29 Jan
So you need some sexy tooltips on your website/app do you? Well take a look at this awesome lightweight tooltip plugin brought to you by Build It with Me
TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin.
It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS. It’s also only 3.5kb minified!
by the way @drewwilson you ROCK!
29 Jan
Being plugged into the interactive space pretty heavily I’m constantly watching the websites and blogs that publish and talk about innovative technology and great creative. I’ve been a fan of Rob Ford’s FWA (Favourite Website Awards) for quite sometime and experienced a great deal of pleasure from watching and contributing to some of its winning websites that make its prestigious list.
Today was the first time in the history of the website where a website built in something other than flash made the cut of “Site of the Day“. I started to think about that and I figured I would share a bit more what that means for the Interactive Designers and Creative Strategists of today and tomorrow alike.
The Digital Landscape is changing (duh) and the Technology and ways that things are done are changing with it. As i’ve said for so long technology is only a tool or a vehicle. The minds using and creating it are the messengers.
With browsers getting better and the push towards standards being a voice that is finally being heard the ability to deliver content is only getting better. HTML5 and CSS3 are carving shape to a whole new world of possibilities for Web Developers and Designers alike. You no longer have to be a flash developer to animate a menu and you no longer have to write thousands of lines of code to drag and drop or do things that should have been effortless since day one.
This shift is also causing roles to change. Suddenly the generalist in the office who was once the unsung hero for having knowledge in many things now becomes the all-star. Being a master of one language or syntax isn’t good enough anymore.
Flash Developers are rushing to learn markup and css. Application Developers are rushing to learn jquery and front-end skills to further solidify their job security.
With Coding frameworks getting stronger, API development getting easier and deadlines getting shorter our jobs aren’t getting any less complex. In fact they are getting harder.
I was talking with a close friend of mine the other day who has been a Flash Developer since before there was ActionScript. We started discussing how critical it was that he continued to learn the newer ways of tackling interactive outside of the bounds of flash.
He asked me “Why is Flash Dying“.
My reply was simple “Flash isn’t dying the needs for using it are just changing“.
Flash has always been a staple for connecting together various technologies to offer a unified interactive experience. The penetration of people adopting the Flash Plug-in happened because flash was offering them a better internet. One filled with more interactivity and rich media content. The same thing will happen with HTML5 and advanced JavaScript frameworks like Jquery and Prototype.
Change is the only constant in life. So if your a programmer and your reading this get off your ass and don’t be afraid to break your comfort zone. You don’t have the luxury of hiding behind your one talent anymore because the world is full of a new breed of talent who are well versed in a handful of the things you may have avoided until now.
At my company we are really big on continued learning. We use tools like Lynda for video learning and read blogs and websites like A List Apart and Net-Tuts to stay abreast on things that might slip past us when we are working on client work on a day to day basis.
I’m really curious to see how my peers are viewing this shift.
[/rant]
