Interactive IQ : The Hessler Design Blog » Blogging

Dropping the Ball on Mobile Application Development

Anthony — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:30:23 +0000

OK. I need to get this off my chest. I’m not a fan of Adobe’s attempt to get into the mobile application game.

There. I said it. That feels better.

But why am I not a fan of what they’ve done? Quite frankly, in the process of trying to build a mobile application with Flash Builder 4.5, I’m finding myself either engineering components from scratch, or reengineering the default “mobile-optimized” components to get them to do what I want/need. Plus, I’m finding that in an application of even a decent size (more than just a “hello world” app with a couple simple views like Adobe likes to show off to get Flash developers excited about mobile apps), the optimization and performance are still lacking.

Maybe I’m just being pessimistic. And maybe I’m not doing everything correctly to get things optimized for the mobile app. Honestly, I hope that I am missing something that I’ll catch soon and have a light bulb-over-the-head moment. But my experience thus far has taught me that Steve Jobs was right in bashing Adobe’s ability to create mobile-optimized content.

Here’s a snippet from a blog post from Steve Jobs, dated April 2010:

“We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

“This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.”

Jobs, Steve. “Thoughts on Flash.” Apple. Apple Inc., Apr. 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.

As you probably noticed, this post was from April of 2010. Yeah, that’s over a year and a half ago. And guess what? Adobe still doesn’t have it right. They’re close. But not there. And with the news of Adobe dropping mobile support for Flash Player a couple weeks ago, I’m guessing they never will be there. They may try to really hone in on the mobile application side, rather than just the Flash Player plugin for mobile, and they may get close. But like Jobs eluded to, Adobe holds all of its developers at the mercy of when they choose to adopt new features, whereas developing a mobile application natively gives immediate access to the full spectrum of features.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely agreeing with the Flash haters out there who think that all Flash needs to go away—there is definitely still a time and place for Flash on the web. I’m just agreeing that Adobe needs to realize what their strengths are, and really concentrate on them rather than trying to get a foot into every single realm and telling developers that the Adobe solution will change their lives and work seamlessly.

The Updated Blog Design is Here!

Anthony — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:56:28 +0000

I guess you could call this a case of under-promise, over-deliver. As I was working to get my custom blog theme design done, I found that it went surprisingly faster than I thought. So in my previous post when I said the updated look would be here “in the coming weeks”, I had no idea it would be more like “in the coming days”. Either way, the newly updated theme is here, complete and better matching the rest of HesslerDesign.com.

For those tech-nerds out there (you know who you are), you may appreciate that the theme is a completely custom WordPress theme. Previously I had piggy-backed another nice theme and tweaked it to my heart’s content. Nothing wrong with that, but as I said, it no longer matched my sites redesign. The cool part is, I (obviously) learned a lot about building WordPress themes in the process, including a handful of neat PHP tricks (some used in my theme, others stashed in my back pocket for use later on down the road). If you keep an eye out, you may even see one or two of these tricks surface in future posts. Not making any promises — just throwing it out there.

With all that said, I hope you like the new blog theme design. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it along the road, adding new functionality, nit-picking details down to the pixel, and other good stuff us web designers/developers like to do. But for now, it’s time to take a little breather, sit back and relax.

HesslerDesign.com Creative Refresh

Anthony — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:18:47 +0000

So as time goes on, HesslerDesign.com undergoes updates – both with content and design. Recently, the main site has been redesigned, but the blog section has remained tied to the previous design. Well, I’m happy to announce that I am now well on the way to bringing the main site and blog together into one cohesive design and site. Keep a keen eye out in the coming weeks when the update will be launched.