I actually had this post written right before my vacation this summer (the reason for not posting here for 6 weeks!), but somehow managed to lose it. But oh well, the topic is just as hot as ever, as witnessed by several blogposts recently from the likes of the BBC and YouTube. My favorite quote from the YouTube article is “Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.” I think that basically sums it up.

For all the excitement surrounding HTML5, it seems that the idea of “replacing Flash” for video delivery is the one that gets everyone going. But, as is pointed out in those two articles (and numerous others), it’s just not that simple – especially as long as there is a hefty majority of users on Internet Explorer 8 and below. If history is any indication, it will be many, many years before those browsers will disappear. I was recently speaking with some attendees at An Event Apart in Minneapolis who informed me that their IT department had just decided to move the entire organization (a large one, but one who I will not name for obvious reasons) to Internet Explorer… 7!!! Yes, S E V E N! I asked why on earth they weren’t moving to 8 and was told that they had begun testing internal apps on 7 “just before 8 was announced” – and they’d put too much work into it, and would have to start all over on 8. Sheez… but that is the reality in a large part of the corporate world.

Adding to that continued need for Flash are also concerns about DRM, multi-bandwidth delivery, as well as the simple fact that it is far easier for the average web designer/developer to customize a video experience in Flash. Oh, and if the client wants subtitles, cue points, video synchronized with our content it all becomes even more difficult. Not necessarily impossible, just difficult. And at the moment, there’s not even any tooling to help ease the pain. I’m sure it’ll come, and I’m also sure that every single point that I could ever dream up will be addressed – eventually.

For now, we live in a world that requires a multifaceted video approach, and thanks to the HTML5 Pack for Dreamweaver CS5, we can not only build pages using HTML5 elements and style them with CSS3, we also can add HTML5 video. But there are a few things that you need to be aware of in order to deliver a seamless video experience in HTML5, as well as provide a Flash alternative for IE. Let’s take a quick look…

Are you using HTML5 video today? Still using Flash? Join the conversation – I’d love to hear your thoughts…

You might have noticed that the blog has been quiet this summer. The reason? I finally took some time off – a lot of time, as a matter of fact. But it’s back to work time now, both on the blog front and on the live events front.

In about two weeks, I will be headed back to one of my favorite places in the whole world, South Africa, where I will be joined by my colleagues Terry White and Jason Levine. We’ll be loaded up with enough Creative Suite 5 tips and tricks to fill an entire day – literally! So, if you’re in Johannesburg on the 26th of August, be sure to join us. My colleagues in South Africa have the agenda and registration info posted, and they’ve even created an AIR application to keep you up-to-date with all things creative in South Africa – check it out.

Then it’s September – and of course, anyone who knows me knows that that means only one thing – Oktoberfest! Um, I mean, a Creative Suite Masters Tour in Germany! Jason and I have the lederhosen out and we’re ready to take a tour through my “alte Heimat” with stops in Munich, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Hamburg (or Berlin) and Switzerland. We’re going to see if we can get Terry to put on the suspenders with us as we dive deep into Creative Suite goodness this year. More details and registration information will be available shortly. Wenn Sie noch nicht CS5 gesehen haben, oder vielleicht immer noch nicht überzeugt sind, machen Sie mit! (Der Vortrag wird teilweise auf Englisch und teilweise auf Deutsch ausgeführt.)

As always, you can keep an eye on the list of events in the right hand column of this page to find out where I will be speaking. Travel safe, and hope to see you soon!

While I truly am excited by the new semantic elements in HTML5, as well as the possibilities that things like local storage will do for expanding the capabilities of websites, I have to admit that I’m really much more excited by the shiny new toys in CSS3. And, of course, with the recently released HTML5 pack for Dreamweaver CS5, I no longer have to “try” to remember the new CSS3 properties – I get them all with lovely code-hinting and code-completion right within Dreamweaver CS5.

In the following video, I show you how to use some of the really popular new properties – like using border-radius to add rounded corners, transform to rotate elements and transitions to create the illusion of an animated rollover.

There is a definite caveat that I want to make sure to mention – since CSS3 (and HTML5, of course) is still being developed, not all of the CSS3 properties are available in Dreamweaver CS5 (and in Live View some properties do not render). But even with that caveat, Dreamweaver CS5 now really rocks with CSS3. And again, if you’ve not looked at Dreamweaver lately, you can always download a 30-day trial.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the underlying language of the web, HTML, has begun to (finally) evolve once again with the browsers slowly beginning to support pieces of HTML5 and CSS3. With the release of Dreamweaver CS5, the world’s leading web authoring tool has made huge strides in embracing the evolution of the web, providing an unparalleled ability to style themes for any PHP-based CMS system (WordPress, Drupal and Joomla out of the box, as well as home-grown PHP-based systems). However, for those who have already upgraded and who want to leverage HTML5 and CSS3, you’ve no doubt found that the only “apparent” support for HTML5 in Dreamweaver CS5 is the addition of the HTML5 doctype in the New Document dialog. But now, that’s all changed!

During the keynote session at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, demonstrated an extension to Dreamweaver CS5 which not only adds the new HTML5 semantic elements, but also properties for CSS3, to the authoring environment. With this addition, Dreamweaver CS5 users are provided with code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3 in Code View.

Of course, HTML5 and CSS3 are not “finished” yet, and as such, the team can’t “know” what’s going to be in the final specification. Therefore, the extension provides support for the elements and properties that are “the most complete” at this time. In other words, the elements and properties that, (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks, I have really resisted weighing in on the Flash vs HTML5 pissing match that has preoccupied the blogosphere. As an Adobe employee, I obviously felt the tug to defend my company’s product and perhaps even echo Lee’s sentiment. But as an advocate of the “standards-based” web – having spent the majority of my career building HTML authoring tools and evangelizing the power of HTML/CSS/Javascript, I have been enjoying seeing the industry really begin to discuss “what’s next”.

Anyone who knows me (even internally at Adobe), also knows that I am the first person to tell you NOT to build an all Flash site – and don’t use Flash to build your site navigation – or your contact form for that matter. You see, I lived through the stupidity of the “Skip Intro” era – and spent countless hours (more…)