Re: [backstage] Flash required?
Having been one of the first people at the BBC to try to create a 'useful' ( ;-) ) Flash app ( BBC New Iraq War Console / Celebdaq Interactive Console) I came up against so many people at work saying We can't use Flash 6!! (back in the day) , I said Rubbish! Check the stats! Sniff the plugin version!! and then they soon found out that a MASSIVE majority of users to BBC News Online had the version of Flash I needed (to save vast amounts of time parsing xml etc) So, on we went. I think it's amusing when I see people bemoan the use of Flash for things that sure, can be done in AJAX etc. (I have learned and used a lot of AJAX since those early Flash days, when at the time it was the the only way you could do certain things across platforms which were meant meant to improve the user experience - no, really! ;) ) Trouble is, there aren't enough developers there at the beeb (in News, at least) who can do all these things - along with all the other great stuff they have to do. There are some amazing developers there - don't get me wrong - some are geniuses - some are not anything close. Some are great at Java, some are Flash ninjas, some do great html. Some do what they're told. Some push the boundaries. Some 'watch the clock'. Some work as long as it takes to get a job done because they love it! ;) Some do that little bit 'extra'. What can happen in editorially-driven sites like this is, when a producer/editor wants a certain 'feature', a representative of the design/dev team might a) say 'No! We can't do that!' then hopefully b) Come up with a solution / compromise which might be down to skillsets required and resources available. What I mean is, I expect Flash was chosen because when you have a Flash ninja at your disposal, it's very very easy fast and cheap to implement. And you know it's going to work across platforms. And you know it's safe - as it's in the Flash 'vm' environment/wrapper, where doing really bad things is pretty impossible actually. Hopefully a Flash dev there worth his/her salt stood up and said I can do it! ;) K ps: dont get me started on the crazy looks people gave me years ago when I suggested I use PHP and MySql on a live project. Save money?? God forbid!! ;) lol pps: I *did* end up using LAMP for that project. Using an old PC which was about to be thrown out as it was not Millennium compliant - I put Linux on it - seemed OK to me ;) hehe On 3/5/07, Andy Leighton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 10:32:04PM +, Andy wrote: On 04/03/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Switch to Ruby on Rails and AJAX over and above Java? Ruby is server side, unless I am mistaken. Thus would not need to be installed locally, so a good thing there. Javascript (needed for AJAX) is implemented differently across browser. not even sure the XMLHTTPRequest function, or whatever it is called, is standardised or if websites just pray all vendors implemented it the same way. Javascript is pretty standard. XMLHTTPRequest is implemented slightly different across platforms however it is pretty easy to write code that wraps around the particular implementation for all the major browsers. I suggested Java over HTML/CSS/Javascript as Java is more versatile. Java will also run on many more platforms than Flash. You can even get embedded versions of Java. Java is a more full featured language than javascript, or I might just not know Javascript well enough. I've written Java on server, client and mobile. CDLC (the form of Java on mobile phones) is pretty cut down compared to JavaSE - the UI layer is completely different for example. Also I am not sure how good the phone browsers (or even Pocket IE on WindowsCE PDAs) are at running java applets. Javascript as a language is perfectly capable (although prototype based languages have typically been less well-understood). Some of its poor reputation comes down to poor implementation of the DOM and not the language at all. Also it doesn't have a wide range of general purpose libraries (IO and UI in particular) because it was designed to work wihtin a hosted environment. At the moment for most things my choice would tend to JS/CSS/HTML for portability. However I do appreciate that it can be a more tricky proposal to develop to that and likely to take a little longer than Flash. Personally I'm looking forward to a time when all desktop browsers have SVG/SMIL/XForms/XHTML/CSS3. And of course security wise Flash is a no go area. If you can't see what code is doing to your machine better assume its doing something bad to it. Of course I could run flash in a VM Technically the Flash Player is already a VM. If you want real issues with Adobe Flash the following are better issues - far more optimisation for the Windows platform. Solaris is still languishing on Flash 7. No 64bit version. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin,
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
Re: Arrington OMFG!! On 2/22/07, Mr I Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All, The video form the 1st Backstage podcast is now up - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/bbc_backstage_p_1.html and you might want to check out the comments from Mike TechCrunch Arrington on the BBC - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/michael_arringt.html Cheers, Ian - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
btw: I just added Ian's blip.tv video feed to our podcast.com video folder http://podcast.com/show/6951 I will attempt to clean up the audio from last night's geekdinner event and get that online soon too. (Also to rip out the audio of Mike saying his piece and post to my blog) ;) On 2/22/07, blogHUD [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Re: Arrington OMFG!! On 2/22/07, Mr I Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All, The video form the 1st Backstage podcast is now up - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/bbc_backstage_p_1.html and you might want to check out the comments from Mike TechCrunch Arrington on the BBC - http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/02/michael_arringt.html Cheers, Ian - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
i tried processing the audio through 'Levelator' (an audio normalisation app) as the original panel audio was waaay quieter than Ian spitting out his coffee ;) I could quite hear the context before he said if, in the video, but he did say 'this is bullsh*t' before saying it. hopefully some kind of 'official' recording of this event will surface at some stage. ;) On 2/22/07, Scot McSweeney-Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: blogHUD wrote: I have posted the audio here: http://kosso.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/techcrunchs-mike-arrington-calls-for-the-end-of-the-bbc/ http://kosso.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/techcrunchs-mike-arrington-calls-for-the-end-of-the-bbc/ download! share! mock! taunt! ;) Maybe I'm going deaf, but the audio isn't audible - I've got my speakers turned up full blast, and while there is enough sound to know that there is something there, it's still not audible. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
could*nt* hear... - sorry On 2/22/07, blogHUD [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i tried processing the audio through 'Levelator' (an audio normalisation app) as the original panel audio was waaay quieter than Ian spitting out his coffee ;) I could quite hear the context before he said if, in the video, but he did say 'this is bullsh*t' before saying it. hopefully some kind of 'official' recording of this event will surface at some stage. ;) On 2/22/07, Scot McSweeney-Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: blogHUD wrote: I have posted the audio here: http://kosso.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/techcrunchs-mike-arrington-calls-for-the-end-of-the-bbc/ http://kosso.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/techcrunchs-mike-arrington-calls-for-the-end-of-the-bbc/ download! share! mock! taunt! ;) Maybe I'm going deaf, but the audio isn't audible - I've got my speakers turned up full blast, and while there is enough sound to know that there is something there, it's still not audible. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life
you could if we (oops) they used Quicktime.We could use the video podcasts, if they have been done in mp4On 10/3/06, Ian Forrester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nice stuff Mario, I will check it out next time I'm in second life. Can you add some detail how you did it? I've only looked at the scripting language insecond life briefly. Just a thought, if you used the AV News RSS feeds, you could link to the stream which would actually stream into Second life? Or maybe not? Ian Forrester || backstage.bbc.co.uk From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mario MentiSent: 03 October 2006 16:19To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.ukSubject: [backstage] BBC news ticker in Second Life In case there's any Second Lifers on this list, I thought I'd mention a little experiment I did last night - created a very simple BBC news ticker that cycles through the latest/newest 10 news items and displays the headlines. For details and teleport/location see http://menti.net/?p=13It really is incredibly basic, but more features could of course be added (initially thinking of hooks to launch web browser, and the facility to select which flavour of the BBC news feed the screen should display. Cheers,Mario.
[backstage] Proto commenting?
Hi everyone,I dont appear to be able to post comments on the backstage prototype entries.Has this been switched off, or are they turned off?Do I have to active anything / stand on one leg humming the themetune to The Archers or anything? ;) Kosso
