Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending some other Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session is part of Adobe Creative Camp Event on March 12. It is the Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product led by Bruce Bowman and Greg Rewis. Here is the session description.
“We are announcing something completely new – Adobe will be unveiling a new product for Web designers and developers to help with their mobile Web workflows.”
Here is another in my series on SXSW events. I am pleased to be attending SXSW for the first time. I am grateful for Adobe Acrobat for enabling me to attend. I will be attending some other Adobe sponsored sessions. As I do with other events I will be posting my notes from most of the sessions I attend. This is the session is part of Adobe Creative Camp Event on March 12. It is called “Boost your Mobile Workflow with Adobe’s Newest Product” and is led by Bruce Bowman and Greg Rewis. Here is the session description.
“We are announcing something completely new – Adobe will be unveiling a new product for Web designers and developers to help with their mobile Web workflows.”
Bruce led off the session by asking if mobile Web development was easy. No one raised their hands. In the old days you could predict what you screen could look like. But not screens can be larger or smaller and this complicates what we can do as developers. We have to change our mind set beyond the desktop screen. Now one size fits all does not work anymore. Even refrigerators and gas station pumps have screens and Web connections. In the future we will have more mobile devices than desktops. I think the future is already here.
We need a new mantra. All Web experiences do not have to be the same. – he said will not exactly – he said that “all Web experiences should not be the same.” It is okay to add or delete based on the device. Browser sniffing is one way to handle this issue and then determine what are we running and make delivery changes. But this has drawbacks. For one thing, it requires Javascript. Also your browser can deceive you. It also requires detection 24/7.
Another solution is responsive design. Allow the layout to look different based on the device. I saw some of this yesterday. He showed some good examples with a Van Gogh painting. The problem is that the browser can lie. They do not always report their true size. Now can ask the browser to not lie. But even if you make it the same thing, the text can be too small on the iPhone and you have to magnify to see the content details and lose the context.
Mobile development requires constant testing on the real devices and this can be complex. There are too many devices. This is the challenge they want to address.
Greg took over to explain their approach. It is now called Lab Release 1. They plan more releases. You can do remote inspection for devices simplifying the devices. There is an every changing world of devices and operating systems. Cross browser consistency is becoming harder and more important. They call their solution – Shadow – aka Lab Release 1. You can download and install it on your development machine and your target devices. It takes a few minutes but it is quick and free. Now you see across your devices. Seems like a good idea. In their SF office they had 35 devices connected together. He did a demo and it does work. You can have your device paired with your development machine. Shadow works with any Web browser. He showed a number of devices including iPhone, iPad, and Andriod and they were all in synch as he browsed. This was cool. You can make changes and fix things on the spot without a lot of complex testing. Once you do this you cannot go back.
You can do remote inspection. They showed a few more demos. There will be a commercial release by the end of the year as they fine tune Shadow but these early versions are free. This looks like a great tool for mobile app developer, a field that will only grow in size and importance.
This is a good event and for sure everyone can benefit specially those designers and developers. This may a good sort of their trainings.
Posted by: Von Rod Limpot | March 16, 2012 at 04:47 AM