Category Archives: professional

adobe, flash, gaming, professional, software development

Flash to get 3D acceleration with “Molehill”

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One of the demos here at Adobe Max was a 3D racing game, running in Flash with 3D acceleration. It was enabled by a new set of GPU-accelerated APIs codenamed Molehill. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch remarked that with GPU-accelerated 3D, Flash games could come closer to console games in the experience they offer. Lynch also demonstrated using a game controller with a Flash game.

There are no precise dates for availability, but Adobe expects to offer a public beta in the first half of 2011. The APIs will be available in a future version of the Flash Player. Under the covers, the 3D APIs will user DirectX 9 on Windows and OpenGL 1.3 on MacOS and Linux. If no supported 3D API is found on a particular platform, Flash will fall back to software rendering.

One interesting aspect is that Molehill will also work on mobile devices, where it will use OpenGL ES 2.0. Apparently GPUs will be common on mobile devices because they enable longer battery life than relying on the CPU for all processing. I heard similar remarks at the NVIDIA GPU conference last month.

This will be a significant development, especially when put in the context of Flash appearing in the living room, built into a TV or on Google TV.

adobe, flash, microsoft, professional

Adobe: no AIR planned for Windows Phone 7

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I’m at the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles, and last night attended a couple of the “Meet the team” events where a bunch of Adobe engineers, product managers and others field questions about the products they are working on.

One of the events was on Adobe AIR, where an attendee asked whether we will see the AIR runtime on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. It is an interesting question, particularly at an event where mobile AIR has been highlighted. There is much talk of AIR for Android, and at the conference we have also discovered that the forthcoming Blackberry Tablet, the Playbook, uses AIR extensively for its user interface. AIR does not run on Apple’s iOS for iPhone and iPad, but Adobe has come up with a packager that compiles AIR apps to native code.

I have asked Adobe spokespersons before about AIR for Windows Phone 7 and have even been told that it will come, but it is a delicate matter. In fact, when I discussed this in a pre-MAX briefing with Adobe, I was informed was that Adobe would like to do it but that Microsoft will not permit it, though I doubt this is the whole story. The Flash runtime is known to be making its way to the device, though I have yet to see a date announced.

Last night the “Meet the team” presenter was clear. Adobe has no plans to deliver AIR for Windows Phone 7. We were told that Adobe sees Windows Phone 7 as a .NET device. The spokesperson (whose name I missed unfortunately – I’ll update if someone can tell me who it was) added mysteriously his belief that “it wouldn’t be the most successful endeavour for us.”

I would not assume from this that AIR will never appear on this platform; but it seems safe to say that it will not be soon.

The tension here is that supporting AIR would immediately increase app availability on Windows Phone 7, which would be to Microsoft’s advantage; but would also drive developers towards Adobe’s platform and away from Silverlight and .NET. The attraction of a cross-platform runtime is that you can develop once and deploy on a variety of devices, though there are always compromises involved.

Adobe may also have mixed feelings about supporting Windows Phone 7. Android is being heavily promoted here at MAX, even to the extent of handing a free Motorola Droid 2 to all attendees. If Windows Phone 7 becomes popular, Adobe will want its stuff to run there; but it might suit the company even better if it turns out to be a niche device.

adobe, mobile, professional, software development, web authoring

Adobe aims to fill mobile vacuum with AIR

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Today is day one of the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles. In this morning’s keynote CTO Kevin Lynch focused firmly on devices – both mobile devices and living room devices including Google TV. There was a nod to HTML 5 in the opening demo, a prototype of a new product called Edge which is a motion designer that extends JQuery, but the Flash player remains the heart of Adobe’s platform. The proliferation of incompatible devices is an opportunity for cross-platform runtimes, and Adobe intends to take advantage with Flash and AIR – the Adobe Integrated Runtime, for local applications that fun on Flash.

Released today in public preview, the Flex “Hero” SDK includes support for mobile development, among other things, and is backed by an updated Flash Builder code-named Burrito.

Right now the only mobile platform which is supported is Google Android, but others are promised. In particular, we heard a lot in the keynote about the Blackberry Playbook,  the forthcoming tablet from RIM, including an appearance from RIM boss Mike Lazaridis.

An interesting aspect of the Playbook is that the user interface of the device itself is built in part with AIR. As a RIM exec observed in a later Q&A, it makes sense for the OS to use the same framework as that used by third party apps, so that any issues are sorted early.

AIR popped up again in a a different context, as Lynch described Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite. This suite targets magazine publishers creating publications for the Apple iPad, such as publisher Condé Nast, also represented at the keynote, which is adopting the platform for many of its publications from Wired to the New Yorker.

The Digital Publishing Suite exports publications from Adobe InDesign to a dedicated format with a .issue extension, played on the iPad by Adobe Content Viewer. Adobe will now implement the content viewer on AIR, so that digital publications will render on the new wave of Android tablets, Blackberry tablets, and others in future.

Also worth noting is that Adobe plans to insert itself into the distribution process beyond just providing the authoring tools and the runtime. The Digital Publishing Suite includes Adobe hosting for the content. More broadly, the Melrose project, now called Adobe InMarket, is a service where you host your application on Adobe’s servers and Adobe handles deployment to the various App Stores out there as well as credit card processing.

Of course Apple is working, it seems, to undermine Flash. The runtime is not allowed on iOS, Apple’s mobile platform. Apple is not including Flash by default in the latest Macs, and the forthcoming Mac App Store will not allow AIR (or for that matter Java) applications. You will still be able to install Flash and AIR on a Mac, but Apple will no doubt be encouraging users to go the App Store route.

It is a fascinating tension, particularly since Apple’s devices fit so well with other aspects of Adobe’s strategy.

Despite Steve Jobs, Lynch announced today that the number of Flash platform developers has grown by 50% over the last year, which is huge. I also wonder whether the Java turmoil, especially on the Mac, could work in Adobe’s favour as it builds support for its Flash runtime.

microsoft, mobile, professional

An honest assessment of Windows Phone 7

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I’ve been using Windows Phone 7 for a week and a half now, in the shape of an HTC Mozart on Orange. So what do I think?

I am not going to go blow-by-blow through the features – others have done that, and while it is important to do, it does not convey well what the phone is like to use. Instead, this is my first impression of the phone together with some thoughts on its future.

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First, it is a decent smartphone. Take no notice of comments about the ugliness of the user interface. Although it looks a little boxy in pictures, in practice it is fun to use.

Some things take a bit of learning. For example, There is a camera button on the phone, and a full press on this activates the camera from almost anywhere. Within the camera, a full press takes a picture, but a half press or a press and hold activates autofocus. I did not find this behaviour immediately intuitive, but it is something you get used to.

There is plenty to like about the phone. This includes the dynamically updating tiles; the picture hub and the ability to auto-upload pictures to Skydrive, Microsoft’s free cloud storage; and neat touches such as the music controls which appear over the lock screen when you activate the screen during playback; or the Find your Phone feature which can ring your phone loudly even if it is set to silent, or lock the phone and add an if found message.

The People hub is fabulous if you use Facebook. I don’t use Facebook much, but even with my limited use, I noticed that as soon as I linked with Facebook, the phone felt deeply personalised to me, with little pictures of people I know in the People tile. The ability to link two profiles to one contact is good.

I also like the Office hub which includes Sharepoint workspace mobile – useful for synching content. Microsoft should push this hard, especially as Office 365, which includes hosted Exchange and Sharepoint, gains users.

There are some excellent design touches. For example, many apps have a menu bar with icons at the foot of the screen. There are no captions, which saves space, but by tapping a three-dot icon you can temporarily display captions. In time you learn them and no longer need to.

The pros and cons of hubs

Microsoft has addressed what is a significant issue in other smartphones: how to declutter the user interface. Windows Phone 7 hubs collect several related apps and features (between which there is no sharp difference) into a multi-page view. There are really six hubs:

  • People
  • Pictures (includes the camera)
  • Music and videos
  • Marketplace
  • Office
  • Games

I like the hubs in general; but there are a few issues. Of the hubs listed above, four of them work well: People, Pictures, Music/Videos, and Games. Marketplace is not really a hub any more than “phone” is a hub – it is just a way to access a single feature. Office is handy but it is not a hub gathering all the apps that address a particular area; it is a Microsoft brand. If I made a word processor app I could not add it to the Office hub.

Further, operators and OEMs can add their own hubs, but will most likely make bad decisions. There is a pointless HTC hub on my device which combines weather and featured apps. It also features a dizzying start-up animation which soon gets tired. I have no idea what the HTC hub is meant to do, other than to promote the HTC brand.

Speaking of brands, I have deliberately left the home screen on my Mozart as supplied by Orange. As you can see from the picture above, Orange decided we would rather see four Orange apps occupy 50% of the home screen (before you scroll down), than other features such as web browsing, music and video, pictures and so on. Why isn’t Orange a hub so that at least all this stuff is in one place?

The user can modify the home screen easily enough, and largely remove the Orange branding. But to get back to my point about hubs: it is not clear to me what a hub is meant to be. It is not really a category, because you cannot create hubs or add and remove apps from them, and because of the special privileges given to OEMs we get nonsense like the HTC hub, alongside works of art like the Pictures hub.

There is still more good than bad in the hub concept, but it need work.

Not enough features?

I have no complaint about lack of features in this first release of Windows Phone 7. Yes, I would like tethering. Yes, I would like the ability to copy an URL from the web browser to the Twitter client. But I am happy with the argument that Microsoft was more concerned with getting the foundation right, than with supplying every possible feature in version one.

I am less happy with the notion that Microsoft can afford for the initial devices to be a bit hopeless, and fix it up in later versions. I am not sure how much time the company has, before the world at large just presumes it cannot match iPhone or Android and forgets Microsoft as a smartphone company.

Is it a bit hopeless, or very good at what it does? I am still not sure, mainly because I seem to have had more odd behaviour than some other early adopters. Example: licence error after downloading from marketplace; apps that don’t open or which give an error and inform me that they have to close; black screens. A few times I’ve had to restart; once I had to remove the battery – thank you HTC Notes, which has been updated and now does not work at all. It is possible that there is some issue with my review device, such as faulty RAM, or maybe the amount of memory in a Mozart is inadequate. I am going to assume the former, but await other reports with interest.

The one area where Windows Phone 7 is weak is in app availability. I would like a WordPress app, for example. Clearly this will fix itself if the device is popular, though there are some issues facing third-party developers which will impede this somewhat.

App Development and the Marketplace

The development platform for third parties is meant to be Silverlight and XNA, two frameworks based on .NET which address general apps and games respectively. These are strong platforms, backed up by Visual Studio and the C# programming language, so not a bad development story as far as it goes.

That said, there are a couple of significant issues here. One is that third-party apps do not have access to all the features of the phone and cannot multi-task. Switch away from an app and it dies. This can result in a terrible user experience. For example, I fire up the impressive game The Harvest. Good though it is, it takes a while to load. Finally it loads and play resumes from where I got to last time. I’m just wondering what to tap, when the lock screen kicks in – since I have not tapped anything for a bit (because the game was loading), the device has decided to lock. I flick back the lock. Unfortunately the game has been killed, and starts over with resume and a long loading process.

The other area of uncertainly relates to native code development. C/C++ and native code is popular for mobile apps. It is efficient, which is good for devices with constrained resources; and while native code is by definition not cross-platform, large chunks of the code for one platform will likely port OK to another.

Third party developers cannot do native code development for Windows Phone 7. Or can they? Frankly, I have heard conflicting reports on this from Microsoft, from developers, and even from other journalists.

At the beginning, when the Windows Phone 7 development platform was announced at the Mix conference last year, it was stated that the only third-party developers allowed to use native code were Adobe, because Microsoft wants Flash on the device, operators and OEM hardware vendors. At the UK reviewer’s workshop, I was assured by a Microsoft spokesperson that this is still the case, and that no other third parties have been given special privileges.

I am sceptical though. I expect important third parties like Spotify will use native code for their apps, and/or get access to additional APIs. If you have a good enough relationship with Microsoft, or an important enough app, it will be negotiable.

In fact, I hope this is the case; and I also expect that there will be an official, public native code SDK for the device within a year or two.

As it is, the situation is unsatisfactory. I dislike the idea that only operators and OEMs can use native code – especially as this group does not have the best track record for creating innovative and useful apps. I have more confidence in third party developers to come up with compelling apps than operators or hardware vendors – who all too often just want to plug their brand.

I also think the Marketplace needs work. If I search marketplace, I want it filtered to apps only by default, but for some reason the search covers music and video as well, so If I search for a twitter client, I get results including a song called Hit me up on Twitter. That’s nonsense.

I wonder if the submission process is a too lax at the moment, because of Microsoft is so anxious to fill Marketplace with apps. I suppose there will always be too many lousy apps in there, on this and other platforms. Still, while nobody likes arbitrary rejections, I suspect Microsoft would win support if it were more rigorous about enforcing standards in areas like how well apps resume after they are killed by the operating system, and in their handling of the back button, two areas which seem lacking at the moment.

Complaints and annoyances

One persistent annoyance with the HTC Mozart is the proximity of menu bar which appears at the bottom of many apps, with the with “hardware” buttons for back, start, and search which are compulsory on all Windows Phone 7 devices. The problem is that on the Mozart, these buttons are the same as app buttons, triggered by a light touch. So I accidentally hit back, start or search instead of one of the menu buttons. I have similar issues with the onscreen keyboard. I’m learning to be very very careful where I tap in that region, which makes using the device less enjoyable.

Another annoyance is the unpredictability of the back button. I am often unsure whether this is going to navigate me back within an app, or kick me out of the app.

Some of the apps are poor or not quite done. This will sort itself presuming the phone is not a complete flop. For example, in Twozaic, when typing a tweet, the post button is almost entirely hidden by the keyboard. I would like an Android style close keyboard button (update: though the back button should do this consistently).

I have already mentioned problems with bugs and crashes, which I am hoping are specific to my device.

It seems to me that Microsoft has taken a look at Apple’s extraordinarily profitable approach to devices and thought “We want some of that.” The device is equally as locked down as an iPhone – except that in Apple’s case there are no OEMs to disrupt the user experience with half-baked apps, and operators are also prevented from interfering. With Windows Phone we kind-of have the worst of both worlds: operators and OEMs can spoil the phone’s usability – though this is constrained in that clued-up users can get rid of what they do not want – but we are still restricted from doing things like attaching the phone as USB storage.

Still not completely fixed – the OEM problem

My final reflection (for now) is that Windows Phone 7 still reflects Microsoft’s OEM problem. This device matters more to Microsoft than it does either to the operators or the OEM hardware vendors – who have plenty to be getting on with other mobile operating systems. In consequence, the launch devices do not do justice to the capabilities of Windows Phone 7, and in some cases let it does badly. I do not much like the HTC Mozart, and suspect that HTC just has not given the phone the attention that it needed.

One solution would be for Microsoft to make its own device. Another would be for some hardware vendor to come up with a superb device that would make us re-evaluate the platform. Those with long memories will recall that HTC did this for Windows CE, with the original iPAQ, the first devices using that operating system which performed satisfactorily.

HTC could do it again, but has not delivered with the Mozart, or I suspect with its other launch devices.

I have also noted issues with way Orange has customised my device, which is another part of the same overall issue.

Despite Microsoft’s moves to mitigate its OEM problem, by enforcing consistency of hardware and by (mostly) retaining control over the user interface, it is still an area of concern.

google, java, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio

Microsoft lets go of IronPython and IronRuby

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Visual Studio corporate VP Jason Zander has announced that IronPython and IronRuby, .NET implementations of popular dynamic languages, are to be handed over to the open source community. This includes add-ons that enable development in Visual Studio, IronPython Tools and IronRuby Tools. Of the two, IronPython is a more mature and usable project.

Why? Here’s a few reflections. For what it must cost Microsoft to maintain these projects, versus the goodwill it earns in the open source world, I would have thought they represent good value and I am surprised to see them abandoned.

On the other hand, it is easy to see that they are not commercial propositions. I’d guess that they were more valuable a few years back, before C# acquired dynamic features, and when dynamic languages were strongly in vogue and Microsoft was keen not to allow .NET to fall behind. To some extent dynamic languages are still in vogue, but we are now well past what is “the peak of inflated expectations” in the Gartner Hype Cycle, and few are likely to abandon .NET because it does not have an official Python or Ruby.

The other reason they are not commercial propositions is that Microsoft has under-invested in them. I recall Martin Fowler at ThoughtWorks telling me that JRuby, an implementation of Ruby for the Java Virtual Machine, is important to their work; it lets them work in a highly productive language, while giving clients the reassurance of running on a trusted and mature platform. JRuby performs very well, but IronRuby is a long way behind. Perhaps if Microsoft had really got behind them, one or both of these language could be equally significant in the .NET world.

The fact that F# rather than IronRuby or IronPython turned up as a fully supported language in Visual Studio 2010 is also significant. After talking to F# leader Don Syme – see the interview here – I understood how F# was important to some of Microsoft’s key customers in the financial world; and I’m guessing that neither Python nor Ruby had that kind of case made for them within the company.

Although it is a shame that Microsoft is withdrawing official support, the clarity of Zander’s statement is better than leaving the projects in limbo. The folk appointed as project leaders are also very capable – Mono guru Miguel de Icaza is on both teams and a great motivator, though it seems unlikely he will have much time to devote to them given his other commitments – and this may actually be good rather than bad news for the projects themselves.

Jim Hugunin, creator of both Jython (Python for Java) and IronPython, is leaving Microsoft for Google, and his farewell is worth a read. He says C# has evolved into a nicer language than Java, but notes:

I like to have a healthy relationship with Open Source code and communities, and I believe that the future lies in the cloud and the web. These things are all possible to do at Microsoft and IronPython is a testament to that. However, making that happen at Microsoft always felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – which can be done but only at major cost to both the peg and the hole.

apple, itunes, java, professional, software, software development

Apple deprecates Java

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Apple has deprecated the version of Java that it ports and maintains for OS X:

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.

This is not altogether a bad thing for Java. Waiting for Apple to update its official version has been a frustration for Java developers on the Mac. If Oracle now takes responsibility for delivering the JVM for OS X, it may keep in step.

Unfortunately there is not currently an Oracle JVM for OS X. Nor does the open source Apache Harmony support it. In the light of Apple’s announcement I imagine both may address this lack; though a further complication is that IBM has recently abandoned Harmony in favour of the Open JDK.

Further, in making this statement Apple is further discouraging use of Java application on OS X. This announcement should be put together with this one, in the new developer agreement for apps submitted to the forthcoming Mac App Store, a desktop version of the iOS App Store:

3.3.1    Applications may only use public APIs and frameworks included in the default installation of Mac OS X or as bundled with Xcode as provided by Apple, deprecated technologies (such as Java) may not be used.

I doubt Apple will ever attempt to lock down desktop OS X, iPad-style. But I think we will see strong encouragement from Apple steering users towards App Store installs. There will be hints that it is safer and better, the true Mac way to get apps onto your machine.

Remember the early days of Java? One of the reasons it won support was that it reduced the industry’s dependence on a single vendor and its operating system.

Plenty to think about as Apple increases its market share.

[Updated to clarify non-availability of alternative JVMs for OS X]

cloud computing, microsoft, professional, software development, Web

Microsoft unveils Office 365, wins vs Google in California. What are the implications for its future?

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Today Microsoft announced Office 365, though it is not really a new product. Rather, it pulls together a bunch of existing ones: Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Office Live Small Business, and Live@edu, the cloud  . It also impacts the desktop Office business, in that with at least some varieties of Office 365 subscriptions, users get the right to download and install Office 2010 Pro Plus edition.

This rebranding is a smart move. I have long been mystified by the myriad brands Microsoft users for its online offerings. I hope this will all integrate nicely with the new Small Business Server “Aurora”, a forthcoming version of SBS designed to bridge the cloud and the local network. If it does, this will be attractive for small businesses – who will pay $6.00 per user per month, we were told today – as well as for larger organisations.

Enterprises will pay between $2.00 and $27.00 per user depending on which services they buy, and can get extra features such as unlimited space for email archiving.

I also find it interesting that Microsoft has won what sounds like a bitter battle with Google for the migration of the State of California to online services.

Why would anyone choose Microsoft rather than Google for cloud services? Google was born in the web era, has no desktop legacy weighing it down, has helped to drive browser standards forward with HTML 5 and lightning-fast JavaScript, promotes open standards, and has a great free offering as well as subscriptions? Further, with Android Google has a fast-growing mobile platform which it can integrate with its services.

No doubt Microsoft can make a case for its cloud offerings, but I suspect a lot of it is the power of the familiar. If you already run on Office documents and Exchange email, moving to online versions of the same applications will seem a smoother transition. There is also the document format issue: you can import Office documents into Google Apps, but not with with 100% fidelity, and the online editors are basic compared with Microsoft Office.

When Microsoft seemingly had no idea what the cloud was about, it was easier for Google to win customers. Now Microsoft is slowly but surely getting the idea, and the value of its long-standing hold over business computing is being felt.

Google is also winning customers, of course, and even if you accept that Office 365 is the future for many existing Microsoft-platform businesses – and, Microsoft will hope, some new ones – there are still a host of interesting questions about the company’s future.

One is how the numbers stack up. Can Microsoft as cloud provider be as profitable as Microsoft has been with the old locally installed model?

Second, what are the implications for its partners? In today’s press announcement we were told that customers migrating to BPOS report a 10%-50% cost saving. The implication is that these companies are spending less money on IT than before – so who is losing out? It could be Microsoft, it could be hardware suppliers, it could be integration partners. Microsoft does include potential for partners to profit from Office 365 migrations, presuming it follows the BPOS model, but partners could still be worse off.

For example, if support requests diminish,because cloud services are more reliable, and if Microsoft does some support directly, there is less opportunity for partners support services.

Finally, what are the implications for developers? The main one is this. Organisations that migrate to online services will have little enthusiasm for locally installed custom applications, and will also want to reduce their dependence on local servers. In other words, custom applications will also need to live in the cloud.

adobe, professional, software, web authoring

Adobe Acrobat X puts the focus on security and usability

Adobe has announced Acrobat X (pronounced Acrobat ten), the latest PDF document creator with its associated free reader, which will be available in November.

The Acrobat product is a bit of a chameleon. The PDF format – now an ISO standard – has three distinct roles.

The first and original role is as a means of distributing electronic documents that look the same everywhere. This has never been a goal of HTML, which was designed to give the browser, or “user agent”, flexibility over how to render documents. Word processor formats are also compromised in this respect, because they are for editing, whereas PDF is for output. This is how most users encounter PDFs – a document format which is somewhat annoying, especially when it opens to a full page view and you cannot read a thing, but which does show each page as originally designed.

The second role is for print professionals. This is a logical extension of the first role: the same characteristics make it ideal as a format for delivery to a printer. If terms like Preflight, Calibrated CMYK, Trap presets and Job Definition Format mean anything to you, this may be how you use PDF.

The third role is as the forms client in Adobe enterprise workflow systems. When I attended Adobe’s Partner Conference in Amsterdam, this usage was the area of focus. I saw case studies such as processing applications for planning permission, invoicing, and health insurance applications.

Is there any conflict between these roles? I believe there is, though Adobe will disagree. There are features in Acrobat and Adobe reader which exist to support its role in enterprise systems, but do not matter to the more common use of PDF, for distributing static documents. In particular, the ability to execute script and host Flash applications has value if you think of PDF as an application client, but if you just want to read a document it adds bloat and security risk.

Still, we should not complain too much. PDF is both useful and, for most of us, free – particularly now that PDF export is a standard feature in Microsoft Office and in many Mac applications.

After that preamble, what is new in Acrobat X? I’ve been trying a late pre-release, and from what I have seen the changes are more in the realm of the user interface, usability and security, than in new capabilities, though I would still describe this as a major update. Here are the highlights.

First, Adobe has responded to PDF security issues by introducing a new protected mode on Windows, which according to Adobe is the only platform where significant malware attacks via PDF occur. All write calls are sandboxed by default, making it hard for malware to infect a PC. Apparently this is just the first phase, and a future version will restrict read calls as well. Another weakness in the current sandbox is that it does not protect the Windows clipboard.

Second, Adobe has polished and simplified the user interface. In a web browser, a PDF appears without any additional controls or toolbars other than a small toolbar that appears if you hover the mouse around the bottom centre of the page.

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Adobe’s intent is to make moving from HTML to PDF so seamless you hardly notice, further embedding the format into the web.

Acrobat’s user interface has also been revamped. There are a few basic commands on the traditional menu and toolbars, but most of the features are accessed through a tabbed right-hand column, with tabs for Tools, Comments and Share. It is similar to the old Office task pane. I think it is successful, making features easier to find and use.

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One of the sections in the Tools pane is called Action Wizard, which is a new macro feature in Acrobat Pro. “Macro” is not quite right; it is more of a wizard authoring tool, with some pre-prepared wizards that you can use as-is or modify. The following illustration shows one of these wizards in edit mode.

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The Action Wizard should both speed up repetitive tasks, and ensure that important steps are not omitted. The focus is on preparing documents, for example for review, distribution, or web publishing.

Third, Adobe is having another go at the portfolio feature, introduced in Acrobat 9 but perhaps not used as much as the company had hoped. Portfolios let you combine multiple documents into one, for single file distribution with some added features in the container. If you are nostalgic for the Microsoft Office Binder, you will like Portfolios.

Acrobat X makes portfolios easier to create, and adds features like layouts and visual themes, so you can achieve slick effects with little effort. Organisations might create their own themes so as to promote their brand.

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It is cool stuff, but if the portfolio feature in Acrobat 9 found little use, I am not sure that this new improved version will make much difference. Maybe the need for gathering multiple documents into one is not as great as Adobe imagines.

Other features include Microsoft SharePoint integration, enhanced OCR (optical character recognition), and improved copy and paste from PDF to editable documents such as Word and Excel, while preserving formatting – this last quite an important feature since this is a common source of frustration.

I am not sure about portfolios, and have some concern that Adobe has pushed too many features into Acrobat. Nevertheless, I found myself liking the new Acrobat. The usability effort has paid off, and I found it more enjoyable to use than previous versions. Performance seems better as well. Taken together with security improvements on Windows, this is a welcome upgrade.

Update: UK price details are as follows

  • Acrobat X Standard is expected to be £278 ex VAT (£132 upgrade)
  • Acrobat X Pro is expected to be £444 ex VAT (£190 upgrade)
  • Acrobat X Suite (includes Acrobat X Pro, Photoshop CS5, Presenter 7, Captivate 5, Media Encoder CS5, LiveCycle Designer ES2) is expected to be £953 ex VAT (£635 upgrade)
professional, software development, visual studio, web authoring

PyCharm: JetBRAINS IDE for Python and Django

JetBRAINS has released PyCharm, an IDE for Python and the Django web development framework.

The company is best known for the IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, and indeed PyCharm is mostly written in Java, but now has other tools for languages including PHP and Ruby and Rails. It also does add-ins for .NET developrs working in Visual Studio.

PyCharm

PyCharm has a small number of refactorings, lots of code search and assistance features,  integrated support for CVS, Git, Mercurial and Subversion version control, unit testing with a graphical test runner, graphical debugger, built-in deployment to Google App Engine as well as error highlighting for GQL queries, and editing support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript as well as Python.

apple, iphone, microsoft, mobile, professional, visual studio, windows

A useful Windows Phone 7 app in a couple of hours – Where’s my Train

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I was interested to see that National Rail Enquiries has published a web service for its live departure boards. These give you reports on the next trains to depart from any given station, including information on late running.

Given that this is Windows Phone 7 week, I could not resist trying it out. I have a minimalist UI – you type in a station and hit Go. In version two you will just press Enter. It fetches the live train departures and displays them in a list. Version two might have a scrollbar too. Still, I’m pleased with the results, which could actually prove useful when I am running for a train.

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Confession: it is currently hardcoded for just a few stations. That’s because you need to look up the station code in this table. I need to embed this database in my app somehow.

The coding is pretty simple though. It may help that the National Rail Enquiries web service is based on .NET, which is also why it does SOAP and WSDL, to the disappointment of those looking for REST. All the hard stuff is done by Add Service Reference in Visual Studio. The web service call is asynchronous, but there is a code completion wizard to add the necessary event handler.

Could be a money spinner if I can get it out quickly – but unfortunately the terms and conditions appear to prohibit its distribution:

This Web Site is for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not at any time modify, store, copy (including for example screen scraping), extract, reutilise, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell, distribute or create any information, products or services obtained from, linked to or using this Web Site and any data therein or that may provide users with the ability to do the same.

These terms are bit puzzling, because on one interpretation they do not permit any use of the web service, even though it is stated that:

For the purposes of these Terms & Conditions the term Web Site also includes the web services, XML and any other data source supplying the Web Site.

Oh well. It still shows how quickly you can knock together a client for a web service and make something useful, although mine is really only a proof of concept. I reckon it would be almost as easy in Adobe AIR too – and then it would run on Android.

There is a National Rail Enquiries app for iPhone which costs $7.99 and likely uses the same web service.