Blog

May 24th, 2011

Technology, Uncategorized, Web Content Management, Web Development

There are few things more alluring to a system administrator than the promise of easy configuration and worry-free maintenance.  It is the promise of many cloud-based service providers – providers with big names, like Amazon with its EC2 service, and Microsoft with Azure.  The positives may seem downright impossible to ignore when it comes time to write the next hardware refresh budget: managed upkeep; paying for only the hardware and bandwidth you use; the ability to scale your infrastructure with a few moments notice.  Best of all, those frighteningly complex architectural diagrams with redundant failovers, duplicate NICs piped through separate channels and backup domain controllers all get replaced by a big fluffy icon with a label of “Not My Problem Anymore”. 

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Alan Gallauresi

January 18th, 2011

Information Architecture, Internet Strategy, Technology, User Experience Design, Web Development

As developers, we strive to provide the best user experience on the web, priding ourselves on seamlessly enhancing or degrading the user’s experience depending on the capabilities of the user’s browser. But at what point do we stop catering to the few, so we can deliver a much richer experience to the many?

Many freelancers are openly refusing to develop for IE6, not because they can’t, but because of the fact that it hinders the innovation they would like to see throughout the web, in web applications, and on intranet portals and websites. With so many companies beginning to open up their sites to HTML5 and CSS3, it isn’t enough anymore to be cross-browser compliant. Web Applications and websites need to be highly interactive for users to truly obtain an experience that will stand out in their mind. Developers and organizations need to think about the web in a new way.  No longer is it a place where everyone is entitled to the same experience, but it is a place where those with the right capabilities can have a truly amazing experience. (more…)

Matt Heiner

October 18th, 2010

Application Development, Technology, User Experience Design

Yesterday out of curiosity for what the operating system giant has been doing with its mobile initiative, I went to a presentation sponsored by Microsoft on its latest mobile platform – Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s architect evangelist Dr Zhiming Xue (Dr. Z) gave a quick overview on basic features of the platform. He also introduced the upcoming Microsoft Marketplace, which will be the equivalent of iPhone’s App Store or Android Market.

So would Windows Phone 7 stand a chance in the already very competitive mobile market? I’d say that I found myself pleasantly surprised if not completely blown away by what I saw. (more…)

Cathy Lu

October 13th, 2010

Application Development, Technology, User Experience Design

If you’ve read some of my past posts, you’ll know that I’m a little interested in mobile technology…just a little.  Recently some colleagues asked me about my impression of Windows Phone 7, and the theory that Microsoft can make it work because of the power they have in the marketplace. Here are my thoughts: (more…)

Douglas Brashear

September 13th, 2010

Technology, Web Development

There are some odd stories surfacing about the potential future (or lack of future) of Silverlight and WPF with Microsoft. Essentially the implication (and keep in mind these are rumors, that’s all) is that the IE9 team and some others feel that HTML5 may have a bigger future than Silverlight and WPF. (more…)

Rob Cherny

April 28th, 2010

Application Development, Social Networking, Web Content Management, Web Development

Last week two colleagues and I were fortunate enough to be able to attend the North America Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference in Boston. The volume of information and quality of speakers was astounding, so it’s going to take a little while to digest and distill it into something that can be managed and talked about easily.

The Sitecore management team literally braved the elements and an angry planet (referring to volcanoes and such) to get to Boston, so kudos to the whole team are in order.

Out of the shoot considering the “live” nature of a lot of conferences these days I thought it would be interesting to share some links and tips that surfaced during the conference from around the Web. (more…)

Rob Cherny

April 15th, 2010

Web Development

By now news has spread around the Web that Microsoft announced the Platform Preview of IE9 at MIX10. Our own John Sutton was there and touched on it in our blog here. Reactions around the Web have generally been positive, but there’s been some criticism about the marketing machine, their test results, the features they’re touting, the platform restrictions, and even the fake browser UI that’s been slapped on the thing.

It’s important to realize if you evaluate it that it’s just an early preview and the user interface is, generally speaking, not even there! (more…)

Rob Cherny

March 18th, 2010

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Web Development

Day two at MIX10 and the information overload continues:

Keynote Highlights:

IE9 and HTML 5

IE9 has true support for HTML 5 including HTML 5 video. Reduced processing capacity required for JavaScript and HTML 5 video. The demo provided was truly amazing. The demo ran on Windows 7. This made me wonder what the performance would be like on older versions of Windows as well as other OS platforms. (more…)

John Sutton

March 17th, 2010

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development

There’s a lot going on at MIX10, here are my thoughts on day one:

Keynote introduced the design and development community to the new Windows phone. The interface is interesting. As with most new concepts, there are some good things and some bad. Also introduced the Pivot Control for Silverlight 4, which uses content type attributes and values to help winnow down a large set of similar content types down to a narrow set. (more…)

John Sutton

November 19th, 2009

Web Development

So Microsoft is starting to release information on the next release of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), IE version 9. The IE team posted on their blog about the ongoing progress … but it covers everything from some of the performance profiling that they’re doing (which is an interesting read), to their current performance in the Acid 3 test, to some of the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) features that they will be supporting. (more…)

Rob Cherny