We just got back from a conference here in Sweden. A conference for organisations within the public sector, and where we also exhibited and presented some new features. It was a quite positive experience in general, and a very positive aspect was the attitude for complementing web sites with interactive content. There's very clearly a shift in how municipals think about interactive Flash-objects. Obviously we're very biased as we're providing a very productive service for many of those, but mainly it's about making information more accessible for the visitors.

We've seen great and successful examples where Flash content is used to visualise information, which in the end makes the information easier to find out about. The Flash content isn't replacing anything, it complements and strengthens the static content. You can't either disregard that many municipals also, more and more acts like a brand. It's about attracting new businesses with a visually enhanced, and interesting website.

But again, the good thing is that Flash content is there to make it easier for the inhabitants.

Tags: offentliga rummet, yooba, flash cms, visualisation, information, flash

As always, Yooba Studio is constantly growing, improving and evolving.
The GUI designers are working on some updates for the next release of Yooba Studio right now, improving some GUI elements to fit better with the rest. At the same time, the development team is implementing new exciting features. One feature which we think will be very useful is the ability to see some detailed info on your project. Info on which images, fonts etc. that are being used, with a file size report and suggestions on how to improve the loading experience can really be helpful to make your Yooba project the best it can be for your viewers.

Look out for this and more in the upcoming release of Yooba Studio!

Tags: yooba studio, gui, project info

Web applications are not something new – they’ve existed for years, in different forms and with different technologies. Lately, these applications have become more and more like the applications we have installed on our computers and use in the day-to-day work, so called desktop applications. As the functionality and usability progresses with these web applications, we grow more effective in our work using them. And, they have an advantage over desktop applications: no installation is required and the application is available everywhere that there’s a computer with an Internet connection.

Although many of these Rich Internet Applications (RIA) exists in the browser, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. New technologies such as Adobe AIR and Mozilla Prism make it possible to install the application as a traditional desktop application, but with all the advantages from a RIA. To include constantly changing information from the web and integrate with other web services such as YouTube and Google Maps is all made possible with this technology.

This week, one of the largest newspapers in the world – The New York Times – launched a desktop RIA for reading their paper online. It’s called Times Reader and includes all published articles from a week back. As they put it: “It reads like a newspaper. Updates like a Web site. And delivers like The New York Times.”

Seeing a company such as The New York Times, traditionally associated with an “old media” launching a Rich Internet Application is a strong sign of the impact of RIAs, be it in the browser or on the desktop.

For more reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_application
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
http://timesreader.nytimes.com/timesreader/
http://prism.mozilla.com/

Tags: rich internet application, new york times, times reader, desktop

It's been lying about for some time.

Tags: yooba studio, caliban, the tempest, shakespeare, project managers, manager managers

Version 1.25 of Yooba Studio is now up and running, including among many things a brand new Actions Panel. It is now possible to add MouseOver and MouseOut actions to objects, as well as adding multiple actions to an object that will execute simultaneously.

The rebuilt actions panel is faster to work with, but it is also an important foundation for upcoming improvements. In future versions we will include more types of actions, and the list of actions you can execute will gradually grow longer.

Tags: actions, yooba studio