Flash vs HTML? What is wrong with you people??

And I’m dead serious.

Let me start by saying that I am a passionate Actionscript Creative (if someday I might grow up, you can call me a Flash developer but not just yet) and I absolute love the web as it exists today. I love HTML and CSS. I even like Javascript (a bit) (it’s not my favorite, but we get along pretty good). So don’t go off thinking I’m taking sides.

What are we talking about today?

Earlier this week, Serge Jespers wrote about Adobe vs the open web, which kinda looked like a Flash vs HTML5 article from a distance (because let’s face it: The Adobe platform on the web is mainly the Flash platform). I had a lot of conversations about that in the past and the one thing I have come to conclude is that you can’t actually compare those to each other.
Not even remotely.

So to what should we compare it then?

People keep referring to the features that the Flash Player offers and which the developer might want to use. And then their statement goes on with ‘You can’t do that with HTML!‘
Of course you can’t! There are thousands of things you can do with Flash, which you just can’t pull of with HTML, CSS or Javascript. But if you really want to compare Flash and HTML, you gotta do it right:

Flash Player vs FireFox ( or IE or Safari or Opera or any other browser)
Timeline and Actionscript vs HTML and Javascript (and CSS if you really want)

(Please, stop throwing those vegetables at me… Thank you.) Read the rest of this entry »

Wordpress Theme SuperMini reloaded

A long time ago Smashing Magazine listed 100 of the best Wordpress themes. That list totally kicked ass to be honest. At one point I decided to restyle my poetry site. I took a look at their list and when I found the SuperMini theme, my choice was immediately made.

After I downloaded the theme I realized a lot of features were missing: No searchbox, no searchresults page, no archives, no global archives, no blogroll support, no pages support, no 404 pages and a few design flaws…

I actually went on, and built those things myself. Later on I wanted to contact the orginal author (Patrick Behrend) of the theme to send him my updates but by the time I got to send my mail, his site was down and he completely dissappeared from the web. I never received an aswer regarding the theme updates I sent him.

By now the original download isn’t even online anymore, and Smashing Magazine disabled the link to the SuperMini theme (as it is a 404). So I recently decided to finish the theme, and translate it back to English and re-publish it. I thought the initial theme was awesome, and I figured it would be cool if other people would be able to actually use the completed theme. Read the rest of this entry »

Duidelijke tutorial over hoe je een Wordpress theme maakt

Matt Brett heeft een erg goede tutorial, die duidelijk uitlegt hoe hij WordPress themes voor zijn klanten maakt. Erg duidelijk, en interessant.

[ Link ]

Tutorial: Transparante Flash en HTML

Naar aanleiding van heel wat hits op mijn site, en enkele emails om uit te leggen hoe ik het transparante pixel-teken effect op mijn portfolio-site heb gemaakt, heb ik besloten om even een korte tutorial te schrijven hiervoor.

Om de tut te volgen heb je alleen een text-editor nodig (Notepad is al genoeg. Ik gebruik Dreamweaver ). Een Flashmovie kun je tijdens de tutorial zelf downloaden.

Basis kennis van HTML en ‘weten wat de Canvas in Flash is’ is vereist.

Read the rest of this entry »