A great tool to make simple, interactive UI prototypes without having to touch code.

Avram Piltch reviews Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2.

I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.

In summary, Flash on the smartphone fails to deliver on any of its promises and offering no substantial benefit over already existing HTML5 technology that smartphones have adopted for online video and other uses.

If you’ve been wanting to offer HTML5-based video on your site so that users of smartphones and other mobile devices have easier access to your video it’s been a difficult thing up until today if you haven’t been able to host your own video.

Here’s an example of an embedded Vimeo video with the new player/embed code:

“Inception” Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Vimeo has always been a great solution for hosting video, but now with their complete HTML5 solution they’re pulling ahead of the pack.

A ROCK-SOLID DEFAULT FOR HTML5 AWESOME.

After more than two years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain ajax and flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.

Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it’s just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.

Do yourself a favor, if you’re doing anything touching web development take a look at this site and the code they provide. You couldn’t ask for a better foundation covering all the ins-and-outs you need to be aware of to get a modern site working that takes all current browser differences into account. Not to mention the code comments are clear, concise, and informative for novices and pros alike.

The set includes:

• GUI Library – Hundreds of vector elements for interface design
• Minimal UI icons set – 260 vecor icons for Illustrator
• Styles Library – 200 styles to apply in Illustrator

While this won’t be perfect for everyone, it’s worth checking out. And the linking requirement for commercial use may make it unusable in some situations. Either way, it’s a great set of widgets and gizmos and for someone just getting started or students it’s an excellent tool to put in the toolbox.

We’re officially adding a new piece of software to the list of default common applications we expect employees to use, and that’s the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Firefox has been around for years, of course. Today we already have thousands of employees using it on Linux, Mac, and Windows laptops and desktops, but we’re going to be adding thousands more users to the rolls.

Some of us started using it because it was new and fast and cool. I tried it for those reasons, but I still use it for the following ones:

• Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy.
• Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity.
• Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it.
• Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM.
• Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.

Many of you have probably heard your tech-minded friend or relative try and talk you into moving from IE to Firefox in the past. The pain of installing and learning new software or the inability to choose what software runs on your work computer have kept you from bothering.

No one doubts that there is a cost to switching software in the time and effort required to get used to the new application. Multiply that effort by 400k and you might never consider it. However, IBM has decided that the cost of moving their employees to Firefox is worth the effort.

Firefox is one of the leading browsers in supporting and advocating open internet standards. If you’re not convinced to at least give Firefox a chance I’ll close with another quote from Bob Sutor:

The longstanding commitment of Mozilla to open standards and the quality of the implementation of them in Firefox gives us confidence that this is a solid, modern platform…

Visit Firefox.com to download Firefox.

To learn more about custom post types check out Justin Tadlock’s great custom post type article.

During a recent company project I had to work out how to output unique HTML for different post types in the search results. The solution was surprisingly easy thanks to the new template function get_template_part(). This technique can also be transferred to the main loop if you are going output different post types together. In the case of search results, if you set your new post type as search-able it will show up together with your posts and pages.

get_template_part() is located in wp-includes/general-template.php and accepts two arguments, slug and name. It uses these two arguments to locate a template file of your choosing. What is cool about the way it works is how the slug acts as a fallback when it can’t find the template file specified by the second argument name.

From the functions self documentation

Load a template part into a template

Makes it easy for a theme to reuse sections of code in a easy to overload way for child themes.

Includes the named template part for a theme or if a name is specified then a specialised part will be included. If the theme contains no {slug}.php file then no template will be included.

The template is included using require, not require_once, so you may include the same template part multiple times.

For the parameter, if the file is called “{slug}-special.php” then specify “special”.

@uses locate_template()
@since 3.0.0
@uses do_action() Calls ‘get_template_part{$slug}’ action.

@param string $slug The slug name for the generic template.
@param string $name The name of the specialised template.

The new default  WordPress theme Tweny Ten uses this function to allow for child themes to overwrite the theme’s loop file. We however will be re-purposing it for a slightly different use. Post type conditional html loading!

Alright lets get started.

Note: If you’ve started using get_template_part() for loops in your themes or are creating a child theme for Twenty Ten ( or any other theme using a loop.php file similarly to how Twenty Ten does ) you can probably copy a lot of this code without much worry.

Create a new file called loop-search.php and copy over the current contents of loop.php from your theme.

In the loop-seach.php file, find the actual post loop and cut and paste the insides of the post loop ( what is withing the while( have_posts() ) ) and paste it into a new file called post-layout.php. Mine looks like this:

Now replace what you just cut from loop-search.php with something that looks like this:

Do a test search on your blog to make sure nothing has changed visually. If you find you theme is spitting errors make sure you haven’t made any syntax errors.

What does this code do?

Now when you search for something and your new custom post type is listed as search-able WordPress will look for a file called post-layout-{custom_post_type_here}.php when looping through the search results. If it can’t find that particular file it will fallback on the new post-layout.php template file we created.

Now whenever you create a new post type create a new file called post-layout-{your_custom_post_type_here}.php and put in any custom html you may need to output for that particular type.

For example here is the post-layout-profiles.php file we used in the company project to output a “Company Profile” for the Client.

As you can see this custom post type output uses featured thumbnails, custom taxonomies for outputting the current profile’s company title, as well as post meta that stores that profiles contact information. This file is also used for outputting the complete profile on a individual profile page by detecting whether we are viewing an archive or search view of the profile.

So what are you waiting for? Start creating new post templates for your own custom post types right now!

David Strozier, Troy McDaniel, Adam Brown, Beverly McDaniel, Belle McDaniel, Stu McDaniel, Blair Bovaird, Kim Falcon, Patrick Forringer, Will Nevin, Mike Riddle, and Sara Spurrier.

The GuRuStu Group will be featured in the “New and Notable” section of the July 2010 Tulsa People magazine.  Of primary focus is the new GuRuStu Project Manager (GPM), our innovative project management system, which gives clients user access to login and view the real time status of their projects and interact with staff about progress and changes.

Here is a copy of the article.

The GuRuStu Group
Web development firm revolutionizes online project management.

Since 2003, the GuRuStu Group has continued to grow as it works with clients to create innovative and logical solutions for their media and design needs. The firm recently developed a web based project management system. Stuart McDaniel, managing partner, says the new GuRuStu Project Manager (GPM) allows clients to login and interact with his staff for changes and alterations, as well as view real time progress on their projects. The GPM sets GuRuStu apart from many others in the industry.

With websites being a driving force in a company’s marketing strategy, GuRuStu strives to provide clients the best solution to satisfy their long term goals. For example, GuRuStu provides an open source content management system (CMS) allowing clients the ability to easily update and make changes to their own website and avoid unnecessary maintenance fees, such as those associated with being locked into a proprietary system.

Besides an extensive background in website development, the GuRuStu Group also coordinates multiple projects for a variety of uses. From everyday printing needs to complete branding campaigns, from immersive online experiences to interactive touch screens, the GuRuStu Group has a design that will achieve a client’s objective and set them on a path to attaining their full potential and growth.

The GuRuStu Group office is at 2 W. Sixth St., Suite 402. To find out more about the company, visit www.GuRuStuGroup.com or call 582-1881.

8:00 Lion’s Club Pancake Breakfast, Trinity United Methodist Church
11:00 Kid Zones from 38th to 36th Streets on South Peoria
12:00 p.m. Trick-or-Treating at Brookside Merchants from 33rd to 49th Streets on South Peoria
12:00 p.m. Pet Costume Contest at Food Pyramid Parking lot, 41st and Peoria (arrive early to register!)
1:00 p.m. Children’s Costume Contest at Food Pyramid…….
3:00 p.m.  Annual BooHaHa Parade from 49th to 33rd Streets on South Peoria with KOOL 106.1 Talent at the 41st and Peoria Grandstand
Call Pat Kroblin with PK Promotions at 918.260.7680