dan-menard.com

These days there are more and more mobile devices that support rich software applications. Since the iPhone, we’ve seen the Blackberry, the Palm Pre and Android all start their own app stores, and surely Windows Phone 7 won’t be far behind. With all of these options, how do you decide which ones to develop software for? Porting the same native application to five different platforms is expensive, but only supporting a few adds the risk of alienating users with non-supported devices. Fortunately, thanks to HTML5, it’s now possible to develop one version of your application that works across all these platforms.

HTML5 is a new standard for developing web-based applications with rich interfaces similar to what can traditionally only be achieved in a desktop environment or by using browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash. Support for HTML5 is being built right into all modern web browsers, with many features already available. While this is very good for the web community, it’s also very good for the mobile space; all modern smartphones come with a browser that is working to support HTML5. This means that instead of re-writing the same application for each mobile platform, one single version can be written in HTML5 that works across all of them.

The main motivation for choosing HTML5 is that the smartphone market is diverging, while support for HTML5 is converging. Each mobile platform in the expanding mobile space has its own API and distribution model, and any new platforms will likely follow suite. Contrast this with support for HTML5, where all these platforms are rushing to implement the same specification. How will this look in a few years? We will have even more platforms to develop separate clients for, but all of them will have increasingly better support for HTML5.

Another big reason for choosing HTM5 is that it has a strong, predictable future. In addition to picking up traction all over the web, the specification for HTML5 is mapped out to the year 2022, over ten years from now (but that doesn’t mean HTML5 is not ready to use right now). With the current smartphone market, it’s difficult to predict which clients will even be around in a few years, let alone which ones will still be popular. Using an HTML5 client removes much of the guesswork surrounding which platforms to support, and as it becomes the default standard for web browsers, any future platforms will support it as well.

There are other benefits to an HTML5 client, such as the control it grants you over your application. With the iPhone, for example, Apple must approve any change that is made to a native application, even after it is released. With an HTML5 application, there is no need for an approval process — in fact, it’s not even possible; device manufacturers and OS providers have no ability to regulate web content.

HTML5 is a great choice for mobile development in the current market. If you find yourself struggling to decide which platform(s) to develop for, or concerned about the future landscape of the mobile space, or unsure about having to seek approval from a manufacturer before your application can be deployed, consider the possible advantages of HTML5; it won’t be right for every scenario, but creating a native app isn’t either.

Note: This post is also available at http://www.macadamian.com/blog/post/why_html5_makes_sense_for_mobile/.

This is the fourth (!) post I’ve written for today. The reason you aren’t seeing the first three is because the past couple of days have taught me a few valuable lessons about when you shouldn’t follow through on a post idea (even if it’s a really good idea), and I thought I’d share that knowledge with all of you.

<tangent>This post was probably inspired in part by a recent similar post on Outspoken Media.</tangent>

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

My first idea for this week’s post was massively ambitious. A popular site I follow posted an article last week about something I know a lot about, and didn’t do a very good job of it — and it was one of those dreaded list-posts where you can tell some of the items were just filler to boost the count up to a nice, rounded number. I was sure I could write a better post about the topic, so I got started! I was picking apart all the things the other article did wrong, doling out advice for how it could have been improved, coming up with my own, significantly better advice and conclusions, it was epic!

And then I read over what I had so far.

It was atrocious. My bold calling-out of a not-so-great post with examples of how to do it right was reading like a vicious tirade about why I’m better than they are. It was awful! Then I looked up the post’s author; he’s been blogging since I was in high school, has guest posts on some of my favourite blogs, and has made a hugely positive impact in his niche. What was I doing? This guy was a role model. So he had an off-post. It wasn’t all that bad, and even if I could find a few things wrong with it, that doesn’t translate to a better post — especially if I’m being a jerk about it.

So I trashed it. It was probably the longest post I’ve written for this blog to date, and I wholly regret wasting so much time on it before pulling the plug. On the plus side, I’ll think twice about it next time, and hopefully one of you will too.

Posts about current events can backfire.

My back-up idea for this week was based on a gem of a rant I went on over Skype when I found out that YouTube pulled the original RickRoll’d video for a Terms of Service violation. This was a solid post with some legitimately good content that I was all set to write — until I found out that YouTube restored the video.

This is the problem with such ephemeral topics. How long would that post have been relevant for? A few days? Then what? I update it to say “rejoice! the video is restored!” and the rest of my post is moot? Ridiculous. Next time I’ll remember to wait until the news is more official before assuming I’m set for next week’s post.

Are you really a good candidate to write this post?

My third idea was to write a post based on some story I found via Slashdot; one of those trendy posts about an ongoing saga of human rights dilution in a far-away land. This was obviously a good idea, because it was something I cared about! Not so.

What kind of insight would I have on such an issue? Sure I’m passionate about it, but so are millions of other people. Do I know more than the majority of them do? Probably not. Am I going to have some wacky angle that no one else has covered yet? I doubt it. Is there anything significant I can contribute in this space? Not really. So, no post. It was my fault for choosing a topic I was under-qualified to write about.

Please learn from my mistakes.

It’s been a long couple of days. It wasn’t easy throwing out idea after idea, especially after I’d invested time and energy into each one. But in the end I’m glad I did it; I didn’t publish something stupid that I’d probably regret later (or worse: completely forget about), and the silver lining turned out to be a handful of valuable lessons, ready for their own post.

Suppose the year is 1990, and you have some big news to share with those close to you and the world in general. How can you do it? There are a few ways:

• In person
• Over the phone
• In a mailed letter
• Through a printed announcement (say, in a newspaper)

Fast forward to today, a mere 20 years later. How much has changed? In addition to the ways mentioned above, look at all the new tools we have:

• Voice chat (Skype, Google Voice)
• Video conference (Skype, iChat)
• Instant message (from any number of clients)
• Text message (or MMS)
• Email
• Facebook (status update, wall post, private message)
• Twitter (tweet, @someone, DM)
• Blog post

And this is just what I used on Monday; there are many others. We’re more connected than ever before. We can reach more people, faster, through whatever means is convenient for them, and the list of applicable technologies just keeps growing. It’s incredible!

A brief take-away

Monday reminded me how many tools there are for spreading messages that I don’t normally use, and made me realize that sometimes I have to look outside of my usual channels to reach people in a way that is most effective to them. I’m sure there are other things I will think of over the next little while that I can communicate more efficiently using tools other than my defaults; perhaps the same is true for you?

2009 was an exciting year for the web browser crowd:

• Google released Chrome.
• Apple ported Safari to Windows.
• Firefox picked up a lot of market share.
• Microsoft actually produced a half-decent version of Internet Explorer.
• The iPhone and Android finally made mobile browsing popular.
• Support for HTML5 and CSS3 was way up across the board.

The term crowd is especially appropriate here because it really is starting to get very crowded. For a long time the browser war has been fought largely between two major players at a time (IE/Netscape, IE/Firefox) and all of a sudden we have four major companies with fantastic browsers available to the vast majority of users. Oh, and then there’s Opera.

Here’s the thing about Opera

Opera is in serious trouble because it doesn’t have a “thing”:

• Internet Explorer’s thing is its existing market share. It has a lot more users than everyone else, so its going to be a major player for the foreseeable future.
• Firefox’s thing is its community. Not just its core developers, but the people who create addons or personas or rally everyone they know to go download the latest version on launch day. It’s easily the most passionate user group of the bunch.
• Chrome’s thing is its brand. When people think web, they think Google. Google has the best search, a fantastic email client, why not a great browser? Users rely on Google for a great online experience, and Google has a lot of high-traffic areas where it can push Chrome.
• Apple’s thing is its loyalty. Apple fanboys are a loyal bunch — most of them will stick with Safari on their Mac and many will consider getting Safari for any Windows computers they’re forced to use. Apple also has the iPhone, which gives it a growing space where it has the only browser (not that any iPhone users mind — loyalty, remember?).

Opera has nothing. It used to be the most advanced browser for HTML5 support, then everyone else caught up. It used to be a major player in the mobile space, then Apple and Google obliterated it. It used to be a fun browser for geeks to talk about, but now the buzz is all Chrome. It’s not enough to be an alternative to IE anymore; users are demanding more from their browsing experience, and they’re flush with places to find it.

What’s even worse is that there isn’t really anything you or I can do to help. Opera’s engine isn’t open source like Gecko (Firefox) or Webkit (Chrome/Safari) and they don’t have the extensibility of Firefox or Chrome. It doesn’t have the de-facto standard advantage in Windows (IE), OSX (Safari) or linux (Firefox), and even if I wanted to rally some Opera enthusiasts together, where would I start? How many people do you know that have even heard of Opera?

I don’t have anything against Opera (it’s a fine browser), it’s just that it’s no longer relevant — there are too many better options around preventing Opera from picking up new users, and I can’t think of a single significant reason for its existing users to stick with it.

Any Opera fans out there?

Do you use Opera? Do you have any thoughts on Opera’s future? Be sure to leave a comment.

A domain name is the unique, human-readable address of a website — the stuff in your browser’s address bar after “http://” but before any subsequent “/” characters. This blog actually has two domain names:

• dan-menard.com
• danmenard.com

Both redirect to the same content, but each serves a different specific purpose (which we’ll get to in a moment). The idea behind a domain name is that it represents where your website “lives” on the internet, so you’ll be telling it to a lot of people and it plays a very important role. In particular, a domain name should be related to you and easy for people to remember. Each of these qualities is quantitative, and varies from domain to domain.

For this blog in particular, both domain names are easily related to me — they’re my name. Where they differ if in how easy they are for people to remember. There are essentially two high-level ways for someone to find out about a domain name; to hear the domain name spoken out-loud, and to see the domain name written down or on screen. These are different situations which have different requirements:

• A domain name that is easy to hear out loud should sound very simple and clear. No weird characters, nothing too clever, no ridiculous abbreviations.
• A domain name that is easy to read should “parse” well. This means that even a quick glance is long enough to comprehend what it says.

I chose to use two domain names for this blog because I couldn’t find one name that matched both those qualities. On the one hand, danmenard.com is very easy to hear out loud. “Dan Menard dot com” or “my name, dot com”. But I hate how it looks; it’s very hard to read, because the “nm” bit kind of obfuscates the whole thing. The other, dan-menard.com, is the opposite. It’s easy to look at an instantly read, but it’s awkward to say out loud “Dan dash Menard dot com” doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, and I’m sure people would confuse the dash for an underscore or a slash. By choosing two domain names, I have the best of both worlds:

• If I’m talking to someone in person, I tell them my blog is at the pleasant-sounding danmenard.com.
• If I’m sharing my blog in writing (email, Twitter, etc), I write dan-menard.com because it is easier to read.

What do you think? Do you have a blog? Would it benefit from a second domain name? Leave a comment and share some thoughts.