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 Friday, 1 March 2002
Learning Recommendations: Web Programming, Databases and Backends.
Unless you’re a programmer who wants to build high-end web applications running off the server for banks, finance corporations or big online retailers, or executable software products, then there is not much point in learning Java. Those stupid Java applet tricks that were so trendy amongst certain webheads a few years back have no place in today’s web.
JavaScript—no relation despite containing the words J, A and V—is another matter altogether. As with XHTML, HTML and XML, JavaScript is best learned by hand coding it, then you will need to turn to a good WYSIWYG editor—GoLive or Dreamweaver—when going into production mode.
Having spent a fortune on acquiring Allaire, the developer of Cold Fusion, Macromedia is now building Cold Fusion support into Flash and is pushing it as the prime choice for your web backend programming language. The big catch is that the Cold Fusion coding and server products are expensive, and that Cold Fusion web hosting is rare and very expensive.
Despite demand from users who prefer the fast, easy-to-learn and efficient PHP language, Macromedia has dragged its rear in adding support for PHP to Dreamweaver UltraDev. GoLive 6, on the other hand, supports PHP, as well as ASP and JSP, and is much more affordable than UltraDev. The cheaper non-UltraDev version of Dreamweaver cannot effectively be used for coding web pages that call on server applications.
MySQL is the database most commonly used in conjunction with PHP, and is also free. PHP works with many other databases including Oracle.
For high-end enterprise-class web applications, there is nothing better than Apple’s WebObjects. WebObjects used to cost in the vicinity of tens of thousands of dollars, but Apple has radically reduced the price to US$700 per licence.
7:57:36 PM 
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Learning Recommendations: Web Page Design and Coding.
Hand coding is the best way to learn XHTML and HTML, JavaScript, and XML too, but a lousy way to produce web pages in a professional production environment. I learned to hand code with BBEdit Lite, then graduated to BBEdit full version. I still use it all the time, for programming and text editing.
PageSpinner has its users, although having tried it I still much prefer BBEdit. When hand coding on a Windows computer I use HomeSite, but grew to like ScriptWorx when it was absolutely free. Now it must be paid for but its price is relatively low for what you get.
Most design firms have standardized on Dreamweaver as their WYSIWYG web page editor, but GoLive 6 has come roaring up from behind and is in many cases a better choice. The marks against Dreamweaver are that none of Macromedia’s products have been ported to Mac OS X while all except one of Adobe’s have. The importance of Mac OS X for web design and development cannot be overstated.
In Dreamweaver’s favour is that it has a huge community of people who make extensions to it and share them at the Macromedia Exchange. Another big mark against Dreamweaver is that its workgroup server solution, SiteSpring, is insanely expensive, can only run on Windows NT/2000, and requires a fast dedicated machine with heaps of RAM. Adobe’s WorkGroup Server is free, runs on Mac OS X or Windows, and many of Adobe’s graphics products are WorkGroup server savvy, tying them together in an effective group workflow solution.
It is actually possible to build excellent web sites completely in Flash 5 or LiveMotion 2, creating them as composites of small components that load as needed instead of one whopping big file that takes forever to download. To do this you follow the same pattern as you do with conventional web sites, turning small graphics into .swf files to be called on at given points in the timeline or on demand. Text can be coded, graphic, or called from external XML files, or from external databases.
It is important that students learn to build web pages in CSS and XHTML, as they are the current standards. Both current versions of Dreamweaver and GoLive are deficient in their CSS support. The solution is Western Civilisation’s StyleMaster and Layout Master products.
6:39:19 PM
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Learning Recommendations: Web, DVD and CD Interactive Multimedia.
Director used to be the gold standard so far as authoring interactive multimedia goes, but even its maker Macromedia will tell you that a vast number of projects once built in Director are now being made with Flash, even those interactive menus in many movies on DVD.
Flash 5’s ActionScript language is what made that possible. And, with Flash, you no longer have to have a Mac and a Windows copy of Director, each on its own machine, in order to author fully crossplatform interactive titles.
Now that LiveMotion has hit version 2, and is so good, it is a valid alternative to the Flash authoring environment.
Flash and Director are far from the only way of making interactive multimedia of course. QuickTime’s .mov movie file format is an extraordinarily good, and far too underestimated, format to produce multimedia in.
And consider how many people have already downloaded the QuickTime media layer to their Macs and Windows computers—hundreds of thousands. QuickTime contains its own scripting layer, sprites layer and a Flash layer, as well as several other unique multimedia layer types.
LiveStage Pro and iShell are the two stand-alone interactive QuickTime authoring products to choose from. But don’t forget that GoLive has its own very good QuickTime editing toolset built-in. For many projects it may be more than enough.
5:04:27 PM
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Learning Recommendations: 2D Web and Video Animation.
Who on earth does animated GIFs any more? Certainly not anybody who wants to do decent animation. But if you must, then use Fireworks, or Imageready, and forget about any of the stand-alone GIF animation-only packages that were around a few years ago. Fireworks does better image compression than ImageReady, by the way.
If you are using Flash 4 still, toss it out immediately—Flash 5 is so far advanced beyond version 4 that there is absolutely no point in persevering with Flash 4.
Flash is the file format of choice for producing 2D animation for the web or for broadcast video. Flash is not necessarily the application that is best at producing it, however, despite the Flash 5 update. The interface is still too hard and slow to use and too quirky to draw in, and now that Adobe has released LiveMotion 2, which has many of the best traits of their After Effects application, as well as better features than Flash 5, there is an excellent alternative.
After Effects is of course excellent for non-Web video, although the fact that it also exports to Quicktime and Shockwave Flash file formats means you can use it for broadband web production. But stick with Flash or LiveMotion for narrowband web work.
ToonBoom Studio is the product serious animators use in conjunction with Flash 5 or LiveMotion 2 to create large Flash animation projects, especially if they are for video broadcast.
4:29:54 PM
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Learning Recommendations: Audio Generation, Editing and Production.
Swedish developer Propellerheads makes the best and most complete virtual synthesiser packages—ReBirth and Reason. Their ReCycle product is an excellent audio loop editor. There are several other software synthesiser products available that I like a great deal, such as Bitheadz’ Retro AS-1, Absynth, Reaktor and the other Native Instruments products, but sound synthesis is a whole specialization unto itself, as is MIDI.
Peak is the audio editor I use the most now that Macromedia no longer makes Sound Edit 16, and Deck, also another former Macromedia product, is an excellent high-end sound recorder. Pro Tools Free is the entry level product in the Pro Tools range, and has its devotees. I use iTunes to convert sound files into MP3 for import into Flash and other editing applications, as well as for audio playback on my Macs.
3:41:20 PM
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Learning Recommendations: Video Editing, Compositing and Production.
Apple has made a major effort to capture the desktop video market. That’s not surprising given how well-suited its new iMacs, PowerMacs, iBooks and PowerBooks are to video production. The firm has now begun giving away free essential video (and audio) products with its computers, and is developing more such products for home media production, such as iPhoto and iTunes. Their quality is enough to guarantee them a place in professional production studios.
iMovie is the best low-end video editing product available on any computer platform. iDVD allows you to create interactive DVD versions of your movies, for playback on your computer or DVD player, using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
DVD Studio Pro is the best professional DVD authoring and production package available. Final Cut Pro is the best digital video editor, and feature films as well as home movies are being edited on it.
Although Final Cut Pro can now do many of the compositing and special effects Adobe’s After Effects was designed to carry out, the latest version of After Effects has uses beyond that of video production—it now exports Shockwave Flash movies.
Most of us know that QuickTime is the best quality and most popular free web movie player—the success of the QuickTime movie trailer downloads page is ample evidence. Not many people know that QuickTime also has some very good audio and video editing tools built-in, that are unlocked when you pay the QuickTime Pro licensing fee.
Adobe’s Premiere video editor has its die-hard fans, but frankly it’s not a patch on Final Cut Pro.
1:56:56 PM
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Learning Recommendations: Page Layout and Production for Print.
Forget about Quark XPress of any vintage, even the latest one. Adobe’s InDesign 2 is so much better and so far advanced beyond Quark’s page layout product that the only reason you might want to expose students to Xpress is so they can legitimately say they have used it.
There are so many good things to say about InDesign that space is too limited to do it here. Check out the Adobe InDesign web pages, take note of how many publishers, agencies and designers have already made the switch from Quark Xpress, and look into the new OpenType font standard developed by Adobe and that works so well when used in InDesign.
PDF is the file format that has become the document interchange file format for corporate documents and for reproduction. Acrobat, as opposed to the freeware Acrobat Reader, is for producing and exchanging such documents, and for reprographics purposes the PitStop Pro plug-in for Acrobat is absolutely essential.
1:20:04 PM
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Learning Recommendations: 3D Stills and Animations.
There are almost a hundred and one 3D products for stills and animation, each with their own little band of true believers. I have tried many of them, but there is one that stands head-and-shoulders above the rest—Cinema 4D XL.
Maya is the standard now for high-end 3D design, and it is extraordinarily good, but its cost is prohibitive for the regular user. Alias|Wavefront has made a free personal learning edition available, but it omits certain parts of the product and stamps a nasty watermark over outputted images and animations.
3D Flash is becoming very important with current advances in Flash use on the web, and will be even more so with the ongoing broadband rollout. There is no clear winner in products that export Flash 3D just now. Swift 3D is the only dedicated Flash 3D modeller and animator.
The high-end 3D products are adding Flash export plug-ins, and both Poser 4 with the addition of the Poser Pro kit, and Amorphium, are cheaper solutions that do good Flash export. Incidentally, Poser is not just for human figures. It is also very good at importing 3D meshes of any object and exporting as stills or animations in many different rendering styles and file types.
12:34:17 PM
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My Learning Recommendations.
Yesterday I was asked to list the software I would recommend for learning design across a number of areas. That list follows, published progressively in parts, with links to the manufacturer’s websites, and comments after the list.
All such lists are relative. Sometimes there is one and only one product that a subject should be learned on. Other times students are going to encounter alternatives in use at their potential employers.
I also make no secret of my preference for the Macintosh over the Windows computer for any kind of design, programming and production work. I have always had late model Windows machines on my desk next to the Macs, have used Windows as much as possible in my daily work, but there are a number of very good reasons why almost all the best design firms use Macs in preference to Windows machines.
Just take an unbiased look at the latest BSD Unix-based version of the Macintosh operating system, the new iMac, and the desktop and portable professional production models. Even better, visit an Apple Store or AppleCentre and try them out for yourself.
Where a product exists only for the Mac, I will note it. Otherwise, assume that the products listed are fully cross-platform. Where there are several alternatives for something I will note the differences after the list.
2D Graphics for Web and Print:
There is no question that everyone needs to have good command of Photoshop and Illustrator, though there are still a few design houses where Freehand is preferred to the latter. I lean towards Illustrator, since version 10.
Fireworks is not to be underestimated when it comes to vector and bitmaps graphics for the web. You can do far more in it than most people realise, and it will be more enough for many production situations. Corel’s vector and bitmap products have their tiny fanbase, and occasionally you’ll see CorelDRAW listed in job ads as a requirement.
Any course where illustration is a component should include the natural media drawing and painting product Painter. It also does a fine job as a photo editing package.
10:52:24 AM
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