Archive for the ‘Web Apps’ Category

File Under: Mobile, Multimedia, Web Apps
Apr
5
2012

Flickr Ditches Flash Photo Editor for Mobile-Friendly Aviary

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Editing your Flickr photos in Aviary. Image: Aviary

Flickr is swapping out its existing Flash-based photo editor for a new HTML-based app that will work on any device.

Aviary, as the new editor is known, will start appearing as an editing option for your photos today, though some users may have to wait since Yahoo is staggering the rollout over the next few weeks.

Part of the change is out of necessity. Flickr’s previous photo editor was Picnik, which was purchased by Google in 2010. Google has since announced it will shut down the service Apr. 19 and roll its features into Google+.

To use Aviary to edit your Flickr photos, just head to the photo page, click the Actions tab and select the new “Edit photo in Aviary” option. That will open up the image in the Aviary window as an overlay. From there you can crop, rotate, add effects, adjust brightness and contrast and other editing basics.

Obviously Aviary is not aimed at people who takes their photo editing seriously, but for the casual user who just wants to crop an upload or add some punchier contrast, it works well. The learning curve is almost nil and it more than handles the 80 percent use case for casual Flickr users.

In that sense Aviary is a step up from Picnik, which was more of a Photoshop-inspired editor than an amateur-friendly option. However it’s surprising to see Flickr continue to ignore the Instagram-inspired trend of one-click image effects, which are not part of Aviary’s arsenal. Some may decry Instagram’s retro-inspired results, but there’s no denying the simplicity and popularity of its filters.

While Flickr obviously had to replace Picnik since Google is shutting the service down, Aviary offers another huge advantage over Picnik — it doesn’t use Flash. Dropping the Flash requirement means that Flickr users can now edit their photos on iOS devices and upcoming Windows Metro tablets, neither of which run the Flash plugin.

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File Under: Web Apps, Web Basics
Dec
28
2011

Building Better Single-Page Web Apps

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Single-page, application-style websites offer web developers a way to replicate the user experience of native apps, particularly on mobile devices. Indeed, the application design model — that is, a single webpage that never needs to refresh or reload — is the basis for some of the web’s most popular sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But such app-based sites often break fundamental tenets of the web, eschewing HTML source for JavaScript, breaking the browser’s back button and removing the ability to link deep into the application. Some of these problems are addressed by standards like the HTML5 History API, which allows applications to update the URL bar without refreshing the page, but not every app bothers to take advantage of such recent developments.

The potential problems single-page apps can cause are not, however, sufficient reason to avoid them, argues Mozilla Developer Evangelist Christian Heilmann. Done responsibly and in keeping with the best practices of the web, the single-page app can be part of the future of the web, writes Heilmann.

Among the benefits of single-page apps are speed gains — stripping away the HTML means there’s very little to load initially and subsequent data loads can be done in very small increments, which makes for very fast apps. With the rise of web apps targeting mobile devices the speed advantages make single-page apps appealing to developers. Indeed, Heilmann believes “single page apps … are necessary for the web to be an apps platform.”

Naturally there will be problems with the rise of apps. “We have to battle two main issues,” writes Heilmann, “old conditioning of users and sloppy development for the sake of doing something ‘new’.”

In other words the danger isn’t the single-page concept itself, which, if done right, will yield an “app” that also has all the benefits of the web — deep linking, bookmarking, and indexing. It’s the latter problem Heilmann mentions, one that’s neatly satirized by sites like Hipstergrammers, that causes many developers concern: new just for the sake of new.

Heilmann’s post does a great job of cutting through the hype behind single page apps and presenting them for what they are — another tool with both positive and negative trade offs. Be sure to read through the whole article which offers a great list of potential problems and how to avoid them.

File Under: Web Apps
Sep
29
2011

Flickr’s New ‘Photo Sessions’ Bring Back the Slideshow

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Flickr has unveiled a new feature dubbed Photo Sessions, which are real-time slideshows you can share with your friends around the web.

Say you want to share a slideshow with some friends you met on your last trip abroad. You’re back home and they’re back home on the other side of the globe. No one is coming over for dinner and slides. Instead, you just create a new session on Flickr and send the resulting URL to your friends. Once everyone has joined in, sessions become a bit like screen sharing — you swipe to the next photo and everyone else’s screen follows along.

Flickr has thrown in a few interactive features as well, including the ability to chat while the photos roll by. There’s also a way for your friends to doodle on your images from their own laptops or iPads.

Combine Flickr’s new sessions with a group chat app — Skype, iChat or the like — and you have a kind of disjointed, thoroughly modern take on the good old carousel slideshows your parents subjected their friends to in the ’70s. Feel the shag carpet people.

Alongside Sessions Flickr also announced a new Android app, which is considerably more impressive than the company’s iOS app. The Android Flickr app offers filters, geotagging and sharing in a slick-looking app that seems aimed at catching up with Instagram.

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File Under: Web Apps
Sep
19
2011

Last Call for Delicious Bookmarks

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Attention Delicious bookmarking fans, time is running out to transition your bookmarks to the updated, launching-soon Delicious website.

Current Delicious users have until September 23, 2011 to transfer their data and accept the new terms of service. If you don’t move your data by then your bookmarks will disappear forever.

After years of languishing at Yahoo, Delicious, the original king of online bookmarking, was purchased by AVOS, a new company from YouTube creators Chad Hurley and Steven Chen.

The transfer of ownership means that existing users need to agree to the new terms of service before Delicious can relaunch. You can read over the new terms on the AVOS website. If you prefer not to be part of the new Delicious, but would still like to grab your bookmarks before they go poof, you can do so using Delicious’ export tools.

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File Under: Web Apps
Sep
1
2011

Offline Gmail Returns, Sort of

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The offline Gmail web app

Offline Gmail is back. Originally built around Google’s Gears plugin, the company announced earlier this year that it was pulling the Gears-based feature and rewriting it to use HTML5 and web standards. Now offline Gmail is back (along with offline support for Google Docs and Calendar) and no longer requires the Gears browser add-on.

Offline Gmail does, however, require the Google Chrome web browser. In fact, the offline version of Gmail is an entirely separate app you’ll need to install through the Chrome Web Store. The Web Store app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets and uses a widescreen layout that will look familiar to anyone using Gmail on an iPad or the new three-pane mail interface.

Unfortunately, the offline app for Gmail is just that, a separate web app. You won’t be able to use Gmail offline simply by clicking a button in the regular web interface. Rather you’ll need to install the offline Gmail app and switch over to that interface whenever you’re offline.

And that’s not the only downside to this release. Offline Gmail will only give you access to the last three to seven days’ worth of email (the exact amount will vary depending on how many messages you get each day). All of your starred messages will also be available, but beyond that you’re out of luck — there’s no way to, for example, download a specific tag or set of messages for offline use.

Things are even worse in the offline version of Google Docs which, for now, is limited to read-only access — not exactly helpful when you’re trying to finish that report sans wifi.

Google says these issues are temporary and that the offline support is a work in progress, but given the extremely limited functionality one wonders why they were released at all. Of course Google’s motto is release early, release often; clearly they’ve released early, hopefully the often will kick in soon.

In the mean time if you need offline access to your email, we suggest a traditional desktop client.

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