sureispure

One of the web's most widely used technologies is going to be absent from some versions of Windows 8. Microsoft is to drop support for Adobe Flash from the web browser that works with the Metro interface on Windows 8.

The Metro user interface is most likely to be used on tablets as it displays applications and programs as easy to touch coloured tiles. Flash will still be supported in the Windows 8 desktop interface and the desktop version of IE.

The announcement about the lack of Flash support was made in a blog post by Dean Hachamovitch, head of IE development at Microsoft.

In the post he said Microsoft had worked hard to make Metro rely as little as possible on older technologies. Instead it had concentrated on the latest version of web technology HTML 5.

Supporting HTML 5 meant making Metro plug-in free, he said. One of the most widely used plug-ins for web browsers is Adobe's Flash as many sites use it to show video, multimedia and games.

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Like most commercial web developers these days, we have moved over to open source software where possible. This allows us to keep costs lower because we spend less time bringing projects to launch.

Open source software, helps keep costs down, it is that simple. And open source software helps deliver feature rich websites that will engage your visitors and ultimately bring you business, by converting visitors into customers. Open source CMS such as Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal are now at the forefront of current web development practices. If it's good enough for the BBC it should be good enough for most of what we do here.

Another benefit of developing with open source, is that there are large and active networks of support, including blogs and forums dedicated to spreading & sharing knowledge. This can be a great bonus to companies wishing to maintain their own websites, as after the design and install stage, updating or changing content is really quite easy.

E-commmerce is also now available using open source solutions. We will happily discuss your requirements and can advise on any benefits or drawbacks in using an open source shopping cart versus a paid for solution.

When the iphone was launched little did we realise what impact smart mobile devices would have on the web design market. Even bigger was the realization that with Apples decision not to support Flash on any of its mobile platforms. Now developers and website owners were in a bit of a fix, how do we move forward from here?

Well the relentless progress of the iOS platform into cyberspace, has from our point of view put the final nail in the coffin of Adobe Flash... and at least in my opinion, not before time. Flash made a lot of web designers and developers lazy, websites became bloated and slow to load, navigation was awful. Firefox even had addons to block such content or replace it with a play button you had to press to see the flash content, not an ideal result for website owners.

Apples support of technologies such as HTML in place of flash has lead some large institutional websites to drop flash altogether and others offer separate content to iPhones and iPads. Again this is not really an ideal solution for small sites and SME's. Tools such as Tumult's Hype (pictured) are now starting to make their way to market and this I think will see an even faster decline of Flash as a viable platform on which to build websites that will stand the test of time.

Tumult's Hype – is a  nice HTML5 authoring tool, that’s easy to use and you don’t need know and coding to make it work, and at $29 it is $650 cheaper than Adobe Flash.

So here we stand, I'm not saying we absolutely won't do any Flash at SureisPure, but we will really try to convince you that in the medium to long term, there are other alternatives that will work as good if not better.

So I'm with Steve Jobs on this one, bye bye flash you will not be missed...  at all!

After many years of banging our heads together to try and get websites to function properly under Internet Explorer 6, we have now decided to drop support for the browser completely.

What does this mean?

This means that any sites designed by SureisPure, will no longer be accessable to users of IE6. It's not just us here at SureisPure that are dropping support for this antiquated browser, even Microsoft are trying to push its demise. The truth is it never really worked very well, and is one of the least secure of all modern browsers.

What happens if my clients use IE6?

If someone tries to view your site using IE6, they will see a polite notice advising them to upgrade to a more secure browser. The page will contain the links to the newest version available to download from the Microsoft site. The whole process to upgrade should take no more than 5-10 minutes and the benefits of taking this approach far outweighs the added incurred costs in developing websites to work properly in IE6.