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I just sat through Dries' keynote on Drupal which mainly focused on the future of Drupal namely the next version 8. He got into the logistics of what he wants to happen along with how he plans on getting there with some defined roles that weren't there before. The main thing that he talked about that struck me is to strip out html as a core language and making it more agile for mobile development. This most likely means some major changes to Drupal core along with some exciting things to come. I personally have been holding back from getting too deep into mobile development but is definitely something I'd like to add to my portfolio and services. As Dries pointed out Mobile is now and it's only getting bigger and bigger. Catch the full keynote here: http://bcove.me/tj5htwfr

I'm very excited about the future of mobile development and glad to see Drupal is on-board!

50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers

I have written a few posts about google wave in the past and I'm sad to say the tool that has barely found it's potential is already scheduled to be shut down in about a year. I have personally used google wave to collaborate on projects and keep some of my business tasks in order. The reason given is that there was a low adoption rate. If you have want to save google wave check out this website.

If you have your own uses for wave feel free to talk about it in our comments.

So having a really cool website for your business, hobby, or passion is a great step in the right direction but honestly does it matter if no one can see it? That's where some search engine optimization comes into play.

Find links

One method is to scour the vast Internet and find other websites willing to link to you for one reason or another. This can be like minded groups that will find what you do interesting to sites like yelp that list businesses and open up a forum for others to comment on what you do. Basically the more websites you have linking to you the more relevant Google and other search engines find your content. This of course is a good thing and if you can get more links than your competition then you can get listed before them on Google results.

If you tweet they will come

Using Twitter, Facebook and other social networks is also a great way to get others to come to your website. If you have a blog or something interesting to say on your website you can also put a snippet out on Twitter/Facebook to pull others in and read the full article on your website. If you want to hire someone to hire or a plethora of other reasons Twitter can be a great way to get the word out. Just posting anything to get others to come to your site isn't as helpful. Make sure to target your audience and captivate them with something that is interesting to that particular niche, otherwise they will hit the back button faster than it took your site to load.

It takes more than just building it

Unless your website is for a large company like Target where most users already know who you are, you will need to do more work to pull in an audience. Some sites just hit on their niche so well that it doesn't take too much work to pull others in otherwise you need to do a lot more work to build an audience. Start by searching your competition and any sites that are similar to yours and find as many creative ways you can to get your site out there. The more work you put into it the higher the rewards.

Thanks to Steve Jobs and Apple, developers have started to question if we should use flash at all on our websites. Currently you can use javascript to accomplish a lot of the same things and for more complex animations html5 is available. But currently html5 is still in very early stages which means although you can do a lot of neat things, html5 is still in testing phases and there may be many changes to come. Beyond that there are lots of designers who specialize in flash which has been a fairly standard format for years. Pretty much all browsers in the past have supported flash.

Enter the Iphone and Ipad Dilemma

Well Steve Jobs decided in order to push his own agenda of killing Flash he won't support it with the Iphone and Ipad devices. There is much debate on whether they have the right to do this. Some say it's their company and product and they can do what they want. This is true to an extent but the public isn't completely dumb either. He blames Adobe for this problem and says it's their fault for having a buggy and power hungry product. According to Apple Flash just can't run on the Iphone/Ipad. Well currently Android phones and many others can run Flash without many issues as described by Steve.

So what's the deal? Maybe Flash does drain your battery quickly and although this is a problem, shouldn't the user of the device have the choice to run their battery down? Well without adding too much more fire to the debate, where does this leave us?

Personally I have never advised clients to use flash. If you can accomplish a slideshow using javascript I always suggest that over flash. If you can have pop-ups, fade-ins, etc. Without flash it always makes sense to do it without it. Flash isn't as search engine friendly either. So overall it makes sense not to use flash when possible. But with all of this standing against flash people still have many 'flashy' (no pun intended) uses for it. Lots of ads using mini-animations use flash.

A way to degrade gracefully

So we see many problems with using flash but we would still like to use it and have ways to get around all of these problems that Steve Jobs has introduced to the equation. Well currently I don't know of many solutions other than trying to create an html5 solution. The good news is there is a plugin I recently ran across called smokescreen that appears to have a solution to this problem. Basically what this does is convert your flash swf into it's html5 alternative on the fly. So in other words if someone supports flash on their browser then they see the flash version, but if they don't then they can see the same animation in html5. This sounds great, but of course the bad news right now is that Smokescreen is currently in closed beta. So I guess we'll have to sit back and wait for this alternative to come to life. Once an alternative like this is released to the public we'll have a way to continue creating flash without having to worry about this debate and who can see our flash swf.

I still believe flash should be used sparingly to all the alternatives available, but unfortunately there still isn't a viable solution to all the great things flash can do. So we'll have to slowly ween ourselves off of it until the future catches up with the past.

Take a look at the current browser stats, as you can see IE6 is finally declining and Google Chrome has been on the rise:

Good news for anyone who finds the current web safe fonts limiting can now use the Google Font api to embed more fonts on your website. These also port back to ie6! There are many other solutions for using fonts, but these are very easy to use and they are hosted by Google keeping bandwidth down on your own website.

Along with this announcement Google has come out with their own html 5 video codec that is royalty free for all to use. It's great to see the web progressing in so many ways! Also the font in this post was brought to you by the Google Font api.

This blog post is brought to you by Google Wave. If you don't know what google wave is you can visit the website and request a free account or you can request an invite from us in the comments below. Please feel free to edit the wave below and respond to the poll. We are especially interested in how others are using goolge wave themselves and if they have found it effective in managing any of their project or business processes.

With Summer just around the corner so is Drupal Camp Colorado. The entire conference is still in the planning stages although the dates have been set to June 26th and 27th. The price to attend the conference should be very reasonable. Although the website is still in the works you can find it here: http://drupalcampcolorado.org and as soon as everything is set you should be able to sign up.

These conferences can get very technical in nature although there are always plans for introductory level talks. I'm hoping Vijay and I can do an introductory level class for anyone interested in Drupal but can't follow any of the technical jargon. I encourage anyone interested in Drupal and are in a position to attend this conference to come and check it out. I would love to talk with anyone interested in Drupal.

Even if you don't have time for the entire conference the price should be reasonable for just attending a few sessions. Keep an eye on the website to see the sessions and pricing info.

decimal152 have written a great blog post on the role of web CMS. In many organizations there is a desperate need for managing web content, and top level management has recognized this need. However, there is a misconception in organizations, one that rears its head up after the implementation of a CMS.

This article titled "The Incidental Publisher" illustrates the importance of having a content strategy.

25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time