Tag Archives: standards Blog

WordPress: Now Is the Time

WordPress is mainstream, with almost 19.9% of the web using it, and its development is in high gear. We can expect three new releases by the end of this year alone. That’s the news from WordCamp, the annual WordPress developers conference.

WordPress’ features for the modern web just continue to grow, which makes it very attractive for bringing the company website up to current standards in one fell swoop. We’ve been onboard for the last few years and now recommend it regularly for clients. Consider everything that comes with it:

  • Content management for in-house publishing
  • Media management
  • SEO management
  • Social media integration
  • Accessibility ready
  • Mobile ready with responsive design for tablets and mobile screens
  • HTML5/CSS3
  • Fully extensible
  • Readily adaptable for custom layout and design
  • Open source software with regular security and feature updates
  • Easy-to-learn interface and growing population of skilled users
  • Large development community for custom applications

And by the way, Automattic, the company behind WordPress, just received $50MM of new financing that will push the platform even further.

If you’re looking to level-up your company’s web efforts, consider WordPress. It’s mainstream now and will take you to the front in terms of capabilities faster than anything else available today.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/16njsbl

Web Video Is Still a Mess

It looks like no one can agree on what is the best way to deliver video over the web. Why is this important? Because with ubiquitous fast connections and processors now available to most people, video is the preferred medium online for entertainment, and in many cases, information. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a sound is worth a thousand pictures, then video is, well, you get the idea. If this weren’t so, TV and movies would not be at the center of the entertainment world. And because the Internet can deliver these media digitally, it is naturally the best way for consumers to access them. And that equates to big business.

So what do the people who have the power to establish the standards that allow everyone to benefit from video online do? They fight with each other, of course, since it’s much more important to own the whole pie than to create a level field for all to compete on. And the battle goes on.

First, it was Real vs. QuickTime vs. Windows Media. Then Flash stepped in and, because of YouTube’s adoption of Flash and the ubiquity of the Flash plug-in, it became the de facto web video standard. Today, it’s Flash vs. the H.264 codec, which plays without plug-ins in browsers via HTML 5.

So what’s the problem? In brief, Adobe wants to own the world of web video, and Apple doesn’t like this. Nor does Microsoft, which has designs on web media domination with its Silverlight technology. Several patent holders own the rights to H.264 and they can’t agree on anything, especially royalties. And the Firefox and Opera browsers support a format that few have even heard of (Ogg Theora – ugh).

We can only hope this mess resolves quickly, the way the format war between Blu-Ray Disc and HD-DVD did in recent years. But according to this article from Webmonkey, that doesn’t appear to be likely. So in the meantime, keep that Flash plug-in handy — although it won’t help if you own a mobile product made by Apple.

Full article: http://bit.ly/cgxcSu