goodbye flash, hello html5...

Historical import from LiveJournal via Wayback Machine.

Original URL: http://aks1983.livejournal.com/24618.html

Current mood:	productive
Current music:	BT - Skylarking

one of the nicer 2013 feelings: taking something flash-based and making it survive in a browser without apology. strange little historical symmetry there, because a few years ago i was still touching flash in ad-related work, and now i am helping remove it from actual client-facing functionality. apparently this is how time passes in web development: first you use a thing because it looks magical, then you replace the same thing because it became embarrassing.

the current thing is charts for a crm/sharepoint-ish world. not glamorous, but useful. data wants to be visible, users want it interactive, and nobody wants a plugin anymore. fair enough. html5 is not magic, but at least it belongs to this century. kinetic.js turned out to be a pretty decent compromise between "we need this fast" and "please let this not be awful".

i saved the result here too: CRM Charts. funny how "legacy" can start almost immediately if the platform under you shifts fast enough. but i like that this one is mine in a more adult way than the old toys were. less naive, more useful.

there is probably a moral somewhere about not marrying technologies too hard. today it is flash, tomorrow something else. better to stay loyal to ideas and be pragmatic about tools. same applies to jobs, by the way. i finally seem to be learning that too.