Category: Business

Adobe: It’s not too late to learn from Coca-Cola

Edit: this article was written prior to Coca-Cola’s scandal in 2021 and is not an endorsement of everything the company does. Give credit where credit is due, I say.

Another year is gone now, as is “Adobe Flash Support”. People all over Twitter are reflecting on what they miss about Flash and I find it curious because the software still exists as Adobe Animate and it is still able to do everything Flash ever did, and more. Being the year end, I believe it’s time for another exercise in hindsight. I’ll spare you any year-related puns at this point.

As I reflect on all this I have come to an epiphany:

If Flash belonged to the Coca-Cola company it would be going strong today.

Remember New Coke? I would encourage you to review the story if you weren’t around in 1985. I see many parallels between that saga and the one of Adobe and Flash.

Like Coca-Cola experienced, Flash was in a big decline in its own world. Apple had disallowed the Flash plugin from their devices and there were a few “security issues” uncovered. Losing popularity, both companies felt it was time for a drastic change. Coca-Cola famously changed its formula. Adobe’s solution was to change the name of Flash IDE to Animate.

When “new Coke” came out, the brand was on everyone’s lips and they received a lot of negative publicity—just like Flash. What Coca-Cola remembered at that point is that Coke is not just a product. It is a brand which people loved. They wisely back-pedalled, and not only did they restore the old formula but they used it as a springboard for renewed marketing efforts and came roaring back more popular than ever.

Today, Flash is on everybody’s lips (in the web world at least) and Animate is just a verb that people can do with almost any software out there.

So will Adobe learn from its mistakes…

…or will they just let Animate continue as a discoloured droplet in the Creative Cloud?

It’s not too late to rebrand again. Flash was not just a product, it is a brand synonymous with creativity and fun on the web. Whether they call it “Flash Bang” or whatever, Adobe would do well to reconnect with that web nostalgia and bring back the Flash name. If all the old consoles can do it, they can too.

Work Update – Building a 3-D Web Store

Lately I’ve been working on a couple projects which use 3-D technology to arrange and display merchandise. One project is tied to a Joomla web store which will handle organising the 3-D models, saving scenes and selling of the real merchandise. The other is done using Haxe and Away3D, and would be compatible with mobile devices potentially.

View of the 3-D scene builder Currently used controls on the 3-D shopping cart

Please [email-obfuscate email=”secrets@confidant.ca” link_title=”let me know”] if this interests you for your business. I will likely post more about this later!

 

Making do…thoughts from a Saskatchewan web developer

I wrote about my grandmother a while ago, so why don’t I bring up my grandfather with equal reverence for a bit?

Norman Dowdeswell was a Saskatchewan farmer who lived through the Great Depression. As such, he was somewhat resistant to buying something new when a bit of “fixer-upping” in the shop would result in getting something working again. He never threw anything remotely usable away. This was evidenced by his large piles of scrap metal in the yard and myriad jars and tins, filed with everything from used nails to retired drawer handles, lining the walls of his shop.

When we were doing farm work out in Grampa’s yard, my Dad and I would often have a chuckle at some of his make-do’s we discovered. Having a sore hip, Grampa made himself a cane for yard use by sawing off a hockey stick to the right length. He built a kids’ merry-go-round (known in our family as The Whirl-a-Gig) out of a big old tractor wheel. He made his own cab for the old Fordson tractor out of plywood and angle iron, and I couldn’t tell you how many items such as grain shovels which developed a hole at some period in their life and were later patched using braised brass.

So what does his grandson doing web design in Saskatoon draw from all of this?

1. New stuff can be a world of pain

Not only is new stuff an unnecessary driver of capitalism, it can be simply a recipe for heartache.

How many times have you upgraded your computer’s operating system for the Wonderful New Features it offers, only to discover that your other software and hardware ceases to work properly? What starts out as a free upgrade so often results in many hours and dollars spent on new software, driver upgrades, expensive dongle adapters, or new peripherals. And the old installation discs, manuals, and fully-functional hardware end up either recycled or in the landfill. Often there’s no going back.

Right now I am two OS versions behind on my laptop because I know if I upgrade, my whole Adobe Creative Suite will hit the toilet and I’ll need to upgrade that and start paying subscription fees. I’ve tried Illustrator CC on my machine and it is so slow as to be unusable. Are things good enough right now? You bet they are.

2. Sometimes new ain’t new enough

“What does it cost to migrate to WordPress?” These are words I often hear from people with perfectly good websites. Even when I could make a ton of money from an expensive upgrade, I’d much rather have a client get good value from what they already have.

Sometimes a user has a robust CMS such as Joomla, and finds the feature set is simply overwhelming. Often they don’t understand that Joomla is already preventing problems which are typical to other systems, and providing features they don’t have.

If the user needs simplicity, there are many options for easy editing in Joomla, whether it is custom administrator templates, using front-end editing, installing a blogging component, or simply having a training session. Good web developers should be training their clients properly when building a site, and stick around to guide their clients in managing it.

3. Know when to give in

I do my best to resist “the new” but the time will come when a major upgrade just makes sense. For example, I had a client with an older version of Joomla ask me if they should upgrade. For a couple years my answer was no, because there was no security concern. However, a security issue was recently uncovered which affected many old versions of Joomla. I was quick to recommend the upgrade.

My grandfather bought a new car in his later years. With his health declining, it just made sense to have a reliable vehicle for long road trips.

Thank you for reading this. I hope that 2017 will be a good trip for you!