I've had a couple of questions by email that I should answer (note I've paraphrased some of these):

What fonts should I use for my HTML Media Center application and can I use Flash?  The SDK is where to go for design guidelines for HTML applications (the short answer is to use a sans serif font).  Yes, Flash can be used in HTML Media Center applications - Napster and MSN Music both use Flash.

How can I add an application to the Start Menu?  You can't.  Well OK, you can, but we recommend that only OEMs use this functionality as there is a limit to how many applications can appear on the start menu and adding a new app will stomp on existing applications.  If you intend to distribute your application you shouldn't do this, but if you really want to know, the details are in the SDK here.

I've seen the Media Center software for sale online is it OK to buy it?  I'm no lawyer so I'm not going to comment on this.  Media Center is an OEM product and only available with new PCs is the official answer though.

I've been working with Jason Levitt (from Yahoo) recently to iron the wrinkles out of my Flash-based technique for making cross-domain requests. The main focus was to extend the reach of the technique to a larger audience, by adding support for Flash 7, which is more widely deployed than Flash 8.

Try the new FlashXMLHttpRequest demo.

Brad Neuberg's awesome work on DojoExternalInterface gave us a major boost. It emulates the most recent javascript to flash communication API (ExternalInterface, in Flash 8) accross platforms including Flash 7. The library hides differences with browsers and flash versions as much as possible, and works around various performance limitations.

Thanks again to Jason for his interest, feedback and support. I'm pretty excited to see what cool stuff he'll cook using this and the new web APIs from Yahoo.


If you only want to deploy this component, you can download the 'binary' package.
To modify the flash source files and re-build them, get the 'source' package.

As you can see in the demo/index.html file, after including dojo.js and FlashXMLHttpRequest.js, you'll need to initialize dojo and the flash object by calling InitFlash with the name of a function. That function will be invoked once the flash object is loaded and ready to make requests.
From there on, you can create FlashXMLHttpRequest instances and use the 'open', 'onload' and 'send' methods almost as you would with a regular XMLHttpRequest object. You can also call 'setRequestHeader', but only to set the content type request header.

More generally, FlashXMLHttpRequest still has some limitations, due to the native Flash capabilities.
First, access to other domains is restricted by use of a crossdomain.xml file.
Second, you can only make GET and POST requests. It will become possible to support other verbs, such as PUT, DELETE or HEAD, with the new APIs provided by Flash 8.5.

Let me know if FlashXMLHttpRequest is useful to you and if you encounter any bugs. Here's a more convenient permalink to this post: http://blog.monstuff.com/FlashXMLHttpRequest.

During the development of a software product we all make numerous design decisions. Some decisions are done in early stages of development, while analyzing the requirements and gathering the overall architecture of the product. Other design decisions are done during the lower-level design. Finally, even during the implementation of the a single component, we are often in position to weight several design options against each other.

In the following discussion we will examine one of the common design aspects, which is the source of numerous design dilemmas: should we design the product such that it will be ready for a future change (in the requirements, in technology etc.), or should we settle for a straight forward implementation? When is our product “sufficiently-designed” and when is it “over-designed”? In other words, how can we find the golden path when it comes to designing a software system to be ready for future changes?

Read the article...

... the Flash ad contains code to open a popup that leads to a very different destination -- it's what I assume is an affiliate link that attempts to download and install ErrorSafe on your computer (link is to Symantec's description of it).

This, of course, would be totally against any ad company's guidelines. Masquerading as a banner ad, but discreetly opening a popup -- and not only that, but to what people consider malware -- is totally against any ad company's guidelines. So how did it get through?

Simple -- the ad actually contacts its website in the background, and the site returns a response code that tells it whether to display the popup or not - 'popup=1'. My guess is that kpremium.com returned 'popup=0' while the ad company were testing the ad for conformance to guidelines, and then they turned it back on once it was out in the wild.

I had to post this article below. It was simply so spot-on with regards to the cold, hard realities of design work that I would have been in the wrong for now sharing it….

Direct and Related Links for 'The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School'

Overview

Web development incorporates all areas of creating a Web site for the World Wide Web. This includes Web design (graphic design, XHTML, CSS, usability and semantics), programming, content management, marketing, testing and deployment. The term can also specifically be used to refer to the "back end", that is, programming and server administration.

ref: Wikipedia: Web Development