VP8 seeking to become a de facto video codec standard

Much like Android, VP8 came to be a Google product by way of acquisition and, likewise, then released as open source code and available royalty-free for a number of uses such as online and mobile video. The VP8 video codec is paired with the open-source Ogg Vorbis audio to form the WebM container format which is directly aimed at providing high quality video compression for use with HTML5 video. Is there an immediate impact on the interface design of websites? Not really, but interface designers and web developers have to think carefully about which users they’re targeting when implementing video into their interface design. These decisions are more pronounced when developing a website that requires natively hosted video (i.e. not using YouTube embedded videos) because one has to decide on which format(s) to use. For now Flash is still the most popular player but, say, you are targeting a significant amount of iPhone users you’d have to use an alternative. And since Apple has embraced H.264, the use of that codec brings with it its own set of baggage as we saw with Nero. So, is open source the right way to create a video codec standard? Quite possibly, but we will have to wait and see what lies ahead.

For the people who are into screen design, Rapid Paper Prototyping is old school! But ever considered doing screen prototyping on screen?

With pidoco’s web-based screen design software, designers and web developers can save valuable time, optimize communication within the team and build better websites for the internet.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been in the know for a while to get a website started. Rapid Paper Prototyping is about sketching ideas with pen and paper to be discussed within the team. This prototype will then be put through a refinement process by integrating feedback from different stake holders. This paper prototype will at last act as a guideline for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some screen-designers even use these sketches for performing usability tests. Retrieving problems in the use cases in the prototyping phase can save a lot of money, since later changes in the so called ‘finished’ web project are minimized.

Anyway, there are disadvantages of Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Prototypes are not easy to add to the document servers and also difficult to collaborate on over different locations. Scanning paper prototypes and making them ‘clickable’ for web testing is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many companies create their sketches directly in MS PowerPoint or MS Visio and have them shared to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the data more effectively but it is not really more dynamic than making duplicates of a piece of paper handing it to the team. The digital sketches still do not show the real functionality:  links, dynamic menus and work-flows etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long text. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.

A small company from Berlin, Germany has spotted this problem and made it their mission to tackle it by providing a simple web-based interface design software.