I first started turning angle brackets into dollar signs on a full time basis in the summer of 2002, a little over 6 years ago (I did contract work, internships, and worked part time before then).

Allow me to tell you a little bit about the ol’ interweb job back then.

The company I worked with was on the cutting edge… of backwards compatibility, that meant that in 2002 we were developing for 4.x browsers circa 1997, Today that would be like developing for IE 6 and Mozilla 1 (as a focus!) so it wasn’t really a big deal it just wasn’t exciting. Tables and spacer GIFs were the name of the game (GIFs were still patented back then you know!) We used Flash too, we tried to publish for Flash 3 or 4, and of course we offered non-flash, non-javascript, non-cookie versions of pretty much everything thing because a surprising number of users back then thought they were bad. Some clients (especially in the the government) were in offices where they used dial-up to connect to the Interwebs from their Windows 98 computers with 640×480 256 color screens, used IE 4 with no plug-ins, no scripts, no cookies… o and they still wanted nice websites. Boy howdy did we deliver! It’s amazing what you can do when you have to.

If you’re wondering just how much things have changed in the way of rich content access I just checked the stats for a couple of popular wide audiences websites I have access to and browsers with no-flash access make up only 1.5% of the the hits, including those from mobile devices. Just for comparison about 3.3% of people in North America are visually impaired, 0.4% are legally blind, 1% are functionally illiterate. How often do you develop with non-flash users in mind? How about the blind or even illiterate ones?

So where is the future?

I see the bulk of the skilled development work shifting from a) making pretty designs, b) marking up content the client wrote, and c) hammering out oodles of non-interactive sites to developing really interactive rich applications.

This might actually mean fewer web designers, and developers over all; but let’s face it, at one time a lot of people made a lot of money by “thinking in fortran” and punching cards, those people didn’t die when the technology changed. We just need to be ready for the changes. A lot of the really dull repetitive, wheel re-inventing jobs will be eliminated, and the people who aren’t capable of moving on will certainly be forced to find new jobs, some of the jobs may move to emerging markets, but don’t expect “basic” web jobs to be sticking around here all that much longer. At-least not very many of them.

CMSs are getting pretty good, rich editors are almost decent and if IE gets it’s act together the lumps with that will smooth out pretty quickly. I’ve even seen a fairly convincing demo of a product that cuts up PSDs into XHTML and CSS automatically.

By 2019 I see development of the typical small business website going a bit like this (and I’m being very conservative here). A designer makes a layout (probably based on something from a library of wireframe designs), perhaps even in a tool which transparently works directly with XML, CSS and SVG (Or whatever code we’re using by then!) bypassing Photoshop (or whatever the big tool is by then) all together (in most cases). That design is point and click marked up for use with a template system and is then plugged into a CMS. The client will fill out the content, which I’m sure will still be difficult to cause to happen, even in 2019.

It’s already pretty close to being the case, all we’re really losing is the skilled work of turning designs into code and plugging them into a CMS, and don’t expect to be doing a lot of work writing CMS software either. How many people are writing new word processors these days? At one time that was the product of the future, Now you have three, Office, OpenOffice and Pages, and you can almost ignore the last two, actually most businesses do. I’m expecting an end to end Adobe solution that actually works, right now they don’t have that, but Adobe isn’t stupid, they’re just slow.

That means Joey McCodemonkey isn’t going to be able to eek out a living turning PSDs into HTML anymore; so what will he do? Well that means Joey is going to have to do what all those programmers who were writing desktop publishing software back in the ’90s had to do when that dried up. He’ll have to get a job doing something else, and for a lot that’s going to be outside of programming. Technology careers have a tendency to chew people up and spit them out. How many programmers do you know? How many who have been doing it for more than 5,10,15,20 years? Those numbers shrink pretty fast don’t they. It’s not like people were not programmers in 1989, sure there might have been fewer but they did exist, and probably in greater number than you’d think.

So what will the Joeys who can adapt be doing?

Well they’re going to be writing apps, web apps but we’re not really going to consider them that because it’s all going to be “web” apps, and you can drop the web because that’s not going to be important. You can call them, internet hosted applications or something if you like. The line between desktop and web apps is already under attack, heck Microsoft tried it with the whole HTA fiasco back in the day. More recently Microsoft, Apple and Google have all been playing around with web based office suites.

So what does it come down to?

Rich, unskilled-human friendly interfaces to important and interesting data, just like desktop apps today, just like desktop apps in 1999. Our idea of what good usable software means changes all the time. In 1989 color terminal based software was the bee’s knees in usable computer software. In 1999 it was rich GUI desktop applications. In 2009 it’s rich web apps. In 2019 it’s going to be rich interfaces delivered over the Internet. What will rich mean? Well I suspect it’s going to be ever more interactive and ever more social. Indeed John Gage was a genius when he came up with the one time Sun Microsystem’s slogan of “The Network Is The Computer”. It’s been lauded as an idea before it’s time, and it only gets more true with time.

A Quick Recommendation

If you’re here you probably like photos, so I though I’d mention my friends over at fotojournal have finally launched their hotly anticipated, super easy to use blogging system for photographers. I recommend you try it out (there’s a free option!). I’ve been using it for a while and really love it.

I was having a problem with some thumbnails not loading on Flickr when others did, it seems this problem is exacerbated by slow connections, others have reported this too. Almost everyone who reports this seems to be fairly technically adept, and I think I know why it’s happening.

It seems for whatever reason the servers sending he thumbnails don’t reliably support HTTP 1.1 pipelines, and I think that’s why it happens. Changing the the setting network.http.pipelining to false fixed the issue for me 100%

To do this enter “about:config” in the location bad bar, then in the search box put in “pipe” and when you see network.http.pipelining right click it and select Toggle.

A Quick Recommendation

If you’re here you probably like photos, so I though I’d mention my friends over at fotojournal have finally launched their hotly anticipated, super easy to use blogging system for photographers. I recommend you try it out (there’s a free option!). I’ve been using it for a while and really love it.

Many people may have noticed that the entry level Sony Alpha (properly α, the Greek letter Alpha) DSLR cameras are incredibly well priced for what you get, “highly competitive” some might say. I think we all know Sony don’t usually compete so heavily on price, but as it is now they’ve got a very small slice of the DSLR market share and they’re looking to build that. Sony’s business model seems to be built around reasonable margins on reasonable volume driven by lock in. Not high volume low margin or high margin low volume. Sony seems to be applying a long term application of their usual MO to their DSLR offerings as well. First they hook you, then they let you lock yourself in then they sell you the top of the line stuff at the same price as “the other guys” but without all that pesky profit killing competition.

Some people seem to think that there must be something wrong with the Sony α line of DSLR cameras, noisy sensors, bad software, you name it, the assumptions abound. Surely a DSLR with a lens for $375 can’t be any good, right? Well the truth is they’re just fine, pretty much as good as $375 point and shoot (though maybe not in all respects), the A100 with it’s 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 is both inexpensive and versatile. But what it has that a point and shoot doesn’t is an upgrade path and accessories.

I happen to own a Sony DSLR-A200 which is the second lowest end model and the kit comes with the same lens as the A100. They list for $499, but I got mine for $399 and I can assure you, it’s not a trick, it’s a strategy and they really are a very good value.

I think that Sony is banking on the fact that the price is so outstanding many people will chose the A100 and A200 rather than a point and shoot. I suspect Sony loses money on ever A100 they sell. However that doesn’t mean Sony isn’t in the DSLR market for money (and a little Nikon/Canon blood).

There are only a few technical drawbacks to the A100 and A200 versus other entry level DSLRS

• The that cases are a particularly cheap plastic which can also be a bonus because it doesn’t weigh very much.
• The kit lens will never win an award for sharp focus, but it’s versatile
• The CCD gets a touch noisy at ISO800 and is more or less useless at ISO3200, ISO1600 is pretty bad too

The plastic case really is very light and there aren’t mass reports of any kind of issue with it. The glass might produce a bit of a soft image but it’s a 18-70mm and costs about $170 on it’s own, compromises had to be made. That’s not exactly high end glass but it will provide you with virtually the entire range you need for casual shooting. The CCD is fine up to and including ISO400, and ISO800 is acceptable but in the shadows you’ll see some faint blue noise.

That brings me to the strategy. It’s all about the lens and the CCD. You see Sony was very wise when they bought Minolta’s camera business including the all important α bayonet lens mount. That’s the real trick here. The α lens mount puts the autofocus (AF) motor inside the body of the camera not the lens, that means lenses can be much cheaper to manufacture and much lighter, it also means that the entire range of Minolta AF lenses is available to the Sony DSLR user. Konica Minolta / Sony also put(s) the optomechanical image stabilization in the body of the camera so you get sharper images whatever lens you use. So while other brands have to put the image stabilization and autofocus into every lens, Sony (and previously Minolta) doesn’t have that expense.

That’s important because with the death of Minolta as a camera brand many people think their Minolta lenses are worthless and surly there is nobody looking to buy them. Minolta also had a impressive range of lenses, especially lenses which wouldn’t otherwise be autofocusing. For example Minolta / Sony have the only autofocusing catadioptric lens; a 500mm (f/8) unit (You can find them used for $350). The shrewd Sony owner will quickly find this out and start buying up old lenses for rock bottom prices. That means smart people interested in photography who buy the Sony for value will all of a sudden have a bunch of great lenses in their bag, which leads to more enthusiasm.

That leads me to the other half of this strategy, the CCD, you see Sony’s CCD isn’t full frame, like other entry level DSLRs it’s APS-C sized, specifically it has a 1.5 crop factor, meaning that a 50mm prime works like a 75mm prime. There’s no way to fix that without expensive reducing optics between the body and lens. So the average α buyer who gets into using other lenses is going to see the amazing results of these lenses and lament their lack of proper frame. I know I do. I have a wonderful 50mm f/1.7 AF prime which I picked up for $40 including a spiffy camera bag. However it’s much less useful than a 50mm would normally be because I have to back way up from the action at a party to get that perfect shot of the family having a good time.

So now you have thousands of people who bought the entry level α cameras and picked up a second lens and came to the realization the lens is critical and want to buy more, but because these are the kind of people who like to buy new things (after all they got a new α instead of a used professional camera) they will probably want new lenses for their more important ones. Lenses are competitively priced, that means lenses with similar picture quality and similar technical specifications generally have to sell for about the same. If they don’t, people might use adapters and deal with the crop factor, or buy a third party brand like Tamron or Sigma. But you can’t use Sony lenses on a Canon even with and adapter because there is no AF inside the lens, but the Canon lens can be adapted to the Sony. So Sony has all the more reason to keep their lens prices competitive. Remember that they don’t have put a stabilization or focus drive into the lens! Hellllooo profit! Even Tamron and Sigma are in on that game, they charge pretty much the same thing for their Sony lenses as for the same lens for a Canon or Nikon, meaning the Canon and Nikon ones must have lower margins.

Okay so now we have Sony and friends making more on their lens sales, big deal so they make $30 of pure profit on every lens they sell. That doesn’t sound like much until you consider that these are DSLR lenses, they go with you when you buy a new camera, provided it’s a Sony. That means people don’t mind buying them so much. More importantly that lens is investment, weather it’s a $65 macro lens fro some eBay seller or a new gee-wiz $1,200 telephoto from factory it is momentum for your next purchase’s brand selection.

As a result lots of people who have been point and shoot owners are now DSLR owners with maybe 3 lenses in their bags and they’re getting sick of that 1.5x crop factor.

Enter the Sony α DSLR-A850 the full frame big brother to the entry level α; well in reality the little brother to the A900, it’s more of a cousin to the entry level cameras. You see the A850 has a full frame CCD but it’s $2,000, it’s basically your only rational choice, you know your lenses aren’t worth squat used because the market is flooded with used Minolta lenses that work just fine and they can’t be adapted to any other brand. So you might as well pony up $2,000 for the A850, besides it’s a few hundred bucks cheaper than the Canon or the Nikon anyways, and buying value makes you feel good, and soothes the worry you might have had about spending $2,000 on a camera, when you’re obviously not a professional photographer in the first place or you would have bought a Canon or a Nikon “just to be safe”. Okay so some small percentage of professionals buy Sony, but I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near what their overall market share is.

There you have it, through leveraging a discount used lens market, high margins on lenses and providing a reasonably priced upgrade path Sony has got you for the long haul, and they won’t have to compete on price forever, just a few more market share points and they’ll be able to stick another $200 onto the price of the A850 (or whatever it’s replaced with by then).

A Quick Recommendation

If you like photography or web development consider following me on Twitter. You can also check out my photo blog, which isn’t just a bunch of pictures of my family.

Now Updated For The New Size!

Well as near as I can tell everyone is now able to upload and be shown the new Facebook image size. The largest photo you can have on Facebook is now 720x720px. That’s 42% larger (by area) than the old standard of 604x604px. It’s so big that it doesn’t fit into my blog template. Click the image to see how large it actually is.

So if you want to get picky about re-sizing your images for better quality and watching for artifacts you should shoot for 720 pixels either wide, tall or both.

It seems that no matter what you do Facebook re-compresses your images regardless of what their original file size might be, this equates to about a 50% quality setting in most apps but there seems to be no size it won’t re-compress, even if it actually makes the file bigger.

Mike makes a good point, you can find out more in his Facebook Gallery