Microsoft Windows 8 is Bombing

So one of the magazines I read regularly is Ad Age, and according to Ad Age, Microsoft Ads Are Everywhere, But They're Not Selling Windows. Having been in Advertising for 20 years I can give you a brief insight as to why. Microsoft having long been known for it's business machines has sort of the corner on the business market. Businesses love to have things that work. Windows Vista which I use, but the rest of the market hated, had its share of issues in terms of the requirements for running it on already existing machines. Furthermore when integrating it with some of the networks already in place there were huge security risks. IT departments did not embrace it and it bombed.

Microsoft quickly followed suit with Windows 7. I myself did not upgrade, but did purchase a new Laptop that came with the software loaded. Quite a few of my corporate clients currently run Windows 7. About 5 Windows Updates in, my machine started exhibiting the "Black Screen of Death" which was basically a failed Windows Update. It took about 25 minutes, but eventually my brand new quad core laptop would finally come on. After a reboot, be prepared to wait another 25 minutes. After a short investigation online I noticed that there was no fix available, but you could fix the issue by setting up a new user profile. So I took it upon myself to save my beloved laptop. In the end I went into the start up items in the registry for my profile and deleted the new Windows Update item that had already been installed which was crashing the machine on start up. This saved my machine and my bloated already well-used profile.

In looms Windows 8
I received a phone call a few months ago from a client that said "The website interface you created isn't working in Windows 8." Windows 8 hadn't been released yet, so he must have been running the Beta pre-release version of the software. A quick search and I had found a copy. Rather than hosing any of my working production machines I setup a new profile in Parallels and installed the software on one of my Mac workstations. I was shocked.

1. Just because you make something doesn't mean people will buy it.
On initial load the software was hideous. Some sort of mix between post modernism / minimalism and the 80s. Then I noticed something... once I was inside of Internet Explorer I couldn't get out unles I used the old shortcut Alt-F4 to quit the application. New users won't know that. I couldn't get back to where I was. I've been using Windows since there was a Windows and this is bad. I mean really bad. If I can't get out, then you're doomed.

2. If people have the chance to demo the Windows 8 at a store before using it, they will likely not like it... especially if there are other machines around.
Windows 8 is not intuitive. The very first rule about creating a user interface whether it be for a website, a program, or a mobile device, is that it HAS TO BE INTUITIVE. After spending about 30 minutes trying to find my way around and figure out where everything had gone I was able to finally turn on the desktop that I was used to. There was no "Start Menu" like what has existed in Windows since Windows '95. No normal top screen menus either.

3. If a customer can't use it at home, why would they try to replace their workstation with it?
In these increasing resource depleted work environments of the modern age, people do not experiment with new things. If you create an operating system that has a learning curve similar to most production programs for the masses (Word, Excel, etc) you will not have good results. People need to be productive and saying "I can't figure out this new version of Windows" is not an option.

4. If I had a problem with it, then who are you really targeting?
I have a high-end video editing design station that runs Windows Vista 64-bit. I did not upgrade for fear of the Black Screen of Death and because of some of the new processor licensing issues. (My machine has 12 cores and 64gb of RAM). I was looking forward to Windows 8. I have a Wacom tablet, so I can probably navigate the OS similar to a touch screen and the new touch mice make it so I could probably get one of those and use it as well. I don't want to have to upgrade everything just to run some new non-backward compliant OS. I have thousands of dollars of software licenses for all sorts of high-end production apps from 3D to Video Editing to the Adobe Creative Suite and if they don't play well with the new interface on Windows I am not upgrading.

Having Sherlock Holmes use it on the TV show Elementary was a bad idea. He's smarter than that. He's not going to be on the bleeding edge of any OS install, and if he's the hacker they're trying to make him out to be, then he's not going to be using Windows Anything as his primary machine. I'm sort of sick of the Windows product placement overall. It's a hideous interface, it reminds me of my bad experience, and it's too ubiquitous. It's like the ads during the election, I want them to end.

Another thing to consider is that because I'm one of the more technically saavy Windows supporters I'm usually the guy someone calls when they've messed something up. If I can't figure out the OS, then it's going to be a bomb for your branding. I'm going to tell people to buy a Mac. Not because I think that Apple is better, or because I think Apple has a better company. I hate Apple and their business model, but if I have to try and figure out Windows 8 on someone's machine just out of the kindness of my heart, I'm going to probably be the driving force in steering their next machine purchase immediately and I'm going to tell them if they buy a Windows machine they're on their own. I don't have the time to deal with it. I wonder what kind of machine they would buy? It's probably not going to have Windows on it... AND it will be more secure (for now).

That last statement is a little joke. Security is in the eye of the beholder. You can read more about security in my other blog at: Observation - the-analytical.blogspot.com

So in short, there's your answer. It's not the advertising, it's the branding. It's a crappy OS and word of mouth spreads faster than product placement. The more people you associate with it the worse it's going to be. Just change the interface to something people are used to and you're golden. Run a couple of press releases after the fact and they'll be much better spent than the Jonestown approach of "just drink the Kool-aid."

Illustrator CS6 still not ready for prime time.

I've been using all of the Adobe products since they came out (or before they were owned by Adobe), allowing me to be one of the fortunate few who has the ability to notice the changes with every new release. Some of the newer releases have created a few changes that actually aren't for the better at all. Since the future of everything related to marketing communications will ultimately involve some sort of digital medium I was shocked at some of the major oversight on Adobe's part in regard to the treatment of pixels in one of their popular illustration programs, Adobe Illustrator. Furthermore the Save for Web feature in Adobe Illustrator no longer has the option to save HTML files for you. It kind of makes me wonder who's driving the agendas at Adobe. If they're willing to sacrifice a few things to save their productivity but tank the productivity of the end users is it really worth supporting Adobe anymore at all? I would say no. Now is the time competition... step up!

Since I'm a long-time user of Adobe Illustrator I almost always use it to generate layouts for the web for websites, email marketing pieces, and sometimes for animations for the web. I was a little shocked when one of my agency clients sent me a file for an email marketing piece (we call them mail blasts) and I was unable to save the file for web with HTML after painstakingly creating all of the necessary slices. This is a huge setback. Not only did I have to save back to an older version of CS5 that I luckily still had installed, but I also had to make sure that my client didn't use any of the newer features in Illustrator like gradients as strokes that could crash the older version of the program. Luckily this time everything went okay.

The deeper I got into Illustrator trying to Save for the Web I noticed a few other issues that actually showed up in CS5. The pixel placement of the elements in the interface plays a huge part in how those pieces will render when they're saved for the internet. Since Illustrator is a Vector program, all of the lines, points, fills, and shading that your use in the document might be assigned a width in the program, but because they're all relative to the pasteboard might not line up with pixels on-screen. So one of the things I noticed is if you have your artwork start at some odd placement like 102.45 pixels, that .45 pixels actually gets split and you'll end up with either a transparent or slightly discolored pixel depending on the save type. This existed in CS5.

Older versions of the applications are much more robust with dealing with the internet files (web formats) in general. They have the ability to position items exactly and when saved out do not have issues with pixels and borders not lining up.

The newest version of Illustrator (at the time of this writing) CS6 has some other issues that it has been plagued with. One being the measurement system overall. If you play with the strokes and watch the positioning of the boxes you'll see what I mean. The strokes actually take size, similar to what you experience when working with strokes on the web. This means that rather than being just a stroke applied to the size of the box, it's actually altering the shape characteristics of the box itself.

A little test:

New Document Dialogue in Adobe Illustrator

Create a 120px x 120px new document. This creates an art board at 0,0. Be sure to turn on your ruler and set the ruler units to pixels. (Note: When you change the size on the New Document dialog box it will no longer say Web or Print because the size isn't stored as a profile.)

Draw a box inside with a 1-point/pixel black stroke that is 120 pixels wide by 120 pixels tall.

Note in the control palette that the width is 120px by 120px, but the x coordinate for the box isn't at 0,0 like intended or in old versions. It's actually at -.5px x -.5px meaning it's splitting the centered stroke (default for Illustrator) in half.

Example from the control palette.

Stroke Palette

Screenshot of final file.

If I select "align stroke to inside" in my stroke palette (left), now the box is off-centered visually in the interface. When the image of the box is exported with the save for web feature the box saved is offset just like the preview (right). This problem happens in the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Adobe Illustrator for Windows. I've not tested these findings on a Mac but they are more than likely similar.

This brings up the issue though, if the future of everything we're doing from Web to Email to Mobile Devices to Television (movies as well) are all related to the pixel and Adobe didn't think this was a major issue getting this building block of everything under control, then what are we to do? A few of my clients have noticed this issue asked me what to do. They do not have access to the older versions of the software that I have. Furthermore with the nanny-state tactics that Adobe has been doing of late, there may be the possibility at some point in time that I can not use my older software (rightfully licensed) because of some other glitch in their system.

I've been becoming increasingly more and more frustrated with Adobe being on the bleeding edge myself and see no good alternative on the horizon.  Since Adobe was allowed to purchase Macromedia, they've effectively created a monopoly on the industry.

Recently I was apprised of the information that although I paid for the Master Collection of the Adobe Creative Suite, I'm not allowed to have the most recent upgrades to the software because I'm not a member of their costly abomination to the modern licensing world, the Creative Cloud Subscription. I refused to be beheld to a company that can raise the price of the software that I'm using for a living while I'm using it simply so they can make a few extra bucks for their shareholders. Anyone considering the Creative Cloud, at the time of this writing even with the discount for already being an Adobe user, I can tell you that it is way more cost effective to only pay for the software outright and then upgrade when you need to, rather than paying for the cloud services. The drawback is that you do not receive the bleeding edge buggy features (which by my latest experiences) that might render your copy of the program you use for work useless.

Until later, -Chris

QR Codes and their proper usage.

I’ve had a few clients recently ask about QR Codes and what they’re used for. Some already know, but in short, a QR code is a graphic barcode for printing that lets someone with a mobile device retrieve information from the decoded image. The important things in that statement are printing, barcode, and mobile, because your target market is people with phones, and they will have to have something to decode a barcode on their device, and they will more than likely need to take the image from something printed (unless it’s one of those mall tv ad spots).

With that being said, if your website is not mobile friendly (eg. large Flash intro page) do not bother placing a QR Code to that page because people with mobile devices will have mixed results. To create a QR Code you'll need to visit a website like the QR-Code Generator at Kaywa and enter the text or URL that you would like to use and select a size XL works best for print.

On the next screen you'll receive your code in the form of an RGB PNG. Save this file to your local machine. Next we'll want something we can scale infinitely, so that means vector format, and there are a couple of different ways to go about it. Open it in Adobe Photoshop (a raster editor). Once you've loaded the file, convert it to grayscale, then convert that to Bitmap with the following settings to increase the resolution without losing (or adding) information:

Now you should have a larger black and white version of the file. Save the file as a TIFF. Some people can stop here if they're only going to use the image on a business card, but if you want to keep going to create a vector scalable version of this raster file, read on.

Option 1 - Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator

Assuming you have Live trace available, open Adobe Illustrator and create a new artboard. Place the TIFF (File > Place...) so you can see the image on your screen in the newly created artboard. When the image is imported if you have the option for Live Trace, you will see either "Live Trace" or "Image Trace" in the control palette on the top of your screen. If not, skip this and go with Option 2. Once you select trace, you might receive an error or warning like the one below. If so, simply select OK.

The default settings in the old trace panel would give varied results. Also placing the PNG instead of the TIFF would also give varied results depending on the complexity of the URL you're using. To clean up the image a bit, select the "Trace Options" or "Tracing Options Dialog" button to the right of the presets. For this I try to make the artwork as clean as possible using the preview. In CS6 I used the following results for my layout (left) and CS5 (right).

Tracing CS6

Tracing CS5

Next, select "Expand" from the control palette (this makes the paths editable) and save the image as an EPS.

Option 2 - Making Paths from a Selection
in Photoshop (Old Skool)

If you don't have a more recent version of Illustrator at your disposal (or Adobe Streamline) you can take a different approach. Open the Bitmap TIFF in Photoshop. Open your Channels Palette. This should show a "Bitmap" channel. Hold your Command Key (Apple Key) on a Mac or the Control Key on a PC and select the Bitmap layer with your mouse. This should make a marquee selection. This selection will be the white areas, so we'll need to invert the selection by going to Select > Inverse (or Invert). Now go into your paths palette and select the flyout in the upper right-hand corner. Next select "Make Work Path" and you will receive a prompt asking about the pixel tracing tolerance. Select 2 pixels. This will create a path for you. Double-click on the path to name it.

Now you can either use the selection tool (the black arrow) and select the path, then copy it to the clipboard and paste it into Illustrator, or select File > Export > Paths to Illustrator, then open the file you save. Either way you should have a file you can edit in Illustrator that can be scaled up infinitely.

Thanks for reading, and good luck.

Although these are cool, be sure to check out my other blog entry about the Dangers of QR Codes.

Adobe Software Training in Chicago

Adobe recently released Creative Suite 6 (containing Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, Indesign CS6, Dreamweaver CS6, and Acrobat X) earlier this month. After downloading and installing it became apparent that there is a significant difference between this version and the previous versions of CS5 and CS 5.5. One of my clients was asking about the learning curve and where to go learn the new version since she didn't have the money to pick up the software, install it, and learn it on her own free time, and learning the software on the job was out of the question since her company would not spring for the new version. My suggestion was to take a look at training courses with a company that offers hands-on training in a classroom environment using the software, then get the company she works for to pay for the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to make it more cost effective for her to get access to all of the Adobe products including Premiere and After Effects.

The next day, my friend and colleague from Columbia College Chicago,  Michael Riordan, mentioned his new training center Digital Design Lab in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside the city of Chicago that specializes in teaching Adobe Creative Suite applications. With Mike's expertise and years of experience in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, and Quark XPress in agencies throughout Chicago, he has a skillset that would help anyone in the industry to learn what they need to stay current on the most recent applications from Adobe.

If you're in the Chicago area and are looking for courses to learn Adobe software, visit the Digital Design Lab website and check out their services today.