[PressRelease] Sencha (formerly the formidable Ext JS), provider of HTML5 frameworks and tools for desktop and mobile application developers, announced the forthcoming availability of Sencha Touch 2, a major upgrade to its market-leading HTML5 mobile application development framework.

The highlights of the extensive list of enhancements offered in Sencha Touch 2 include native application packaging, access to more device APIs, and numerous performance enhancements that put cross-platform Web apps created with Sencha Touch at parity with many native applications – giving developers the option of creating cross-platform Web apps or native apps that take advantage of device APIs on Apple iOS and Android.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Framework has been shaped by their core community of over 250,000 developers. Sencha Touch 2 will be available as a public beta by the end of September and will remain a free download from www.sencha.com.

• Visit & Download Sencha Touch 2

Everybody knows the sometimes huge benefits of a good CSS/HTML framework – at least those designers or developers who frequently build sites. This is a short presentation of 3 relatively new HTML5 and CSS3 frameworks.

These new frameworks are for the moment not fully tested by Cashrevelations.

3 New CSS3 & HTML5 Frameworks

Inuit.CSS – CSS Framework
Inuit.CSS framework by Harry Roberts is built to work on smaller screens and tiny screens straight out of the box with minimal effort. This CSS framework has also basic support for new HTML5 elements. According to the developer, it doesn’t do much styling, but does a lot of nifty, functional things that most people should find useful.

Perkins – HTML5/CSS3 Framework
Perkins by Carlos Elías is an HTML5 and CSS3 Framework. It has a basic HTML5 template including many of the supported tags, a set of LESS stylesheets and mixings for common tasks such as creating navigation and more. According to the developer, it is built to be little enough to design a single page and robust enough to build a fully featured web app.

G5 Framework – HTML5 Front End Development Framework
G5 Framework by Greg Babula is a lightweight HTML5, CSS3, PHP and jQuery front-end development framework. This practical framework is packed, amongst others, with CSS3 PIE, Orbit Image Slider, Eric Meyer’s Reset Reloaded and more. The flexible layout has a 940px total content width by default, but can easily be updated as desired.

Other CSS & HTML Framework Resources

Cashrevelations would also like to take this opportunity to remind you of some other good and highly adaptable and well established CSS and HTML framework resources.

Compass Core Framework
The compass core framework by Christopher Eppstein is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks. It uses Sass – an extension of CSS3 which adds nested rules, variables and more.

EZ-CSS – Lightweight CSS Framework
EZ-CSS framework by Thierry Koblentz is a browser friendly, lightweight (just 1kb) and easy to use CSS framework for building any type of CSS layouts for your project – you are not bound to a “grid”, and columns and gutters can be of any width.

Drop-Down Menu Framework
This is an easy to use CSS drop-down menu framework – and the developers describe it as a clean, free, standards-friendly, cross browser framework for CSS menus. It contains 14 customizable templates for designing drop-down-menus.

Project Deploy
Deploy is a free, open source, online tool which allows users to quickly deploy a web project framework in only a couple seconds. It offers a couple unique features from other project folder downloads, but the most unique is bookmarking.

960 Grid System
The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

Fluid 960 Grid System
The Fluid 960 Grid System templates (for interactive prototyping, covering main design elements) have been built upon the work of Nathan Smith and his 960 Grid System using effects from the MooTools and jQuery JavaScript libraries.

BlueTrip CSS Framework
This is a full featured Cascading Style Sheet framework which combined the very best of Blueprint, Tripoli (hence the name), Hartija’s print stylesheet, the 960.gs’s simplicity and Elements’ icons. It gives you a sensible set of styles and a common way to build a site.

Blueprint
Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

The CSS and HTML frameworks presented here in this article are not in any particular order – and Cashrevelations is not by any means affiliated with any of the authors.

Facebook is becoming increasingly popular as a promotion channel amongst marketers – even big companies like Amazon and IKEA are represented on Facebook. We are talking Facebook Fanpages. A window for your business to millions of people all over the world.

But to create a visually appealing, effective and something a bit over the ordinary and boring, Facebook fanpage can be irritatingly time consuming. The newly released 520 Grid System Facebook framework was created to help you with that task.

520 Grid System is an HTML and CSS Framework made for Facebook page developers – and according to the developer, Goran Mitic from Belgrade in Serbia, it is fully functional within the Facebook static FBML application and helpful in speeding up of design process.

The framework is still under development and it is 520px wide including 16px left and right margin around container. The future plans for the 520 Grid System framework include for example styles for text, tables and forms.

• Download 520 Grid System

The newly released Baker is a free HTML 5 ebook framework to publish on the iPad using open web standards. It allows developers and web designers to easily convert fixed width HTML 5 pages into a practical ebook format with the possibility to real typography, real layouts and high quality design. To design for the Baker framework you just have to build some nice HTML5 pages with a fixed width of 768px.

The framework is still under development and, for example, files must be named as 1.html, 2.html and etc. But the three developers are continuously working on the HPub format – and according to them, the final format will be more flexible and without this requirement.

The framework is developed by a core team consisting of Davide Casali (earlier involved in the Good50x70 project), Marco “Xmas” Colombo (freelance developer at Tecnomovie) and Alessandro Morandi (author of ZenphotoPress) from Italy.

You can download all the Baker Framework files, including 768px support CSS (for ebook testing in a regular web browser) and ebook packaging example, at the Baker Framework official site. You can also get involved with the project on GitHub.

• Download Baker HTML5 eBook Framework

There is a lot of theories about how a great website layout should be – but I suspect the consensus is greater when it comes to the advantages of a CSS based layout compared to a table based layout. Personally, I think table based layouts feel kind of obsolete – but not at all totally useless. I must admit that I still use tables and I honestly think even if they feel obsolete, tables fill a function and have an undeserved bad reputation – it is as with so many things else, there is a lot of strange myths involved.

Michael Locke of mlwebco.com describes this issue well in his video Tables vs Divs. And now when we mention Michael Locke, I also would like to recommend another video of him, The Standard Website Layout – a layout that can be used for every website.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, a good idea for effective web layout (or webdesign in general) is to follow some basic guidelines. Keep it simple and user friendly – or a simple website is much more user friendly than a complicated and cluttered. A standard layout with, lets say, two or three columns and a billboard is proven to be effective and useful for most sites. Think about functionality – it is far better to have a functional website than a beautiful. Use a clearly readable font size and face. Be inspired by experienced webdesigner (but don’t steal).

Let the two words, simplicity and functionality, be your Star of Bethlehem in webdesign.

6 CSS Frameworks – CSS Layout Resources

A good and simple way to get a relevant and appealing layout is to turn to the skillful professionals. On Internet there is plenty of ready made layouts you can use for free – commonly known as frameworks or templates. Right below you have 6 useful frameworks which will help you to get a good and user friendly layout for your web page.

A Collection Of 224 Grid & CSS Layouts – Iron Myers
These very practical layouts are suitable for Content Management Systems, blog themes, website templates or as a starting point for your web projects. They are SEO optimized and each CSS layout will look and behave the same in all Internet browsers.

Yet Another Multicolumn Lay
YAML is an (X)HTML and CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts. The structure is extremely versatile in its programming and absolutely accessible for end users. It is focused on web standards and accessibility.

Elastic CSS Framework
A simple CSS framework to layout web-based interfaces – with a capacity to make elastic, fixed and liquid layout easily. According to the developers, Elastic provides a declarative syntax language to define the layout structure and behavior.

960 Grid System
The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

Fluid 960 Grid System
The Fluid 960 Grid System templates (for interactive prototyping, covering main design elements) have been built upon the work of Nathan Smith and his 960 Grid System using effects from the MooTools and jQuery JavaScript libraries.

More CSS
This is a lightweight JavaScript library (or framework) with CSS syntax for common things: creating popups, tab menus, list styling, AJAX file inclusion, hyphenation and more. If you know Cascading Style Sheets you already know how to use MoreCSS.

This article was just a few thoughts or mini tutorial about web layouts and webdesign in general – if you are interested of further information about webdesign you could begin with a visit to Wikipedias article Web design and Webdesigndev (webdesign in general).

Jo by Dave Balmer is a JavaScript framework for HTML5 capable browsers and devices. And according to the dedicated developer, it was originally designed to work on mobile platforms as a GUI and light data layer on top of PhoneGap. The framework is still under development, but it has already been tested successfully as a lightweight framework for newer desktop browsers, mobile browsers and dashboard widgets.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video above gives you a quick demonstration of Jo Framework in action on a variety of platforms using the same application source. Platforms include desktop browsers, widgets, mobile browsers and native mobile apps.

Dave Balmer is a Senior Software Engineer and the creator of four JavaScript application frameworks, including this latest framework named Jo (HTML5 Mobile App Framework).

Jo Framework is released under a friendly OpenBSD License.

• Visit JO HTML5 Mobile App Framework

On last Wednesday the new Zend Framework 1.10.7 became available for download. This is the seventh major maintenance release in the 1.10 series and this particular release includes as much as 60 bug fixes. The first version (1.0) was released On July 1, 2007.

The Zend Framework is an object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 5 – and it is focused on building more secure and modern Web applications and services. Zend has also an extensive documentation with help topics close enough to everything.

The Zend Framework is licensed under the simple and safe New BSD License and you can read the license terms HERE and a general overview over BSD licenses you find HERE.

• Download Zend Framework

Sencha (formerly the formidable Ext JS) has introduced Sencha Touch framework – and it can very well be the first HTML5 framework for mobile devices. The package includes an UI widget library, touch event management with CSS transitions and an extensive data package. Following their tradition, the framework is released under Open Source License.

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to Sencha, this framework is built specifically to leverage HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. A cross-platform library aimed at next generation, touch enabled, devices.

On June 15 this year, the merger of Ext JS with JQTouch and Raphaël was announced, forming a new platform called Sencha. Ext JS will still be available on the Sencha website.

• Visit Sencha Touch Website

With this framework you can build up a layout fast through the pedagogic “Cut & Paste” methodology – the EZZ-CSS site provides you with several code snippets and instructions on how to implement them on your webpage. You can also download the CSS files.

The framework is developed by Thierry Koblentz, a CSS engineer at Yahoo! – and the EZ-CSS framework is available for download under BSD and MIT licenses.

• Visit EZ-CSS – An Easy To Use CSS Framework

[Press Release] San Francisco in USA, July 10.
Microsoft Corporation, founded 1975, today launched Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 – combining new capabilities with simplified packaging to provide the industry’s leading media and Rich Internet Application (RIA) solution.

In conjunction with Microsoft Visual Studio, Silverlight and Expression offer a highly collaborative development and design environment that simplifies the process of delivering engaging user experiences.

Wikipedia; Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework with a scope similar to Adobe Flash. Microsoft made the beta of Silverlight 3.0 available on March 18, 2009.

Adoption of Microsoft’s platform continues to rapidly accelerate as evidenced by strong demand for Microsoft Silverlight 2. In less than nine months since its release, more than 1 in 3 Internet devices now have Silverlight 2 installed.

Introducing New Features

Microsoft is introducing several groundbreaking features in Silverlight 3 and Expression 3, including the following:

• Expression SketchFlow. Available to customers just four months after its initial debut at MIX09, SketchFlow provides development teams unrivaled capabilities to rapidly prototype applications and take their ideas from concept to reality.
• Out of Browser. Silverlight 3 provides the seamless ability to add out-of-browser, connected and disconnected scenarios for cross-platform applications, radically improving the productivity and capabilities over traditional RIAs.
• IIS Smooth Streaming. As part of Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Media Services and combined with Silverlight 3, IIS Smooth Streaming enables the industry’s first HDTV-quality (1080p) video experiences with rich interactivity for both on-demand and live video.

All this news and more will be highlighted as part of the Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 interactive virtual launch experience available at See the Light.

Wikipedia; Microsoft Expression Studio is a suite of tools for designing and building web and Windows client applications and rich digital media contents.

Related:

• Silverlight Web site
• See the Light Web site
• Silverlight Partners Web site
• Microsoft Launches Silverlight 3 and Expression 3