I recently came across the SublimeVideo HTML5 video player. It’s hard to say what will actually happen with HTML5, but there are certainly some intriguing things coming out. SublimeVideo is a video player written entirely in JavaScript, that will play videos without any browser plug-ins at all! It allows the user to jump to anywhere in the video, play in fullscreen mode, and works on iPhones and iPads. SublimeVideo works on Safari 4.0.4 and greater, Firefox 3.6 and greater, Google Chrome 4.0 and greater, and versions of IE that have installed the Chrome Frame.

Version 1.1.2 of the Yii framework came out a couple of weeks ago (May 2, 2010) and it’s main new feature is Gii. Gii is a Web-based alternative to the yiic command-line tool. Both yiic and Gii are used to generate code in existing Yii Web applications. For example, you create the database for a project, then use the command-line yiic tool to generate the shell of the project (its directory, configuration files, subdirectories, etc.), and then you would turn to Gii in the Web browser to create Model, Controller, and View files, along with the standard CRUD functionality. I’ll write more about Gii soon, but in the meantime, check out the previous Gii link or this part of the quickstart documentation.

I StumbledUpon this post on the 30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners. It’s a good read, even for non-beginners (especially if you’re the type that likes validation of what you’re already doing). The suggestions cover merely coding to what tools you should be using. Check it out!

Peachpit Press, publisher of my forthcoming “Effortless Flex 4 Development” book, has published another excerpt of the book online, free for anyone to read. (Technically New Riders is the publisher, but New Riders is owned by Peachpit.) This article represents a few pages from Chapter 4 of the book, “Event Management”. It follows the previous excerpt (also from Chapter 4), which you should probably read first if you haven’t. The first excerpt largely discusses event handling theory; in this excerpt you’ll see how to turn that theory into actual code. Even if you don’t yet know Flex and ActionScript, you should still be able to follow along. Most importantly, Flex is largely an event-driven approach to application development (conversely, Flash Professional is primarily a timeline-driven approach), so this section is really a key insight into what it’s like to use Flex.

I’m just about to do two “5 Tips in 5 Days” blog posts for Peachpit’s site. One will be specifically on the Flex 4 framework and the other will be on Flash Builder. Flash Builder, in case you’re not familiar with it, used to be called Flex Builder and is just a commercial IDE for developing using Flex. You don’t have to use Flash Builder as the Flex 4 framework and its SDK are available for free, but it does ease the process significantly. The book does not assume you’re using Flash Builder, either. There are specific instructions for how to create Flex applications using a text editor and the command-line IDE, but there are also areas that cover how you would do X or Y using Flash Builder. Most of the book focuses on the Flex framework, so it doesn’t matter what development tools you’re using.

The Web site Scribd, a social publishing site, has recently made the switch from using Flash to using HTML 5. This is a fairly significant change for any site of Scribd’s size to undertake, as Scribd has tons of content available for people to read. They’ve put together a nifty little presentation on their switch to HTML 5 (written using HTML 5) that’s really worth checking out.