You know I love Flipboard. So does Time Magazine. So does Apple, which just named Flipboard the iPad app of the year.
The problem with Flipboard is that it’s an app, not the Web, and I keep hoping someone will show me a really well-designed web app that shows me that the Web can still win.
Yesterday Treesaver’s Filipe Fortes took me up on my “can the web be saved” challenge and visited my house to show me what he’s been working on for publishers. An open-source JavaScript/HTML5/CSS library of design templates that will help developers at content companies compete with the design aesthetic that Flipboard showed us.
Now, this isn’t a product you can use today. Right now he’s doing consulting for well-heeled publishing companies, but in a month he’ll release this into beta.
For now, though, he gives a good case for why the Web is still important and how good HTML5 is for the future of publishing.
What’s funny is I first met Filipe when he worked at Microsoft. What team did he work on? What now is Silverlight. He admits that the Web has come a long way for providing great cross-platform well-designed experiences.
Must watch and if you are doing stuff to push the web forward, like Filipe is, please drop me a line! scobleizer@gmail.com
Scobleizer 
Interesting! We are using our own Web templates to make user-curated topics look like easy-to-read magazines on Scoop.it, our curation platform. I’ll be curious to see whether we can use Filipe’s techniques to improve them further. I’ll check it out. Thanks for sharing!
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I’m not sure it requires saving? Flipboard relies on web pages to exist, otherwise you’re limited to it being just another Twitter/Facebook client. This is the app trap, siloed applications created for a limited number of platforms that either require fresh original content from the open web, or have original content produced for it at expense that is ultimately not linkable from any other app (the worst perpetrator being magazine apps). Sharing options from within apps rely on web-rooted applications for this very reason and still provide no way to bring another user to the desired content post-installation.
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I’m not sure it requires saving? Flipboard relies on web pages to exist, otherwise you’re limited to it being just another Twitter/Facebook client. This is the app trap, siloed applications created for a limited number of platforms that either require fresh original content from the open web, or have original content produced for it at expense that is ultimately not linkable from any other app (the worst perpetrator being magazine apps). Sharing options from within apps rely on web-rooted applications for this very reason and still provide no way to bring another user to the desired content post-installation.
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Thanks for posting this, Robert and for sharing your thoughts Filipe! I’m really looking forward to the beta.
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Interesting!
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Awesome! Can’t wait for the Treesaver JavaScript files. Hey Scoble, is that a 24″ LED Cinema Display? How did you set it up vertically?
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Yeah, it is. I use an Ergotron arm, which lets me spin it horizontally or vertically. Then in the Apple Control Panel you can set it to be vertically.
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Google should acquire this thing in its battle against Apple…
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As long as folks like Filipe are excited about developing rich web apps, we’ll keep seeing the browser and html become a stronger interactive platform. Looking forward to the beta, please let me know if I can try it out or sign up as an early tester.
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Loved this Scoble! Btw, you should enable the youtube interactive transcript so it’s easier to scan these types of videos. For an example, hit the button under the viewcount here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh76oepKFc8
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