Domain: flashgap.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to flashgap.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:You, sir (madam?) are a buffoon...
The Flash file format is open. I don't understand your point. Just because something is proprietary doesn't make it not open, or bad for that matter. There are tools out there which output Flash and are not made by Macromedia themselves. There are even open source Flash production mechanisms. Yes, Macromedia could at some point change the file format to obfuscate it, yes they could make it non-backwards-compatible, they could even decide to abandon Flash completely. That doesn't put the genie back in the bottle, and its still not making Flash a bad thing in and of itself.
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you could get parts from jgenerator
jgenerator is an open source project on slashdot. It provides the functionallity of (expensive) Macromedia Generator. In order to accomplish this it has to understand flash. Not a development environment, but a core code toolkit for building one?
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JGenerator
This JGenerator is exactly what you want.
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Re:Flash will always be Eye Candy.
Flash definitely has bad implementations as well as good implementations; I'm by no means advocating 100% use, but sometimes the flexibility of Flash allows a better UI.
Anyway, to counter some of your statements:
1) Flash can be dynamic. Check out JGenerator, an open source, Apache-style licensed dynamic generator for flash at http://www.flashgap.com/
2) Any intelligent developer will know to keep their content seperate from their presentation, and should be able to create alternate interfaces, such as plain HTML.
3) The "back" button really isn't the greatest paradigm (motif) to begin with. The only purpose for its use is for sites with poor navigation, where users can tend to get lost in a maze of subpages with no clear way to get back to where they were. -
Re:Internet Explorer with Flash5?
Flash is open source, you can download a nice C++ tar file that compiles on win32 and every linux I've tried. They have downloadable native players for Windows, Macintosh,Pocket PC, OS/2, Sun Solaris,Linux x86, andSGI IRIX. at
http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alter nates/
I must also wonder why people are down on flash? Don't confuse it with Shockwave(Macromedia's huge monster app), Flash movies are small, streaming and let you create almost anything without having all the overhead a virtual machine creates.
If you want a free way of making them check out open source JGenerator( http://www.flashgap.com/ ) which even lets you dynamically create flash on your site. Oh and JGenerator runs on almost every OS too. -
This is one
I'm not sure if it has an IDE or not...
JGenerator -
physics vs. other stuffIt's too bad discussion of OOP is so limited in this book, I was looking forward to it. I've found flash to be a very interesting to program in. I really enjoy being able to create objects by drawing and/or coding in the same environment. It's often overlooked that Flash has some pretty advanced OOP stuff going on, like inheritance built right into the interface.
Unfortunately, Flash books rarely discuss such things. Most of them are devoted to making UI thingys or physics algorithms. Worst case, you've got UI thingys and physics together (navigate my website with a parametric EQ!).
Flash does have some great effects, my favorite is that it gets new types of people programming. It's too bad that
/. readers will keep their no doubt keep their blinders on. On Slashdot, there seems to be three main gripes about Flash:1.)Flash websites are badly designed.
It's true, Flash sites are often badly designed. The thing is, they're often trying to accomplish fairly complex goals. A DHTML site trying the same type of thing is bound to be at least as bad, if not worse.2.)Flash is unnecessary.
For you, maybe. Don't forget that Flash is taking over a lot of territory from Java applets rather than HTML. Which would you rather have?3.)Flash is not Free
The authoring tool is not free in any sense, but the players are, and the file format is open. People are doing some really cool things with SWFs on the server side, like JGenerator or Flash2XML. While I agree it's unlikely that the authoring tool will ever be open source, there may one day be a linux version, since there will certainly be a MacOS X version. Anyway, I'm not convinced that Open Source could create products that compete with Adobe or Macromedia. It's possible, but it hasn't happened yet (I like the GIMP too, but it's no PhotoShop), especially when it comes to publishing.
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