Domain: flashmagazine.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to flashmagazine.com.
Comments · 7
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Re:If they really want to boost Flash adoption ...
The SWF format is open sourced - There is also an open source project called Gnash which is an implementation of the flash player - also, the spec to create software tools to create flash content is open as well - There are tons of ways to create flash content without buying anything from Adobe - I use FDT on a daily basis to create flash content without using any of Adobe's tools - http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/open_source_and_free_development_tools_for_flash/
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No Flash - No Point
If there is no flash, there is no point. A good chunk of websites (est 30-40% Cite) use flash which Apple blatently alienates. I'll stick to my laptop and my tethered iPhone and get better results.
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Tufte-Dashboards and headlights.
"Any particular one of the four books that people might know to be most useful for me, or a suggested reading order anyone might have?"
They're all good books but you may have trouble going from theory to practice. A book I'd recommend A website I'd also recommend Here's some more. A nice tool for those doing 3d flash and it's open source. Have fun! -
Re:Webmasters are NOT dead!
A few years ago I would have agreed with you, but now I find that people bear unjustified grudges against what is essentially a marriage between visual creativity and ingenuous coding.
Here are a few excellent points I've borrowed from a close friend of mine who works for FlashMagazine.
- Flash is everywhere. For the web version of a game, 96% of the audience won't need to download anything except the game. More importantly, many people won't be able to install arbitrary ActiveX controls, or use a Java plugin, whereas Flash is preinstalled with Windows on corporate machines.
- Cost is essentially free - there is a small cost for the Flash IDE, but it's nearly free to distribute (just some minor licensing things to worry about that don't cost anything). Royalty-free licenses for decoders such as MP3 and Sorensen Spark are included.
- Ease of finding artists. There is a huge talent pool to draw from for creating art or animations for Flash, either on staff or contract.
- A gigantic community and secondary market. There are thousands of Flash related web sites with tutorials, articles, discussions. There are hundreds of Flash add-ons or components for sale.
- Easy copy-paste to test things out. Flash permits drag-and-drop or copy-paste from one FLA to another, and it automatically brings along any dependent objects into the new library. This can make it incredibly easy to try out quick ideas outside of the main game, and is the one case where it's worth using the debugger.
This makes it very attractive to most open source developers (my cousin being a very active member of the community).
Hope my little sermon converts a few disbelievers :) -
How about Flash?
I know much of Slashdot's audience can't stand Flash, but I've had quite a bit of experience with it over the past five years -- I was a Flash game developer -- and I've got to say, ActionScript has become o very powerful language. Don't be fooled by its name: It's not a scripting language. It's an entirely object-oriented similar to Java and C#. You should feel right at home with it.
The upside is a very rapid development phase: you could bang out a prototype in a couple of hours, depending on complexity. It's also an almost-ubiquitous platform: With the exception of *nix (of which I know very little, and as such refrain from commenting), the player is reportedly installed in 90% of all browsers.
The does-side is that you have little-to-no control over lower-level functions, such as memory-management; no direct disk access outside of 'Flash cookies'; and absolutely no access to a user's video card. It's also quite an expensive application -- it starts at $499.00 USD for the standard version.
Quite a number of amazing games have been developed using Flash, most notably (IMHO) Alien Hominid, which, ironically, has been turned into a full-fledged console game.
That's just my two cents, at any rate.
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Re:They needed a marketing jingle?Bruce R. Chizen went to town, riding on InCopy.
Punched a monkey in his eye and mad the web real phony.
bought a company out of fear and called it MacrAdobe!
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Re:open-source Flash?
not really, even though it is an open format. some time ago there was an openlgx project that was suppoused to be an open source engine and ide:
http://www.flashmagazine.com/html/441.htm
but it didnt come through...
I do use a great open source actionscript ide written in python:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sepy