Flash and Open Source

Anders Schneiderman asks: "I'm involved in a project that's planning to create open source toys for educating people around complicated policy questions (e.g., policy on prescription drugs). We'd really like to use Flash as our main language, but we're concerned about the fact that the major Flash development tools cost $500--more than some of the community group folks we want to involve can afford. I took a look at Sourceforge, and while there are plenty of projects that offer ways to create Flash for free, there didn't seem to be any v.1 general development tools. Did I miss something? If you want to build Flash and you don't want to pay $500, how do you do it (aside from copying somebody else's, which as Bill Gates told us is just bad, bad, bad)? And if there aren't any powerful open source tools for it, any thoughts on why?"

Comments

why in the world...

[rtstyk]

would you mention Bill Gates in this context? This is getting ridicoulus. I almost finished reading the post and almost ignored it then the reference hit me and all I could say was WTF? Does it incrase the post's chance to be accepted if you bash Bill Gates? Geez... d.

When I first started reading...

[RatOmeter]

...I thought you were going to make a portably device and wanted advice on how to maximize the utilization of Flash memory, balancing the economics of parts cost vs. storage capacity, minimizing write cycles, compressing code to save space.

Then I realized you're talking about using that bloated, bandwidth hogging, gotta get the plug-in, standards ignoring web-based thing called Flash(tm).

Unless others here can convince you otherwise, please don't. It's starting to look like some day all you'll need to surf the web is that damndable Flash plug-in. Just think about all those poor saps at the IETF and before who, with their misguided thinking, labored so long to create *public standards* for delivering online content .

Maybe a little more info is necessary:

- Is this application to be Internet or intranet based? If Intranet, I guess you might assume better resources (bandwidth, storage) than with an app for the general public.
- do you really need the animation features? My experience (on the receiving end) with Flash indicates it may be esp. good for animation. Somehow I don't see the need in your application.
- Is the content mainly static? I think there are many better choices if the content needs frequent updates.

Re:Non-Macromedia Flash tools

[interiot]

Flash is definitely not compatible with text browsers, blind readers, cell phones, or many of the more obscure OS's. Do you really want to limit yourself that much?

$500 is too much?

[Drunken_Jackass]

C'mon folks. Show me another app that's as powerful as Flash for $500.

To sum up - don't confuse open with free when you're a cheap bastard!

OSS users aren't normal

[GCP]

Yeah, yeah, I know. "Troll!" I mean it in the statistical sense.

Most OSS users prefer command lines to GUIs. Normal people are the reverse.

OSS users are usually the sorts who prefer the experiences inside their heads to external experiences. Reading roller coaster specs is just as good for a lot of them as actually riding the roller coaster.

Not so for normal folks.

Standards committees, forums like /., and other gaggles of techies are famously out of touch with the preferences of "normal" people. They are then morally outraged by technologies that "corrupt" the purity of their systems -- by making them more the way normal people would like them to be.

Techies have screamed for years as HTML has moved from "it looks the way you want it to look, depending on how you configure your browser", to "it looks the way the professional designer intended it to look, and it looks that way in every browser". Techies want to configure their browsers for optimum "information display". Normal people want to see professional production values and don't want to waste their time "configuring" anything.

Flash is a superb way to build websites for normal audiences. Most /.ers seem convinced that their eliteness means they know best what is right for the Web. In fact, they are simply out of touch.