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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?"
Maybe because most open source people (me included) tend not to like flash?????
Seriously if you are going to use flash you will also need someway to view it right? That means you have to get a system capable of viewing flash.... Which means that your nice community effort is going to rely on commercial software.
Go with something completly free (the speach kind), it will safe you a lot of money!
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
SVG is a W3C approved vector graphic and animation XML language. Development tools for it are coming right along. There is a good series about SVG on XML.COM. The author demonstrates many flash features using SVG.
Actually, no they wouldn't get sued, and Flash rather open. In fact, there is Ming, an extension for PHP, and even FreeMovie, http://freemovie.sourceforge.net/, which is currently moving to support the following:
FreeMovie/C#
FreeMovie/Java
FreeMovie/Perl
FreeMovie/PHP
FreeMovie/Python
FreeMovie/Rebol
FreeMovie/Ruby
FreeMovie/Tcl
FreeMovie/VB
FreeMovie/VB.Net
So the real question is, "How do you want to flash today?"
Jason Lotito
Don't use flash for a large-scale project, please. It's only going to make your trainging and maintenance costs skyrocket. HTML is open-source and is highly capable.
:-)
However, if you want cheap flash, the educational price for Flash MX is $99. Enroll in a community college course. Maybe a flash course... You'll need it.
Kevin Fox
The W3C SVG page may be found here. Probably the most popular browser plug-in is made by Adobe and you can get it here (RedHat 7.1 and Solaris 8 versions of the plug-in are somewhat hard to find but are still available).
You might also wish to check out some of Adobe's demos. Jasc has a Win32 app called WebDraw that can come in handy, too.
You could try Swish, which does text effects (among other things) quite well and is only $50.
mahlen
"The carrot is the agent of the coleslaw." -- Berkeley Bob
Flash is not a good user interface design tool.
There's really no such thing.
If you need to be redesigning a UI in order to get the job done, then you're probably missing something in your app design. You want your users to presented with something they immediately recognize - you don't want them to have to figure out where they have to click and what each funky abstract blinky thing does. It's a bit different with games - those are supposed to be playful, not necessarily usable. But if you're doing stuff for a non-entertainment purpose - stick to the standard widget sets.
Let's face it: a scrollbar is a scrollbar for a reason, and a bunch of graphic designers workign independently aren't especially likely to come up with a better replacement.
Flash: good for some things. Animation? Yep. AV syncing? Yep. Designing widgets for navigating your website? Nope.
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Are you aware of the existence of Flash Turbine?
here
My company's site is developed using it, and it's fully dynamic....
Digitized Solutions
dmarien
found at http://www.openswf.org
hmm, no, flash is not a well-designed format. And although there is some openness to the spec, there is not much (like Java, you never know where ti is going next, like adding the Sorenson video codec to the latest version).
WHat is wrong with it? Well, it doesnt have decent generic matrix transforms for a start. SVG is better from this point of view. And there is more once you start to look at it
There are a few tools for Flash and Open Source, but they are pretty much code oriented. The first is Ming, which can be found at:
http://www.opaque.net/ming/
The second is libswf, created by SGI. I'm not sure of the status of the license, but the source _is_ available.
ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/graphics/grafica/flash/
Both libraries are accessible from PHP.
As far as vector tools, Sodipodi is an incredibly cool vector editor. Unfortunately, at this time it is only svg, but you may find it useful.People have for quite a while wanted flash for sodipodi, and all one has to do is tie the Open Source flash libs to the UI. But nobody has done it. Read a post about it on the Sodipodi web site.
I hope you find this helpful.
How about a nice alternative to Flash.
For all of you people who graciously gave your .. thanks for your
opinion on not to use flash
opinion, however, THE QUESTION WAS FOR A SOLUTION
NOT YOUR DAMN OPINION.
Use swish, it's identical to flash for what most
people desire, and IT'S CHEAP... a good deal.
Have fun...
- students / low-income people using the browser PCs at the local public library (usually an older box donated by someone)
And? Never seen a simple Flash animation use up much CPU unless you're doing complicated computations, which it doesn't sound like he plans to do.
- the disabled (the visually impaired often use audio text readers / large fonts)
You mean text readers like FlashMX supports, or large fonts a la vector graphics that you can zoom in on and not lose resolution?
- non-geeks who may not know what a "plug-in" is, where to get it or how to install it
The same non-geeks who most likely use IE, where the plugin is either already installed or auto-installed if not present?
- people on a slow connection (DSL / cable modems are not available in many rural neighbourhoods)
Inconsequential if the flash is designed correctly. Since it can play as it's downloading all the end user would have to do is wait a couple of seconds. Considering the use/target audience for this, the animation is something they're coming specifically to see meaning they'd be willing to wait.
Actually, it wouldn't be too hard to read an swf file into a textual format, the format is relatively simple and well-documented. (I think there's a free software utility that does this, as a matter of fact.) The authoring format is closed, however, and more complex.
As I said elsewhere, I think that part of the reason there isn't a free Flash package is coz the format itself isn't completely free but under the control of Macromedia. But it is relatively well-understood and easy to output.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Apparently, a Flash export for OpenOffice is planned.
All I can recommend right now is FreeMovie or Ming or libswf. But if you want a GUI Flash design tool, you will have to wait. I do have plans for writing a Flash authoring application, but have to get FreeMovie 2 out of the door first. It also requires quite a lot of time and money to write such application, so you should not expect it to appear before X-mas 2002.
Jacek Artymiak
freelance consultant and writer
master of many a page
Edu.com carries a discounted copy of Flash MX for Windows here. The original price is $499.99, but the edu discount brings it down to $96.95, but this is a Windows solution only. Not sure if this is the way you want to go.
works better then java
have you have looked at the flash plugin files? in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins:
ShockwaveFlash.class libflashplayer.so
how does something that is in java work better then java?
More reasons NOT to use flash: 1) It doesn't print well. 2) It's not section 508 compliant, meaning it's not accessible so government websites won't link to you. 3) Not cross platform (I'm thinking PDA's and webpads)
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
Uh, not to pick nits, but FLASH doesnt use LINGO.
that is the language behind ShockWave.(Director)
FLASH uses ActionScript, which has gone under some
major changes in the last few releases.
Mosty dot-syntax now, looks very much like javascript.
The whole program revolves around Objects and inheritance, works as a programming environment now.
viral games, contageous fun. http://www.DaddySculpin.com
Nothing?
What about FreeMovie? Oh, you want a GUI tool. I'm available, and my rates are v. competitive. If anybody wants to pay me to write an OpenSource authoring tool, I'll do it.
Jacek Artymiak
freelance consultant and writer
master of many a page
Have you checked out Ming which allows PHP to generate custom Flash movies on the fly?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
There is a reason the BLINK tag is dead.
that is not an accurate or mature attitude towards flash. yes.. the blink tag is dead, and for good reason, but in case you haven't seen any promotional websites for things such as movies or events lately, you might be interested in knowing that your version of the future of the web is boring. Yes, a good website is one that offers dialup and text only browsers lusers an escape trap, but flash has some very entertaining possibilities on the web. Of course it has no place on a site like slashdot.. but fine.. move on from sites that use it.. you are seriously missing out.
I happened to have loved the recent E.T. website, completely done in flash. The sounds, images, and interactivity were very interesting.
Sorry about your connection, or browser, or lack of interest in web media. It must be boring where you live.
flaimbait? perhaps.
As for the slashdot question,
If you want to build Flash and you don't want to pay $500, how do you do it
you do it with swish.
it's not as fancy but it will do the basics.
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
Scalable Vector Graphics is a great open-standard, W3C Recommended technologies that can look just as nice as Flash. And the editing environment? Any text editor. There are also a couple of projects out there for making freeware GUI SVG editors (I'm making a Web-based one in SVG/JavaScript, myself), to make the process easier.
One advantage to SVG is that you can separate out the content from the presentation using CSS and XSL. If you needed to translate your presentation into Spanish, say, you could simply change the source text (in XML), and the animations, fonts, etc. would stay the same. Since text in SVG keeps its textual meaning, and isn't converted into a meaningless vector image, the text is also searchable and can be copied and pasted.
While this may be outside the scope of your project, you can also translate to SVG
from MathML (I'm working on a project doing that right now, to make math tutorials), or represent ChemML graphically (see the SVG demos at Adobe ( http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/main.html ).
There's a great SVG-Wiki/FAQ at http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/ .
Coffee Cup software has a flash tool called Firestarter that you might find useful. www.coffeecup.com/firestarter
- We dream of the stars. Now let us return to them.
Actually, the Flash file format is open and avaliable at Macromedia.com (flash 5, flash 6 / mx is still being put together).
Using this, anyone who wants could create a tool that creates flash files. In fact, there are a large number of third party tools and programming libraries (adobe's livemotion being jsut one) that create SWF files.
Tool that creatse Flash based text effects.
http://www.swishzone.com
Java Based Flash library
http://www.flashgap.com
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
I for one am more partial to content over form.
/.. If we needed oversimplification and pretty moving pictures to understand things, we'd be on people.com instead of here. His task is "...toys for educating people around complicated...". That implies that these aren't deep thinkers, and probably would benefit from such a presentation.
So am I. So is everybody on
Our personal biases (bia?) against stupid flash is irrelevant. It sounds like he actually needs it.
This JGenerator is exactly what you want.
Go to Tools->Internet Options->Security->Custom... to disable ActiveX/plugins.
If you want to uninstall Flash completely, see this:
How to remove the Macromedia Flash Player ActiveX control
As you can see here.
Even though the W3C has backed away from the proposal to include RAND-licenced patented material in W3C standards, the SVG standard went to 1.0 under the assumption that the public would accept RAND-licensing for web standards, and so SVG incorporates a number of RAND-liceneced patents, specifically from IBM Kodak and Quark. No doubt this situation is going to be resolved, especially if people don't forget it still needs to be resolved. To remind the W3C and the companies involved that this situation is still unresolved, you can comment on this list, subscribe here.
And oh by the way, is IBM's roll in this particular little minidrama hypocritical, given their support for and reliance upon Linux and other open source projects? You bet it is, and that's because IBM has lots of little parts, not all of which are headed in the same direction, e.g., some are run by the legal department or managers who still don't get it.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
It's called Java. It'll probably do just about anything you need for an education site, plus it's compatible with more systems.
Which of the top 20 MediaMetrix websites are designed by these "more realistic and knowledgeable" techies today?
Yahoo!
Started by techies way back in the Dark Ages, and still a great example of a good-looking, useable collection of web applications. What's good about it?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.