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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?"
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."
found at http://www.openswf.org
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.
- 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.
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/ .
This JGenerator is exactly what you want.
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.
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.