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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?"
Seems to me like your site will have plenty of information. Using Flash for that kind of site is a really bad idea. Flash is a usability nightmare.
Why would anyone make an Open-Source Flash equivalent? They would get their pants sued off (and their shorts as well) because Flash is PROPRIETARY and PATENTED.
If you need Flash, students or teachers can usually get a copy for a reduced amount (under $200 US). Just make sure that this isn't commercial development you're doing.
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Flash is a well-designed format, and the format is known and documented. It could be used for more things. I'd like to see a PowerPoint replacement that used Flash, for example. PowerPoint files are incredibly bulky; Flash is compact. Plus, you could put your presentations on web pages without much hassle.
Flash is also useful for user interface design. Many video games use Flash for the 2D API. That approach could help the open source community transition from bitmap-based to form-based APIs.
And just having a good open-source draw program for when you need a diagram on a web page would be a big help. It's annoying that Linux documentation seldom has useful diagrams. And if there are diagrams, they're raster images that can't be usefully edited. A good Flash-based lines-and-boxes program, like early Visio, would be valuable.
Macromedia's tools have a keyframe animation mindset, but that's not inherent in the Flash format. It's just a Macromedia bias. There are lots of interesting things to do with Flash and its object stream / event stream format.
While there are some practical uses for Flash, these are few and far between, far outnumbered by the idiotic uses. This is why there's no opensource flash tools.
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No, incompetent developers that overuse Flash are what suck. Like a lot of things, Flash is an awesome tool, but only when used appropriately.
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It doesn't sound like the guy's using Flash to make a web site, rather to make a set of "toys" which I imagine would stand by themselves and be little programs that people would use. I would imagine that these programs might be used in a presentation or something, something private where it can be assumed that all viewers will have Flash installed.
dude. the ability to make embeded apps that work better than Java and are more powerful than Javascript is invaluable.
I got a buddy who is doing a web development class and he chose flash for his app so that the User does not need to download a new page everytime a serverside script updates information.
faster than Java, nice looking than Java, and has all the power of a serverside script without all the page reloads....NICE!!!!
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Being a beginning Flash developer myself, I can attest that it's probably next to impossible to produce a full-bore "budget" tool to create Flash files.
This isn't HTML we're talking about here. Flash files use coordinated timelines, compressed files, and loads of user interaction to do what it does, and it's not cheap. You can't just open the source code and peek inside. It's probably going to be some time before any open source project can produce the complexity Macromedia's put into six versions of their product.
As others have pointed out, though, you don't really need to use Flash. 99% of the time it's just that: flash, pretty animations which are implemented badly by non-professionals in order to make their site look cooler than it needs to. Most people honestly just want the information. You should consider this.
However, if you're persistently determined to use Flash, then I'd recommend buying a used copy of an Flash 4 on eBay or somewhere. It's certain to be better than any of the open source products currently available.
The reason Flash isn't more "open source" is because it is ultimately a proprietary technology under the tight control of the Macromedia company. Although Macromedia has released a publicly available description of the internal flash file format, this in itself does not an open-source standard make:
* The description Macromedia released is incomplete in some areas, and has not been kept up to date with more recent versions of Flash.
* I've used Macromedia's documentation to write a Perl library that outputs and modifies flash movies. I've found format to be highly optimized for playback unfortunately; you can't do much to modify existing movies in interesting ways (aside from moving existing elements around the screen, rearranging letters and so on).
* Macromedia has not released a description of the Flash *project* file (thus giving them a tight reign over authoring tools). Significant information is lost when a project is published in the (documented) flash format - information that would lend itself to making more dynamic and interesting sites.
* Macromedia likely does not view the prospect of 3rd party authoring tools as being a good thing, since Macromedia is largly an authoring tools company.
Finally, I'm a bit perplexed why you would choose Flash as a good tool for educating people about "complicated policy questions" - this strikes me as something that would be served better by a more dynamic text-oriented approach (such as a Slash-code based site).
One of the problems with Flash is that it doesn't lend itself to sites which have a large amount of interaction between their users and the site authors. You can do it, but it's a huge pain-in-the-ass.
So I'm assuming you want to create a flashy presentation, and not much else.
Flash is hell from a usability standpoint. It does away with many of the notions that the web was founded out - consistant interfaces, as well as the page-based metaphor. Flash essentially "breaks" the browser controls people have finally learned to use (the back button, URL bar, etc etc).
I'm sure Flash could be useful in cases where animation is actually necessary - animated diagrams and the such. But the cases where such a thing is actually CALLED FOR are extremely rare.
All in all, Flash epitomizes style over substance. Just don't do it. There's really no good reason to.
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Flash (the development tool) enables people to create relatively complex animations and interactive sites with amazing ease. Flash itself is not to blame for usability problems on websites - check out http://www.homestarrunner.com and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate. :)
Until there are real, viable alternatives to Flash that have 96% browser penetration (this statistic is from Macromedia, of course, so it may or may not be 100% true) then it'll be the best tool for the job.
(Someone suggested PHP as an alternative? You really think doing this stuff in PHP will be as easy without any GUI-based tools??)
Please read the whole comment before moderating...
As I understand it, the question can be translated as:
"We're developing a new education product in Flash. Instead of hiring developers to help us design the interface, we would like to call it 'open-source' so we can get people to work on our product for free. We're really too cheap to even supply a basic development tool to our workers, so can we mooch off someone else's work by using a free product?"
Please forgive me if I'm assuming too much, but it really sounds like you want someone to have duplicated Flash and put it on the market for free. Now, having stated something that could be considered "flamebait", I will give you some advice.
-- Don't use Flash. I know that a lot of the tech-heads here on Slashdot will say this as enitre comment and get moderated up for it. I happen to not use Flash, but I do also happen to realize that there are very valid reasons for using it, and that education is one of Flash's core markets.
If you are not willing to pay your developers or at least buy them a tool for their work, use HTML. Most likely, the people on this project will already have a preferred HTML editor, which will enable you to just use CVS or another versioning system to check in the documents.
What bothers me about this whole post, though, is that it epitomizes the "bottom-feeder" attitude of companies that really want to profit from people's hard work without paying those people for that work. To avoid this, I would recommend gathring a core development team and paying for the tools that you believe that team needs. Then, you can release your product so that the masses can update it, with the caveat that the people updating it will need a development tool that they will have to pay for on their own. Everyone goes home happy: you sell a product, your development team gets paid a small amount plus experience, and your customers can update the product on their own accord and with their own tools.
Open-source software usually fulfills a need of the developer(s). I would say that the reason that there aren't free Flash development tools is that either a) Flash is such a good product that the people who use it are willing to pay for it or b) not that many people feel a need to use Flash. It's probably some of both.
Another thing: how do you release a Flash product as "open-source"? Do you distribute your product's SWF files to the target audience? I'm not sure how that would work. Is this something you have considered?
I apologize if I read too much into your statement. I hope that you really did have good intentions and weren't just riding on the "free [as in beer] is cool" bandwagon. I'd appreciate a good response from the original poster or someone who is involved in a similar project. At face value, it seems that there are a lot of "holes" in this project plan that haven't quite been addressed.
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If you're aiming your educational site at:
- students / low-income people using the browser PCs at the local public library (usually an older box donated by someone)
- the disabled (the visually impaired often use audio text readers / large fonts)
- non-geeks who may not know what a "plug-in" is, where to get it or how to install it
- people on a slow connection (DSL / cable modems are not available in many rural neighbourhoods)
then you DO NOT want to use Flash, because you will block out a large part of your target audience.
If you insist on Flash content, have a dual site - Flash and non-Flash - and make sure the main page is accessible to a text-only browser like Lynx, so people using audio readers / slow links can actually read your page.
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neophase
The real question is where are the *easy to use, end-user* Flash-making apps...And that question sort of answers itself. Most OSS developers aren't interested in end-user, easy-to-use, GUI-heavy tools. I mean, OSS is just now getting to the point where there are halfway decent Office-style applications...And Flash, while somewhat widely used, is much more niche than Office apps.
To pose a question back at the original author -- why are you looking to Flash for this functionality? I'm not anti-Flash as like 95% of Slashdot seems to be, but for what you're doing it seems like you could do it in browser-neutral DHTML and still have a really slick interactive tool. What is Flash bringing to the table for you?
It sounds like you are involved in a worthy cause. Approach Macromedia about giving you the dev tools for free. They have to love the fact that you are creating more flash authors in the process.
of how people view open source software, and software. It seems to me one main argument for OSS is that it's free. And I summit it's killing the software industry.
This poster has a specific problem: Creating multimedia content without paying for the development tool. To that end, if the development tool is open source or not really don't matter. I am sure if the use is really for community and education, namely, non commercial, a deal can and should be worked out with Macromedia where he can get the tools for free or a nominal fee.
A bigger problem is the mind set: you want something free, try open source. That might be the reason many people create and use open source, but that's not the value of open source. You use open source because you want to control the development of your own software and not be limited by the things you built on. And in an ideal world, you will pay what it is worth to you.
As part of the intentionaly flash disabled, don't forget to put the content in a non flash format. A blank page is useless. I removed flash as it's a real drag on my modem connection and it's almost always for advertisements, not content. The signal to noise ratio is just too bad to justify re-installing flash.
The truth shall set you free!
faster than Java, nice looking than Java, and has all the power of a serverside script without all the page reloads....NICE!!!!
Exactly. Let me add a couple of more reasons to this list.
You guys who live in the world of the command line are very comfortable with plain text. Thus, you assume that everything is best presented to everyone in plain text. The fact of the matter is that people have different cognitive styles. If you're developing something to teach people, at least some of your audience will learn better through diagrams, pictures, simulations, and other sort of participatory (i.e., interactive) exercise. Flash can be very useful for this sort of application, particularly now that it has a real scripting language behind it, can use XML, and has some real interface widgets available to programmers.
You have a valid point. However, here are two things to consider:
The best solution, of course, is to have SVG handled natively by the browser. I'm not holding my breath.
I'm sure, because it's my experience. Much like it is some of my peer's experience that Microsoft dosen't fix bugs.
Here's some of the examples that feed my experience
Examples of "closed" linux products with problems:
nvidia drivers
real player
Examples of "open/free" linux products that have problems that get fixed:
mozilla
apache
linux
I'm not going to dedicate my resources to fixing a closed product that I have no desire to run, which may end me caught in some kinda software patent lawsuit. (I'm a novice to multimedia graphics programming)
This is the problem with flash on Linux
Finally, I'm a bit perplexed why you would choose Flash as a good tool for educating people about "complicated policy questions" - this strikes me as something that would be served better by a more dynamic text-oriented approach (such as a Slash-code based site).
I couldn't agree more. Perhaps the reason why these policy quesitons remain complicated is that the people put in charge of creating educational tools have no clue about how to deliver simple, succinct answers.
Flash indeed.
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That is something I learned real quick doing client side coding. Make it in Flash once or write umpteen different versions in DHTML. I like my free time too much to do that.
Especially those "splash pages", even more so if theres no text link to bypass them, for example http://www.andromedatv.com/
I use linux on a non x86 architecture, there is no flash plugin for my system, and in the case of the above site, everything beyond the stupid intro (ie: the actual content) works perfectly in mozilla, the same is true for most sites, but it`s impossible to get past the bandwidth-wasting splash page. When there is a good cross-platform flash plugin that can be compiled alongside mozilla, i may change my mind..
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Infact virtually all of the problems i experience on linux, usually a program freezing up, going crazy and consuming all the system ram, or perhaps occupying the entire screen under X11 and locking out the keyboard. involve closed programs. Netscape 4.x is one of the worst offenders, and realplayer. The flash plugin has brought both netscape and mozilla down on several occasions too. Most of these problems involve the program locking up and/or consuming large amounts of ram, rarely will the program exit with a segfault error or such. I would much prefer a screwed up program to die and return me to a prompt, and i imagine opensource software is designed this way because it`s easier to debug when gdb catches the fault.
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As a poster above said, talking about Flash on /. always provokes knee-jerk reactions...
/.ers' main points of criticism of Flash, a) It makes sites that look like angry fruit salads, b) it requires use of a FAIB, proprietary plugin which is unavailable for some platforms, and c) is generated by a commercial program that is not open-source.
...er... cartoons and animations. The ability to work with a library to recycle elements, the timeline, the various techniques and options available for animating all allow for easy cartoon-making.
.swf files.
To summarize (and grossly over-simplify)
The truth be told, flash is such an easy-to-use, powerful program that abusing it is really easy. Cheesy text effects are really quickly done, and this is even worse when you throw in programs such as Swish, whose sole purpose is to make these cheesy text effects. Only once in a blue moon do you come across a site that actually gains functionality from these effects.
On the other hand, flash is an extremely good environment for three kinds of developers. First, it's wonderful for cartoonists and animators, giving them tons of tools with which to make
Second, it's a nice environment for making web applications that require tight control over the site's graphical representation (when customizing products, etc). Flash sites with good design and good actionscripting (hopefully integrating to the server via xml) allow programmers to make different apps that get things done, while keeping tight control on the GUI (example: OneScreen for hotel reservations - go to http://www.ihotelier.com/onescreen).
And thirdly, it is really good for designers who want to have absolute control over how their website looks and feels. Granted, often these websites don't look and feel like 'standard'; however, the limitations that come with making 'standard' webpages are avoided. I personally prefer to have control over as many elements of my site as possible.
Speaking in terms of the original topic of discussion, I'd consider Flash to be a strong possibility because, after making a few selections, one could quickly access different media and have them play directly in the browser window. A quick change of options leads to a quick change of what information's being shown. Text (and in flash mx, sound and images) can be loaded dynamically, making site maintenance a lot easier to swallow. All in all, I don' t think flash is too bad an alternative, especially if , as quoted by another poster, 98.3% (I think) of computers can already view
In terms of how to find it, academic pricing is usually very generous (someone said $99 for Flash MX), and since the site in question seems to be non-commercial, I'm sure there wouldn't be any problems.
So... much as I dislike flash 'intros' as much as the next man, what do you suggest for web-based interactive graphics? I don't know of anything as widespread and well-supported as Flash.
Anyway, the Flash file format is open: http://www.openswf.org/ (Well, in that it is openly documented, anyway...)
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.
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This is a common misconception. The reason that "normal" users and techies differ is not necessarily that they want different things from their computers, it's that the techies know the consequences of various design decisions. For example:
1) Normal people like web pages that are done by graphic designers because they look nice even though they violate every know web design rule. Oh wait, except for my parents, because they can't read the font that the page author picked. Had it been done by a techie, they would have let the user's pick the fonts, and thus my parents could read it easily.
2) Normal people like flashy pages that are all interactive and move around on the screen. Oh wait, my parents don't because they are on a 100Mhz computer. Oh yeah, and it's bad for the company because although their information changes daily, it's so hard to change the custom-designed web page that it becomes useless in a matter of weeks because it's outdated. My church website is like that.
3) Normal people like GUI tools to build their web pages. Oh wait, unless they want it to look good on more than the browser the tool was built for. GUI tools tend to try to hide the nature of HTML, and thus, even though they will be displayable on other browsers (or even other browser versions), they won't look anything like the user intended. Because the user isn't aware of how HTML works, they will have no idea why this happens.
So, you can see, even though a lot of people would like to think "oh, those are just silly techies talking", the truth is that they usually have the same goals, but are just more realistic and knowledgeable on how they can be achieved.
Engineering and the Ultimate
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.
Heh. Excellent stab at dorks. You're right, Flash is good, people who bash it are knee-jerking. But since you pitted dorks up against graphic designers, I'm going to have to step out of character and actually defend the dorks.
Yes, normal people want to see a professional presentation. The trick is that in the case of the web, dorks usually have a better understanding of what a professional presentation actually is.
Graphic designers are woefully under-equipped for the web. They think it's a piece of paper, and no amount of 7pt font can make this true. They see what's up on their 21-inch monitor and they think this is what the world sees. Graphic designers, sadly, have only one set of eyes.
Not so for normal folks.
the problem with most of the comments here is that the oh-so-knowledgeable techies here know nothing about flash and are just prejudiced.
like you don't know about flashs xml capabilities, that would let your churches server update the sunday prayers on your mothers computer without her even having to reload it, with flash using the ECMA-262-based scripting language to update the content even with only 100Mhz.
by the way, assuming you have gone through at least two update cycles since the 100MHz days, you really could have build your parents a new computer out of the old parts. shame on you!
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Only if you parents knew how to map host fonts to HTML virtual fonts. That's the sort of "configuring" that techies assume everyone does. To quote you, that's a common misconception.
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Not quite. Parents have children, or they can ask around. No, I don't expect my parents to know how to do such a thing. However, they do often ask me, "how do I get these fonts bigger" when they are looking at a JPEG rendering of fonts, done so that everyone's fonts look the same.
So no, I don't expect them to do everything themselves, but for the option to be available when they ask for help.
Also, as users get more power (which they would if people followed standards closer), they start to become more self-sufficient and knowledgeable.
The concepts behind the web and HTML aren't tricky or hard to grasp. The problem is that they are geared toward giving power to the end-user. Most corporations don't like that, and so they benefit more by simply covering up the fact that the users have power, and try to take it away for themselves.
I don't think they do this with a bad intention, it's just their nature, and the nature of many people, especially marketing people. Designers always seem to want people to experience things in the way that they have mapped out for them, instead of whatever way the user wants to experience them. Where I have worked, the designers, even when they have a design that will work in variable-width tables, insist on it being fixed-width so everything is exactly the same. Nevermind that users with big screens like to make use of them, or people with small screens don't like to scroll - they just want control of the experience. And the experience suffers because of that.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually the flash movies in howstuffworks are quite good for ther kids. I especially liked the WWII nuclear bombs.
Click to explode Little Boy
Click to explode Fat Man
Seriously thou, flash has uses, it's just too overused in most places.
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