Slashdot Mirror
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/
This is a problem I've hit before. Unfortunately the open source community hasnt produced any Flash development tools since many users of OSS are anti-flash. This is mainly due to the fact that no matter how glitzy, Flash is still not supported by the W3C as an accepted internet standard. Plus PHP works wonders with graphics. Nevertheless, maybe it's time we asked Macromedia to help us out??
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.
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.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
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.
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
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.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
No, incompetent developers that overuse Flash are what suck. Like a lot of things, Flash is an awesome tool, but only when used appropriately.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
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
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!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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.
dude
you can use flash to develope powerful clientside applications that load faster and look nice than Java and there is no need for serverside crap so no reloading the webpage.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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.
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
No flashkit and other have an open source flash movie section, there are slightly cheaper closed source products such as SWiSH and Macromedia has a 30 day trail or Flash FX availible for download. but overall this question is _kind_of_ like asking "we would like to build a Visual C++ project but can't afford Visual C++"
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
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.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Swish is a Flash tool that only costs $50 for a basic license and has a free demo for you to decide. Macromedia Flash files can be saved in .swf format. It is not fully featured Flash, but may handle your needs.
I just wanted to add one thing...
:)
Think about why people will be using this web site. Do they want pretty? Or do they want information? If they wanted pretty, they'd watch a movie or take acid and stare at some vintage 70's wallpaper.
You should try to make the site attractive, of course- but don't forget your #1 priority which is (or should be) usability and information. Any compromise to make the site flashy is a detriment to what your site set out to accomplish.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Java and SVG should cover about everything Flash does, anyway...
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
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.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
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.
==================================
neophase
Yes, but how secure is it? Java is arguably slow because it goes to great lengths to define and manage untrusted code. If any turing-complete language like flash is used (note that javascript uses a restricted function call model, and, therefore, is possibly provably secure), we typically want to see some guarantees. I find it surprising that folks haven't dug deeper into flash vulnerabilities (I am sure there are tons of them; even java, with its well-defined vm+runtime, class, and security definitions had security issues). Sun and others don't seem to push the original safe mobile-code benefits of java anymore probably because java is currently finding its niche in server-side environments where mobile code and byte-interpretor performance are probably not an issue (because one can always use jit's, can trust server's own code, etc.). Currently, flash seems to have found its niche as a replacement for animated gif's, and I am very scary about the security implications.
nope. flash is not a usability nightmare. it's very easy to make usable, and attractive sites based on flash.
the problem with flash is that it's a _functional_ nightmare. it's impossible to make information rich sites using flash, or deep link using flash.
if you find that certain sites rendered using flash are unusable, don't blame the hammer. blame the carpenter.
found at http://www.openswf.org
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?
I'll agree and add that how do you expect to have flash indexed by search engines like google? Many information sites get most of their hits from people searching for the information, it would be foolish to ignore these people. :)
The more you know, the less you understand.
You whiners shaddap. The question was asked, and instead of whining about how bad Flash is, just answer the friggin question.
So, here's my answer:
Get Apache, PHP, and the Ming libraries, located at http://www.opaque.net/ming/.
Ming lets you create Flash animations from within PHP that can be either saved (to reduce CPU load of regenerating the flash each time) or dynamically written so you can do things on-the-fly with it.
I used it to write up some crappy animations on my home page for my relatives to see.
Part of the problem with flash is it's overused, and the audio makes the apps take forever to load.
For some really nice examples of what you can do with flash, take a look at joecartoon.com.
I see some people posting here saying "oh, don't develop for Flash; nobody bothers to install those plugins". Well, I was curious myself, so a quick Google search turned up this: (from a Whitepaper on Macromedia's website(!), but the NPD Research numbers should be easily confirmable)
"In December 2001, NPD Research, the parent company of MediaMetrix, conducted a study to determine what percentage of Web browsers have Macromedia Flash preinstalled. The results show that 98.3% of Web users can experience Macromedia Flash content without having to download and install a player."
Take it for what it's worth. Seems amazingly high to me though.
Slashdot ran a story on an early Perl/Flash module... mustabeen... at least two years ago. As usual, the answer's Perl: now what's the question? ;)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
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.
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.
Untrue--flash is just like any other medium--the usability is based on how thoughtful your design process is.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
It's not better or more widely supported, it's just easier in that you only have to develop it once. There are plenty of DHTML libraries pre-written in ecmascript (javascript, jscript, whatever your browser calls it) that degrade nicely. Flash doesn't degrade - it either works or doesn't - unless you take the time to implement some extra code. At that point, you could've just set up a faster, easier ecma-based menu system.
:)
What ever happened to applets? Those work in more browsers and provide more flexibility...
How about a nice alternative to Flash.
This is somewhat off topic, but my question is what does your site www.seiu.org actually stand behind? Is there a page that clearly states your objectives? I see "current events", "get involved", "working family issues", but nothing that really states what your guys want and where you guys are going. This is only one /.'s opinion, but it seems a little more time spent on your message and content might be worth more time then prettying/messing it up with Flash.
That seems only half-right. Things like the back, forward, and reload buttons, and the page metaphor (when not broken by forms...what's a button doing in a scrolling window?) seem to have been there from the start, but most of the consistent interfaces seem to have evolved slowly. Mostly I'm thinking about the "tab" layout, the locations of "log out" and "help," and that kind of thing. They definitely aren't part of the web's foundation, and only developed as the market's response to user confusion.
I do agree with you about Flash though. Stupid stupid.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
A comparable flash tool to Macromedia's would be about as much work as an Illustrator clone before you added all the animation stuff. And all the while Macromedia could just change the swf format and/or introduce subtle incompatibilities in the player. (Though control of the standard may have changed recently, I stopped keeping track.)
There are various free software packages that do interesting things with vector graphics. I forgot what Killustrator changed its name to, but I think it could output static swfs. Autotrace (free, does about the same thing as Adobe Streamline) definitely can (I wrote the first version of the swf output). Then there's Ming, which can be used with several languages to output swf. But you've probably already come across most of these.
But if you're looking for a fully-featured swf authoring packages, just give up and nick Macromedia's, or hassle them for charity copies or something, coz otherwise you're SOL.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Just because it's closed it's "causing inconsistant stability"?
And what makes you absolutly certain that if the Flash plugin was open source that someone will actually fix it?
Just FYI, there are tons of places where you can get info how to develop a flash "player" - be my guest, write an open source plugin...
Hetz (Heunique)
Now that I drove that home, on with my story:
Macromedia did try to open up the Flash 4 format so that other people could create software compatible with it. And in fact, LiveMotion was Adobe's entry into that market.
This was Flash 4, though. They're now essentially up to Flash MX (read: 6), and the spec has grown significantly since then. The first big change was scripting from 4 => 5, and while I have no idea what they added from 5 => MX, but I'm sure it's sizeable. (Memo to myself: look into it, consider upgrading just because it might be fun to try some animation.)
Remember, once again, that Macromedia makes the player plug-in, and if you base a site on Flash, you're still going to be at their mercy no matter whose development tools you use. And if you use someone else's tools, they may not keep up with Macromedia's changes.
Now, it's doubtful that they'll do anything to break an animation when viewed through an older plug-in or browser, but there may be side-effects, and they will affect both usability and user perceptions of your site.
Yes, I'll admit, this argument smacks of FUD, but sometimes the unthinkable happens.
Barring my qualms against it, I'll side with everyone else who answered so far and recommend not using Flash to build a website because it can prevent normal navigation, SWFs can take a long time to play over slow connections (I'm still stuck on a 56K dialup--I know from whence I speak), and as of Flash 5, Macromedia's authoring environment had some seriously "avant-garde" (read: bad) user interface design philosophies. There are those who believe [really C|net news] the Flash-based web is not necessarily a good idea.
The load speeds and display times could be the biggest issue, since web surfers have notoriously short attention spans.
But that's just my opinion, as always. The salt shaker is to the left; take as many grains as you need.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Apparently, a Flash export for OpenOffice is planned.
There's been some word that SVG is covered by someone's (Adobe's?) patent. Does anyone know if that is true? That would really suck...
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.
but what percentage of your users have gone out of their way to install Adobe's 2.5 MB SVG browser plugin? Windows, IE, and AOL all bundle the Flash player for their users convenience.
cpeterso
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?
No Bill Gates didn't invent the notion that theft is bad. This line is getting so lame and cliched. Come on folks, get a grip.
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.
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?
my right arm to get back to the good old days of plain old fasioned text and hyperlinks -- or better yet a touch of content every now and then.
Anymore with flash and banner ads everywhere the content begins to slip away. Plus I don't know how friendly flash sites are with search engines. You can't put a price on someone being able to fire up google and search for "policy on prescription drugs" and find your site. (I would trade that for flashy, bandwidth hogging eye candy any day!)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Apparently, the person who submitted the story was appalled at the costs of developing in Macromedia Flash tools, and wanted to find something that was free.
It seems that person, however, did not wish to look at the source of whatever program he was going to use... he just wanted to have something that was free for use.
This is the problem with Open Source AND Free Software. While Open Source software is a nice idea in some respects, it seems that everyone thinks Open Source is another word for free. It's not. Plus, you can derive a lot of benefits from selling commercial software that is Open Source... unless you have low-lifes out there that will compile the source and use the resulting commercial software at no charge. Judging from what computer geeks do with commercial MUSIC, it's not hard to imagine.
And let's not forget the most sickening part of this all: this guy wants to use free software as a development tool in a commercial/business environment. Or, basically, profit off of someone else's hard work without having to put in any effort or support into the author's cause in a meaningful way. (come on, did you even think that this guy's company would send the author a thank-you card?) And there's absolutely no way in hell that there's any logical consistency in writing free software for business use.
And you want us to PAY for this crap?
I heard that Adobe has recently abandoned Live Motion. Plus Live Motion is only for animation, you can't use ActionScript to make your movie more dynamic or use external data sources.
cpeterso
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.
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
I think that if you're going to be generating content for a web page, you're going to need to use things like, oh, I don't know--- line breaks!!!
Good god man, you might as well have written one continous run-on-sentence.
Forgive me, as I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, but why is it that when anyone poses a question like this to a group of geeks, 90% of the responses are of the "Why would you want to do that, you idiot?" variety?
Yes, we know you don't like flash. Fine. That wasn't the question.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
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
I've rarely seen anything done in Flash that cannot be done with some hard-core DHTML and JavaScript. Especially if the user has IE5.5+/Mozilla.
Seriously, check out DynamicDrive.com
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
That's exactly what Borg...er..Bill Gates would say.
It hurts when I pee.
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.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
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/ .
Just use the trial version. I haven't read through the licensing, but I don't think there will be any problems you can't get around. You may want to take turns registering it if you go past 30 days.
The truth is, Macromedia would make more money if they sold Flash for less. The problem is, then everyday people would have it and they'd make crappy flash sites. By keeping it to the elite, they ensure that sites using Flash are fairly good quality (not may people would spend $500 and make a shitty site). This keeps the reputation of their project up. It also protects their trademark by keeping Flash less common, and keeping it from going the way of escalator(tm).
It was him! Him!
"All right. Why did you throw that rock before I gave the signal?"
Well you did say 'Flash...' Ow! Ouch!
...the experience is the content...
That is so heavy, man. I mean, it's like, the site is about animated menus, naw'mean? I mean, like, my experience of the dancing text is the meaning of the text, naw'mean.
I thought so.
illegitimii non ingravare
No he's right, flash does suck.
There isn't suitable user control of flash. flash is used in annoying ways(think ads) on many sites and isn't easy to enable/disable in any browser I've seen. If I had the control to only display the last frame of animation and disable frivolous and visually distracting events I could tolerate having the flash plug-in installed.
As near as I can tell flash use is never appropriate for a general use website because it lacks accessability settings and has a tedious enable/disable procedure. To me, that constitutes sucking.
By not making me install the plugin and then close my browser when I'm done flash free sites are doing me a big favor.
Lots of people have mentioned reasons why you shouldn't be using Flash, or why it's difficult to write an open-source implementation of Flash.
However, I think the reason there's no complete, stable open-source implementation of Flash is that:
1. It's a very large project
2. With a very small market
The fact is that very few people actually need to create Flash content. Most companies that want a little bit of Flash on their websites are better off paying someone else to build it for them. Therefore, the price ($500) is quite reasonable - it's honestly what Macromedia needs to charge in order to be able to create a product that only a tiny number of people need to own.
Contrast this with Microsoft Word. (Yes, you can still purchase Word without Office; it costs $289, all of Office costs $419). Everyone needs a basic word processor. However, most users only need 10% of Microsoft Word's features, and therefore the price of Microsoft Word is not fair. The fact that everyone needs a basic word processor, plus the fact that the commercial competition is unfairly priced, is what has driven so many open-source developers to create word processors. (My favorites: AbiWord, OpenOffice Write, and KWord. I'm not even counting LaTeX-based tools, which I also enjoy, but aren't for the masses.)
Get The Proxomitron:
http://www.flaaten.dk/prox/
It does an amazing job of de-annoyifying the web. Start it, change your web proxy to localhost:8080, and you're done. Many settings to tinker with though, if you like that kind of thing. No Windows user should be without it. And it kills Flash if you want.
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.
I as a user hate flash sites because they take away power from me:
1) I can't use the BACK button to get back one step.
2) I can't search text with the browsers search function.
3) I can't resize the browser window to my comfort and have the content resized as well.
4) I have to learn how to use each and every site because everybody uses a different user interface (preferably using tiny fonts and tiny scrolling windows to display large amounts of text).
5) Murphy's Law: interesting sites always require the latest flash plugin, which unfortunately is not yet available for your platform.
6) Murphy's 2nd Law: if you have the required plugin version it will crash your browser.
Well, I wouldn't mind Flash so much, but, the problem
is that every time I go to a site with Flash on the
main page, my browser opens up three windows (or more)
to Macromedia's website, presumably to explain to me
that I don't have Flash support in my browser.
This is a terribly annoying thing to go through, and
it does not inspire me to do whatever would be required
to make Flash work on my system (plugin from another
browser platform + compatability software, run another
browser, etc.)
It really just alienates me further, wastes my time,
annoys me, and generally makes a bad impression on
me by Macromedia.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Uhhh... I know that ASP does this. Displays data as it comes that is. Unless you have the response.buffer (or something like that) enabled.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
98% of browsers have a Flash player installed, and the vast majority are Flash 5. There are about as many people still using the Flash 3 plugin as there are using IE 3 or Netscape Nav 3.
The Flash installed base upgrades very fast because the player is so lightweight and quick to download.
The SVG plugins out there are an order of magnitude larger than a Flash player and most browsers don't have them installed.
There are probably a thousand Flash sites for every SVG site, and that may be too generous to SVG. Most of those Flash sites participate in the sprea of lightweight Flash players. With that level of use, the amount of debugging that has gone into Flash is overwhelmingly larger than what has gone into SVG.
If what you want is to be able to easily create professional quality media (assuming you have the artistic skills, of course), for it to work reliably, and for it to be accessible by almost everyone, then choose Flash.
If political considerations are more important to you, consider writing your own open source SVG authoring tool -- for Linux only, of course -- and nuts to your users.
If all you care about is the price, there are very cheap, low quality tools for both Flash and SVG. I'm not quite sure how they compare in quality, because each time I (briefly) survey such tools, they seem to be either bad or worse.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
For every bad example of Flash usablility, I can show you 1,000 or more HTML usablility nightmares. So is HTML bad? No. Bad designers are bad. Unfortunately, Macromedia did such a good job at making thier tool taht even taltntless clods can create contnet.
Much like the way Slashdot made it so easy for cluless people to post.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
considered squeak?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I, as a user, almost always close the browser window if I arrive at a site that uses Flash.
1. I've found that most sites that use Flash do so to provide pretty colors and glitter to easily dazzled end-users, but usually don't have much in the way of real content.
2. Even on my DSL line, I can often click on "Back" and select the next website at google before the previous website was done loading and doing their silly animations.
3. I think Flash was developed near the end of the dot com boom when people were all thrilled about anything that looked cool on the Internet. Now, as mentioned by previous articles here and on CNN, the novelty of Internet is starting to wear off and it's becoming a tool to get a job done. Flash doesn't do anything to help you get the job done. It slows you down. Rather than waste my time I'll just move on to the next site.
the problem with flash is that it's a _functional_ nightmare
In other words, it's a nightmare for the visitors that will be using your site. Good idea.
if you find that certain sites rendered using flash are unusable, don't blame the hammer. blame the carpenter.
Right. The carpenter (web developer) is using the wrong tool (Flash). He should be using the right tool--HTML.
I can't think of many appropriate applications for Flash. HTML provides content, Java applets provide interactivity, when necessary. Flash is unnecessary bulk and fluf.
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Yeah and don't forget that SMIL and SVG are both XML specs that do much of the same as Flash.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
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.
Other than a slight increase in processor load, what's wrong with "serverside crap?" It allows you to remove most client dependencies, and it keeps your software on your machine...all that users will get are the results. (This might not be as much of a concern with open-source code, but not everything is open source.) With SSI and CGI, I can create a website that will render optimally in everything from IE to Lynx to a cell-phone browser or a text-to-speech program. It can even take Nutscrape's idiosyncracies into account and completely rewrite standards-compliant HTML so that it'll render properly. It enables the widest possible audience and minimizes bandwidth requirements. Instead of (for instance) sending a program down the pipe to calculate MPEG bitrates for SVCD mastering, I can put up a webpage that accepts needed inputs from the user and spits out the result.
As for "looking nice," while that isn't a Bad Thing, it isn't everything either. Maybe the fact that Flash is often abused is more a statement against the people who implement it than against the technology itself, but there is still something to be said against tools that at least appear to encourage form at the expense of function.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Two reasons: Good software takes time to make, and the fact that people need to eat.
Flash is a simply AMAZING authoring and development envirnonment. And before the typical folks who never used flash, never seen GOOD flash done on the web jump on the "Flash suxorz, flash is always stle over substance, flash sux! Flash is unusable" bandwagon start moaning, USE Flash, and develop some quality stuff with it. It's not hard... but like with most things, it's really easy to create crap with it... If I write a well formatted but crappy novel with OpenOffice, does OSS software sucks, and OpenOffice is "style over substance"? No, it means I can't write.
Anyway, back to the point. It takes time to develop software, and if you need to eat, you can either work on your software and charge for it (what macromedia does) or work on it in the time you are not making sure you can eat (what msot OSS software folks do)
The "problem" is that with a tool as comlplex and powerful as Flash, it takes a loooong time to create, and so the X number of months the for-profit guys turn thiers out in, it can (and most likely will) take X number of years for the OSS version to come out.
Obviously there are exception, and every case is different, but the volume of programming, and the various types of programming ( vector based drawing, type, actionScript compiler, timeline animation system, etc..) involved in creating a "Flash-alike" enviroment is a rather huge undertaking.
$500 is dirt cheap for something that can create the type of multimedia web and stand-alone applications that Flash is cabable of in a small ammount of time... I'm seeing Flash 5 selling for $400, or if you plan out what you want to to ahead of time, DL the 30 day trial... you can get 4 - 5 big projects done in a month =)
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
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...)
I've been wondering about this myself, for some time. Not for any "serious" reason, but I'd love to play with web-cartoons. Problem is, I doubt that I've got $500 worth of talent to justify buying Macromedia FlashMaker(or whatever it's called) and installing Windows to use it...
There appear to be three ways of approaching this from a free/open perspective that I know of:
Drawback here is that they supply the raw functionality, but no "authoring environment" seems to exist for them.
Can anyone further enlighten me on these three options?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.
Is your website promoting a movie or selling vacuum cleaners?
It could be a Flash site.
Does your website live in a tiny little pop-up window all it's own?
I betcha it's also a Flash site.
Does your website display the message "Loading" when you visit it?
Yep. Smells like a Flash site.
Does your website impress all your graphic designer buds?
Flash site.
Is your website incredibly fun to visit, but exactly one time only?
Might be a flash site.
Does your website have an animation of a bunch of semi-transparent oblong
objects moving in a spiral pattern?
Flash site.
Does your website have a "skip intro" button?
I'd say there's a 99% probabililty that it's a Flash site.
Is your website invisible to users who are using ad-blocking tools like Proximitron,
or slightly non-standard web browsing technology or computers that don't use one
of three well known operating systems?
Well then maybe you're abusing javascript.
OR maybe it's a flash site.
Is your website immune to being bookmarked?
Hmmm. Maybe there's an outside chance it might be a flash site.
Is the content on your website 2 years out of date, because it's
such a pain-in-the-ass to update?
Well then, there exists the possilibity it might be a flash site.
Blame the author. It's simple to add the same functionality to the Flash movie (it can call javascript which in turn would call history.back()).
No, blame the tool. When you author in HTML, you don't need to do anything to get that functionality. In Flash, it's another item on the TODO list.
Again, there's nothing to stop a flash movie searching itself. There is a DOM, and scripting is always active (obviously).
See my previous point. It's not the default behavior, and nobody bothers to do it.
This is just wrong. Depending upon the parameters used in the embed/object tags, a movie can be resizable, or of fixed dimensions (like java).
Can you resize the text? Sure, you can zoom, but I've seen sites that disable most of the context menu functions. Some people can't read itsy bitsy teensy weensy fonts, you know.
Hardly flash's fault! When I browse with my linux box I often come across html only sites with unreadable text, broken javascript and other multimedia elements that don't work. If anything, flash helps sites to be more accessable across platforms.
Most browsers will allow you to work around those issues by overriding certain (poort) choices made by the HTML author. With Flash, you're just stuck with what they shovel your way. Now, Javascript... that's a whole other issue.
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.
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.
***
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
For every bad example of Flash usablility, I can show you 1,000 or more HTML usablility nightmares. So is HTML bad? No. Bad designers are bad.
Whatever your opinion of HTML (and there are PLENTY of things with which to find fault, usability-wise) Flash inherits all of them, and adds a few more such as the breaking of the browser's back/forward buttons and URL field.
Even a well-designed Flash site has these problems, because they break standard browser navigation UI conventions. While you could of course create an HTML site which is less usable than many Flash sites, HTML is, on the whole, inherently more usable and consistant than Flash for the reasons I outlined above.
Pointing out any number of badly-designed HTML sites does not address the issue of Flash being better or worse than HTML. That's like saying, "for every drug overdose fatality, I can show you 1,000 or more fatalities that did not involve drug overdoses." True, perhaps, but you're not addressing the issue! If you want to argue in favor of Flash, by all means do so but please address the issue.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
>No, blame the tool. When you author in HTML, you don't need to do anything to get that >functionality. In Flash, it's another item on the TODO list.
:
Riiight... Maybe I should throw out my computer too huh? Since it doesn't write the software for me, instead it's left it on the TODO list...
You obviously have no concept of Object Orientated coding, which is a shame because there is one important point to learn from it
NEVER do something multiple times if you can do it once and forget about it.
Obviously, you have to do it once in the first place (you can't just "throw away the computer") but hey - the fact that your using a computer means you at least partly understand the concept - I mean, you don't use a seperate machine for email, web browsing text, web browsing flash, web browsing XML, web browsing pictures, web browsing hyperlinked sites, web browsing... (etc. etc. etc...) do you?
Put the functionality into flash ONCE, and forget about it. Rather than have EVERY SINGLE author who ever makes a flash movie have to WASTE HIS TIME putting it in.
I think there are builds that already support it.
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.
Excuse me, but: what if your goal is to make something pretty?
What the hell is it about HTTP (aside from the name) that makes people think that it's only good for delivering HTML, and that every site must have information, information, information. Cripes do you demand information from art galleries? You might be a functional unit kind of person, but do you have a hundred identical black turtlenecks to choose from in your closet? (Oddly, Steve Jobs, mister style-is-king himself, does)...
It's just lazy intellectually to decry, bemoan, and otherwise wring your hands about the decline and fall of all that is right and correct at the hands of some devil tool. You have a choice, so exercise it, and stop telling everyone else what they should want.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
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.
What do DVDs and DVD players use for the menus? Is this format open? Is it appropriate for the web?
Here here! The "moral outrage" is an example of the technical elite corporate ignorant defending the bourgoisie against the corporate elite technical ignorant. It's all about the power of the middle class, and the struggles of those powers, in this case the will of the technical smart to live in a world with less problems, and the will of the corporates to push the average person into directed consumerism. Key insight to the corporate side: the average person, not every average person.
Flash crashes 95% of the time on my remote X term too. Had to disable it so mozilla wouldn't be taken out be every flash ad.
The misconceptions here aren't mine:
/.ers crazy, but it's a major hit with the real Web audience of today.
1) 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.
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.
As one of the twenty busiest sites on the Web, we have done a lot of research and discovered -- what a surprise -- that the vast majority of users leave their browsers unchanged from their default settings. They have no mental model of mapping site descriptions to host implementations. They don't "configure", they browse.
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
Only a small minority uses a machine as slow as 100MHz. Again, the statistics show you your market. Most competitive commercial businesses will sacrifice the low-end 5% and the high-end 5% in order to maximize customer satisfaction in the fat center of the normal curve.
Parents who are into configuring browser font mapping and yet still use hardware from the days of Windows 3.1 aren't exactly mainstream. I'll take our statistics over your anecdotal evidence.
3) Normal people like GUI tools to build their web pages
Most normal people don't build websites at all. Of those who do, the majority use simple Web-form-based tools provided by their ISP to create their "My Cats and Me" personal Web page. Your raw text HTML editor for the masses would go over like a lead balloon. These big consumer ISPs advertise "no need to learn HTML", and that's a big selling point for the mass market.
Flash is for the creation of consumer websites with high production values, with relatively high consistency across browsers and platforms. The majority of people who browse the Web consider such sites more interesting and more professional looking than the "this site best viewed with Lynx" type sites beloved by techies.
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.
Really? I remember when all websites were designed by techies. Which of the top 20 MediaMetrix websites are designed by these "more realistic and knowledgeable" techies today? "Web producers" at major sites today majored in graphic arts, communications, and marketing, not CS or EE. Like other media before it, the Web is abandoning techie preferences in favor of consumer preferences. Flash may drive
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
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!
--
making up good sigs is a hard thing to do.
You might check with Macromedia, I'm a teacher, and as a teacher I bought Flash MX (It's the new version, the successor to Flash 5. The user interface is much more refined) for $99 USD. They may be willing to swing such a deal for non-profit groups.
On the Plus side:
Flash MX allows Flash files to be indexed on search engines, has accessibility features for vision impaired and handicapped users.
If used well, I don't think there is anything that can beat it for what it does. It's the most commonly used special feature plug-in around and most browsers can view Flash files (According to Macromedia's figures, 98% of all Internet users have the Flash plug-in installed).
File sizes need not be large at all, Flash uses vector graphics rather than raster graphics to save time on downloads (at the expense of CPU cycles on the user machine...the processing power needed to display vector graphics is somewhat higher than displaying raster graphics such as jpeg, gif and png images).
Despite what is being said in reply to your question, not everyone on the internet is an open-source fanatic that avoids Flash for ethical reasons. I would say a very miniscule percentage, and not likely within the scope of your target audience (to the upcoming firestormers, flame me, bake me, scorch me, but it's ture).
Using Flash on a website is not, be definition, bad design. Commerical designers the world over use it extensively, and for a reason.
On the Downside:
Flash has a steep learning cure. It isn't quite vertical, but it's pretty close to it at first. If you're used to vector graphics programs, that will help somewhat. Once you've learned how to draw and animate shapes, text and objects in Flash, you will discover that you have not even begun to scratch the surface, Actionscript is next, and it's enormously powerful. You will need to read several books on both Flash and Actionscript to come to grips with the full potential of the medium, also a good deal of time and practice to master it.
If someone in your group is passionately interested in learning the tool, and creating a great website with it, go for it...but he or she will be outlaying a fair amount of money and time on books and practice. I'll wager they'll get a kick out of it, and in time produce splended results, but Flash can be quite intimidating at first...if not to say opaque and inscrutable. This isn't Powerpoint! I think any tool you use will ultimately require a lot of study however.
Personally, I use it to give presentations to my students on many topics. I have one of my classroom computers hooked up to a very large presentation monitor, but I don't do very much webdesign with it at the moment, although I am making three or four sites using it, they are secondary to my current purpose. For the future, I'm looking toward web-based exercises and testing applications. I use it in place of many other programs, and I use it almost constantly. I've read a couple of books on it, and am reading three more (now mostly dealing with actionscript). I swear by it, but for what I'm doing, it so much more than adaquately fills my needs. It's overkill for me, but overkill is the American way, isn't it?
HTML itself takes quite a bit of education in good webdesign, even if you're using a WYSIWYG HTML editor, so some education is going to be necessary whatever you do.
Are there alternatives to Flash? Adobe's LiveMotion 2 looks interesting...and it will handle Flash SWF format files...but I don't think its userbase is nearly as large, and I feel you're probably better off just using Flash to make Flash files in the end. It does cost USD $199 however (introductiory price).
Adobe and many others are developing SVG, which are scalable vector graphics in XML, and they will do many of the things Flash can do...but I doubt if the SVG plugin is very commonly used at all at the moment. Check it out at www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8
This site contains links to many other articles on the subject, and I think it bears a lot of promise for the future of the web.
I'd vote for Flash, myself, but you're not going to get immediate results from it. I do have high praise for the product, but whatever medium you choose, you're going to have to do the hard work of mastering it. Flash is a means to this end, and then some.
Vince Frost
chente@attbi.com
>No, blame the tool. When you author in HTML, you don't need to do anything to get that functionality. In Flash, it's another item on the TODO list.
Unfortunatly this is simply a limitation of any technology that gives this level of control to the developer. People use flash precisely because it lets them do things like run animations/programs in the web page. If you have some sort of fast changing graphic (for instance a game/educational software) what is "back." The programmer needs to explicitly tell flash how to go back precisely because it has that extra power (if you don't believe this ask the question "why doesn't x-windows have a back button". Flash gives you similar power to an x-windows app.
Searching is similar. Quite simply if you want to display graphic images (which are often buttons or words) you need to tell the program how to do a search otherwise it isn't very usefull.
Of course flash effects can be arbitrarily resizeable. This is the same reason x-windows programs can't simply be resized, it doesn't always make sense. Flash is meant to be used primarily for graphic intensive operations. Its strength is precisely the fact that it lets the author control precisely how the output looks on the computer.
Quite simply all of these are disadvatages of giving the author such a high degree of control over the output. I am not claiming flash is as well designed as possible (maybe it could have more features to encourage authors to add these userfriendly features) however these are all issues endemic to any tool which addresses flashes needs. In fact flash is remarkably good at replicating the same results on differnt platforms.
It mostly seems that your problem is that people often implement flash for the wrong purposes. HTML is better for informational content b/c it has search builtin (esp if you aren't going to bother to implement it yourself). This is no more flashes fault than it is perl's fault that your ray tracer written in perl is too slow.
It is really unfortunate that I know of no good free flash development tools
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Cripes do you demand information from art galleries?
That's an interesting point. I think it's a matter of taking advantage of the strengths of a particular medium. If you want pretty, why web pages? It's probably one of the least well-suited mediums for whatever aesthetic goal you're trying to achieve.
Now, having said that, playing around with constraints is fun too. I'm a big fan of the music and sound on old(er) video games as well as a lot of minimalist art in general. I dunno, I like that FM synthesis music and those 16-color sprites. So, I guess it's a matter of personal taste.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I'm still running a 200Mhz computer. I'm a cheap bastard.
Engineering and the Ultimate
That's 'proposal' not 'purposal', 'proposed' not 'purposed'.
Aside from that, right on.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I don't see how this went from web site design to progamming, but whatever, it's your ballgame.
I'm sorry to say either you're mixing methaphors very bady or you have no concept of computer languages at all, otherwise you wouldn't have said this; But you did, and well, let me say this: Lets suppose you write a library for a program. You finish that program and are done with it. You start another -- do you really expect the compiler/IDE to do your job for you and load up your previous base codebase for you?
Saying behaviour should be default is one thing, but comparing Apples to Tree Sloths is another...
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
True now, perhaps. Gecko is moving towards having SVG, and AOL is moving to gecko. Won't be all that long and SVG will be as standard as javascript support. What then? Still any reason for Flash? Its not as though the user interface for flash was as good as the gimp ;-)
Riiight... Maybe I should throw out my computer too huh? Since it doesn't write the software for me, instead it's left it on the TODO list...
.swf file with a hex editor? I sure can't.
That's not what I meant. The nicer development tools will choose sensible defaults for you. HTML, as an authoring environment, has at least one such sensible default: The back button works. People know, understand, and dearly love the back button. When a web design tool causes the back button to break by default, that's bad tool design.
So, if a tool forces you to repeatedly write code to do something that should have been the default behavior, is it still a good tool? Maybe, but If every single Flash site I've ever seen suffers from usability issues, I have to conclude that the tool used to create those sites encourages unusable design.
By way of analogy, you can look at Visual Basic. Many visual basic projects have business logic in widget callbacks. This is bad, because changing the UI involves moving and modifying code that has nothing to do with the UI, and just happens to be in the wrong place.
The primary reason for that is that Visual Basic's development environment encourages this design, because it's the most natural thing to do. Drag the pretty icon to the form, double click, spew out some code, done. Ship. Repeat.
Hang on a minute! A few lines ago you were moaning about having to add a line of script to emulate the back button, yet NOW you're complaining that some authors take the time to add extra code to disable the context menu (which I've never seen anywhere, BTW and didn't think possible but haven't checked).
I'm just trying to be consistent. I'm complaining about people designing unusable sites. In the first case, I point out that many people neglect to write some code that could have made their site a little more tolerable. In the second case, I complain about SOME people, who choose to waste their time writing code that specifically impairs usability.
However, I just leave an unreadable site - if the author can't be bothered to test the site out, I can't be bothered to jump through hoops to use it.
Of course. Bad design is only a problem for a web designer if she wants people to use her sites.
This goes for Flash and HTML. Bad design is possible using either platform, but there's a hell of a lot more of it created in HTML, as any fool with a text editor can slap something up on Geocities.
Lies, damn lies and statistics... Of course there is a lot more bad design that was done in HTML - the vast majority of web content today is still created in HTML! I still maintain that most Flash content is just plain bad, from a usability perspective. I can't remember seeing a single Flash site that I liked, but that could just be me being too critical, or just losing my memory.
Now, mostly as an illustration of how bad things can get with Flash, take a look at http://www.ysub.com - I know it doesn't prove anything, but just look at the blasted thing! There's actually some content on that page. Can anyone find it without looking at the
If Flash can be used to create usable web sites, how come nobody uses it to create usable web sites? The only Flash application I've ever seen that came close was the one with the frog in the blender, and that was only because it used an established user interface metaphore (The Blender), and it had an on-screen animated character (the frog), that practically TOLD you what to do.
Not even /. HTML complies with the W3C standards. W3C is a morgue
Hmmm, I really don't see how W3C is a "morgue," and I don't see how the fact that Slashdot pushes nonconforming documents to browsers as supporting evidence. W3C standards are the best way to create sites that work across all major browsers.
W3C is the source of XML, XHTML and CSS (as well as many others) specs. This is what most people are using now. The fact that not everyone uses it properly is no different from when people write bad C++ code.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
HTML is not consistant, Web BROWSERS are consistant... but that is another issue all together =)
I agree that Flash inherits som "usablility issues" if your goal is REPLACING a "normal" HTML page... but for applications that require animtaion (and by require, I do mean *require*, not those godawful 'skip intro' pile of crap every throws up in front of their sites because little Johnny leanred how to make a button in Flash =) and / or do things a normal web page can't do ( there are web-based apps I develop that are impossible to do in DHTML ) in which case you are losing the "this is a web page" metaphor anyway, and getting into "this is software.. it just happens to be deployed in your browser."
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
If you sell a product that's worth buying, it's not an issue. Being a cheap bastard doesn't mean that I don't buy anything, it's that I refuse to be cought in a useless continuous upgrade cycle that in the end gives me no real benefits, other than I can run bloated, worthless applications.
Engineering and the Ultimate
http://www.eskimospy.com/contentPages/phone.html
It prints, if you use your back button, you go to the page you were on before. It's easy to write a text search in Flash.
Have a nice day
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Nice guess, but not correct. Yahoo doesn't use techies as Web designers. They gave that up in early Tim Koogle days.
You may like the design, but that doesn't mean they let programmers design their pages.
The look comes from their early adoption of a pay-per-view advertising business model, which happened when the business people took over control from the founding techies. The more ad views per second, the greater the revenue, so get the pages up FAST, and move them thru to other sub-services with more targeted ads ASAP. No dawdling on the home page, because the higher rates come from the more targeted internal ads.
The techies at Yahoo don't do page content or design. That's the job of the "producers", who get their orders from the business people.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."