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?"
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.
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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.
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
It is regretable that Macromedia haven't either supported alternative OSs or even released an OSS flash player. However, if you wanted to produce multimedia content for the web, what other options are available? The only thing currently available thats even comparable is Shockwave and most Flash users wouldn't consider touching that.
Even when browser developers start supporting the open SVG standard the questioner will still find himself with the same problem because SVG just specifies a vector format to display static images. Animation can be achieved my means of Javascript (yeh, I know you probably don't like that either) manipulating the DOM. Even so, few multimedia authors want to write Javascript.
If you look at the huge number of projects listed on SourceForge or Freshmeat you will see very few that involve rich graphical user interfaces like the Flash developer environment. We all agree that free software developers are as smart as commercial developers (many of them are the same people just working in their spare time). The lack of multimedia development tools in the 'free' arena is really down to the fact that they are a bitch to write and people that are developing software for fun would rather write something that is useful to *them*.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
How about a nice alternative to Flash.
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.
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, 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?
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/ .
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
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.
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...)
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.
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
As you can see here.
Even though the W3C has backed away from the proposal to include RAND-licenced patented material in W3C standards, the SVG standard went to 1.0 under the assumption that the public would accept RAND-licensing for web standards, and so SVG incorporates a number of RAND-liceneced patents, specifically from IBM Kodak and Quark. No doubt this situation is going to be resolved, especially if people don't forget it still needs to be resolved. To remind the W3C and the companies involved that this situation is still unresolved, you can comment on this list, subscribe here.
And oh by the way, is IBM's roll in this particular little minidrama hypocritical, given their support for and reliance upon Linux and other open source projects? You bet it is, and that's because IBM has lots of little parts, not all of which are headed in the same direction, e.g., some are run by the legal department or managers who still don't get it.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Which of the top 20 MediaMetrix websites are designed by these "more realistic and knowledgeable" techies today?
Yahoo!
Started by techies way back in the Dark Ages, and still a great example of a good-looking, useable collection of web applications. What's good about it?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
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:
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.
*****
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