Blame it on Skip Intro for the Flash 99% Bad name. But honestly, I feel that history is being repeated here. If you look around, you will see bold experiments, wild prototypes done in ActionScript 3.0 and post Flash Player 8, which were not doable in Flash before. I am not trying to point fingers are anybody, nobody at all and the remaining part of this article is purely my presonal speculation.
We’re going on another wild ride with the capabilities of ActionScript, the more powerful it gets, the more crazy and cool things we can do with it. Mimic applications in ActionScript that had already been there with other technologies and in place, just because we can do that in ActionScript is not the really the way I would envision the usage of Flash. According to my opinion, we should remember what happen to Flash when everybody started doing Intros. Aren’t we simulating a similar situation but this time with ActionScript. I would rather stick to doing what is needed for an Application and the reason it should be done in Flash/ActionScript.
For instance, I love Flash powered Blogs but why? Why should you have your blog running on a Flash Player? Is it just me, I am not sure! Another is to use Flash just for the Navigation of a site just because you can have that ting sound and the swiveling mouseover.
Once we were discussing about doing some experiments with the new Flash Player 8 capabilities. Well of course, one of the top topic that came up was the Enhanced Bitmap Manipulation Capabilities. Ok, do we really need to do that? Where are we using that? Should we do a “Hello World” sample? Finally, we decided against just doing a “Hello World” kinda sample but wait on untill we found something that it really fits its usage. We did found the usage including transitions, etc in the right place. Another idea was when to user ExternalInterface. We never found a good Use Case Scenario other than a “Hello World”. We simply have to shelved the idea till we come up with something that serves its real purpose.
Here again, I am not advocating against doing experiments, prototypes. Let us just try to keep Skip Intro in the back of our mind and let us prevent that from repeating in another form which may even be uglier. Personally, I know I am bit of the Purist and a Perfectionist but I am sorry I cannot help it.
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Brajeshwar posted this article
on Sun, Dec 4th, 2005 at 3:29 am
Categorized under Technology
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you make some great points there Brajeshwar ÃÆÃ though I believe the whole ÃÆÃskip introÃÆÃ phenomena is often unjustly blamed on Flash whereas it is actually an example of poor usability rather than necessarily a bad use of Flash.
With MacromediaÃÆÃs ÃÆÃExperience mattersÃÆÃ slogan in mind I believe Flash introÃÆÃs do have a role to play and BitmapData and the huge performance improvements in AS3 will help tremendously with this.
What it comes down to, is the right tool for the job ÃÆÃ if youÃÆÃre building a site that has as goal to provide easy access to information then that would not be a good candidate for a Flash intro, if on the other hand youÃÆÃre trying to convey emotion this same Flash intro could be an invaluable tool.
IÃÆÃm a strong believer in what I call Flash experience environments, which is essentially a type of old-school intro that seamlessly integrates with the Flash interface of the site or application and takes advantage of this to show context-sensitive animations, transitions etc.
What probably is most exciting is that as the Flash platform evolves it is not considered something that needs to run exclusive and is self-contained but plays nice with technologies like AJAX which is refreshing to see with the ongoing battle of what defines Web 2.0
Some good points, but I think there’s a distinction between experiments posted on somebody’s blog, and a “Skip Intro” launched on a real commercial website. I think the little experiments help demonstrate possibilities and inspire others.
As for Flash-based navigation or blogs, why not? Sure, it can be considered a waste of time to create them, as they usually don’t provide any real value. But it’s only when and if they are worse than the HTML alternatives that I really get annoyed.
BitmapData has really opened a new door in gaming. Allowing blitting greatly increase the bredth of what you can do. Thousands of objects rendering on 1 bitmap vs. thousands of sprites… that’s a big deal!
Secondly, ExternalInterface, to me, is more about integration with things OTHER than JavaScript, like C and .NET. Good stuff.
To put the whole issue in biblical terms -
What Would Strongbad Do?
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