I could go on an on. I challenge anyone to find an example of anything half as compelling as these.
The fact of it is that when progressive companies want to make something impressive and compelling they develop for the Flash Platform.
Plus, with Flex Builder IDE and automated build processes a company can do large scale deployments with hundreds of developers working together at once.
If Adobe plays their cards correctly they will continue to dominate.
Areas where the Flash Platform needs to improve:
1) More robust text display and handling.
2) Native support for rendering motion and graphics via the Graphics Processor
Additional recommendation:
Adobe should merge all the functionality from Director/Shockwave into Flash and kill of Director.
With Flash and AIR now being open source projects it will be fascinating to see what happens. It's World War III for the future of user experiences--a battle between Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Sun. Who will emerge as the victor? Excited to find out. And I hope its Adobe Flash.
Tony J.
That milk site isn't really nice at all. Took me quite a while (after enabling scripting, and popups) to find the tiny got-milk link i needed to click on to get to the main section w/o going Full-screen. Then after waiting for the loading screen I am presented with a common theme from "worst site of the year" awarks: Mystery Meat Navigation i.e. having to mouse around and hover over stuff to try to find what u want. All while having my AMD 64 dual core cpu pegged. And once u do mouse over a hidden "game" reading the spinning signs is neither easy nor pleasant. And after all that, i'm still not sure what the site is about other than something with promoting the general concept of milk.
Next time you may want to take design tips form google or apple. Busy stuff is not goot; impressive looking at first, but not good. Simple plain UI is the easiest and quickest to use. And simple doesn't mean it can't also be beautiful.
Although I have made some good money in flash development in the past, I'm quite happy to see it die, now someone needs to make a decent SVG timelined WYSIWYG IDE, apple...
What I would really like would be for apple to stick a layer ontop of SVG so we dont have to write code that looks like this...
<svg width="225" height="250">
eughh horrible.
[svg width: 225 height :250]
thats better
or [svg initWithRect:rect]
the objective c would be parsed and converted to SVG out of sight. Can anyone think of a decent reason why this would be a silly idea?
PS: im sure there may be decent reason, i havent given the idea more than 5 minutes of thought.
I really don't understand what the probem is. One looks like standard XML type notation, the other looks like a coding style that I haven't seen anywhere except for developing software for Apple products.
That milk site isn't really nice at all. Took me quite a while (after enabling scripting, and popups) to find the tiny got-milk link i needed to click on to get to the main section w/o going Full-screen. Then after waiting for the loading screen I am presented with a common theme from "worst site of the year" awarks: Mystery Meat Navigation i.e. having to mouse around and hover over stuff to try to find what u want. All while having my AMD 64 dual core cpu pegged. And once u do mouse over a hidden "game" reading the spinning signs is neither easy nor pleasant. And after all that, i'm still not sure what the site is about other than something with promoting the general concept of milk.
Next time you may want to take design tips form google or apple. Busy stuff is not goot; impressive looking at first, but not good. Simple plain UI is the easiest and quickest to use. And simple doesn't mean it can't also be beautiful.
I think you're looking at it incorrectly. The client on that project probably wants something to inspire people, make an impression, engage them. It's be one thing if you were trying to do your taxes or buy something online and the site was making you roll dice, and watch video character stories and play games. You can't apply one set of rules to every type of user experience or set of business goals.
I think you're looking at it incorrectly. The client on that project probably wants something to inspire people, make an impression, engage them. It's be one thing if you were trying to do your taxes or buy something online and the site was making you roll dice, and watch video character stories and play games. You can't apply one set of rules to every type of user experience or set of business goals.
You're basically saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature". You are perfectly free to have an impression of "Ooo shiny" and like it. Just as my impression of "wtf is this site for/is going on?!" is equally valid.
My most objective observations which are not at all intrinsic to flash are:
a) hard to find the games (guess you could consider this an entertaining mini-game in itself)
b) spinning signs are hard to read.
It is still possible to mess these up while not using flash, but IMO less likely to this degree.
And when it comes down to it, the customer is never wrong. You can't just explain to visitors that they are "not looking at it correctly". If you have to do that, you failed because you don't have that opportunity. If i am not part of the target audience, so be it.
I could go on an on. I challenge anyone to find an example of anything half as compelling as these.
The fact of it is that when progressive companies want to make something impressive and compelling they develop for the Flash Platform.
Plus, with Flex Builder IDE and automated build processes a company can do large scale deployments with hundreds of developers working together at once.
If Adobe plays their cards correctly they will continue to dominate.
Areas where the Flash Platform needs to improve:
1) More robust text display and handling.
2) Native support for rendering motion and graphics via the Graphics Processor
Additional recommendation:
Adobe should merge all the functionality from Director/Shockwave into Flash and kill of Director.
With Flash and AIR now being open source projects it will be fascinating to see what happens. It's World War III for the future of user experiences--a battle between Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Sun. Who will emerge as the victor? Excited to find out. And I hope its Adobe Flash.
Tony J.
Hm, let's see...I couldn't view the first site becuase it gets blocked by our filtering software, oh well. There was absolutely nothing special on the home page of the 2nd site that couldn't have been easily done with other tools (ok, you have fancy round ended text entry boxes...ooh!). And when I clicked on one of the links, my browser (WinXP, IE6, and a brand new Core2Duo ThinkPad): 1) locked up for about 5-7 seconds, 2) unloaded the home page and left me staring at a blank page for about 30 seconds (all the while killing my system response time in other windows), and 3) finally loaded the next page of the site (which again was nothing special). Am I missing some uber-cool aspect of the site that you were trying to point out?
I didn't bother viewing any of the other links you provided...
While I like Flex, I definitely don't see a future for it (or Flash). Take a look at some of the leading JavaScript libraries like DOJO, JQuery, ExtJS or YUI to see where the future of RIAs is going. ExtJS, in particular, snuffs Flex for building data driven web sites.
Flash (without Flex) is, at best, a nuisance. I despise all-Flash "boutique" sites because they are usually completely counterintuitive in navigation. Good web developers create sites to please users, not just their web designer peers.
These articles are very critical of Flash but offer little in terms of solutions to the Flash's alleged shortcomings. Flash is still the most powerful tool on the net. I've invested a lot of money and time into Flash but I would switch in a heartbeat if there was something else that worked as well. But just saying Flash is a crappy product doesn't make it so. That is one person's opinion. Flash is so much more than a ubiquitous video container. The bottom line is always "I hate the ads' therefore Flash is evil.
I tend to agree. I'm not a Flash developer, but this series seems to be extremely biased. How about something positive about Flash? Surely Adobe wouldn't spend the money the did to acquire Macromedia to get a dying outdated piece of technology.
"a drawing app extended into an animation tool and then retrofitted into a monstrous hack of a development platform"
Don't you think that's a little harsh? Just because new platforms get developed using Flash as an example doesn't mean that they are any better. If Flash works, it works. Whatever with esthetics and hind sight. Those new platforms will have bugs and will always be behind Flash in maturity.
Flash made web development fun, the content engaging, and consistent instead of clunky, misaligned, and never the same. All I have to say is "GIF" and "shim" and you can understand. Yes, I concur that Flash sites can be counter intuitive but that is not Flash's fault it's the designer's fault. At least with Flash you have the freedom to be counter intuitive.
The only problem Apple has with Flash is that the current hand held CPU is to slow for Flash. Apple is all about the quality of user experience so they have to exclude Flash until the platform is ready. Same reason the iPhone is so closed and they didn't provide a SDK until it was ready. The Newton is an excellent example of premature technology killing sales and customer confidence. I think they learned there lesson. Apple doesn't want to be a Sharper Image.
The landscape that Flash pioneered is changing, so it will have to evolve in order to survive. I see Flash Lite as just the spear head for a Flash Mobile. Again Flash is ahead of the game. When the Intel Atom platform hits the market Flash should be ready. I hope.
Hmmm correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't believe H.264 is an open codec. It is owned by the Motion Picture Experts Group.
I can't tell for sure, but it appears to be ISO standardized. But there are some problems with software patents in some places where software patents are legal.
Am I missing some uber-cool aspect of the site that you were trying to point out?.
This whole Papervision3D lark is a little bit over-hyped I have to agree (if that was one of your points). Although it's all very fun and cool in a geeky way, what good does this all do for the consumer? Not a fat lot really. I really hate all those commercial whizzy Flash sites that delivery zero content. I'm a Flash developer but unless I'm adding to the content rather than masking it poorly, I'd rather not bother.
I really don't understand what the probem is. One looks like standard XML type notation, the other looks like a coding style that I haven't seen anywhere except for developing software for Apple products.
it's just my preference, but i dislike xml notation, flash has similarities to c, so to differentiate things an objective c style would be right up my alley.
This whole Papervision3D lark is a little bit over-hyped I have to agree (if that was one of your points). Although it's all very fun and cool in a geeky way, what good does this all do for the consumer? Not a fat lot really. I really hate all those commercial whizzy Flash sites that delivery zero content. I'm a Flash developer but unless I'm adding to the content rather than masking it poorly, I'd rather not bother.
I thought that looked pretty darn cool, but it took way too long to load in my opinion, and the signs maybe spun once too many times.
"a drawing app extended into an animation tool and then retrofitted into a monstrous hack of a development platform"
Don't you think that's a little harsh? Just because new platforms get developed using Flash as an example doesn't mean that they are any better. If Flash works, it works. Whatever with esthetics and hind sight. Those new platforms will have bugs and will always be behind Flash in maturity.
The whole article smacks of being written by someone who hasn't really done their research into the subject, and from reading previous articles on AI I can safely say it's not the first time.
The back-end has been completely rewritten from the ground up, so basically the timeline animation stuff is now just a flimsy add-on to a very powerful coding engine. I actually feel more sorry for the designers now, since Flash CS3 is terribly buggy as it tries to compile timelines into runtime code. However for sheer computing power - well, let's face it, if ActionScript 3 was a grouch, it certainly wouldn't be able to render real-time 3D in software as competently as it does.
The future decline of Flash video is overplayed. Flash video rose to dominance because it's the easiest for social systems: video can be uploaded in various formats and resolutions and easily repurposed; Flash video is easily embedded. Flash provides an easy API for anyone to build a complete upload, reformat, viewing/streaming, serving service. This is its advantage and H.264 hasn't eliminated that advantage.
The future decline of Flash video is overplayed. Flash video rose to dominance because it's the easiest for social systems: video can be uploaded in various formats and resolutions and easily repurposed; Flash video is easily embedded. Flash provides an easy API for anyone to build a complete upload, reformat, viewing/streaming, serving service. This is its advantage and H.264 hasn't eliminated that advantage.
No it hasn't but im hoping something will come along soon, and im fairly sure it will.
I started designing websites totally in Flash a few years ago. The main reason was cross browser issues with Netscape and IE. Then I studied SEO, and found out how terrible Flash was with Search Engines. Which forced me to do double the work.
Now enters iPhone which is changing everything. Why I say this is because as of this summer, the iPhone will be available world wide and will be 3G. What this means is $$$. Tap into the 30 million plus mobile users that is forecasted equates primarily to mega advertising dollars... worldwide. That is if developers adapt to the iPhone criteria. No Flash and No Java. This means that 90% ( guessing ) of the websites out there have to be redesigned to meet the iPhone criteria.
Until Flash is allowed on the iPhone, I forecast a decline in Flash development based primarily on the advertising dollar. Same goes for MS Silvercrap.
Comments
Here are 3 examples of extremely compelling user experiences on the web that no other web platform can even come close to:
Site of the Year on FWA.
http://www.gettheglass.com/
Seriously powerful design, layout and photo manipulation tool:
http://www.scrapblog.com/tour/tour.aspx
Drive this car. Full interactive realtime 3d!!!:
http://www.carlosulloa.com/
Plus several hundred more examples at: http://www.thefwa.com
and
http://blog.papervision3d.org
I could go on an on. I challenge anyone to find an example of anything half as compelling as these.
The fact of it is that when progressive companies want to make something impressive and compelling they develop for the Flash Platform.
Plus, with Flex Builder IDE and automated build processes a company can do large scale deployments with hundreds of developers working together at once.
If Adobe plays their cards correctly they will continue to dominate.
Areas where the Flash Platform needs to improve:
1) More robust text display and handling.
2) Native support for rendering motion and graphics via the Graphics Processor
Additional recommendation:
Adobe should merge all the functionality from Director/Shockwave into Flash and kill of Director.
With Flash and AIR now being open source projects it will be fascinating to see what happens. It's World War III for the future of user experiences--a battle between Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Sun. Who will emerge as the victor? Excited to find out. And I hope its Adobe Flash.
Tony J.
That milk site isn't really nice at all. Took me quite a while (after enabling scripting, and popups) to find the tiny got-milk link i needed to click on to get to the main section w/o going Full-screen. Then after waiting for the loading screen I am presented with a common theme from "worst site of the year" awarks: Mystery Meat Navigation i.e. having to mouse around and hover over stuff to try to find what u want. All while having my AMD 64 dual core cpu pegged. And once u do mouse over a hidden "game" reading the spinning signs is neither easy nor pleasant. And after all that, i'm still not sure what the site is about other than something with promoting the general concept of milk.
Next time you may want to take design tips form google or apple. Busy stuff is not goot; impressive looking at first, but not good. Simple plain UI is the easiest and quickest to use. And simple doesn't mean it can't also be beautiful.
Although I have made some good money in flash development in the past, I'm quite happy to see it die, now someone needs to make a decent SVG timelined WYSIWYG IDE, apple...
What I would really like would be for apple to stick a layer ontop of SVG so we dont have to write code that looks like this...
<svg width="225" height="250">
eughh horrible.
[svg width: 225 height :250]
thats better
or [svg initWithRect:rect]
the objective c would be parsed and converted to SVG out of sight. Can anyone think of a decent reason why this would be a silly idea?
PS: im sure there may be decent reason, i havent given the idea more than 5 minutes of thought.
I really don't understand what the probem is. One looks like standard XML type notation, the other looks like a coding style that I haven't seen anywhere except for developing software for Apple products.
That milk site isn't really nice at all. Took me quite a while (after enabling scripting, and popups) to find the tiny got-milk link i needed to click on to get to the main section w/o going Full-screen. Then after waiting for the loading screen I am presented with a common theme from "worst site of the year" awarks: Mystery Meat Navigation i.e. having to mouse around and hover over stuff to try to find what u want. All while having my AMD 64 dual core cpu pegged. And once u do mouse over a hidden "game" reading the spinning signs is neither easy nor pleasant. And after all that, i'm still not sure what the site is about other than something with promoting the general concept of milk.
Next time you may want to take design tips form google or apple. Busy stuff is not goot; impressive looking at first, but not good. Simple plain UI is the easiest and quickest to use. And simple doesn't mean it can't also be beautiful.
I think you're looking at it incorrectly. The client on that project probably wants something to inspire people, make an impression, engage them. It's be one thing if you were trying to do your taxes or buy something online and the site was making you roll dice, and watch video character stories and play games. You can't apply one set of rules to every type of user experience or set of business goals.
I think you're looking at it incorrectly. The client on that project probably wants something to inspire people, make an impression, engage them. It's be one thing if you were trying to do your taxes or buy something online and the site was making you roll dice, and watch video character stories and play games. You can't apply one set of rules to every type of user experience or set of business goals.
You're basically saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature". You are perfectly free to have an impression of "Ooo shiny" and like it. Just as my impression of "wtf is this site for/is going on?!" is equally valid.
My most objective observations which are not at all intrinsic to flash are:
a) hard to find the games (guess you could consider this an entertaining mini-game in itself)
b) spinning signs are hard to read.
It is still possible to mess these up while not using flash, but IMO less likely to this degree.
And when it comes down to it, the customer is never wrong. You can't just explain to visitors that they are "not looking at it correctly". If you have to do that, you failed because you don't have that opportunity. If i am not part of the target audience, so be it.
Here are 3 examples of extremely compelling user experiences on the web that no other web platform can even come close to:
Site of the Year on FWA.
http://www.gettheglass.com/
Seriously powerful design, layout and photo manipulation tool:
http://www.scrapblog.com/tour/tour.aspx
Drive this car. Full interactive realtime 3d!!!:
http://www.carlosulloa.com/
Plus several hundred more examples at: http://www.thefwa.com
and
http://blog.papervision3d.org
I could go on an on. I challenge anyone to find an example of anything half as compelling as these.
The fact of it is that when progressive companies want to make something impressive and compelling they develop for the Flash Platform.
Plus, with Flex Builder IDE and automated build processes a company can do large scale deployments with hundreds of developers working together at once.
If Adobe plays their cards correctly they will continue to dominate.
Areas where the Flash Platform needs to improve:
1) More robust text display and handling.
2) Native support for rendering motion and graphics via the Graphics Processor
Additional recommendation:
Adobe should merge all the functionality from Director/Shockwave into Flash and kill of Director.
With Flash and AIR now being open source projects it will be fascinating to see what happens. It's World War III for the future of user experiences--a battle between Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and Sun. Who will emerge as the victor? Excited to find out. And I hope its Adobe Flash.
Tony J.
Hm, let's see...I couldn't view the first site becuase it gets blocked by our filtering software, oh well. There was absolutely nothing special on the home page of the 2nd site that couldn't have been easily done with other tools (ok, you have fancy round ended text entry boxes...ooh!). And when I clicked on one of the links, my browser (WinXP, IE6, and a brand new Core2Duo ThinkPad): 1) locked up for about 5-7 seconds, 2) unloaded the home page and left me staring at a blank page for about 30 seconds (all the while killing my system response time in other windows), and 3) finally loaded the next page of the site (which again was nothing special). Am I missing some uber-cool aspect of the site that you were trying to point out?
I didn't bother viewing any of the other links you provided...
Flash (without Flex) is, at best, a nuisance. I despise all-Flash "boutique" sites because they are usually completely counterintuitive in navigation. Good web developers create sites to please users, not just their web designer peers.
The death of Flash is long overdue.
These articles are very critical of Flash but offer little in terms of solutions to the Flash's alleged shortcomings. Flash is still the most powerful tool on the net. I've invested a lot of money and time into Flash but I would switch in a heartbeat if there was something else that worked as well. But just saying Flash is a crappy product doesn't make it so. That is one person's opinion. Flash is so much more than a ubiquitous video container. The bottom line is always "I hate the ads' therefore Flash is evil.
I tend to agree. I'm not a Flash developer, but this series seems to be extremely biased. How about something positive about Flash? Surely Adobe wouldn't spend the money the did to acquire Macromedia to get a dying outdated piece of technology.
Don't you think that's a little harsh? Just because new platforms get developed using Flash as an example doesn't mean that they are any better. If Flash works, it works. Whatever with esthetics and hind sight. Those new platforms will have bugs and will always be behind Flash in maturity.
Flash made web development fun, the content engaging, and consistent instead of clunky, misaligned, and never the same. All I have to say is "GIF" and "shim" and you can understand. Yes, I concur that Flash sites can be counter intuitive but that is not Flash's fault it's the designer's fault. At least with Flash you have the freedom to be counter intuitive.
The only problem Apple has with Flash is that the current hand held CPU is to slow for Flash. Apple is all about the quality of user experience so they have to exclude Flash until the platform is ready. Same reason the iPhone is so closed and they didn't provide a SDK until it was ready. The Newton is an excellent example of premature technology killing sales and customer confidence. I think they learned there lesson. Apple doesn't want to be a Sharper Image.
The landscape that Flash pioneered is changing, so it will have to evolve in order to survive. I see Flash Lite as just the spear head for a Flash Mobile. Again Flash is ahead of the game. When the Intel Atom platform hits the market Flash should be ready. I hope.
However, as the industry has moved to support the more advanced and open H.264 video codec
Hmmm correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't believe H.264 is an open codec. It is owned by the Motion Picture Experts Group.
Drive this car. Full interactive realtime 3d!!!:
http://www.carlosulloa.com/
I click on the car and it drives on again. Whoo interactive!
Real Flash developers use tools like:
Adobe Flex Builder
FlashDevelop
Sepy
etc.
All powerful text editors with additional functionality to assist in ActionScript devevlopment.
Let's not forget about Eclipse and FDT... I don't know what I'd do without them!
Hmmm correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't believe H.264 is an open codec. It is owned by the Motion Picture Experts Group.
I can't tell for sure, but it appears to be ISO standardized. But there are some problems with software patents in some places where software patents are legal.
Am I missing some uber-cool aspect of the site that you were trying to point out?.
This whole Papervision3D lark is a little bit over-hyped I have to agree (if that was one of your points). Although it's all very fun and cool in a geeky way, what good does this all do for the consumer? Not a fat lot really. I really hate all those commercial whizzy Flash sites that delivery zero content. I'm a Flash developer but unless I'm adding to the content rather than masking it poorly, I'd rather not bother.
I really don't understand what the probem is. One looks like standard XML type notation, the other looks like a coding style that I haven't seen anywhere except for developing software for Apple products.
it's just my preference, but i dislike xml notation, flash has similarities to c, so to differentiate things an objective c style would be right up my alley.
This whole Papervision3D lark is a little bit over-hyped I have to agree (if that was one of your points). Although it's all very fun and cool in a geeky way, what good does this all do for the consumer? Not a fat lot really. I really hate all those commercial whizzy Flash sites that delivery zero content. I'm a Flash developer but unless I'm adding to the content rather than masking it poorly, I'd rather not bother.
I thought that looked pretty darn cool, but it took way too long to load in my opinion, and the signs maybe spun once too many times.
"a drawing app extended into an animation tool and then retrofitted into a monstrous hack of a development platform"
Don't you think that's a little harsh? Just because new platforms get developed using Flash as an example doesn't mean that they are any better. If Flash works, it works. Whatever with esthetics and hind sight. Those new platforms will have bugs and will always be behind Flash in maturity.
The whole article smacks of being written by someone who hasn't really done their research into the subject, and from reading previous articles on AI I can safely say it's not the first time.
The back-end has been completely rewritten from the ground up, so basically the timeline animation stuff is now just a flimsy add-on to a very powerful coding engine. I actually feel more sorry for the designers now, since Flash CS3 is terribly buggy as it tries to compile timelines into runtime code. However for sheer computing power - well, let's face it, if ActionScript 3 was a grouch, it certainly wouldn't be able to render real-time 3D in software as competently as it does.
The future decline of Flash video is overplayed. Flash video rose to dominance because it's the easiest for social systems: video can be uploaded in various formats and resolutions and easily repurposed; Flash video is easily embedded. Flash provides an easy API for anyone to build a complete upload, reformat, viewing/streaming, serving service. This is its advantage and H.264 hasn't eliminated that advantage.
No it hasn't but im hoping something will come along soon, and im fairly sure it will.
i think these articles are spot on
I started designing websites totally in Flash a few years ago. The main reason was cross browser issues with Netscape and IE. Then I studied SEO, and found out how terrible Flash was with Search Engines. Which forced me to do double the work.
Now enters iPhone which is changing everything. Why I say this is because as of this summer, the iPhone will be available world wide and will be 3G. What this means is $$$. Tap into the 30 million plus mobile users that is forecasted equates primarily to mega advertising dollars... worldwide. That is if developers adapt to the iPhone criteria. No Flash and No Java. This means that 90% ( guessing ) of the websites out there have to be redesigned to meet the iPhone criteria.
Until Flash is allowed on the iPhone, I forecast a decline in Flash development based primarily on the advertising dollar. Same goes for MS Silvercrap.
Ed