Dave Shea: Reconciling Flash. The goal of experience design is flawed. When Im on the web, I am generally looking for information. I dont browse for the sake of browsing, and thats unfortunately what those aiming to provide an experience expect me to do. Its funny: Im a visual person, and I know great illustration, photography, and animation enhances content. But when used as an end result? I just dont get as much out of it.
I had actually wanted to write a comment on Dave’s site regarding my thoughts on the Flash vs. CSS/HTML debate. It occurred to me as I wrote that I was going well past long-winded for a comment, so I brought my thoughts here. Enjoy and discuss. 
Hi Dave. I think there is a critical component to your current CSS-bent that you refered to in your recent coding vs. design article: the separation of content and design. This is not possible in Flash at all—and it’s not as simple as “Flash is a bad medium.”
Homestarrunner is a great example: you can’t separate the content of the cartoons from their presentation methodology; they’re all one integrated component. This doesn’t make cartoons any less capable medium of expressing content—animators will likely argue that they are capable of expressing ideas and emotions that would take paragraphs in plain text—just “different.” Machines are not capable of understanding cartoons, animation cannot be cataloged and queried, and, perhaps most importantly to this discussion, animation cannot have its ideas torn out and reproduced in another medium (without recreating it entirely).
This doesn’t make Flash inferior as a content medium, but it’s not how we use the Internet right now. We search and catalog things by text, we express ideas in text (though photoblogs are becoming increasingly common—note, too, Mark Pilgrim’s current experiments with RDF and his photos), business transactions, which have arguably driven the Internet’s explosion since 1995, are all text-based.
We all know these things implicitly and, I think, get a sense of comparing apples to oranges in our CSS/HTML vs. Flash debates. Markup-based technology was built with the idea in mind that anyone would be able to access its content. Flash is great, but by its very nature caters to a specific mode of expression—a mode of expression which appeals, in fact, to a subset of the target audience of markup.
Flash is great. I love Flash, but if a pages main content is text based, then you should “wrap” your text in flash (have flash only as banners, footers, “siders”, but keep your content in simple html). Flash intros are annoying (and I’ve made some myself, but only on request). The new X-2 movie’s website has some really innovative flash design. Check out Styker’s Mutant Database… now there’s some cool stuff!
Homestarrunner… now there’s the best Flash on the internet!
How cool would a Flashblog be? I’m thinking about making a version of our blog entirely in flash… but that would be a heckuva project, and one I don’t feel like embarking on at the moment. Flash is not as easily updated as simple HTML with graphics, though MX has brought some wicked cool database abilities (none of which I fully know how to use
)
Gotta love Flash… But Swish is much easier to use.
The ‘content separate from presentation’ concept is relatively new. 20 years ago, marking up a document meant scratching your printer’s notes on it before sending it off. The final product was content and presentation all in one. With animation, you’d have a script (the content) which you’d then apply to moving and talking characters. You wouldn’t (and still don’t, in most cases) read the script independently of the final animation.
I think we’re still exploring what precisely this separation means. Your examples are relevant uses of Flash that may benefit from having an additional layer of text – closed captioning and machine spidering are possible. But you tack it on at the end, rather than use it to form the basis of the animation.
In the end, it’s a matter of what you’re doing. If your goal is entertainment, then Flash is your first choice. If your goal is text, it better not be. The lines are blurred though. Good discussion, thanks Ken.
flash sucks.
end of story.
okay, maybe not, but it should be. The internet, on a whole, should be built on cross platform standards. Its a World Wide Web, that should be accessible by anyone, no matter what OS they are using.
Sorry, as far as I can tell, flash really has no business being on websites. I don’t even both installing flash anymore … Can’t remember the last time i visited a web site that needed it.
Altp.
But, Mike–Flash is cross-platform, no?
Flash 6 exists for amiga? beos? qnx? SCO Unix? OS/2 (ecom)?
nope, sorry. not cross platform
I don’t consider Cross platform to be only Windows/Mac/Linux … to be cross platform, it must be available on all those in edition to the big 3.
And, to make matters worse, I have Linux on 3 different hardware platforms at my home. (x86, PPC, and UltraSparc) , flash is only available on the x86.
Now, if this technology was open, players could easily (or at least much more easily) be ported around … So, i guess in all honesty, I am not against flash as a technology, but flash as a philosophy. It is a closed stanard in what should be an open environment. By using flash, you limit the information available to people with the correct configuration. Even though in many cases (points at the ultrasparc), the technology might be better… So your not only punishing those without the money to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but those that invest in hardware that is better than the latest and greatest.
Now, it is easy to argue that you are supplying software for the ‘common’ user and those ont he fringes have to cope. But, in the case of information, is that better or worse? Isn’t limiting the flow of information worse than providing a flashy-whatever?
Altp.
Flash has been an open standard for 5 years.
Have you read the license agreement?
THe specifications exist so that you can develop applications which produce flash that can be played in the products listed at this url:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/.
also, the license specifically states that the output is for support on Windows, Mac, and Linux, no mention of other OS’s (these are the only three with a current player … )
A link ont he page is provided for the purposes of obtaining the source/sdk for porting Flash to other platforms, but, it has to be approved by macromedia and retain all the copy rights and such and say “Macromedia Flash”, etc …
Now, everyone has different definitions of what should be considered ‘open’, i’ll give you that, but the restrictive license that accompanies these specifications makes it very much not ‘open’ … They could probably be used to create a player on non-supported platforms, but, as I understand the licensing agreement, that wouldn’t be allowed under its terms and conditions.
Altp.
You’re misinterpreting the license.
Point 3) d – “You agree that your Product must output SWF files that can playback without Errors in the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, and Linux Macromedia Flash Players…”
All that’s saying is that you can’t branch it so it breaks on Macromedia’s players. I don’t see any exclusivity in there. Your source?
Build a player for QNX. I don’t see anything stopping you.
This is too much. I did a google search under “windows explorer alternative” and what do I find? Someone writing about doing a google search
under “windows explorer alternative”! Then, curious as to what sort of person this is, I start looking around at the family photos, and it’s like
looking at my own! And then I see some remarks about Flash (a primary programming tool for me) and it’s “war” with CSS/html, and I see the
writer talking about precisely the issue I recently got into a rather lengthy and heated (on my “opponent’s” part) newsgroup exchange on the very
same matter. I went to the html/authoring ng to get some info and happened to mention that since CSS couldn’t do what I needed, I’d have
to use Flash, and then all hell seemed to break loose. What’s amazing to me is how similar we all are. We’re like individual swatches of fabric
taken from the same bolt of material. Thanks for putting this website up. Nice understated graphics by the way. I’m going to swipe
some of it, OK?
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