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Flash CS3 Part II: Incarnation of a Great Product |
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Written by John Tang
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
 My first article on Flash CS3 gave an introduction that probably left
the curious mind unsatisfied. Why is Flash CS3 so great? What types of
applications can I create that I can't do already with other tools?
I'll begin to to answer these questions and more.
Flash was designed originally to support animation that ran in a browser. That last sentence pretty much describes the success of Flash. There are other technologies that support animation. There are many applications that can run in a browser. However, there are few that can do both efficiently. Oddly, this was one of the original goals of Java. Flash succeeded where Java failed. The Java camp had the right idea when they introduced applets but it failed because applets were dreadfully slow. The required Java run time environment was also cumbersome to install for non-techies. The Flash player, on the other hand, installs seamlessly. Adobe really was concerned with the end user experience. The simplicity of installing the Flash player can not be under estimated.
Animation is an important feature because it keeps the user engaged. It also provides important feed back to the user. If I click on a Flash button it will change colors, for example. The ability to animate the controls on the screen are relatively easy to do especially when compared to other technologies like JavaScript and CSS. I can say this with confidence after years of building web sites with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Apache, Java 2EE, PHP, Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server, and MySQL.
I won't deny that it's possible to create simple animations with JavaScript and CSS but the animations tend to be simple. Once in a while we get an application like Google maps that really impresses but how many of us are good enough to create such an application using JavaScript and CSS? It takes a serious brain from MIT (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/) to build some thing in DHTML that a Flash designer or programmer can recreate in relatively short time.
The power of Flash is easier animation creation.
Flash has been used primarily by designers. At least that's what I always thought. I know a lot of programmers. I guess I should since I work in the field. I don't know any programmers that use Flash at least they don't admit to it. Flash was always a web designer's tool in my mind. Seriously, how many hard core hackers do you know that use Flash? Most programmers are using C++ for application development. Java, PHP, Perl, and Ruby on Rails are popular on back end web applications. C# and Visual Basic are popular for Windows front end development. I'm generalizing of course but Flash is not in the mind set of most hard core programmers...yet.
Designers have a good jump on Flash development. That is my observation. The folks that use Flash are the same professionals who use other Adobe products like Photoshop, Illustrator, or After Effects. It makes complete sense since Adobe would market their product to the same customer base. The predominant use of Flash at my company is banner ads created by the creative folks. I envy them because they got a chance to use a great product long before I made the decision to really study it.
To all my fellow hackers, it's time to wake up to Flash and it's sister technology Flex and AIR. Flex applications run inside of the Flash player. The Flex integrated development environment (IDE) is based on Eclipse. Java programmers will feel at home since Eclipse has become the most popular IDE for Java development. Think of Flex as Flash for developers. That's right. Adobe has programmers on their minds now. AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. A runtime is a set of compiled files that allows other programs to run on top of it. The runtime sits between custom applications and the operating system. AIR allows Flash files (which run inside of a browser) to run as a desktop application like Quicken or Turbo Tax. You can build cross platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) desktop
appilcations using AIR. Installation of the AIR runtime is quite simple. Adobe did not abandon the user experience unlike Sun Microsystems.
You are correct if you think AIR is a lot like Java. It wouldn't surprise me if Adobe succeeded where Java failed: write once, run any where. That's saying a lot since Java is my favorite programming language. I have a lot invested in Java. I wished Java would succeed every where but I think it is now Adobe's game to lose at least on the client side. Java will still be very popular on the web back end, though.
The technology that binds Flash, Flex, and AIR is ActionScript 3.0 (AS3). This is Adobe's new jewel. AS3 has turned Flash into a serious development platform. Every animation, every Flash application that you ever wanted to create can now be done with code. ActionScript 1 and 2 provided some programming power but it pales to AS3. AS3 is a serious programming language. AS3 is one of those technology that will change the landscape of computing because it will open the wildly Flash player to a whole new group of people… the power programmers. I'm referring to the programmers who have previously shied away from using Adobe products.
About John Tang
John Tang's college roommate convinced him to go into IT since
computing was his passion. He studied Applied Mathematics at UCLA but
always had a love of programming. He worked at a research lab on the
UCLA campus where he learned Fox Pro, SQL, and local area networking.
His first "real" job was at Ernst & Young where he did mainframe
programming with Cobol and client server development with Powerbuilder,
Sybase. He has been working as a web programmer since 1999 starting
with Java, HTML, JavaScript, and Oracle before migrating to PHP and
MySQL.
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