Posts tagged as: Adobe
The Post-Flash Web: Are We There Yet?
The short is answer is mostly. There’s no doubt Flash is witnessing its final years due to the proliferation of mobile and tablet use; and while HTML5 and the like have much to offer there are several issues that are delaying a complete transition from Flash. Flash won in the late 90′s and early 2000′s for several reasons: great support for typography, animation, solid development tools (i.e. Flash / Flex Builder), rich interactivity and casual gaming. And it worked reliably across a myriad of browsers and operating systems. With the addition of VP6 video codec in 2005 Flash also solved the multi-codec – multi-player hassles that plagued developers for years. For those too young to recall, it was standard to provide separate videos and player pages for each of the major solutions such as Quicktime, Real and Windows Media Player.
According to current statics from the WC3, only 5% of IE users have IE9, which is to say ~15% of your users are unable to experience all the bells and whistles of a modern (non-flash) site. Adding fuel to fire are the myriad of mobile devices with a dizzying array of performance and capability profiles. Even highly homogeneous Apple products show speed variances greater than a thousand percent between device and version. I’m reminded of the William Gibson quote, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
In recent years HTML5, CSS3, web fonts and javascript utilities like jQuery have largely closed the gap with Flash on many fronts: interactivity, typography, and cross browser compatibility. Matched with modern techniques like responsive design and progressive enhancement these tools are well suited for traditional web site development. The same cannot be said for highly interactive sites or even sites with modest video needs. Only IE9 supports video natively so the other 15% of IE users are out of luck unless you also offer Flash.
For highly interactive sites, think casual games, augmented reality or high performance 3D experiences, the situation is far worse. Flash covers +90% of current users but is clearly on the way out and essentially absent on the fastest growing segments of computing, mobile and tablet. The current crop of tools, jQuery, for example, are sufficient for modest interactivity and do a great job obfuscating browser compatibility differences (other than speed variance), but none offer the depth of features that game development require-just to name one. While it’s technically possible to build casual games like ‘Pirates Love Daisies’ from whole cloth, cost and compatibility issues make it unfeasible for all but a very select set of projects.
Unless you’re willing to eschew a substantial segment of your audience, all of this nets out to increased development and maintenance cost versus reduced functionality, sophistication and impact. And for nearly all clients, that’s a very painful choice.
So when can we close the door on Flash and get back to making cool stuff?
First and foremost, that pesky 15% of IE users not using IE9 needs to drop. While Microsoft is working hard to make this happen corporate environments are particularly slow to adopt new technologies. If your business is B2B, you may experience a jump in that excluded share to 40-50%.
Second, the insanely disparate mix of mobile devices needs to come into sharper focus. As creators we need baseline functionality and performance across platforms. A technical “Lowest Common Denominator” if you like. Coming for Flash that “LCD” feels very low indeed.
Finally, we need development tools that match the sophistication and depth of Flash because for over a decade people have come to expect the rich interactivity and beauty that Flash has allowed. The combination of issues means that developers and designers have to substantially dial back the “wow factor” in order to achieve high stability, performance and functionality across platforms. Alternatively, clients will have to spend a fortune to create custom executions for each environment: iPhone app, Android app, mobile site, tablet site and standard site. For many clients this cost will be impossible to budget and manage for both external agencies and in-house creative teams.
Until then developers and clients will have to make tough trade-offs between cost, compatibility and rich interactivity. Two years ago the iPad didn’t exist and Flash was going strong. With luck, the story will be very different two years from now.
For more information:
WC3 Schools Statistics
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp
Pirates Love Daisies (a Microsoft commissioned gaming project that was built to showcase IE9′s improved performance and capabilities compared to other browsers)
http://www.pirateslovedaisies.com/
The Evolution of Web Development Tools
http://gskinner.com/blog/archives/2012/01/the-evolution-of-web-development-tools.html
Myjive Goes to Middle School
In November, Myjive had the chance to visit Lancaster South Middle School. Mrs. Peters, teacher of the technology and art class, invited us to give a presentation for their “Career Day.” Her goal was to show her students that you can have a career in art and to show how far you can go in Adobe Photoshop.
Our Creative Director, Ron Edelen, spoke in conjunction with Jessica Mushik (Classic Design Kitchen and Bath). Jessica went over some of the details of schooling and her trade. Ron gave a short presentation on some of the processes we use, different mediums for which we design, and showed our promotional reel. Then we opened it up to the kids for some questions, which was heavily dominated by questions about the gaming industry.
We later received thank you cards from the classes that we attended. They were created by Mrs. Peters’ students in Photoshop and were greatly appreciated.
Adobe Air for Noobs
I am a noob to Air. On top of this, it is also important to recognize that I am a slow adopter of Flash AS3. I have tunnel vision formed by habitual attachments to AS2 methods and it keeps me in a frustrated state of mind. Fortunately I have a few OOP-savvy cohorts that spoon-feed insightful ways of thinking. I am picking up on the basics quickly, but I am finding little resources that speak to those non-programming-centric designers.
I’m not the guy to re-invent the wheel, and Lee makes a killer wheel. Take a moment to view Lee Brimlow’s “Developing AIR in Flash” where he explains setting up your workflow for creating AIR applications. Assuming that you’re somewhat familiar with AS3 structure, Lee jumps straight into using some of the prepackaged AIR-specific classes. For me, one key step in migrating from AS2 to AS3 was getting familiar with the predefined code (functions/classes) available in CS3. A quick reference for this can be found in the top-left panel of your actions window. There is even a handy grouping specifically for Adobe Air.
Developing applications in Air is no different than developing swf files for the web. Deploying functionality that can be packaged and installed on any platform (Mac/PC) make it a super-sexy way to build application-centric solutions. The advantages spawn from running a Flash-based application off the desktop and not being dependent on a web browser. The bad news is that they have to download, install, and run the app before any interactions can occur. With trends moving towards “cloud-space” and more robust browser-based web apps, I am not sure how far this will go.
We are currently working on a few cool applications and I will try to follow up with more substantial AIR tips and tools in the coming weeks. I do want to (at least) conclude this post with some AIR AS3 basics. I also recommend starting/building your own external library of .as files. This can speed up dev process when using the same code over and over. (AIR Window Control .as file).
AS3 for Window Control
// a quick and easy way to make the window draggable. I generally put a background graphic
// at the bottom layer of the stage and make it the active window area, providing opportunity
// for unique window shapes
background_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, back_CLICK);
function back_CLICK(e:MouseEvent):void {
stage.nativeWindow.startMove();
}
// minimize the window, calls a nativeWindow class that tells the OS to minimize the active window
// the great thing about AS3 is that designers don't have to care how nativeWindow works...
// I just know that is does work.
minimize_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, minimize_CLICK);
function minimize_CLICK(e:MouseEvent):void {
stage.nativeWindow.minimize();
}
// close the window, code associated with a close button with an instance name of close_mc
// this just shuts the window and stops the app from running
close_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,closeButton_CLICK);
function closeButton_CLICK(e:MouseEvent):void {
stage.nativeWindow.close();
}
Dreamweaver FTP Frustrations
Here at Myjive we utilize and for the most part enjoy Adobe’s Creative Suite. We have used the various versions for years. In fact, I originally started with Dreamweaver 3 back in the day.
Dreamweaver is great for coding, visualization and design previews. But what continues to frustrate us is the FTP functionality of the program. We are currently using CS3, but this goes for past versions as well.
We are often plagued by “timeouts” and “unable to connect” errors. It doesn’t matter the location, IP or operating system of the server we’re connecting to. I’ve even had problems setting file permissions. We’ve tried all the tips, increasing the timeout to 40+ seconds, using Passive FTP, etc. But the program continues to have issues.
At some points we are forced to use Filezilla or Fetch – and they have no problems. Each new version of Dreamweaver we keep hoping Adobe will make the effort to improve the FTP functionality. Maybe next time… CS4 anyone?
