I don’t want to bore you guys to tears, but Apple’s latest move to not support Flash (and thus 99% of web video) on the iPad is very disturbing.
The facts are simple:
Millions of web pages with Flash content will break on iPhones and iPads.
Like it or not Flash is ubiquitous.
Flash is controlled by Adobe but free to anyone to write code against.
Apple is doing this to try and control content distribution – IMHO.
HTML 5’s video support is years away from being an option to use on commercial web sites.
Since Flash is not supported by the iPad or the iPhone and since the vast majority of web surfers don’t have HTML 5, if we want to deliver video on the Web, we have to support two methods of delivery.
… Just like it was during the 1990’s browser wars, where we had to write code for IE and code for Netscape. Thanks Apple for bringing back the good old days! Jerks.
Apple has to stop being a bunch of iJerks and support Flash.
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do have an eye on things OUTSIDE the web design world … I pay attention to the stock market. Anyway, according to analysts who follow Adobe for investment purposes (Adobe is a large publicly traded company) Adobe should be releasing the CS5 suite of products by second quarter 2010.
… For non stock nerds, that means about mid 2010.
About the Adobe CS5 product line
Adobe (as is usual) will be releasing Photoshop CS5, Dreamweaver CS5, Flash CS5 and all the other CS5 updates at the same time. And from the previews I’ve seen, it’s going to be a big update in terms of the new capabilities CS5 brings to the table:
Flash will have 3D physics – totally nuts!
Photoshop has new crazy powerful cloning tools.
Dreamweaver will make it really easy to insert live data into web pages via AJAX.
… And I’m sure a heck of a lot more.
We will have many videos and articles covering these new products when they become available.
I am happy to announce our new Flash CS4 video tutorials are finally ready! It only took me a year to get Santo (the author of the video tutorial course) to finally do it – better late than never I suppose.
🙂
… I have to tell you, wrangling up good video authors is like herding cats!
Check out this sample video on using the Flash Bones tool:
I have read or watched a few of the items about flash, but still have not gotten an answer to a big question I have.
Here is the question with a little of my background first. I’m a career programmer/developer having gotten my degree in 1972, I have been in the business ever since.
… I have done some web development for the last 4 years. Not full time, just part time. I spend most of my time developing and maintaining MS Access databases, using VBA to control whatever needs to be controlled. With that background, I would like better control over the UI within a web page and have the feeling that Flash is the tool to use, but I have not been able to find a good summary of what is possible with flash, from an interactive standpoint.
The short answer to this question is: YES.
Flash has evolved from being an web animation program to a full fledged application framework. It includes built in drag-and-drop UI components, data binding along with a powerful object oriented language that looks like a cross between Java and Javascript: Flash Actionscript.
Since Flash is a vector based engine, it provides a pixel accurate layout capability … that means you can produce any type of layout / UI you could possibly want for your application.
Adobe has created a framework for Flash called Flex. This extends Flash and provides a very rich set of tools for building applications for both the Web and the desktop. To get you Flash based applications on the desktop, Adobe has created the Air framework.
Actionscript has gone through a few major changes that make it increasingly more powerful. But, on the downside, Actioscript has gotten a little more complex along the way.
The following video is designed to introduce you the major differences between Actionscript 1, 2 and 3.
Using Nested Animations in Movie Clips with Flash CS 3
By: Santo Romano
Tutorial level: Beginner to intermediate Flash users.
Flash version: Flash MX, MX2004, CS2, and CS3
When creating simple animations in Flash, the main timeline is often the best place to position your animations. However, when these animations are repetitive, the best way to handle them is to utilize the movie clip symbol in Flash. Unlike the other symbols you’ll find in the Flash environment, the Movie clip symbol is perfectly suited to handle this kind of work. Rather than creating multiple key frames over and over again, it is much better to nest the simple animation inside of a Movie Clip, and to let it handle most of the work.
Up until Flash CS3, I think Flash had been slowly drifting into becoming a niche market technology. But now, Flash CS3 (and the Flash player 9) puts Flash back into the game as an important player.
… This means that it now makes more sense for web developers to learn Flash technology. I go over some of the details below.
