As anyone who has read Slashdot knows, mentioning Flash is a good way to get people angry. Among the ultra-devout tech crowd, Flash has one of the worst stigmas imaginable. When I read comments on Slashdot, and even on Digg, I want to scream at the closed-mindedness. These people slammed the doors shut years ago, and they would like Flash to die a horrible death and disappear.
It’s funny really. There’s nothing inherently bad about the Flash platform. It offers a pretty decent language (which is getting even better with AS3), scalable vector graphics, and it’s on almost every computer out there. Yet like Java, Flash gained a reputation early on, and it’s tough to make people take a fresh look at it. Early implementations of Java offered poor performance, but now, those issues have virtually disappeared. Even today, many still argue that Java is horribly slow when many studies have shown that it’s nearly comparable to native C code. Likewise, Flash gained a reputation for bringing us obnoxious advertisements that can ruin the web browsing experience. In the same vein as popup-blockers, tools exist to block Flash content.
However, Flash is branching out into many new realms that take it well beyond web advertisement. The upcoming Flex Builder 2 will be an amazing tool to build Rich Internet Applications. Some call it an AJAX killer, many admit that it’s a strong potential competitor, and yet I’m seeing many techies completely ignoring it because it’s based on Flash. Honestly, it’s frustrating. Flash, like any technology, can be used for good or bad. I’ll admit, I hate most Flash ads with a passion as much as the next guy, but as a developer, I’ve chosen to make Flash a part of my daily life.
Share your thoughts. What do you think would help the most to change a few minds among the tech crowd? I know there are many folks out there who will never look at Flash with respect, but I’d say there are just as many that only need a fresh look to see what Flash has to offer.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
I recently downloaded the Opera Web Browser so that I could use it for testing some pages I’m working on. Did you know it’s totally ad-free now (and doesn’t cost a penny)? Me either. Anyway, as I was playing around with its weird interface, I discovered “Small Screen” mode in the View menu. Suddenly, the site I was viewing squished to about 300 pixels wide, and a bunch of styling information was lost. “Odd,” I thought to myself. Then I quickly realized that I was looking at the page as someone with a mobile device might see it.
While I don’t often target mobile audiences, I can instantly understand the usefulness of this feature. For some quick testing during development, Small Screen mode would help a lot because you won’t necessarily have to reload a page in a phone’s browser every time you make a change. Imagine if you had some sort of page saved locally for an application on the phone. You’d have to transfer your files every time you want to test them, and I don’t doubt that would become a hassle.
That’s not the main reason I’m excited about it, though. I intend to test every website I build from now with this feature. Why? Because it gives me an example of how a particular site will react when it should be failing gracefully. For every bell and whistle I include, I try my best to provide an alternative, and this will do wonders to help me test that it’s all working.
Think that’s cool? You might also be interested in the Web Developer Extension for Firefox, which provides all sorts of interesting (and more advanced) options for viewing a page.
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
Many wisely chose to wait before putting Flash 8 content on the web. For a business, blocking a large portion of your customer base is a bad idea. As I’m sure you’ve read, Adobe recently released their first Flash Player 8 version penetration data. Now, 8-ball sits on about 50% of machines out there. The question on my mind is, are we at a point where a company could reasonably take advantage of new features of Flash 8?
Assuming that it takes a bit of time to develop the content, would it be safe to assume that penetration would be strong enough by the time a project is ready to deploy? Obviously, different projects have different target audience requirements, so don’t worry too much about the details. One thing to consider is that web advertisers are starting to switch to Flash 8 content. People may not like ads all the much, but if the ads don’t look right because Flash Player 7 doesn’t render them correctly, many will upgrade quicker (as odd as that sounds). Likewise, I’m sure Flash Player is still sending out the new upgrade notifications. Discuss.
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
After previously reading Web Standards Solutions and adoring it, I’ve been keen to read another book published by Friends of ED. All the buzz about AJAX and the comeback of JavaScript made me pick up DOM Scripting
by Jeremy Keith. Though not quite the same calibre as the previous book, Friends of ED delivers an informative book that I expect to continue to use in the future.
Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
