I recently had an opportunity to spend a couple of weeks working on high-resolution mobile application mockups using ActionScript 3.0, the most recent variant of the Flash language. I did a bit of follow-up research afterwards to learn more.
This new version of the language is very like Javascript in some ways and very like Java in others. If you're prototyping sloppy code you don't need to type (as in "is a type of ") anything. You can also go in a more formal direction and create nested libraries of custom objects that know about each other. I found it a fast language to work in, and not too difficult to debug. My little mockups were well-received. The first mockup was of the app as it will probably ship, the second, of the app 1 rev out. After working with this a bit, I didn't like it. Fire the designer (oops, that's me). So I did a third mockup of how I thought it ought to really-no-I-mean-it-this-time work. I changed the way some pieces worked, removed a couple of controls, and used buttons on the device instead of on the screen. Seemed better. Still under discussion. This all happened in a couple of weeks. Pretty handy tool. Adobe is heading in a very interesting direction with their Flash / Flex / Apollo projects. They have a universally-distributed front-end development tool with a well-defined and furbished development language. The Flex and Apollo parts are more development-centric, and are aimed at creating rich desktop applications in Flash. The idea seems to be, if Flash is such an agreeable environment to create simple web UIs with, why not use it to create desktop applications? I believe that Microsoft has a similar project going called Silverlight. Adobe or MS folks who are better informed than I please do chip in here. Practically, on the web now, Flash is used a lot for little postage stamp ad movies, for moving banners of all kinds, for special font replacements, to create interactive games, and to act as a secured front end to a back end library of media, like music or movies or photographs. Flash movies seem also to be the hobby outlet of about 50,000 film school grads. I hope this is helpful and isn't too wordy, Michael Micheletti On 10/22/07, Lorelei Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > So, why is flash so awesome? What does it do that > nothing else does better? > > How can we use Flash to improve an interface or an > experience? What makes it better than, say, Ajax or > DHTML for interactivity? > > What is Flash particularly good at as a development > platform? > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
