There is no merging the two because they are based on different technologies at different times. Hopefully this makes sense. HTML is a specification developed by the W3C over the last 10+ years (check w3c.org for official specs check http://www.w3schools.com/ for info on how to use a bunch of different web technologies). This specification is not an implementation in itself, that is there is no right way to implement the specification only ones that comply with it's rules versus those that don't but it doesn't specify exact details of what low level steps result in compliance only the high level goals of a compliant browser/code. HTML and Javascript alike are interpreted by your browser and in the case of javascript it was a netscape language that used a plugin for interpretation and execution during run-time, allowing it to do more dynamic things than HTML by itself.
Flash is entirely it's own beast, originally created by Macromedia back in the day along with a program called Director, Flash was geared towards the ultra low bandwidth internet (28.8 kbps modems, I know to the real old school guys I sound like an ass right now), so the idea was store all your assets in a library and instead of sending individual frames of a movie with every color for every pixel just send along images and move them around to get your animation going... it was pretty crappy but was way better than anything out at the time. Director was geared towards DVD creation or more "production" oriented things where you'd have bigger assets than what's used on the web, essentially as far as I can tell Flash has since fulfilled this role and remains a very lightweight animator (amongst handling all sorts of data streams now). Therefore the Javascript+HTML is one path of getting google maps working, it is great if your goal is to avoid Flash (for example you expect a large apple user base to whom Flash content will not be served due to squabbles between Apple and Adobe) I personally find Javascript development to be very frustrating though because of having to modify so many parts of the code to make them work with supposedly compliant browsers, this seemingly gets better over time but there's always a divergent one amongst the bunch (Internet Explorer, generally, but I do believe variety is good and DHTML was a fair attempt before Silverlight... also not so great but a fair attempt, and can't knock it for having multi-threading or GPU support on Windows but not very friendly for those who don't want to drink the kool-aid, ie linux users). On the javascript side of things you have google earth which there is no API for on the Flash side, so if you're interested in that there's a good reason to jump ship, otherwise I personally find I can do much more, much more quickly in Flex, it's all a matter of preference though and what technology you want to bank on investing your time in learning. Good luck, Shaun -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API For Flash" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api-for-flash?hl=en.
