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Tonight’s Speaker
—Bernard Meisler, Technology
Strategist
— Flash Game Developer, AddictingGames.com
— Previously Technology Strategist for SF
Interactive, the in-house online branch of
Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners in Sausalito.
— Lead development on microsites for Mini,
Epson and Sun.

— Topic: Adobe Flash: What’s Happening Now

— Standard for banner ads, Facebook apps,
Microsites, avatar-based virtual worlds,
online streaming video, and gaming.
copyright 2009 Bernard Differences between Flash CS4, FlashBuilder,
—Meisler 2
 The State of Flash
Presented by Bernard Meisler

bmeisler@evili.com

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 Who Am I?
— “Tell me about yourself” – you don’t want to
know!
— I’m a Flash game developer at Addicting
Games
— I teach Flash and UX at the Art Institute

— Strategic and Technical consultant

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 Origin of Flash
— Began back in 1996 with FutureSplash Animator – remember the first time
you saw those ever-expanding circles over a 56kbps modem

— SkipIntro.com

— Bought by Macromedia in 1996 – Flash 1

— Uses vectors instead of bitmaps (like animated GIFs) – very small file
downloads, tho Flash is a CPU hog

— I had a hard time adapting to Flash – started out in Director – much more
powerful at the time

— Then moved to Java/PHP

— Found a home with advent of OOP in Flash 7 (MX2004) – Note difference in

ACTUAL names (also reflected by plug-in version) and crazy marketing
names

— Acquired by Adobe in 2006 – first release was Flash 9 (Adobe Flash CS3)

—
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 The Adobe Flash
Platform
— Flash Player (and plug-in)

— Flash Professional CS4

— Flex Framework

— Flex Builder 3/Flash Builder 4

— Adobe AIR

— Flash Media Server/Flash Media Encoder

— Flash Lite

— Flash Catalyst

— Bad Marketing has confused the issue: MX, Flex Builder vs. Flash
Builder, etc.

—
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 Flash Sucks
— Some say Flash is like the Yankees…

— Flash-only web sites DO suck

— SEO problematic (tho SWFObject helps)
— Browser buttons problematic
— Bookmarking problematic

— Security is imperfect – especially if you use a

cross-domain file with an *! Don’t use Flash
for a banking site, eg.
— Skip intro – if you have a skip intro button, why
have the intro at all? Useless waste of time
eye candy
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 Flash Sucks (cont)
— The Flash IDE is lousy
— Terrible for programming
— Solution: use FlashBuilder or FlashDevelop
— 2nd rate version of Illustrator – lame drawing
tools
— Solution: use Illustrator – FINALLY play well
together!

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 Flash Sucks (cont)
— Text renders poorly
— Not ideal for text-heavy sites
— Yet, Scribd (aka iPaper) is a Flash-based
technology!

— Coming soon: Text Layout Framework

— Flowing text across multiple columns and
linked containers, and around inline images
— Rich typographical controls, including kerning,
ligatures, and discretionary hyphen

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 Flash Sucks (c0nt)
— Good flash developers/programmers are hard
to find
— Many started out as graphic designers, so they
write spaghetti code (less robust than
spaghetti - capellini?)
— Other side of the coin: with intro of Flex, many
Java programmers are trying Flash – and are
stymied because the “View” is so paramount
to producing good Flash Apps
— Flash programming based on a strange item
called a “MovieClip” - DEMO
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 Alternatives
— Install a Flash blocker: Safari:
http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

— Silverlight – unproven/rough around the edges/non-

standard

— AJAX – can be difficult to code – touch x-

platform/browsers

— Java Applets - fail

— JavaFX – we’ll see

— HTML5 – we’ll see

— Animated GIFs! Dancing Mortgage Men! (Sign of a

housing bubble?)
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 Best Uses of Flash
— Banner Ads – Self-contained games, videos,
Microsites in a banner
— Microsites, Facebook apps – Toyota Tundra Ad,
Get the Glass, Michelin Man
— Virtual Worlds – Club Penguin, WebKinz

— Gaming – AddictingGames, Nick, Cartoon

Network, etc.
— Video – YouTube, Hulu, etc.

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 So What IS Flash,
anyway?
— The IDE known as Flash Professional (aka CS4 Flash
10; earlier versions include Flash CS3, Flash
MX2004, MX2000, etc) , eg, “Open up Flash…”
(now have Flash Builder too)
— SWFs - A file embedded in your browser, aka a Flash
movie – what the end user sees/interacts with,
eg, “that banner ad is Flash”
— The Flash Player – the executable for viewing Flash
movies – available as a plug-in for browsers
(currently version 10) – not always the same
version as the IDE!
— Flash Lite – lightweight version of Flash Player for
mobile
— The ActionScript programming language, eg, “Hey,
can Meisler
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 The Flash IDE(s)
— Currently CS4, aka version 10. Even numbered
releases tend to focus on
Graphics/animation, while odd numbers
focus on ActionScript.
— Inverse Kinematics – DEMO Edwards10
— Full-blown Motion Editor – DEMO PalinHead
— Integrates very well with Illustrator (at last!),
PhotoShop and AfterEffects(!) – DEMO
Import Edwards.psd

— CS3 introduced AS 3, CS5 will introduce:

— iPhone porting (More later!)
— Improved text handling
— Better
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integration with Flash Builder 14
 Alternative IDEs
— Flex Builder 3 (soon to be known as Flash
Builder 4) – built on Eclipse, extremely
robust, can create Flex, AIR and PO Flash
movies
— Flash Develop – open source – many others
— FDT – a commercial plug-in for Eclipse
— All of these are MUCH better for
programming than the standard Flash
IDE – eg, include much better
debuggers, refactoring, code completion,
etc

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 Types of Flash movies
— The standard SWF – created in Flash CS4, or
output from Flash Builder 4 – more on these
later
— FLVs – the standard video format of YouTube,
Hulu, etc
— Flex movies – also swfs, on steroids – Flex was
invented to create enterprise-level Flash
sites
— AIR applications – essentially SWF in a desktop
wrapper (SHOW Desktube, NYTimes reader)
— Flash Lite movies– for mobile
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 Flex
— Created to take advantage of creating enterprise-
level Flash-only sites - RIAs – all the rage in 2001

— Make Flex movies (swfs) with:

— Flex Builder (standalone or Eclipse plug-in) OR
— Flex SDK – free, open source, command line
compiler

— First introduction of AS3 and the Flash 9 plug-in – 1

year before CS3

— Uses MXML language - Essentially AS shorthand –

DEMO

— Flex is essentially an API that extends traditional

Flash
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Meisler 17
 Flex (cont)
— Competes (?) with MS Blend and the XAML language
— Has never really taken off – Flash has inherent security
problems, making it sub-optimal for banking or
brokerage sites, etc
— RPC calls are broken – trouble with REST, sending
headers
— Text is sub-optimal

— Blackberry uses it – only major site I could find…

— Yahoo maps
— Financial Charts (SHOW)
— Prototyping
— Quick outline of a website, with hard-coded combo
boxes
— Quick version of an application to be re-written in JAVA
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 Flex 4
— Currently in Beta 2 release (Flash Builder 4
Beta 2)
— new skinning and component architecture,
named Spark
— new and improved animation engine, which
serves as the foundation for improved effects
and transitions
— Update to MXML (MXML 2009) – better support
for states
— New text engine, and the associated Text
Layout Framework
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 AIR
— Desktop RIAs
— Preserve state
— Interact with user’s machine, save, etc

— Downsides:
— Must install AIR player (1 time – updates – large file)
— “Cancer Warning” when you install an AIR app
— As with all Flash-based stuff – text and printing are lame

— Competes (?) with SilverLight

— AIR Marketplace – not quite the hit that the iPhone app store is…

— Over 200 million installs since its release last year.

— Adobe AIR 2, available in beta later this year, promises improvements to

networking, etc

— TweetDeck, DeskTube, NYTimes Reader - DEMO

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 The Flash plug-in
— The most ubiquitous software on the planet –
distributed automatically with IE, Firefox, Safari,
etc, on Windows, Mac, Linux platforms
— Small install size, quick download, fast initialization
— Write once, don't worry about platform/browser
combos. Unfortunately, not entirely true - many
develop on PCs, then need to render the movies
on Macs with proper fonts, etc.
— This is what does not – and probably never will – run
on the iPhone
— Currently version 10 – the ACTUAL version of Flash,
eg CS4 is really Flash 10 w/o dumb marketing
name
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 ActionScript
— “Can you program in Flash?”
— AS1 – August, 2000 - based on ECMA script, uses
dot syntax, Flash 5 – previously used a rough
scripting system with Scenes, tellTarget, etc
— AS2 – introduced in Flash 7, 2003 - enabled OOP,
using .as files as classes. Allowed for APIs:
— Tween Engines – DEMO – splash buttons
— Flickr
— Facebook
— Yahoo Maps
— Twitter, etc
— PaperVision – DEMO – Blockrain

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 ActionScript 3
— AS3 – introduced in Flex 2 (June 2006)/Flash CS3
(April 2007) – much more Java-Like. Biggest
improvements:
— DisplayList
— Event Handling
— E4x – for importing/parsing of XML
— AS3 is 10x faster than AS2!!!

— Many had difficulty (still) making the transition from

AS2 to AS3

— DEMO - ball following mouse

— Put in Class
— Create in FlexBuilder
— Create
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 Video
— Remember Real Player? Postage-stamp size, choppy
movies?

— FLV format changed everything – Sorenson Spark,

then in Flash 8, On2 VP6. Runs on the Flash plug-
in.

— Flash Media Encoder – 3rd party alternatives, various

codecs

— Flash Media Streamer - streaming Video – much

better performance than progressive video (eg
YouTube)

— HD quality – H.264 codec

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— DEMO Hulu-like player
 Flash Lite
— A “smaller” version of Flash for mobile phones.
Currently does NOT support AS3
— Big in Japan (like Spinal Tap, Anvil, etc) – installed
on over 1 Billion devices!
— Flash Lite 3 – along with the Flash 10.1 plug-in
released next year will give full Flash support to
Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, WebOS and
Windows Mobile
— full FLV video support including H.264 On2 VP6 and
Sorenson
— Delivery of high-definition video content and rich
applications to Internet‐connected TVs and TV‐
connected consumer electronic devices in the
digital living room
— Optimized
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devices
 Flash Catalyst
— Still in Beta – way Beta

— Interaction design tool for rapidly creating expressive

interfaces and interactive content without writing
code.

— Transform artwork created in Photoshop, Illustrator, and

Fireworks into interactive designs.

— Rapidly create interactive prototypes with the ability to

leverage them in the final product

— Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for

distribution

— Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional

user experience then provide the project file to
developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality
and integrate
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 Flash on the iPhone
— Why won’t Apple let this happen?
— Jobs claims it’s cause Flash is a CPU hog – which it
is
— Other possible reasons:
— Apple is betting on a different standard (namely
HTML 5)
— iPhone's conflicting OS won't allow Flash
compatibility
— Potential security problems
— Apple simply doesn't want Flash on the
iPhone – bad blood? OR
— Apple wants their Walled Garden...allowing Flash
would allow users to bypass the iphone app
store!
— Unfortunate – still makes the web experience on
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iPhone suboptimal – window of opportunity for
 Flash on the iPhone 2
— Flash CS5, coming out in Beta over the next few months,
will be able to PORT projects coded in AS3 to naitive
app .ipa format
— You can then upload these for approval to the iPhone app
store, as a regular iPhone app
— Chroma Circuit, FickleBlox, etc, available now – built in
Flash!
— To repeat, this is NOT Flash on the iPhone – no Flash in
browser!
— No Runtime app (plug-in), no JIT – fast and responsive
apps
— Port existing apps, or take advantage of iPhone features
eg accelerometer
— Will be a mad rush of iPhone apps as soon as this
happens,
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developers (approx 1 MM), for example, than
 Some Cool Sites
— Expanding Banner Ad:
— BSSP Mini Banner Ad

— Microsites:
— Get The Glass
— Michelin Forward

— Games:
— AddictingGames
— Nickelodeon Games
— Cartoon Network Games

— Virtual Worlds
— Club Penguin
— WebKinz

— Art
— Erik Natzke Flash paintings
— Jonathan Harris – Sputnik Project

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 To Sum Up
— Flash is and will probably remain the standard
platform for interactive multimedia
development
— Wasn’t so sure 2-3 years ago

— Adobe is hardly standing still. Coming soon:

— Provided a huge shot in the arm – I was afraid
Flash might go the way of Director
— Flash Builder 4 and the Flex 4 Framework
— Flash Catalyst
— Flash Lite 3 – HD video on mobile devices
— Flash CS5 – iPhone porting, better integration
with Flash Builder
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 More Info
— Product support and info:
Adobe Developer Support
— Upcoming Stuff: Adobe Labs

— Open Source Flash – osflash.org

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