Ten Reasons For Flash

Ten Reasons to use the Flash Platform Brian Deitte

1. Great Tools
Built-in profiler, debugger, library creator, documentation tool
Flash Builder 4: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/
Don’t like Flash Builder? Try Intellij or FDT
Flex PMD: http:// opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexpmd/FlexPMD
Flex Formatter: http:// sourceforge.net/projects/flexformatter /
SourceMate: http:// www.elementriver.com/sourcemate /

2. Easy to Make Things Move
The tools, many examples, and rich APIs make animation easy. GPU acceleration will make this even faster
Excellent for charts, transitions, and eye candy

3. Easy to Style
Design through CSS here: http://examples.adobe.com/flex3/consulting/styleexplorer/Flex3StyleExplorer.html
Creating complicated themes and skins in Flex 3? Painful. But that’s where Gumbo and Catalyst come in: http:// labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst /

4. It’s Open!
It’s not W3C open, but there have been dramatic changes in the last few years.
Open Screen Project allows you to write your own player, use an API for porting players, and put the player on any device for free
Specifications published for SWF, AVM, AMF, etc
Mozilla hosts Tamarin (and uses parts in Firefox 3.5), a just-in-time compiler, VM, and garbage collector
Flex SDK, including compiler for Flex/ActionScript, is open source

5. Video Support
No conflicting codecs, all browsers support it, most mobile phones will support it, ads are almost all flash, hardware acceleration
Not discounting the rising importance of HTML5 Video, which will be used for iHardware, by those who dislike Flash, and in more and more places when there’s consistent browser support

6. Mobile Support
Soon possible to make applications for desktop browsers, mobile, and other devices
iHardware possible but limited
APIs for touch screen and accelerometer that allow for full mobile use
GPU acceleration, memory swapping, and other player features specific for mobile
Soon available to all on Palm Pre, Android devices, and many others in the Open Screen Project

7. Consistent Performance with Complicated Code
AVM2 on 98% of desktop browsers (although iHardware will lower this number across all browsers)
Tamarin, as more gets used in Firefox, means it will keep pace with JavaScript
JavaScript in IE6/IE7 is much slower and still 23% of the market ( http://jacksondunstan.com/articles/534 and http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp )

8. Rich APIs
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/
Many that can’t be found in JavaScript: binary sockets, binary data (aka AMF), sound, custom printing, DRM, and more I’m forgetting

9. Components Components Components
Large number built into the Flex framework: http://examples.adobe.com/flex3/componentexplorer/explorer.html
MXML and AS classes set up to easily create component libraries
Brightcove’s extensive component set for manager apps is one example of this
Tour de Flex: http:// www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex/web /

10. Minimal Testing Combinations
Very few differences in the player between browsers/devices/versions
Makes QA happy, which means they send less bugs to me, which makes me happy

What’s Next?
“ I don’t expect to see full implementation of HTML5 across all the major browsers until the end of 2011 at least,” says Philippe Le Hegaret, interaction domain leader for the Worldwide Web Consortium http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/A_Brave_New_Web_Will_Be_Here_Soon__But_Browsers_Must_Improve
“ Flash will innovate or die. I'm betting on innovation.” http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/sympathy_for_the_devil.html
The only certain change is change. http://www.blackcj.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Web_development_timeline.png

http://www.deitte.com	979
http://blog.thebadtiming.com	127
http://deitte.com	24
http://www.slideshare.net	9
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	6
http://thebadtiming.posterous.com	6
http://xianguo.com	1
http://www.brijj.com	1
http://cpjohnw.rblc.com	1
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	1

Ten Reasons For Flash

by Brian Deitte on Feb 09, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

10 Embeds 1,155

Statistics

Ten Reasons For Flash — Presentation Transcript