For someone like myself that hates working with flash but likes JavaScript i'm glad things like this are being made.
This is one of the ares which will really pay off from the new wave of browsers competing to create the best JavaScript engine.
This is one of the ares which will really pay off from the new wave of browsers competing to create the best JavaScript engine.
I believe that Youtube's player is the only good thing ever created using flash. Everything else is just cheesy all-flash websites and apps which break basic functionality of the browser.
1) I have to use their lame tool
2) Flash UI feels super cheesy (imagine gmail in flash)
3) The workflow is very tedious
1) I've been using Vim for years to produce SWFs. I hate their tool too - that's why I don't use it. You can use any text editor you want.
2) The 'Flash UI' is very skinnable (not as skinnable in Flex3 as in the upcoming Flex4, see: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/27/everything-there... )
3) I'm not sure what you mean by tedious. You might be referring to the Flash editor's use of the timeline. If that's the case then you'll want to look into the Flex SDK I mentioned. I haven't used a timeline for over 5 years.
This makes no sense at all to me. Are you coding Flex? How do you design the interfaces for your apps? Pardon my ignorance.
I very rarely open up the IDE, usually it's to rename an asset which the designer had forgot or incorrectly named.
2) Your opinion. Assuming it was done well, a Flash/Flex based mail client could rock. As an added bonus, done right, it could also be a client side mail client (using AIR).
Also, if you're using Flex controls, reskinning isn't that hard.
3) Again, your opinion. Without knowing what you mean, I can only assume you mean the whole Flash Authoring Tool (damn Adobe for overloading Flash to mean the IDE, the VM, the framework, and the technology)/time line thing, you don't need to use it. There are loads of options. See #1, above.
The flash poses so many threats that I don't even know where to begin: it is closed, i.e. not controlled by the community, is binary and not text-based, puts new hardware platform manufacturers at Adobe's mercy, it violates nearly all common software "behavioral standards" on all platforms it attempts to run, i.e. configuration/control of basic things like scrolling, zooming, printing, font rendering, security, keyboard handling, etc. Flash ignores ALL settings in your browser with an exception of proxy configuration, just like their PDF plug-in.
Platform control is dangerous: we just beginning to escape from Microsoft hell, and the last thing I want is to depend on Adobe: imagine starting a new portable hardware platform business: you'll have to beg Adobe to release their fucking plugin for your new awesome phone, and hope it won't drain your battery in an hour, or annoy your users with "Time to Upgrade!" popups.
I am surprised that people from Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Microsoft STILL haven't gotten together and pushed out an emergency release of their browsers with an awesome built-in support for <video> and <audio> tags.
I, however, am certain that Flash will disappear. Eventually browsers will become good enough, that whatever else Adobe will come up with won't be enough to convince developers to steer away from HTML. Besides, Adobe doesn't have any engineering muscle, I'm sorry if this sounds too personal, but they just can't code and ultimately they don't stand a chance competing with Mozilla/WebKit or Microsoft's Silverlight - they're in another league.
I don't know why but reading this made me laugh out loud.
(2)'Cheesyness' depends a lot on how you implement fonts and how how much of a professional designer you are. Its is a function of your imagination and professionalism. See kontain.com
(3) Just like any other language, workflow tediousness depends on the kind of IDE you use. If you are of the developer kind and tries to use Flash IDE's timeline based designer workflow, it will be a disastrous experience.
Having said that , i wish Adobe open-sourced the Player.
Why would you want that? That’s crazy. Flash should be used as a last ressort. Video. Games. That sort of stuff. Use friggin’ html for the rest and do not confuse your users.
Using this site as an example of "professionalism" is just wrong.
Using generic flash frameworks and components definitely increase the file size as they usually come with a lot of functionality (thus code) and legacy code that you might never really use.So if time allows,building your own components is highly recommended to keep file sizes low.
It is possible to build real fast sites with Flash. As an example, if a page contains 20 small thumbnail images (means 20 separate http calls in an html environment), it is possible to load a single zip file with all 20 thumbs into flash and unzip and render it at runtime.Thus reducing the number of http calls from 20 to 1.
As lowdown commented above, the performance of a Flash app depends on how the developer approaches the problem.
As many other commenters pointed out, a 100% Flash based environment is definitely not a great choice for a social network site like Kontain. But the site's neat design and rendering is a great example to show that Flash sites neednt always be cheesy or flashy or flexy.
I'm running flash player 10 on Ubuntu BTW. You can get it here http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/