How to learn Flash | Hacker News Reader

How to learn Flash

1 pointcoliveira5 comments

During the last few years I have seen more and more web sites that use Flash not just for media, but also for UI interaction -- in the same way one would use Cocoa or Win32. It looks like Flash is becoming the "low level" API for web apps, that is, whenever something is not available as DHTML/Javascript, one uses Flash to achieve it.

Considering this, I am thinking that learning Flash is really necessary. Do you have any good resources to do this (books or web sites)? Also, is it possible to develop Flash sites with open source tools?

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If you are just starting with Flash, goto http://flash.tutsplus.com/ and start doing the tutorials with the examples and once you are fimilliar with the environment.

Visit http://www.gotoandlearn.com/ for a very good set of video tutorials and examples. Gotoandlearn is IMO one of the best starting points to dive into flash.

After this you have Google :)

Open source tool: FlashDevelop.org (Windows only but runs on Parallels/Mac)

For someone just starting out, I would recommend checking out haXe.[1] It's certainly not a traditional Flash development environment, but it offers some, to my knowledge, unique advantages in the space particularly in terms of offering multiple output targets. And it's got plenty of open source tools to help you along.

However, first I would ask myself "If I can't accomplish my goals in DHTML and Javascript, is the web the proper place to deploy my application?" I'm pretty sure this is an unpopular view in these parts, but it may be worth considering.

[1] http://haxe.org/

The number of things you can't do with HTML and Javascript is getting smaller every day. I see no need at all for flash in the long term. The only time I like flash is flash video players, but those will be replaceable in the future as well.

But it looks like that there is always something else that is possible in FLASH but not yet in HTML+javascript. My view is that it works like a "lower level API" for web apps, where you can circumvent the limitations of the current generation of standards.

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