Dear Final Debug: What’s Macromedia Flash?-Dora Marcus, Chicago.
Final Debug Responds: Dora, there are many ways to construct small animations for distribution over the Web. Animated GIFs are the simplest while Java applets and Shockwave presentations are also common but more complex to construct.
Now Macromedia, the company that is pushing Director and Shockwave, is pushing Flash, a program for creating animations that can be viewed via a plug-in. Right now it’s being used mostly for ads.
If you’d like to experiment with Flash on the client side, the Flash plug-in is available free from the Macromedia Web site. If you’d like to try authoring with Flash, Macromedia offers a 30-day trial version of the program. Those familiar with Macromedia’s flagship multimedia authoring system, Director, will recognize much of the program’s interface. Even though it’s only a trial version, the program comes with a good tutorial and a handful of sample programs that you can tear apart and customize. There’s no server component to Flash-all you have to do is add a new Mime type to your list of supported server files.
Flash animations can include synchronized sounds in WAV and AIFF formats and you can link sounds to animations. If you use FreeHand to create your graphics, Flash can import them with no translation. The full $299 program includes much clip media: 200M bytes of royalty-free clip animations, graphics, and sounds. Flash runs on Windows (95 and NT) and Macintosh (68K and PPC) platforms.
Before you invest time in creating Flash animations, though, consider your audience and whether you can expect them to invest time in locating, downloading, and installing the Flash plug-in. Animated GIFs and Java applets can be viewed via all current browsers without any extra programs. Make sure you’re offering functionality available only via Flash before you deploy it over other means.
We’re getting cranky
This is your last chance. The current contest will continue for yet another week, as we have received a grand total of zero correct answers. The question, again, from Terry Bronard of Milwaukee: How do you present a JavaScript for browsers that can read the 1.1 version and earlier versions without any browsers losing any information?
The first five people who submit a correct answer will win an Internet programming book from O’Reilly and Associates. If we don’t get any correct answers, we’re going to give the books to our friends and start a new contest next week.
