[Sigia-l] SUMMARY: Flash-based applications

[David Heller]

I had two request in my post regarding Flash-based applications:
1. examples of complex applications
2. an e-mail list for flash-app developers

I got answers to both, but to be honest, they aren't quite what I need,
as they aren't complex enough in scale or scope or quite honestly
professionalism. I'm working at an Enterprise level and my needs far
surpass what has been done thus far, but here are the responses I got.

Examples:
E-mail: www.toast.com; www.postio.com (beta)
Others: www.laszlosystems.com (seems to be more of a development
environment to make up for Flash MX's shortfalls)
www.wanadu.com (conferencing system)
http://smallblueprinter.com/ver5.html (neat little design app)

That's about it:

The designer at Postio, had these interesting comments worth presenting
here:
Pros:

- Abandoning the underlying document metaphor inherent in HTML Web
design.  Flash lets you create real session states within a client-side
runtime environment (i.e., the Flash player)

- Pre-packaged UI components provide useful building blocks for cobbling
together screen-level interface elements (a la Visual Basic).

- Performance.  Minimal latency, much better use of network/server
resources.

- Bells & whistles.  Skip intro movies aside, Flash Communications
Server has all kinds of nifty real-time collaboration and rich media
features like A/V, chat, and collaborative presentation tools.

Cons:

- First, there's the small matter of programming in Flash.  Developing
application logic in Flash requires object-oriented programming with
ActionScript.  This is not scripting, it's programming.

- From a UI designer's perspective, Flash's "stage" metaphor just
doesn't make sense in the context of OO application development; in our
case, our entire application runs within a single frame - and most of
our code was actually authored outside of Flash itself (in Dreamweaver,
of all things, because it has a better text editor).

- Flash is still a relatively immature and nuanced environment, with
lots of weird kinks - suitable for "craft programming" style projects
with small teams willing to invest time in trial and error, not well
suited for the "brute force" programming style of large scale app dev
projects.

- Flash is an ok but not great tool for UI prototyping; on the front
end, it is still more of an animator's tool.

If anyone out there is interested in seeing out what our application
actually looks like, feel free to request a beta account by sending a
note to beta at postio.com.
regards,
alex
---------------
alex wright
alex at agwright.com | www.agwright.com

----

Lists, blogs, or other such resources:
John Dowdell page at Macromedia:
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/jd001.html

Flashcoders:
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi/1

Chris McGregor's article:
http://www.flazoom.com/news/running1_11202002.shtml

Dnaiel Dura's Blog:
http://www.danieldura.com/

Mike Chamber's Blog:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0106797/

Also, I got a response from someone directly from Macromedia, Roger
Murff, who sent me the following that I'm posting on my own website as a
direct link only: http://www.htmhell.com/selling_RIA.zip. I'm a little
ahead of where this is at, and more than anything I need examples, so it
doesn't address my real needs, but might help yours.

That's about all I got of any significance at all. I do think that Flash
is onto something, but they are thinking too small in their current
marketing and development strategy. PetMarket (their blow to .Net) is
all well and good, but still is just a web site and not really a
web-application. I want something that REALLY has true intelligence and
customization on the clientside. Something that can take a desktop
application in the enterprise space and completely replace it (or come
darn close), while at the same time leveraging all that HTML gives us in
terms of deployment and easy of development.

Just here looking for a miracle.
-- dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
http://www.documentum.com/
AIM: bolinhanyc  //  Yahoo: dave_ux  //  MSN: hippiefunk at hotmail.com
 
--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."