Designers can now build entire websites with the latest version of this program
David Shapshak
For the past few years the rich multimedia nature of the Internet was due in great part to one program, Flash. It let website designers add, well, flash, to their designs. Instead of the static nature of HTML, the coding language used to build websites, Flash let you add animation in what can be likened to short, interactive movie clips.
It could be designed to “play” a sequence, and offer you clickable options to proceed. It was perfect for displaying products online and was a hit with advertisers. A particularly popular use was for “Flash mailers” snazzy clips that were small enough to be sent as an e-mail attachment. These animations were sent in a self-executing format and many circulated the Web endlessly.
Of course, as with all good things, it went too far. The “Flash-stravaganza”, as it was sometimes called, led to endless, sometimes pointless, animations that went on too long. This was animation for animation’s sake, as opposed to function.
This happened against the backdrop of unnecessarily graphics-heavy websites that took ages to download a troublesome difficulty for South Africans whose already slow dial-up connections had to be routed to the United States or the United Kingdom, where most of these sites were hosted.
Still, Flash has added another dimension to websites and their designs. The new version, known as Flash MX, launched in South Africa last month, promises to take all of this further. Instead of being a supplementary, add-on aspect of websites, it aims at being the main vehicle in which designers can do virtually anything, even build websites.
As online technology magazine ZDnet put it: “For most Web surfers, Flash is the blinking, animated frosting on Web sites. Now Macromedia [Flash’s maker] wants to make it the whole cake.”
The program has the ability to add video into the small Flash format as well as complicated forms Flash MX is aimed at simplifying both the user’s and the designer’s experience.
Having the media player built into Flash users can download the latest version free means you won’t need any extra players, such as RealNetwork’s RealPlayer or Microsoft’s Windows Media Player.
It’s hard to say how this will impact on this latest round of Internet software wars after the so-called browser wars, where Microsoft’s Internet Explorer trounced Netscape; and the still-raging instant messaging battle that pits AOL’s instant messenger against Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, as well as against ICQ and others.
Real currently dominates the media player market but Microsoft has bundled its version with its new operating system. Macromedia, has certainly turned up the heat.
If a video can be played through Flash and forms filled in, then it makes a pretty convincing argument for using Flash to design the entire site, say some analysts. One even called it “moving Flash from eye candy to an application platform”.
“Flash becomes the standard for the rich user interface,” says Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk, a director at local distributor The Core Group. “They dominate in that space, no other program does what they do.”
Companies that use Flash MX include Sony, IBM, sound-system maker Bose and several hotel groups. It was also used to make the website for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
An IBM demo of how to use its WebSphere software shows just how easy Flash makes this online explanation, while Sony Classical uses the new program for a rich, multimedia teaser about its artists.
With one quick downloaded Flash file you can hear some of the music, see a video and even order the CD online. The site has apparently seen a massive hike in unique users, who are buying more music online because of this feature, says Van Spaandonk.
Forms in Flash MX appear to be simpler and easier to use than most. Sites built with HTML often pop-up new windows, while Flash can do it all in one seamless page, by updating different layers, thus giving a smoother ride to the user.
So while the backend computer is processing the information it gives a much more pleasant user experience which is increasingly being focused on to prevent that swear word in the Internet industry: churn. Why hang around a site that keeps you waiting when you can go to a competitor’s?
But Macromedia is aiming even higher. With every software manufacturer turning its eyes to that burgeoning market cellphones it recently announced that Flash MX would also be available for Nokia 9200 Communicator series, one of the first in a range of powerful cell combos with personal digital assistants. It also has the ability to create media, using a nifty set of templates, for the Microsoft-powered Pocket PC handhelds.
These powerful devices are a major growth area and, coupled with cellphones, are a vehicle for many data services including ones that pinpoint the user’s position, known as location-based services that provide site-specific information, such as restaurants, sales in the area or directions.
Additionally, video and sound compressed into Flash will be a much smaller download, says the maker, and therefore make surfing media-rich sites much faster while also being mobile device friendly.
Indeed, the size of websites is still a key design factor for most countries, including South Africa, where bandwidth is still a major consideration. While broadband (much faster connection speeds with a dedicated digital line) has become quite common in the United States and increasingly so elsewhere in Europe, it is still a truism that users who have to wait too long to get into your site will just go somewhere else.
Additionally, because of the compression of the file images can be saved into a smaller format and are more compact e-mail attachments.
“Flash MX has become an entity on its own, with the added benefit of templates,” says Cathy Hill, Core’s Macromedia product manager. These pre-loaded templates let you build your own site, slide presentation or Internet advertising.
Such user-friendly site construction is a hallmark of another famed Macromedia product, Dreamweaver. This WYSIWYG (pronounced whizziwig, for what you see is what you get) design program has set the standard for a long time in a field that includes Microsoft’s FrontPage.
These programs let you design a web page but the user experience is much like using Word or another design package like Quark, letting you change font sizes, and so on. The program does all the HTML coding in the background.
Dreamweaver has long been a favourite of Web designers, who say it lets them concentrate on the design and not the coding. Other Macromedia packages have as staunch a following. Shockwave and Freehand are two other renowned design programs, often used in Web publishing, that are essential tools in most design houses.
Macromedia clearly also has designs on more server-based applications, that will run on its ColdFusion and JRun server technologies. Says Eric Wittman, Macromedia’s director of product management for Flash: “People are used to TVs, ATMs that’s how they want things to work. We firmly believe that with Flash, we can do that with respect to Web applications.”
It makes one think of that Queen song from Flash Gordon, the early science-fiction movie: “Flash, saviour of the [Web] universe.”