Lane4Interactive

I debated even posting about this because there are so many developers in the Flash community already talking about it; then I thought why not I still have a few questions. I won’t take this post as far as bashing Silverlight as much as a search for an answer to “Why switch?”

There is no argue that Microsoft has offered the RIA world a new way to create and display solid interactive applications, but I still don’t see a need to switch. Dave Wolf from Cynergy comments on how this is good for the world of RIA’s and only confirms that RIA’s are here to stay. I agree. As well as I agree with all of the bloggers stating that this competition will be good for Flash and can only help its future growth. But I still want to know why I would switch to developing applications in XAML and JavaScript and as Keith Peters says, taking a 5 year step backwards with prototype classes.

I attended MIX 2006 where Microsoft demoed WPF and a bit of WPF/E and I watched the Flash developers around the room with smirks on their faces basically saying, “Okay, I’ve been able to do that for 5 years with Flash.” They continued to show applications with a cube of videos that spun as a 3D object. Kinda cool and it was very smooth because their player has a closer tie to the hardware but I don’t think that will sell it for anyone.

I promise, I’m not trying to bash Silverlight, I just don’t understand why I would switch. Okay, maybe I don’t have to and that is not the question, maybe I should be asking why business owners and executives are asking my to really look into this. Why do they care? Since when is it a business goal of an application to have XAML over MXML or vice versa? It must be because Silverlight can do something more than Flash. If so, what can it do? As of a year ago I was not impressed. It was shiny, and I like shiny things that move, but I had seen it all before.

So I guess I can end by asking those of you who have worked with WPF or Silverlight, what can it do that Flash cannot and how important are these features to the success of solid web or desktop applications?

- Tim O’Hare

This post is in response to a question from my NAB 2006 Presentation post.

There are many theories on how to do this. The HGTVPro application does not yet use this method, but it should The easiest way to achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Flash is to provide a link in the HTML to an index page listing all of the videos/data that are in the Flash application. The index page should have descriptive links such as the actual title of the video. A description under the link would also help. The liks should then point back to the Flash page with query string parameters attached to the end of the url. The link would look something like this (http://www.myFlashVideoApp.com?videoID=3265&title=3%20Stud%20Corners). The HTML page which holds the Flash application should have simple JavaScript that can pull the parameter values from the url and pass them to the Flash Object through FlashVars. A simple way to do this is to use SWFObject (formerly known as FlashObject).

I hope this helps. Let me know if you want to discuss this further.

I just recieved a copy of the Flash 8 Cookbook written by Joey Lott. I’m a little excited about this book because I helped out on it as a technical editor. This is my first experience with the book industry and it’s nice to see your name in print. I know I’m biased to this, but I highly recommend this book. You can get it here. If you find any technical errors in the book, then I probably didn’t work on those chapters. I hope you enjoy the book.

This application was designed to display a small sample of colors available from Sherwin Williams. The images were supplied by the client but became very hard to customize. The images were then rebuilt as 3D renderings with all customizable objects colored at runtime. The end result became a fun interactive application that not only advertised Sherwin Williams colors but acted as a functioning application for users interested in painting their house.

Awards
Macromedia Site of the Day

Click here to view the project.

While attending Flash Forward San Francisco in 2004 I had the opportunity to see Erik Natzke give an amazing presentation on his latest work. One of his projects incuded a Page Turner for Dreamworks. I was very inspired by this piece and interested in finding the perfect project for this interactive treatment. A few months after the conference I was given the chance to give this interaction a try. My version of the Page Turner was built from scratch with many hours of trial and error. I would do this completely defferent now, but am still proud of my persistance in completing this project.

Erik, thanks for all the great inspirational projects you’ve created.

Click here to view the project.