DevInterview:Darrel, tell me about the compelling new features in Flash 5.

Darrel: Flash 5’s major new feature is a vastly expanded programming language. You can alter the way a Flash movie works based on its language, ActionScript, which is similar to JavaScript.

DevInterview: How does that help the Flash author?

Darrel: ActionScript can alter the types of graphics that are displayed, change text on the screen, move graphics, and even communicate with databases on a server. That means that a Flash experience doesn’t need to be the same every time its seen.

DevInterview : So, you’re saying it gives you more power to customize it for the viewer? Can you give me an example?

Darrel: Rather than having a movie that’s static and just shows something to the viewer, they can interact with it and change what happens. For example, If you have a Flash shopping site, it can interact with cookies stored for the browser, maintain an appearance set by the user, and show the types of items the users sets as a preference when it’s first displayed.

DevInterview:Do you know anyone who’s doing anything like that yet?

Darrel: I’m not aware of any shopping sites off hand, but one fo the Flash info sites, Shockfusion.com has been doing that for a couple of years. It’s not really a totally new feature... but it is something that’s a lot easier when you have better programming capabilities.

DevInterview: What’s the market penetration for the Flash 5 player?

Darrel : According to the latest surveys, the Flash 5 Player, released in September 2000, has about a 60% share of browsers in the US, and slightly more than that in the rest of the world. The older versions: 4 is at about 80%, as I remember, and Flash 3 is something like 96%.

Darrel: Let me revise the numbers on Flash 4. According to the latest figures (from March, at http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/) , it’s 90%.

DevInterview : How backward compatable is Flash 5? If I were to build a site interface that used Flash and visitors with Flash 4 came, how would it affect their experience?

Darrel: They’re really not compatible at all largely because of the new scripting commands. Flash 5 movies that use the new commands will load into but not play in the Flash 4 player.

DevInterview : So, if you’re going to do something in Flash 5 you have to be able to upgrade visitors to the latest or provide an alternative interface. Have you done much Flash 5 specific programming since it came out, or are people mostly using what came with 4?

Darrel: I’ve done a lot of Flash 5 work, but I’ve also used Flash 5 to produce Flash 4 content including some fairly complex games that pushed the Flash 4 engine to its limits.

DevInterview: Right, creating things using 5 that’s totally compatable with 4. Got any links for the home viewer to visit?

Darrel : It is possible to use Flash 5 to do Flash 4 work. You just have to be careful!

One of my projects was the Koala Kannonball game at: http://www.champlindesign.com/~champlin/Webfinity/WFS/Right/Games/rightGamesZk.html.

Another is: http://www.fruitrollups.zeeks.com.

Darrel: Both of these projects were created early after the release of Flash 5 and we were cognizant of keeping them compatible with Flash 4 Players.

DevInterview : Very cute... Both of these are entertainment. Are you seeing Flash being used much on informational sites?

Darrel: The Fruit Roll-Ups site shows off a feature of Flash that was added after the initial release of 4, which is Web printing.

DevInterview : That’s right. We can now print from Flash.

Darrel : Volkswagen uses it on their site for the New Beetle extensively, as do several other car manufacturers. Barneys, a New York clothing retailer still uses a Flash 4 interface.

DevInterview: Is Flash something that people are only using if they have a big budget?

Darrel : Any multimedia requires some sort of a larger budget because there’s usually more involved in it than just static pictures. It takes more time to assemble assets, to develop what’s going to happen, and especially to test.

DevInterview: Agreed. Off the top of your head can you think of some successful uses of Flash that are in the lower end of the budget scale? I guess the question is, what’s practical to do with Flash and what should stay HTML?

Darrel: There are a lot of valid reasons to use HTML. At present, for instance, there’s no way for search engines to index text accessible only through Flash movies but that’s true of a lot of text in a database as well. Where there’s no link there’s nothing for a search engine to index. It’s also the case with sites that use frames and generated pages.

DevInterview : Indeed, it’s still said that the browser’s back button is the most popular navigation button....however, if you’re viewing a Flash movie and you use the browser’s back button the Flash movie goes away. Is there anyway around that?

Darrel : I can’t think of one; however, a lot of sites hide the Back button by opening the Flash movie in a new window without the navigation tools, although I don’t like that, myself.

DevInterview: That’s also popular with sites using lots of CSS which gives you absolute positioning of graphic elements, but not the handy relative positioning that comes with old HTML tables.

DevInterview: Are you seeing many good examples of Flash being used well in more standard commerce or business sites?

Darrel : Not really lately, apart from the examples I mentioned earlier like Volkswagen and Barneys. As to whether those are "good" examples, that’s a relative term. I’ve seen a lot of experimental stuff and some good subsites for informational material.

DevInterview : I haven’t seen the recent VW work, but the VW Turbonium site was a lot of fun and I bet it played well to the youngin’s looking for a fun hip car to buy.

Darrel : Entertainment sites, informational sites (like National Geographic), and car sites.

DevInterview : One of our clients asks, "has anyone done any hard research on how Flash affects the visitor’s experience?"

Darrel: I haven’t seen any. The buzzword this year at the Macromedia UCON is "useability", because a lot of people claimed that Flash made it difficult for disabled people to use sites, which I expect would extend to other users as well to some extent. But as for hard evidence of whether Flash made a site difficult for a user, no. People do seem to like the games and animated goodies though.

DevInterview : On the disability topic, there is only one Flash player. There’s no way for someone with a sight impairment to make the fonts larger, like they can do in a regular Web browser.?

Darrel: Flash has a zooming feature. Right-click (Windows) and Control-click (MacOS) zooms into the image... and if the browser’s resize capability hasn’t been disabled (I hate that), and the movie is set to play within a Percentage of the window, they can simply resize the window.

DevInterview : I’m on the shockfusion.com site and it’s not letting me do that.

Darrel: Some developers turn off both of these features, apparently figuring that their design is more important than whether people can read it or not.

Darrel: Neither of these are quite the same as the variable-size type of scaling you get with tables and standard HTML, of course.

DevInterview: Can you detect things like language preferences from the browser?

Darrel : Not directly. If you can access that information through JavaScript, you can get it into Flash, unless, of course, you’re in Netscape 6 or IE on the Mac. Netscape broke their LiveConnect interface in NN6 (both platforms) and IE/Mac has never worked right.

DevInterview : The Web world has changed dramatically in the last few years, and Flash is one of the reasons why. Where do you see us going next?

Darrel : Another new feature of Flash 5 was its ability to create persistent connections to XML servers which enabled things like Flash-based chat systems. I think, as far as Flash goes, that that’s the next frontier for the types of applications that will be built with it. Right now those are difficult to build.

DevInterview : Multiplayer games... live in person technical support.

Darrel: AOL Instant messanger

DevInterview : What you’re saying is the Flash movie on your computer can interact with a server running somewhere over the network.

Darrel : I suspect that at some point, Flash movies will be able to grab images and data from the Web and display them within the movie (something that can be done with Generator now).

Darrel: Actually, a Flash movie can already interact with a server. Database transactions within Flash movies have been possible for a couple of versions. What’s going to come down the pike is to make those transactions easier to deal with for the author. I might add that a lot of these capabilities are already in Director and Shockwave.

DevInterview: So, maybe we’ll see Hotmail in a Flash interface, but you’ll also be able to get your Hotmail on your pager because the underlining format is XML?

Darrel: Could be. What Macromedia would like to see is Flash as the interface to your pager. They’ve already ported it to the Pocket PC. LucasArts used a version of the Flash Player on one of their PS2 games.

DevInterview : Do you have to author specifically for the Pocket PC or does it just work if you’re using it to surf the ’net?

Darrel: You have to author for Flash 4, and I believe there are a couple of things you have to avoid there as well, but it’s supposed to be a fairly full-featured Flash 4 version of the Player. The PocketPC doesn’t have the horsepower to handle the interpreted language playback for Flash 5 ActionScript, apparently.

DevInterview :The palm-sized devices don’t have the horsepower...but they will.

Darrel: Most assuredly. http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/pocketpc/authoring/

DevInterview: Thanks for your time Darrel. One last question: If you were an iMac, what flavor would you be?

Darrel: Strawberry.


Darrel Plant is Publisher at Moshofsky/Plant Creative Services in Portland, Oregon, and the Technical Editor of the Director Online User Group where he oversees the production of three to five articles a week on Director and Flash. He’s the author/co-author of four books on multimedia and a contributor to two others; has written numerous articles for magazines including WIRED; has published a short-lived book review magazine; has worked as a radio DJ playing alternative music back when it was still known as ’college rock’; and once offered himself up to the voters as a candidate for the Oregon State Legislature.