Creating a website from scratch is an art form, it is also a blend of technical understanding and application. As a developer you want your websites to look as great as possible, but you also want to go about it in the easiest way possible. Websites can quickly become a complex mess of files and directories, so anything that can reduce the mess and keep the project streamlined is welcome. I have been using Flash for about ten years now and here are some of my opinions on Flash and HTML5.
Flash technology from Adobe ( before from macromedia ) has been around for a while now, but people who do not work in web development do not know what it really is. Often times when working on a web project I will have to explain to someone what flash is and why it might be a good option or not so I figured I would just write a quick post about the differences of flash and HTML5 with javascript from a designers point of view.
In the early years of flash, there was a lot of excitement from young web developers about the technology and it seemed to be a well respected platform. Over time though much has changed, and flash has two major strikes against it now. First is that too many people did not use flash well and abused it in some cases and created many sorts of annoying experiences people associate with it. The second major issue is that Apple does not support Flash on iOS devices meaning it is no longer multi-platform, and that does not seem to be something that will change any time soon unfortunately.
Apple has always in some ways tried to keep its technology separated from windows, so it is no surprise they are doing the same thing with flash. Yet since so many people adopted the iPhone, this has made Apple a bigger player obviously and their closed environments are affecting developers from reaching wider audience. It makes sense for Apple to limit this since they used to be a smaller player they taking a few extra measures to protect themselves.
Websites are complex, and a lot of work to setup from scratch. So if your going to build one, you want it to be easy to do but you also want it to look good. One of the issues with HTML sites for an artist is it can be a real challenge just to lay out your site well. Some things are still pretty difficult to do that really should be easy. It is not intuitive for the way an artist works, and you have to be able to work with code pretty well if you want to do any sort of sophisticate layouts.
So what about flash? Well flash takes a different approach to how you layout your website entirely. For people who are less skilled or interested in working with code, flash simplifies the design process greatly and enables sophisticated designs and layouts to be achieved. Rather than positioning objects with code, you place objects just like you would in a graphic editing program. Many photographers also like to have a website made in flash, because it can have a pretty clean and professional feeling. It also makes it a little harder for the average person to download your images, but it won’t stop anyone who knows what they are doing.
You can easily lay things out visually on the page putting things anywhere you want, and flash handles the code behind the scenes. You can also use flash action script to position objects with code at the same time if you like. Flash video games are built often using objects that are dynamically generated with code in real time.
You can do amazing things with html5 and javascript, and by sticking to those languages to build your websites will allow your websites to reach the broadest audience because iOS is blocking out flash. HTML5 is search engine friendly too, and flash is not as friendly. So if you do use flash it is best to mix it with some html content.
To make beautiful and highly interactive websites with HTML5 and javascript alone is not easy for an artist because you are not able to visually lay things out very well. So HTML5 and javascript are much easier to work with for the those with skills in programming. I hope that eventually some talented folks will possibly build editors which will allow for a more visual approach to working with HTML5 and javascript, hiding the code mostly from the web developer unless they need to tap into it. This HTML5 editor looks promising, but it still isn’t quite as feature rich as flash.
Flash has many advantages, but another major thing it has which HTML5 and javascript might still not get for a while is a timeline and the ability to create animation over time. Flash can be used to create animations, not just for the web but also for television or film with this feature. In fact I animated a short cartoony animation for a friends short film that went to cannes film festival with flash.
Many cartoon TV shows look like they are using flash as well I have noticed. I have used flash to animate a lot of parts in my demo reel, and because you can export animations as image files you can blend flash animation with cgi and film too. HTML5 and javascript do not have a built-in ability to export animations, but someone might have built a script or something though to do this already and I am not sure.
For someone just getting into web design, it might be hard to suggest what to do. Flash might never go away, and the issue with apple might become easier for developers to bypass, so learning how to use it might not be a bad thing if you can. Especially if your an artist who is not exceptionally inclined to work with code.
HTML5 and javascript can pull off some pretty nice graphics and animation too though, and so if you can restrict yourself to working through code to create art, then it is definitely worth learning about. If you not only want to do web design but also some day get into doing cgi animation or 3D vfx then you definitely want to learn how to animate with flash.
