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Flash was
known as "FutureSplash" until 1997, when Macromedia Inc.
bought the company that developed it.
The resulting
files, called SWF (pronounced swiff) files, may appear in a web page
to view in a web browser, or standalone Flash players may
"play" them. You will most likely have come across them as
flash intros on websites, usually the ones where you wait ages to
load. While the results can look fantastic the downside is the time
it often takes to load, especially for viewers with dial-up
connections. Which is why in the past we have always tended to keep
away from Flash.
The good news
is that we now have some new software that greatly reduces the file
sizes but still produces the same quality results, you can see an
example on our Navigation page, where we
designed four menus using HTML Text, HTML Graphics, Java and Flash.
The file sizes were 3 KB, 17 KB, 29 KB and 5 KB respectively. The
Flash example not only looks by far the best of the 4, it is also the
second smallest in file size, only the HTML Text menu loads faster
(just), considering that the Flash menu is the only one to have both
animation and sound added, it's a very impressive file size.
We have
recently replaced this sites Java menus with Flash created using this
new software.
HTML is ideal
for creating websites where text and images are placed at fixed
positions. But it doesn't really support dynamic sites, where text,
images, and animations are moving around on the screen.
Traditionally, these effects were achieved with animated GIF images
or Java applets.
An animated
GIF is actually many images saved into one, when the animated GIF is
loaded onto a web page, the browser simply loops the images. This
means, if you make an animation of a dog that wags his tail up and
down in 25 small movements, then the animated area of the image is
saved 25 times. So it doesn't take a lot of animation to create a GIF
image that's remarkable larger file size than a regular dog image.
Therefore, even small animations can take forever to load, also GIF
images are limited to 256 colours.
While animated
GIFs can be used for animations, they do not support interactivity
other then being used as a link. They simply loop images in a
predefined order and that's it. In Flash, you can control the
animations. For example, you can make the animation stop and wait for
the user to click a button. And when the animation starts again it
can be dependant on which button was clicked.
Flash movies
are in many ways similar to java applets but are more stable in web
browsers than java applets. There are things that you can programme
in Java that just can't be done with Flash, since the focus here is
Flash we will not go into the details.
WHO CAN VIEW
FLASH MOVIES?
Anyone that
has the free Flash plug-in /Active-X installed with their browser can
view flash movies. The Shockwave Flash plug-in is bundled with the
Netscape browser as well as the Windows operating system (98+). This
means that anyone who runs a new Netscape browser, or running Windows
as their operating system, can view Flash movies. The few People that
do not have the plug-in installed can download it for free from
Macromedia's site (size only some 120 Kb).
By the end of
the 3rd quarter of 1998, less than 40% of all surfers were able to
view Flash movies right away. A year later the percentage was 90% -
and today Flash is a state-of-the-art method for vector graphics on
the web. Macromedia reported that by January 2002 more than 400
million browsers were able to view shockwave flash movies. (Data
estimated by independent third party: IDC). That is close to 100% of
all browsers on the web |
