Flash is Different
February 21, 2000
You may have read about
Vector Graphics. This is what makes Flash
different from the old standard web animation technology, .gif,
(and all of its 'hood friends). Flash is only one of many scalar
graphic standards on the web, but so far it looks like it has
the best chance of surviving.
Where a .gif image is made up of coordinates for individual
pixels, Flash uses vectors to make that nice sharp glossy
visual output you have seen and fallen in love with. To generate
an image from a .gif file, the file tells the computer the color
of each individual pixel: "Okay, square one is red. Square two is
blue. Good news - Three, four and five are all Yellow! Whew,
let's take a break."
A Flash file (.swf) tells the computer how to draw based on
shapes: "Draw a red circle at coordinates (301, 596). Its
circumference is 34. In addition, it has a black border that is
2 pixels thick. Hey computer, aren't you glad you learned all
that geometry in junior high?"
If that little dramatic vignette didn't give you a vivid
impression of the difference between old school graphics and
Flash, look at these examples:
The first example uses the old school combo of an HTML document
with a bunch of text and two images - the Herald logo and the
baby pic. You will notice the deliberately ill-chosen font
style, which yields noticeably rough lines. The file size is
good, though, compared to the other two.
The second example is just ridiculous. It presents all the info
in the HTML file as a single image, using an imagemap for
navigation. What we have done is trade data for layout. Bad move,
especially in the context of our contemporary
XML buzz. But what
we did get is smooth lines. That's a-nice!
The last example is what we are interested in. The visual
presentation is better than either of the other two - you have
interactive links and nice smooth lines throughout. (And the
presentation is 100% malleable - you could just as easily have
busy, ridiculous animations for the mouseover as a different
color text). You can still treat the text as text. Notice that
the file size is a little better than the .gif, but still larger
than the HTML/gif combo. If we were publishing a larger
number of pages - say, two - Flash would stack up even more
favorably, (the Flash file size would increase marginally by
the size of the added text and image, but the file size of the
HTML combo collection would double).
Flash is a good way to present content. Currently there are
popular connotations of Flash as a toy to make novelty animations,
(or worse - a hindrance to users trying to find some info).
However - contrary to what you might infer from the current
cannon of web Flash works - the Swatch ski guy is not the zenith
of multimedia development using Flash. Once you get comfortable
with the authoring software and some kind of marriage to a data
source, you could just as easily use Flash to develop sites
like:
- A small town newspaper.
- An eZine.
- A corporate info site.
- Light eCommerce.
0 to 60 in Flash
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