Flash For The Future
October 27, 2003 | 
10 Comments
I’ve got a really busy week ahead so I’ll keep this short. I’ve launched a new resource site for Flash designers and developers. It’s still in beta and needs a bit of work, but I’m posting there so I thought I’d let you know about it.
It’s called Flash For The Future and the main goal of the site is to provide news, resources and showcase sites with an emphasis on well designed, forward-thinking, accessible, usable and audience appropriate Flash work.
It’s kind of like Web standards for Flash with the realization that sometimes the best Flash work is no Flash at all.
A little background: I used to work almost exclusively in Flash and I think that Flash is a great technology that all too often is it’s own worst enemy. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “I want a Flash intro…” or “We can put the navigation in this Flash movie…” from a client before we’ve even discussed a project’s goals.
With this site I hope to try an build a community of forward-thinking Flash designers and developers. If you are interested in helping out get in touch.
Special thanks to Bob for the naming inspiration, Andy for the logo and Travis for the background — which I kind of stole due to time constraints — I hope he doesn’t mind.
Speaking of that, I’ve not had as much time to work on this as I’d have liked, but I plan on heavy progressive enhancement as I have time, so any ideas, comments or whatever would be great. For the time being I’m really working on getting contributers and working out a loose publication plan, but will be revisiting the design and functionality soon as well.
Filed under: Web Design
Comments
1. Jon Hicks said:
Keith - this is such a good idea. I’m in a similiar boat - used to do a lot of work in Flash, then took up web standards, and left wondering how to combine the two. I’ll be reading this with great interest.
Todd Domineys recent design for the PGA open golf championship shows a good combination of the two methods - http://www.pga.com/openchampionship/ ( up until the point where flash was used for the navigation!)
Posted on October 27, 2003 11:48 AM | #
2. Robbert Broersma said:
Good initiative, I’m in the same situation as Jon. This weekend I started to do some things in Flash again, tried some of the XML-functions, etc. With the new accessibility features Flash isn’t ‘evil’ anymore, and some clients simply want something ‘to happen’ on their site (slogans fading in/out, etcetera), because they’ve seen such thing somewhere and said to themselfs: “hey, I want that on my site too!”
Posted on October 27, 2003 12:20 PM | #
3. flexiblefine said:
Do we tell Andy he’s got a 4 in the six-o’clock position on the logo? :)
Posted on October 27, 2003 12:33 PM | #
4. Ro said:
Seems like a good idea. I look forward to the discussion.
If no one has mentioned it yet, there is a cut-off issue in IE6. Appears OK in other browsers.
http://www.intersmash.com/screenshot/screenshot.gif
Posted on October 27, 2003 09:18 PM | #
5. Nick Finck said:
Rio,
I noticed the same issue. Also in IE6 SP1 on WinME. So I guess we’re not alone here. I sent Keith a screenshot, he’ll probably address the issue tomorrow or when he has time. I noticed the site said “Beta” on it, so I assume he’s aware of these kinds of issues.
Posted on October 27, 2003 10:36 PM | #
6. Michael Heilemann said:
I hate Flash with all the fibers in my body. But since this hatred was brought on by just some of the careless uses (or abuses) of Flash that you mention, I hope that this’ll help straighten up the Flash-using community.
Cool tool, but often used in the most annoying ways possible!
Posted on October 28, 2003 01:22 AM | #
7. Bob said:
Congrats on the launch, Keith! Looks good, and I’ve posted the URL on a Flash-heavy design group board that I moderate. (Ironic, eh? A non-Flash guy, with leanings similar to M. Heilemann’s above, moderating a discussion board whose user base is 90% Flash designers…)
Posted on October 28, 2003 07:24 AM | #
8. Keith said:
Well, one of F3’s “catch phrases” is “Sometimes the best Flash is no Flash at all” - and really it’s that feeling that both Mike and Bob have that inspired me to do this.
Flash can be great, for many things if it’s used right and for the right reasons.
As far as the IE 6 thing, I’ve tweaked the style sheet, hopefully that helps. It looks (and has) fine on my machine and several others. I’ve checked in most browsers, most platforms, it validates (both xhtml and css) so I’m not sure what is going on.
Thanks for the screen shot Ro – it gave me something to work from. Let me know if I fixed it please.
Posted on October 28, 2003 10:06 AM | #
9. Ro said:
Looking snazzy now
Posted on October 28, 2003 10:48 PM | #
10. bond said:
it’s gonna be sweet
Posted on November 5, 2003 06:14 PM | #
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