Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
reading this topic, I have to assume that you
'
re at least somewhat
familiar with Flash so I won
'
t spend a huge amount of time describ-
ing it in depth. However, I
ll go ahead with a very quick background
and talk about it at a bit of a high level for anyone who happens to
be reading this who isn
'
'
t a Flash developer or designer (i.e., project
managers, and so on).
Although Flash has been around since 1996, most people didn
t
know about it until a little later as it started showing up in more
and more places on the Internet. At that time, it was primarily
used and known for Web sites with large amounts of animations
and glitzy little spinning and blinking effects. Due to the fact that
most of those sites were way bigger in file size than they really had
any business being in a primarily dial-up connection world, Flash
also started being known as a way to show an
'
“
intro
”
foryoursite
while it loaded. Fast forward to today since I said I
d keep it high
level and the Flash experience has matured by leaps and bounds in
terms of user experience and interaction design. Today, it
'
'
svery
easy to find that Flash is used to create everything from banners
and full-blown Web sites to games and applications.
When you
re looking at Flash as a possible candidate for a given
project, or even just a task within a project, one of the main things
you
'
re dealing with animated
assets like characters with walk/run cycles, your life will be much
easier if you create those animations on the timeline as opposed to
trying to write code to accomplish the same thing. Another thing
that would make Flash the ideal choice is if the design is very image
heavy and there are a lot of cut images to work with. Finally, the
final .swf size is typically smaller when published from Flash as
opposed to Flex/Flash Builder because it doesn
'
ll want to consider is animation. If you
'
tneedtocompile
the Flex framework in with your project. Speaking of Flash Builder,
let
'
'
slookatthatoptionnext.
Flash Builder (Flex)
So another option that you may find yourself considering is Flex.
There are a number of ways to work with Flex including (but not
limited to) using the text editor of your choice in conjunction with
the free SDK (Software Development Kit) or working in Flash
Builder 4 (Fig. 9.2), which was previously named Flex Builder. If
you
'
'
ve downloaded and installed Flash Builder, then you
ve also
installed the Flex SDK and you
re ready to go.
Although Flash is going to be the choice more often in advertis-
ing, there will still be times when you
'
ll want to use Flex because
of its feature set or because of the project requirements. A few
things that might make you lean toward Flex for a microsite would
be data collection, charting/data visualization, or certain classes
that are included in the Flex framework but aren
'
'
t available in Flash.
