I just finished a presentation on Flash for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), and taking a page out of Aral Balkans book I thought I’d do a summary and share it with whoever you crazy people are. As Arals, my slides don’t make much sense on their own, so I’ll walk you through my presentation instead of just giving you a link to my keynote file.

My subject for the talk is “What is Flash?”. I start off on a light note by citing a couple of sources both praising and criticising Flash. Notably Jacob Nielsen with the quote:

Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web’s fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site’s core value.

I move on to say that Flash is by now such a wide term, it would be impossible to sum it up it a sentence or two. We’ll need to take a trip down memory lane back to 1996 and work our way forward.

I spend a good while talking about the history of Flash. The highlights of this trip are:

• 1996: FutureSplash Animator. The “Proto-Flash”. Gets bought by Macromedia. Rebranded as “Flash”.
• 1997: Flash 2. I showcase two flash sites; Macromedia ShockZone, which is bloody awful, and Joe Cartoon, which was awesome.
• I talk about the advances of the Flash platform pointing out the three major milestones:
  • 2000: Flash 5. Actionscript 1
  • 2005: Flash 8. Video. Youtube. Google Video.
  • 2006/07: Actionscript 3. Robust programming language.
• I end the “history session” by repeating the question; What is Flash?

Animation

Flash started it’s life as an animation tool and is still a state-of-the-art piece of software for creating animated content. I showcase JibJab, HomeStarRunner and Brackenwood as examples of web-based animation. I also mention that TV-shows like South Park (Edit: Paulo corrects me on this in the comments) and NRK’s own animated series HalvSeint are created in Flash.

I round off this part of my presentation by showing the audience the latest episode of Ninjai as an example of stunning animation created entirely in Flash.

Design

I talk about generative art for a bit and mention Jared Tarbell and Joshua Davis as pioneers in the discipline. I walk the audience through some of Joshuas work and show a snippet of the video of his process making a design for BMW.

Web sites

I talk about how Flash can be a small contribution to a HTML-based website or a complete Flash-driven experience.I showcase several sites including sIFR and HRP as the extremes of Flashs role in web design and interactivity. As web sites is the most traditional medium in which you’d expect to find Flash I don’t spend too much time on this.

Web Apps

I talk for a while about RIAs and Flex and how Flex still uses the Flash Player and the .swf format for output, yet is quite different from Flash. As examples I show off Map Rooms, Home Locator and Photoshop Express. The audience is appropriately impressed.

Video

I talk about how YouTube and Google Video adopted Flash for video playback and thus made Flash the de facto standard for video on the web. I mention several other sites utilizing Flash for video and talk for a while about how Flash supports h264, that there are open source alternatives to Adobes streaming servers, how flash gives an unprecedented control of the player interface and interactivity with video content.

As examples I use Commonwealth.pl as an example of Flash video storytelling, and (somewhat grudgingly) Coke Zero as an example of interactivity. I also show off Great Pockets because, honestly, that site still cracks me up.

Mobile

I move on to mobile devices and Flash Lite. Sadly I honestly have nothing to say about this, so I just show some example files running in Device Central and move on.

Desktop

I explain the concept of AIR and show some examples. I start with a small widget app I created myself that shortens URLs so they might be used for Twitter or similar situations. (I’ll make this available, with source code, as soon as it stops being sucky.)

Then Twhirl (honestly though. Isn’t that H in the wrong place), a Twitter client.Next: FotoBooth; A Mac OS PhotoBooth clone with Flickr support.

Finally; Adobe Media Player. Ooohs and Aaahs from the audience.

Beyond

I finish off talking about these people that love Flash but don’t care much for the internet. The people that hook Flash apps into sound systems or light systems. To drive the point home I show them this video that I lifted from the Adobe Max website. The audience is (as I was when I found this video while researching for the presentation) appropriately stunned and impressed.

Myths and prejudices

I round off the talk by raising the issue of critiques on the usability of the Flash platform. Truth to be told I lifted this entire part of my presentation from Aral Balkan in his excellent post Bare-Naked Flash. Dispelling Myths and building bridges. He does a far better job than me on this topic, so go there.

That’s it. Thank you and farewell.

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