Hi all,
Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if not, 
why not?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if it would be better than 
Windows Media Player for displaying animations on a website. I know it is 
expensive, but I looked on Ebay, and it's available there for a pretty 
reasonable price.
Thank you,
Steve Shelby

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Steve Shelby wrote:
> Hi all,
> Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if not, 
> why not?  
> 

<rant>
Debating the merits of competing closed proprietary systems for use on 
the web, is akin to comparing chastity among prostitutes.
</rant>

Is it really necessary for your visitor?  Wouldn't a link to an mpg or 
displaying an animated gif or mng file suffice.  Is it not possible to 
use CSS or java for the same effect.

I really hate having to deal with a flash site, when all I want is a 
phone #/email/kb article ...

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"Steve Shelby" <ssh### [at] shelbyvisioncom> wrote in message 
news:41e152f4$1@news.povray.org...
> Hi all,
> Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if not, 
> why not?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if it would be better than 
> Windows Media Player for displaying animations on a website. I know it is 
> expensive, but I looked on Ebay, and it's available there for a pretty 
> reasonable price.
> Thank you,
> Steve Shelby
Flash and WMP are great for sharing with friends and family, but on the web 
I prefer "Just the facts, Ma'am." Toss in a few images if you have to, but 
keep the filesize low and the 'shock and awe' down to a minimum, please.

- Grim

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"Steve Shelby" <ssh### [at] shelbyvisioncom> wrote in message
news:41e152f4$1@news.povray.org...
> Hi all,
> Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if not,
> why not?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if it would be better than
> Windows Media Player for displaying animations on a website. I know it is
> expensive, but I looked on Ebay, and it's available there for a pretty
> reasonable price.
> Thank you,
> Steve Shelby

I think that Tom and GrimDude have jumped the gun slightly in answering your
question (no offence guys, it's just that there's a little more to be said
on the subject than "don't use Flash")...

Avoiding the subject of whether the video is necessary in the first place
(and excluding the idea of making entire websites using Flash, which luckily
pretty much no one does these days as they've finally realised it's like
making an entire website using full-browser JPEGs):

If you're talking about video displayed directly in a website, Flash is
actually a good alternative to what else is around (so the rest of my
response focuses on that use of Flash - video in a web page); if you're
talking about video that a user downloads, it's not a good format (MPEG or
something more universal is a better bet).

Now, on to Flash and video in a web page:

If you want to display animations on your website (right on the page), for
example if you have a gallery of animations that you want to be able to
stream, or you're trying to display methods/techniques of something, or if
you have video footage that you want to display, Flash is actually a pretty
good alternative to encoding the files in WMV, MOV, etc... if the animation
isn't of a very high resolution.

The reason is that most people have Flash Player 6 or higher, which means
they can display video encoded in the flash video format FLV.  This
eliminates problems with codec compatibility (for example, even if you have
the ability to play WMV files, some WMV files won't work because of various
versions of the codec, or because Windows Media Player just doesn't want to
play nice with the browser of choice that the user has), and of having to
get users to install yet another plugin or player that attempts to take over
the system (Real Player, Quicktime, etc - although these now have
non-official "codec packs" available, not many people want to go to the
trouble of installing them).  Flash is good in this respect because Windows
has for a long time come with the IE Flash Player installed by default.

For users of other browsers and platforms, the Flash Player is available
there as well, and is one of the few plugins that's pretty painless and
quick to install - this makes it significantly better than Quicktime, Real
Player or Windows Media Player 9/10/11/whateverthey'reuptonow in this
regard.

So, if you want to stream video and have it displayed on a web page (rather
than downloading it, or whatever), encoding the video in FLV in Flash is
actually a pretty good way.

Of course, there will be people who will not want to install Flash Player or
who don't have it installed, for whatever reason - but as has been
mentioned, this is the same with *any* plugin, so there will always be a
number of users who won't be able to view the content regardless of the type
of file you encode the animation in.

Now the downsides:

* Flash is expensive to purchase.
* Flash does a pretty good job of encoding MOV/WMV/etc into FLV but to get
*really* good quality and still have small file sizes, you either need the
additional Sorenson encoding program (I think it's called Spark), which is
an additional cost, or you need the top Flash version (MX Pro), which also
comes with a better encoder.
* Not all users will have Flash installed (but that's like any proprietary
format/plugin)

So in summary:

If you want to put video into a web page directly (have it display on the
page along with other content) and/or you want to stream video, Flash is a
pretty good alternative compared to Quicktime, Real Player and Windows
Media, so long as the video isn't of a very large resolution.  Flash does,
however, cost a lot, and to get the best video compression you'll need
either the most expensive version of Flash, or the standard version with the
Sorenson Spark encoder utility.  If you want to provide video in a format
that people can download, Flash isn't the right thing to use - something
like Quicktime, Real Player or Windows Media would be better suited, or a
more widely-supported format like MPEG would be even better.

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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> I think that Tom and GrimDude have jumped the gun slightly in answering 
> your
> question (no offence guys, it's just that there's a little more to be said
> on the subject than "don't use Flash")...

Maybe you're right. As for me, though, on the Tools menu of SpywareBlaster 
and under the 'Flash Killer' tab I have selected "Disable and Block 
Macromedia Flash (4.x, 5.x, 6.x) in Internet Explorer."

Every single usage for Flash that I've seen on the net is completely 
annoying.

But, I'm just another user...

- Grim

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"GrimDude" <a36### [at] bellsouthnet> wrote in message
news:41e22aac$1@news.povray.org...
> > I think that Tom and GrimDude have jumped the gun slightly in answering
> > your
> > question (no offence guys, it's just that there's a little more to be
said
> > on the subject than "don't use Flash")...
>
> Maybe you're right. As for me, though, on the Tools menu of SpywareBlaster
> and under the 'Flash Killer' tab I have selected "Disable and Block
> Macromedia Flash (4.x, 5.x, 6.x) in Internet Explorer."

Eewww, Internet Explorer ;)  Sifn't Firefox!</offtopic>  Actually this whole
thread should really be in .off-topic

> Every single usage for Flash that I've seen on the net is completely
> annoying.
>
> But, I'm just another user...

You're right, the vast majority of Flash use is annoying.  However, I think
using Flash as a transport for in-page video is actually a good idea and
removes the need for a lot of other bulky and slow video plugins.  On Amazon
and a number of other large sites they're now using Flash's FLV as a way of
displaying trailers and so on - this to me is the best use of Flash I've
seen, because it's fast and simple for the end-user, and doesn't use as much
CPU time as other plugins like Quicktime and Real Player.

Unfortunately there are still too many people out there making bad use of
Flash (just as there are too many people making bad use of JavaScript).

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Lance Birch wrote:
> Unfortunately there are still too many people out there making bad use of
> Flash (just as there are too many people making bad use of JavaScript).

badger badger badger badger
musshroom MUSHROOM
badger badger badger ...

-- 
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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"Tim Cook" <z99### [at] bellsouthnet> wrote in message
news:41e24b45$1@news.povray.org...
> Lance Birch wrote:
> > Unfortunately there are still too many people out there making bad use
of
> > Flash (just as there are too many people making bad use of JavaScript).
>
> badger badger badger badger
> musshroom MUSHROOM
> badger badger badger ...

LOL :)  OK now we're getting really off-topic!

*hides*

Lance.

P.S. http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/clowns.html  <|8*)  I'm a banana!  (|

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Steve Shelby wrote:
> Hi all,
> Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if
> not, why not?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if it would be
> better than Windows Media Player for displaying animations on a
> website. I know it is expensive, but I looked on Ebay, and it's
> available there for a pretty reasonable price.

I use flash because it is great for drawing and animating simple 2D things.
I used to use it a lot on a website to show how certain things worked.  It
offers perfect quality for very little bandwidth and (almost) everyone can
view it in the webpage.

It depends on the content of your animation though, if it is simple 2D
vector graphics then Flash is by far the best way to go.  It's actually
quite a good 2D drawing package too once you get the hang of it.  I found it
quite hard to learn, it's not the easiest of programs to pick up.

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GrimDude wrote:
>> I think that Tom and GrimDude have jumped the gun slightly in
>> answering your
>> question (no offence guys, it's just that there's a little more to
>> be said on the subject than "don't use Flash")...
>
> Maybe you're right. As for me, though, on the Tools menu of
> SpywareBlaster and under the 'Flash Killer' tab I have selected
> "Disable and Block Macromedia Flash (4.x, 5.x, 6.x) in Internet
> Explorer."
>
> Every single usage for Flash that I've seen on the net is completely
> annoying.

You've never seen any Flash cartoons, or any "how does it work" type site
that has a flash animation then?

Do you also think that most images and colours in web pages are completely
annoying? ;-)

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