Re: FLASH: Flash vs Director

[Antoine Valot]

I beg to differ. Your thinking is based on experience, but don't forget

that this is a changing market. There are new forces at work.


Director is a serious tool for multimedia application development. 

But it is aimed primarily for CD-ROM or kiosk distribution, which are

not particularly booming markets. The ShockWave implementation of

Director still delivers bandwidth hungry files, and almost intolerable

wait times for your regular modem user.


Its very seriousness, and the learning curve associated with it,

produces a constant talent shortage: How easy is it ever to find a GOOD

Lingo programmer when you need one?



Flash, on the other hand, was originally designed (remember

FutureSplash?) as an illustration program for non-computer-geeks. It

takes a novice just a few minutes to start animating in Flash. So there

is an abundance of new talent, and that creates a large and powerful

learning community, such as this one. 

It's easy enough that you can learn and play with it on the side, and

get good enough at it to sell your skills in a short amount of time.

That's a rapidly growing population of web design shops and home

businesses actively selling Flash production.


It was also designed for the Internet. File sizes can still be

ridiculously small, and streaming is a godsend. Well optimized web sites

can start the fireworks in a few seconds and keep your heart pounding

for a good ten minutes. With the features added to Flash4, the

multimedia experience can be even faster, and better. 


More importantly, ActionScript, and the facilities for communicating

with a server-side application, are putting Flash4 in a very good

position to replace HTML altogether.


I mean all of it: Portals, e-commerce, ASPs, online investing, banking,

news, and entertainment. When compared with a clunky, loading-in-pieces,

not-cross-browser, ugly HTML page, a crisp Flash4 interface will be the

obvious choice, once the plugin is more widely distributed.


Once that happens, MacroMedia will probably follow the money upstream

(or somebody else will), and offer a more programmer and database

oriented interface to Flash. I hope they keep the simple interface alive

too, to fuel the supply of talent.


So while Director might still churn kick ass CD-ROMs for a few more

years, Flash is poised to be a movement of much larger proportions. It

is bound to eventually take Director's place as the flagship product of

MacroMedia... or has it already?


Antoine Valot

Senior Web Developer - usa.net

President - valot.com



Matt Coyne wrote:

> 

> Director is a serious tool for application development, hence the

> versatility and price. Flash was a tool primarily aimed at animation

> and simple interactivity on the web [prolly get flamed now] but is

> heading towards more practical web orientated functionality.

> 

> I personally think that director is best served as a cd based app

> developer/'presentation' tool. It certainly has the ability to create

> internet based shockwave files but it's limitations is the file size

> it creates for anything of worth. That's not to say I haven't seen

> good use of shockwave [director] on the web, mainly of the

> 'experimental art based' sort.

> 

> Director is *very* versatile, *very* expensive [but good value],

> whilst flash is just sooooooooo funky....

> 

> m

> 

> >I guess you have to pay the price for quality software.

> >ACI

> >www.acarrow.com

> >

> >  -----Original Message-----


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