Adobe tools has shown significant traction in the market in the past year. This is one of those few technologies that requires both a creative and a technical bent of mind. We were very curious to talk to the creative types and the technical types to see what is that they see in Flash.

We were very fortunate to talk to David Gamez and Anand Vardhan.

Let me introduce the right brain -- David Gamez

An illustrator and media developer, David is definitely the right brain category. He has created characters called Mr. Filleto Fish, SR: BOLOÑA, PICTOPLASMA, OSO BABOSO. He has been featured in NewWebPick e-magazine, a design mag for designers. He has a love-hate relationship with the developer side of it. He firmly believes that "It's not the tools it's what you can do with them". Go to his "My Flash Wandering".

We have, representing the left brain -- Anand Vardhan

A certified Flex developer and an Adobe user group manager, Anand is an RIA expert working with CapGemini. He keeps himself in the bleeding edge of technology. He is an active member of the FLEX and Ajax community. Visit mx:Anand Vardhan

We posed several questions and this is what they had to say....

How did you get started as a flash developer/designer?

David:     

Well for me it all started back in, I think 1997, when internet was making all this big noise ( in Mexico ) and suddenly all the people ( companies ) needed a web site or at least they thought they needed one , the web design community in our country was very  small and  me as many others grew alongside Internet and saw it rise and fall (Big Bubble Time ) and the rise again.

It was a difficult process, boundaries where unexplored back then, the technologies were also starting, and some of the people that had some knowledge in the field where very jealous with the stuff they knew and it was hard to find someone to work with who wanted to share what they knew, that's why I started to get involved with the developer side of the web.

The first site I made was in Flash. Flash was this novel low size vector animation tool( Flash 4) practically, because a client asked for it he wanted to have one of those cool "Intros" in his site, who didn't want one, back then? and me and my wife coming from a "designer" side of things thought Flash was the right tool to use because in Flash we could "draw and animate " our designs and also make websites out of it, at that moment I realized that was the right tool for me, flexible on the design side and capable on the developing side too. The rest as they say is history.

Anand:

I started working on Flash 4 in early 2001 on one of my requirement which demanded big animation in lesser size. That time portals were coming up in a big way and making banners (typically GIF banners) was hot. We came to know by some cool sites that there is a tool developed by Macromedia which provides fast vector based animation and thus I got into it. Slowly I started liking the technology and I went on with that.

Is being a Flash designer more technical or more creative?

David:

Flash is a tool that in my personal experience lets you explore both sides of it and blurs the line between those two sides, I started using Flash as a designer and now I'm a full time Flash Developer, but I feel I've never stopped being a creative person. If I'm using flash for an illustration or animation project, if I'm using it to develop a site, or if I'm doing some experimentation with ActionScript code it's the same for me, each option has it's creative and technical side, but at the end when you see  your work completed and the final user has a great experience with what you created, it definitively makes you feel a creative person.

Anand:

Well its technically creative :) working on flash/flex always requires a creative mind which can think out of box to make rich user interface. A flash app can never be a set of standard controls which we typically incorporate using Java or HTML forms. Also the capability of showing rich presentation it is always expected to have a different UI everytime. And this surely needs technical skills for scripting. ActionScript has come a long way and it is now as stable and roboust as any other we language like PHP or Java. and on the other hand the learning curve regarding ActionScript is lesser than any other web languages.

Where are the best places (kinds of applications) to use Flash?

David:

Well nowadays you'll see flash everywhere. Its on the web, on the desktop ( AIR ), on mobile devices, on video game consoles, even on cars. Kevin Lynch showed in his Adobe MAX 2006 keynote the Jaguar 2007 XK which he categorized as the largest mobile Flash device in the world  The console of the car is completely based on Flash Technology. Adobe is really pushing Flash forward and are constantly polishing and evolving the tool and what you can do with it. The Flash Platform as they call the set of Flash tools, is no longer just Flash. If you're coming form a designer animator field you can use Flash, if you're coming from a developer field you can use Flex which let's you make robust RIAs development, you can use AIR for taking those applications to the desktop too. There is even a new tool for designing applications in adobe's design tools ( illustrator, photoshop, etc. ) called Adobe Flash Catalyst  to preview exactly how they'll work without writing a line of code.

I still use flash mostly for web development but the boundaries are pushed everyday, so where and what kind of applications can you make?
It depends on you.

Anand:

Flash : Animation,games, web presentation and e-learning stuffs.
Flex: Data-oriented hevy rich applications such as financial applications.

What do you most like about flash?

David:

That's an easy one. Why I prefer Flash over other technologies is that if I wake up one day and feel like doing an illustration, I open up Flash and do it, and if  I wake up and feel like writing an application, I open up Flash and do it. A tool that offers me that possibilities it's  definitively a tool I can rely on.

Anand:

Here are my top 5 best thoughts about flash platform
1. Player penetration (98% desktops)
2. OOPS support
3 Easy and rapid development
4 Extremely organized Community support
5 Secure

What would do you say to: flash is slow to load?, not being search engine friendly?

David:

Loading time -  This is an old anachronism like the 256 colors web palette, and if it was true at a time, it not longer applies, nowadays almost all internet carriers gives you a broadband connection that let's you watch video on the web or use very robust applications online, and in the case that you still use a 56k connection Flash has ways of making progressive and queued downloads so that your wait time is lesser. So no, I don't think Flash is slow to load.

Search Engine: That  limit that is being broken right now Adobe has make an alliance with the major search industry leaders like  Yahoo and Google and are currently developing web spiders that will crawl Flash content just like html content. Right now, Google has already started indexing Dynamic text and links. There are split opinions in the Flash community  if this is good or bad, but I think Flash will soon be as search engine friendly as any html based website.

Anand:

Loading Time: An unoptimized application takes time to download. There are thousand of articles written on making flash swf lighter and fast downloadable.

Search Engine: Another myth, now flash contents are fully searchable and crawlable by google. It needs some standards to be followed.

How does one get started in Flash? What do you suggest to reduce the learning curve?

David:

Well it's easier-harder these days, it's easier because there's a very strong Flash community on the web where you can find how to use Flash or how to start coding in ActionScript and it's harder because you really need to focus on what you want to get from Flash.

If you're really thinking in starting a Flash Developer or Designer career, my best suggestion is to start now. Don't let a minute pass without investigating something, the more you get involved in the Flash community, the less learning curve you have. I have always found that there is someone out there that had the same Flash problem as you, and most of the time, they will share how they solved it.

There are some great books, some of them take you on baby steps to learning Flash and some of them get more complex but as soon as you start reading them you'll know when to leave the easy on the shelf and start reading the complex ones.

Anand:
Well it depends from which area the person is coming from,
if s/he is a designer,

1 working on animation
2. understanding symbols
3. undertsning timeline and tweening
4 making simple interactions using buttons and movieclips
5. learning actionScript step by step by online articles.

if s/he is a developer,

1. going through flash player architecture
2. going through Actionscript specification
3. writing small script
4. understanding server/client communication and implementaation of AMF
5. understanind MoviClip class and other flash classes.

What Flash resources do you recommend?

David:

Books:

O'Reilly Learning ActionScript 3.0 by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser 
A very nicely explained ActionScript 3.0 Book with  lots of practical examples. If actionscript 3.0  is a new language in your vocabulary, this is the book for you.

O'Reilly Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock
If you want to know the nuts and bolts of ActionScript 3.0, this is definitively your book Mr. Moock explains in detail and with examples,

and there are many, many more books. O'Reilly and Adobe have made a series of books called the Adobe Developer Library and any one of those might be useful to you.

Web:

The Flash Community is so vast, that this list would be endless, but to quote a few.

Adobe Developer Network 
There you can find tutorials, articles and the inside scoop in the latest Adobe Technologies

Kirupa

The Flash Tutorial network started by Kirupa Chinnathambi  that evolved into a great Flash community and there you can find tutorials on Flash developing, designing as well as other design an development technologies.

The Flash Blog and GoToAndLearn
Both sites created by Lee Brimelow ( nowadays, an Adobe Flash Platform evangelist ). You'll find interesting posts on the Flash technologies and some of the best Flash tutorials ( Video ) on the net.

Thanks for the interview and Happy Flashing !!!

Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR is one of the few technologies that is being used by both the creative and the technical. Thanks David and Anand for taking the time to participate in our discussion.

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