HD For Indies

Thoughts on Flash: "Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash)."

(my bolding)

The catch is, it allows web DEVELOPERS, that happen to know how to program in HTML5, CSS, and Javascript, to DEVELOP "advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions."

The problem is the toolset out there, or rather, the complete, utter, and profound lack of tools for DESIGNERS to create "advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions."

Flash rocks/rocked not because of what it can do, but WHO can do it.

Back in the early days of interactive media (mid-90s), I worked with and eventually for a company called frogdesign (which did the original industrial design for Macs, BTW). At one point, in order to create interactive media (at the time on CDs), there was a designer who comped stuff out in Photoshop, me as production artist to actually animate and do all the shiny/spinny stuff, and then a third guy was a Macromedia/Macromind Director programmer. It took all three of us to make cool stuff. Director was hard - frogdesign actually went to the trouble of hiring a badass guy (Knut Graff*) from GERMANY - including all the difficulties of getting him a green card. Took a looooong time and I'm sure wasn't cheap. But he was THE MAN on getting interactive content all programmed up and working.

Flash forward (pun intended) a few years, and the designer could do all the shiny stuff himself for web based interactive content. Sure, database integration and that kind of stuff still took Knut's chops, but the animations, transitions, typography etc was EASY TO DO. Easy enough that someone trained as a web/interactive designer was routinely expected to know how to do this stuff too.

Flash to today - if HTML5 is our future, OK. If Apple doesn't want Flash on their hardware because it doesn't run well and/or Apple doesn't want a third party dev tool that is slow to adopt Apple specific features, we can argue about the wisdom of that decision (or not), but in the end it is Apple's decision to make.

BUT...Yo Steve! Don't go trying to blow unicorn glitter up our South Port that HTML5 is as easy as Flash - where the hell is our deep, rich, widely deployed, decade-plus-in-development graphical interactive & integrated design environment/application/suite?

It is akin to the days before Illustrator and Pagemaker, telling us "No big deal, just hand code it in PostScript."

It is vector art before Illustrator, it is desktop publishing before Pagemaker, it is web dev before Dreamweaver (think the hand coded BBEdit days).

Now, if Apple were to "magically" have an interactive design solution for HTML5/CSS/Javascript at WWDC announced, then I'd really have a sour look on my face.


(* Hey Knut, do you still wear orange socks and leather sandals to work? I kinda hope so. Love ya, man!)