According to Steve Jobs, Flash is dead. He should know, because he’s the one holding the murder weapon. Flash is dead to Apple because they are not allowing it on the iPad, a device which otherwise would seem ideal for viewing the kind of rich media content the Flash platform excels at.
Obviously, Apple’s decision, and Jobs’ declaration, is not a prescient message from the future, but a company policy intended to protect the profits from their app store. They do not want their sexy device to be able to access all the rich content from the web, they want to be able to charge you for it instead. Even so, when someone like Steve Jobs declares Flash is dead, people take notice. So if the future is no longer Flash, … what is it?
Even before Apple weighed in, I’d noticed the demand for Flash has been on the wane. And even more noticeable has been the wavering interest of my fellow Flash devs. Symptomatic of these times, the Flash Brighton group, the collective home of the finest Flash designers and programmers in Brighton, is in the process of a rebrand, which will very likely include (gasp) dropping the word “Flash” from the group name.
On an individual level, I’ve seen many of Brighton’s finest recently devoting their attention to non-Adobe products. And these are the folks who know. So here are some of the technologies people have been playing with:
Unity – a 3D games engine, also banished from the iPhone via their T&Cs, but capable of some amazing browser based interaction. See http://blurst.com/ for many fine examples. If you want a Unity developer, may I recommend my friend and colleague Iestyn.
OpenFrameworks – a C++ framework, capable of creating multi-platform content. Ideal for interactive art, ambitious installations and audio-reactive work, but also capable of publishing to devices such as the iPad, iPhone and Android. This has been my own favourite toy of late.
Processing – a highly accessible language based on Java. Not so great for the web, but excellent for digital art, video or offline interactive work. For the web there is Processing.js, a JavaScript port, which is probably the best Flash animation alternative currently. I have written an introductory book on the subject of Processing, if you want to get up to speed that might be a good place to start.
HTML5 – this is Jobs’ answer to the lack of Flash on the iPad. Unfortunately, while HTML5 has a huge amount of promise, it is still many years away from Flash’s current power. Even if Adobe were to cease developing Flash/Flex today, by the time HTML5 had caught up the iPad will be a distant memory (because we’ll all have migrated to Android devices long ago).
Objective C – inevitably, many Flash devs don’t like being locked out of the platform-de-jour, so have been awarding their attentions to Objective-C, Apple’s OS language. Again, if you want an iPhone developer, there are people I can recommend.
Flex – while Flash demand is dropping, Flex demand has been on the increase. Flex app are still using the Flash Player, so they’re no more welcome on the iPad than any other breed of Flash, but it still remains the best solution for rich media online.
Personally, I disagree with Apple; there is still a future for the Flash platform. Although Adobe are going to have to pull their socks up to fight back, ignore Apple’s greedy posturing, and focus on all the things that HTML5 can’t do very well. Video for example. Or how about 3D?
There is now video evidence of my brief appearance at Flash On The Beach earlier this year, currently residing on the front page of the FOTB site. I hate seeing myself on film, but fortunately the majority of the video consists of the artwork I showed (from my “Abandoned Art” Generative Art project), which is perhaps the only reason why, three months later, I can now safely watch this without cringing.
Let’s be honest, Interactive Awards don’t mean shit. Unless they’re awards people have heard of, real people, not just people who are in the running for them. But the BAFTA in the UK, like the Oscar in the US, is pretty much universal currency, bring one of those home and there’s no explanation needed.
In 2003 BAFTA introduced a host of “Interactive BAFTAs”, a project I worked on was nominated for one in 2004, but they were quietly dropped in 2005 for reasons unknown. There still exist a few hotly contested Interactive awards buried within other events though, such as the Interactive category at the Children’s BAFTAs, which was last year won by my old company Littleloud. Tonight was a second Brighton triumph as Seb’s PlugIn Media posse landed the very same award for their excellent Big And Small site.
PlugIn walked it home really. I’ve never seen such a level of detail in a childrens game, it was a no brainer. If my four year old had been judging it he’d have gone for the same.
I had absolutely no part in this particular scoop but still I am feeling the joy, if only in the reflected glow upon Brighton’s Flash community. Happy days.
Well, when I say “speaking”, I mean I’ve got three minutes! Which should be just enough time to get on stage, get my laptop hooked up to the projector, make sure it’s got sound, introduce myself, apologise for having no time left and get off.
I’ve been selected to present one of the Flash On The BeachElevator Pitches, twenty micro-sessions showcasing “hot new talent”. On first hearing of the idea I thought it would be impossible to fit anything meaningful into so short a time – when I spoke at Flash Brighton earlier in the year it ran to more like three hours. But, as Seb reminded me, this is more of a teaser trailer rather than a full feature, so I’ve now got something in mind (something new and previously unseen) which I hope will do the trick. I don’t think there’ll be time for questions though.
To get an idea of what you might expect, see my recent postings over at zenbullets.com. And if you’re at the conference please come and see me. You will be allowed 3.5 seconds in which to applaud.
Amongst the forthcoming Flash Brighton sessions in the calendar we have a talk on William Blake by Rich. This news prompted the following from Neil:
var bow = bringMe("burning gold");
var arrows = bringMe("desire");
var shield= bringMe();
var clouds = Clouds.unfold();
var chariot= bringMe("fire");
do {
mentalFight.cease = false
sword.sleep = false
} while (! England.pleasantpastures.isJerusalemBuild())
as3.0 is like a strict german mistress. Very harsh but gets good results.
as2.0 is your stoner friend from college.
as1.0 is for script-kiddies, designers and other non-technical people
as2.0 is for girls
as3.0 is for real men
as3.0 is carefully crafted formulaic pop – predictable, slick, reliable, dull
as2.0 is glitchy electronica – some semblance of form, but playful with it
as1.0 is a child bashing saucepans – imprecise, messy, but lots of fun
as3.0 is a Japanese Chef’s knife. Finely crafted but requires care and technique in its use.
as2.0 is a Machete. Great for hacking things, but useless for anything requiring fine detail or control.
as1.0 is a plastic spoon.
There are only really two types of awards – those that your mom has heard of, and those that she hasn’t. And while I’m still really chuffed about the two DiMAS awards I accepted last week, this was slightly eclipsed last night by Littleloud, the company I used to work for, bringing home a BAFTA for their Bow Street Runner Flash interactive.
I had no involvement in it at all, but my friend and colleague Iestyn Lloyd lead the project, and almost had a breakdown because of it. It was simply not physically possible for one person to work any harder on a Flash project, so the kudos it has received since is very well deserved.
I had a piece of Director work nominated in the short-lived Interactive BAFTAs back in 2004, but it failed on the night, which was very disappointing. This is why, while I am extremely excited for the Littleloud crew, I’m also seeeeeeething with jealousy. Perhaps they’ll let me touch it next time I’m in.
While I have always been a proud member of the Flash Brighton group, I became even prouder on Thursday night when we, collectively, scooped a well deserved Strongest Community award at the 2008 DiMAS awards.
Inspired by the New York group FlashCodersNY, Flash Brighton (or FlashCodersBrighton, as we were originally called) started only two years ago, as a mailing list with a few irregular meetings, mostly kept alive by the enthusiasm of Seb Lee Delisle. But since then it has grown to almost 200 members, with regular weekly meetings attracting a consistent stream of quality speakers, initiating collaborative projects, transatlantic link-ups, big screen spectaculars, a one dayconference last year, and never, so far, charging a penny for any of it. But, most importantly, it has formed into a highly cohesive group of Flash professionals who like to work together and share their knowledge.
At the awards ceremony the group was commended on how much we had achieved in a short time and the potential of our relatively young collective. But what really stood out was how our presence had become felt not just in Brighton, but across the web.
As Rich pointed out, as well as the Community award, Flash Brighton’s members were all over the DiMAS like a rash this year, having contributed to works nominated in seven of the twelve categories . And I should add, with hopefully a sufficient amount of modesty, that I’m supremely chuffed to have come away with a second award that night too; winning this year’s Best Blog award for my writing on zenbullets.com. I won’t be giving up the day job quite yet though.
When I started working as a Flash freelancer in Brighton I assumed the whole world and their wife were all out there doing the same thing too. But I have since come to realise that while there are plenty of freelance Flash professionals out there (not so many Flex Developers though), there are only a few whose ActionScript is worth their day rate. Also, the good ones tend to be booked up months ahead, so don’t have any particular need to advertise their talents.
So, for those of you who are looking for an ActionScript freelancer, below is my pick of the best of Brighton.
Naturally I’m putting myself at the top of the list, as I need your work just as much as anyone else. But if you have spoken to me and I am busy, or you owe me money, or you’ve taken offence to my haircut or something, try one of the other guys. My colleague Kris has a longer list here, but these are the people I will personally vouch for.
If you contact them do let them know you found them via me. Beer is very expensive in this town.
If it is a Flash Designer you are after, rather than an ActionScripter, they are much easier to come by. Your best bet may be to tap people randomly on the shoulder while wandering around Churchill Square. Roughly one in every five will be a Flash Designer.
Currently Flex Developers are a rare commodity, hard to pin down for freelance work. This may be about to change, in Brighton anyway, after Flash Brighton’s Big Day Out event, where Adobe were generous enough to give out a free copy of Flex Builder 2 to everyone who attended.
The Flash Devs of Brighton have been really spoilt this month, with Flash On The Beach, The Big Day Out, and the rest of the Digital Festival. I’ve been to so many events over the last few weeks that my collection of freebie promotional geek t-shirts is now spilling out of the drawer.
Major respec’ to the Flash Brighton crew for the organisation behind the Big Day Out, it was a really good day. Two highlights – 1. Seb and Dom’s 15 minute masterclasses. 2. Andrew Shorten’s preview of Thermo (which is a long way away, but is already getting everyone excited).
So, unsurprising, I was very excited by the project Tom at Flexible Factory has been working on recently. He has reverse-engineered the open source Jasper emulator, originally written in Java, and rebuilt it in ActionScript 3. From Tom’s account this sounds like it involved some pretty hardcore coding, but I’m glad he persevered as now we have Flasper, the Flash ZX Spectrum Emulator. It’s light weight, can be easily embedded in a browser, and it ROCKS!
Tom demoed this for the first time last night at Flash Brighton, the regular get together of the local Flash talent. Every time I attend one of these meeting I find myself blown away by the range and quality of work being produced across our small collective. It can be quite intimidating, I mean, if all you can show from your recent work is some pretty fractal effects, how do you follow a guy who’s been mapping and simulating the brain of a snail (Hi Peter).
Last night we also saw some sweet animation, an AIR Twitter app, and a Flash/ASP project called Communicator World, the work of unwrong, an Edinburgh company who have just moved down to Brighton. Welcome to the south coast guys, I think you’ll be right at home here.
But everyone’s work was great, so I shouldn’t single anyone out. The full list of last night’s exhibitors is on the Flash Brighton site.
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