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?
2010 has already bought me many new friends, clients and collaborators. Fitting into all three of those categories are FutureDeluxe, a forward thinking design studio who have recently relocated to Brighton.
The first zenbullets/FutureDeluxe collaboration has just gone live – an ident for the forthcoming SCI-FI-LONDON festival. Created using Processing, QuickTime and After Effects.
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.
There’s also been a lot of extra-curricular (i.e. non-Flash) work this year, mostly Processing/Generative Art related. I’ve written a little about the “creative coding” book I’m currently writing (to be published in Summer 2010), but for fuller details of my Generative Art, my writing, and other more experimental work, you should visit my (award winning) personal blog here. Which is where, amongst other things, you can see a video of my work projected onto a Brighton church.
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.
Processing, the Open Source visualisation language behind my abandonedart.org site, finally went “1.0″ yesterday (after approx 7 years in Beta). Full press release is here. Download is here.
I can’t recommend Processing enough – it’s very easy to pick up and a great way of sketching out ideas, even for non-programmers. And most of all, it puts the FUN back into coding. There’s oodles of source code on abandonedart.org if you are looking for a place to get started so go, splash around a little, you might like it.
There are two things I have had on my to-do list for a few years – 1. do a Generative Art project, and 2. do an Open Source project, so this month I have ticked off two boxes at once with my new 100 Abandoned Artworks site.
A year ago I saw Robert Hodgin speak at FOTB07, which introduced me to Processing, an Open Source Java-based programming language. It is always good to teach yourself a new language every few years, just to keep things fresh, and to give you new perspectives on your work. And while ActionScript is still great, as the language has evolved from the hacky AS1 to the strict, ordered, enterprise-focussed AS3, it has lost a lot of its sense of fun and experimentation; the thing that attracted me to the language in the first place.
So, while I can still use AS3 to make my clients happy, Processing can be my playground. Which is the idea behind 100 Abandoned Artworks (http://www.abandonedart.org). I don’t have the time, or the sympathetic business partners, to be able to emulate Hodgin’s sophisticated works, so instead I am intending to do a high-volume, fast turn-around project (the only thing I can do with a wife, child and 20odd clients to keep happy).
Over the next 100 weeks I will produce an experiment a week and throw it out there, in whatever state I have got it to before one of my dependents puts a stop to my playtime. But I will also post the source code, so if anyone wants to take these works and run with them, or adapt them for another medium, they are welcome to.
I’m hoping it’ll produce some good stuff, and you’ll be able to see a upward curve in the quality of the work over the two years. Make sure you subscribe to the feed, because the more subscribers I have, the harder it is for me to bow out and quietly abandon the project.
2. Just about everyone seems to think we should be rediscovering the play in our work.
Even Keith Peters was suggesting we quit our jobs and start making casual games for a living. (Next year the theme will be “Flash – not just a toy”)
3. There is a revolution in Flash audio just around the corner.
4. 99% of what we do as developers is shit, but we need to do shit to make that 1% of masterpiece. (Andy Polaine paraphrasing Hemmingway)
5. Flex is not exciting any more, it just IS.
(Same goes for everything else we were excited about following FOTB06 – Papervision, AIR, etc)
6. Flash is so last week. We should all be learning Processing instead.
7. The Dead Sea is dead because nothing flows out of it. This is why we should be giving away at least 10% of our stuff. (Chris Orwig) Preferably 10% of the shit, not the masterpiece I presume. (Personally, I advocate giving it all away).
Transitions – utterly useless from a usability perspective? Rubbish.
Transitions can often contribute more to an application’s look and feel than fonts, colours and sounds. Most of what we present as multimedia comes down to pages of data, laid out attractively, with some way of navigating in-between them. But why have just a simple page to page sequence when, with thoughtful use of transitions, you can give a sense of space. A few examples:
http://www.leoburnett.com/
This is an old favourite, but still a goodie. It’s a portfolio site that is just a series of pages, but the way they are connected together makes it feel like a 3d environment to be explored. The pen scribble that you leave behind is the most inspired trick, as this a) orients you to show where you’ve been, b) leaves ‘evidence of use‘ behind as you explore (much underused in multimedia).
http://www.sixthsenseuk.com/
This is by our local chums futurlab, and I like it a lot. The desktop metaphor is a well used cliche, but to do it as smoothly as this you find yourself exploring just for the joy of watching the transitions, not just to find what you’re looking for.
http://www.wefeelfine.org/
This isn’t Flash, it’s processing, but there are plenty of great navigation ideas in here. In fact it’s essentially a site of nothing but experimental navigation ideas. Again, it is so visually appealing it wouldn’t matter if this was data about the sale of dental equipment, it would still be great.
There were two sessions at FOTB that got me thinking about transitions, especially as FM are planning a showcase site at the moment, which will be a great opportunity for a bit of experimental navigation. Firstly, Tink’s Flashing Flex talk, showed how simple it is to style Flex and not feel limited by the framework. There’s no reason Flex cannot have the same dynamic animation behind it as Flash does, because they are essentially the same product after all.
Secondly, Carlos Ulloa’s demonstrations of Papervision showed how it can be used for much more than just animating 3d fish and spaceships. Just a simple 3d transition between two planes can make the difference between an application being a series of pages to it being an “environment”. See Carlos’s work for Sony Bravia as a good example.
My Pick of FOTB07 Day 2 – Robert Hodgin. His message was simple: forget Flash, try processing (a great message for a Flash conference, cheers). Processing is an open source animation API built on Java, which, as Robert demonstrated, can produce stuff like this:
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