The FlashCanon

Mike Potter at RIA pedia has posted an entry on his blog about an ActionScript multitouch table which will be shown at Adobe MAX in Chicago at the end of this month. As Mike points out:

The key differences between this and what Microsoft is building are that the AS 3 library will be open source

That’s right, he said open source (you gotta love the Flash/Flex/ActionScript community). He also mentions that you can get involved and learn more at nuigroup.com. Check out the post when you get a minute and be sure to check out some of the videos on nuigroup.com as well.

This is by no means a new subject of discussion, but I’ve been thinking lately about how some people use setInterval more and some people use onEnterFrame more. I personally like to use setInterval mainly because I have control over the speed at which the function is called as opposed to having to rely on the frame rate. I know that there are instances where one or the other might be specifically called for, but which do you prefer to use more often and why?

I was having a discussion with someone today who said, in no uncertain terms, that he despises Flash. I found myself taking that in an odd sort of personal way. He doesn’t like some of the “crap” that he sees out there and some of the sites that are just clunky and overloaded with “non-functional movement” and “pointless animations.” As we in the Flash community know, Flash has long been more than just a tool to create pointless little animations. It has grown in so many ways that I can’t even start to list them here. I started explaining some of the magical powers of ActionScript and thumbed through a couple of my books with him to show him just a few strengths. [Quick book plug… Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters (awesome!)] Anyway, after showing and explaining to him where Flash has gone over the years, I think I turned him completely around (that, or he just wanted to get away from me).

I think that for those of us who work/build/create with Flash, that kind of thing can be very frustrating to hear from someone. So frustrating for me that I felt the need to write this post about the subject right away. I feel that a part of my responsibilities as a Flash Developer is to inform others outside of the Flash community about these kind of things. The problem I find myself running into is that it’s hard to engage people in that conversation if they are not in the field. Take this post for example. I can type until I’m blue in the… um… fingers, but who’s reading this? Most likely, people in the Flash community who already know all about this issue and frustration. To that end, I think I’m going to do some brainstorming to find ways to get this information outside of the Flash talking groups and into the world of the people I’ll go ahead and call “civilians” because I like to use that word to describe “other” people.

I’m not sure how I’m going to do it. I’m not sure where I’m going to do it. I really don’t know who will even listen, but I’m going to get the word out if I have to tie people down to chairs in conference rooms and give them hour-long presentations on the extreme power that Flash has grown into. At least that’s what I WANT to do. Hopefully, I won’t end up giving up just to go sit on the couch and wait for the next episode of “Lost.”