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FlashForward
has become the Flash conference of choice, and this version
showed how Flash is maturing at hyper-velocity into the tool
that finally allows designers to harness computation and programmers
to try their hand at design. Check out the schedule
to get a sense of the range of topics covered.
The most
interesting presentation was called Wireless Web : Flash Everywhere.
Phillip Torrone of Fallon
discussed the recently released Flash player for PocketPC
and demoed a project which used Flash to create the interface
for Web-based, ATM-based and PocketPC-based access to banking
services for USABanc.
Not only did it show that Flash was up to providing a secure
interface to a very complex transactional and database engine,
but it demonstrated how developers can now use the tool to
create a core set of content and interaction and deploy them
across a number of very different platforms.
Further
on the platform front, the keynote addressed included a demo
of Flash
operating on the Playstation 2. Again, this has the potential
for greatly simplifying aspects of developing for the notriously-difficult-to-develop-for
game consoles, even if simply for handling titles, inserts,
etc.
With Flash
5, ActionScript has become a full-featured object-oriented
language. Without geeking out too much, this means lower development
costs, greater flexibility in code re-use, and, IMHO, greater
accesibility to complex functionality for non-programmers.
Flash
and XML are becoming the new power couple, with Flash 5's
built-in XML making it possible to create lightweight interfaces
to all that text data. Add in Generator, and industrial-strength
projects like the USABanc one mentioned above, become possible.
A company
called Wildform
has created Flix, a utility that will convert a QuickTime
movie into a .swf (Flash movie) file, allowing the developer
to easily incorporate such data into a movie and control like
any other object. In general, the interaction between Flash
and QuickTime is getting richer and richer.
The conference
also includes the Flash Film Festival, where different sites
are juried by Flash super-gurus and awarded honors in eight
different categories. My personal favorite is natzke.com
(Experimental category), which demonstrates the usefulness
of playing around. The full list of winners, all of which
are worth checking out:
3D: mtv2.co.uk
Carton: eStudio.com
Ecommerce: usabancshares.com
Games: simcoaster.com
Motion Graphics: quam.it/abc
Navigation: mtv2.co.uk
Original Sound: cheshiresmile.com
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Story: icebox.com
Technical Meric: city.popwire.com
Typography: bornmagazine.com/walking
People's Choice Award: scifi.com/chichian
For more
detailed notes about the conference, email
me.
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