INTERVIEW 2 | Vol.
III No. 3, 2005
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| News aggregate site 10x10.org is on the cutting edge of dynamic Flash design and interactive user experience. |
The Fantastic Flash
Sessions Faculty member David Witt is a
Brooklyn, NYC-based new media artist and award-winning
interactive multimedia designer. In the final stages of developing an advanced multimedia course, David talked to us about his favorite development tool, Flash, and more generally about what interactive design is really all about.
Q: We asked Jason this question, so it's only fair to ask you too. Why do we love clicking on and moving things on computer screens?
David: Unlike movies and TV, the computer is about interactivity, clicking and pointing to make things happen—it's about creating your own unique experience, by the choices that you make, and that's what I think draws people into the interactive experience.
Q: Flash was supposed to replace HTML, but sometimes it still looks like it’s hovering on the periphery. Many developers still shy away from it, especially for more corporate sites (even though you can make a clean text site with Flash). Do you still think that Flash will be the future of Web design, or do you think there will always be a place for HTML and DHTML sites?
David: Flash and HTML are complimentary technologies that accomplish different goals: HTML is for sites that are mostly text information and graphics, which is about making site content fully searchable and universally accessible.
For the majority of Web sites, this is the end goal. However, there are many cases when advanced interactivity, animation, sound and video are desired or required in order to create a richer multimedia experience. This is Flash's domain, and nothing else can compare.
The Flash plug-in is the most widely distributed browser plug-in, and is nearly universal. Over 98% of all computers having the plug-in. (http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/) Far from hovering on the periphery, the Flash platform is gaining ubiquity!
Here's a Flash quote from Robert X. Cringely, (http://pbs.org/cringely) one of the Web's leading pundits:
"With 98 percent market penetration, Flash not only isn't going away, it is too pervasive to even be ignored. There is effectively a Flash monopoly and to ensure that remains the case all Macromedia has to do is keep Flash fairly current AND backward-compatible. The only thing that could change that is a complete platform shift, but those come along only every 15 years or so. We're in one right now with the shift to phones and Flash is right in the thick of it."
Good designers and developers use the right tool for the job, and in most cases, the corporate Web site is best done in HTML, due to basic information content, universal access. The fact is, Flash development is generally a more expensive and time-consuming process.
Q: Macromedia ActionScript 2.0 is more powerful than ever and gives developers lots of options. Do you think that Flash is being used to its full potential for interactive design right now, or are developers still just getting a handle on the new features?
David: Macromedia has made developers a target audience for the Flash platform by adding many developer-centric features and beefing up ActionScript with version 2.0. Nevertheless, multimedia designers and animators remain core users of Flash.
Flash is *the* power tool for creating animation and adding interactivity to the Web. While it can be technical, I believe that Flash is a tool for designers at all levels that are interested in creating animation and advanced interactivity.
Q: Flash has made a lot of progress in dynamic text. How do you see this being used in the future? Is this a feature that will get more developers on board with Flash?
David: Dynamic data is now one of Flash's strong points—Flash can hook up to any data source, and display the data much more flexibly than HTML, keeping everything in one screen, without annoying screen refreshes.
Dynamic text in Flash can be as simple as loading external text files and a CSS style sheet. Personally, I think that the ability to embed HTML text in Flash and style it with CSS is a big deal, because it allows the ability to globally style a Flash site's text, and create a Flash app whose content can be changed or updated by editing a text file, without having to change the Flash app itself!
Q: Do you think that CSS’s layout control rivals Flash’s at this point?
David: CSS positioning is a great innovation for HTML layout—that said, it's no comparison to visually creating a composition by directly manipulating the graphic elements. To me, it's basically apples and oranges....
Q: Where do you see people doing really cool stuff right now with Flash?
David: The best dynamic data applicaton I've seen with Flash lately is 10x10.org (http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html). It's a fantastic example of what Flash can do: It's hooked up to news-feeds on the Web, which creates deeper interaction, because the content is never static, always changing!
There's all kinds of cool stuff being done with Flash—one of my favorites is Jared Tarbell, of Levitated.net—I've featured his work in my new Advanced Flash Multimedia course. He's a hardcore science and math head, and he's applied this knowledge using Flash and Actionscript to create fantastic organisms and abstract animations.
Q: When you look at his source code (which he so generously offers), it’s amazing how elegant it is. Where do you see people doing really cool stuff right now with interactive multimedia art in general?
David: To me, creating art is about ideas and outcomes, and not about the tools being used—a good multimedia artist should use multiple software tools to accomplish whatever is needed at the moment.
Check out Rhizome.org to see some great examples of Internet/Interactive art from a global community. Another cutting-edge venue, and the largest international new media art venue, is Ars Electronica (http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp)
Another interesting trend for me today is the rise of 'hardware hackers'—people who combine an understanding of programming with a desire to modify their hardware, to create unique and amazing things. Make magazine (make.oreilly.com/) is at the forefront of this phenomenon. You can also check out http://flashenabled.com to see Make editor Philip Torrone's Flash hacks for portable devices.
Q: Do you find that bandwidth and browser compatibility are still major obstacles for interactive Web sites?
David: Flash doesn't worry about browser compatibility at all, that's an HTML/Javascript issue only! Bandwidth is really less of an issue these days: Today, 'Flash abuse' is much less prevalent, and good Flash designers/developers know to link to external graphics, and audio and video sources, and to use programmatic animation, to help keep file sizes tiny. The base size of my site, http://studioDWitt.net is only 20k!
Q: Wow, it’s hard enough getting one large graphic down to 20k, never mind an entire site! So what major strides have you seen in Web interactivity in the past few years?
David: Interactive design deals with a much larger environment; basic HTML 'page' design is similar to traditional graphic design, which deals with a static page layout. Interactive design and animation have the added elements of time and variability to deal with, which adds a great deal of complexity. Therefore, I think that the learning curve has been longer, and that we're still in the middle of it—however, we've all come a long way in a short period of time, and are making gains every day.
Q: What do you see in the future of Web interactivity?
David: The future of Web interactivity is integration and evolution—we are evolving our design skills to reflect our ever-increasing understanding of the nature of interactivity and the user interface, not to mention increased user sophistication. Integration means combining different technologies and media into one package.
The bottom line is that HTML and Flash address different outcomes. HTML will always be the 'lingua franca' of the Internet, but Flash will remain indispensable for creating more advanced and multifaceted (and fun!) Internet experiences.
