News Flash! Killer Badger's New Flash Site

Why are illustrators and graphic designers so afraid of Flash? Same reason they're afraid of spiders, floppy armed robots, and those vaguely naughty personal hygiene commercials: misunderstanding. If we could only clear up the great prejudices that surround Flash and Flash Player, and if we could just shed light on all the advances the enslaved code-gnomes at Google and Adobe have made in overcoming the early problems with integrating Flash and interwebs, we could all put aside our phobias and hatred. We'd still have those creepy commercials, but at least rich media applications would be more widely accepted.

To wit, I submit the Killer Badger Illustration Studio Flash web site:



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So you might ask, what exactly are all the prejudices of which I speak? First, I'd tell you that it's okay to end a sentence in a preposition. Then I'd enumerate each one:

Flash Prejudice No. 1: You can't assign a unique URL to individual rendering states (or "pages" if you insist), making it impossible to send others a link that directs them to that page view.

Not true! Asual.com offers a free application download for Flash developers called SWFAddress. In Asual's words:

SWFAddress is a small but powerful library that provides deep linking for Flash and Ajax. It's a developer tool, allowing creation of unique virtual URLs that can point to a website section or an application state. SWFAddress enables a number of important capabilities which are missing in today's rich web technologies including: bookmarking in a browser or social website; Sending links via email or instant messenger; Finding specific content with the major search engines; Utilizing browser history and reload buttons.

The Killer Badger web site uses SWFAdress in its navigation. I'll admit that I haven't gotten it to work perfectly yet. But I've seen several sites out there that use it successfully (Nissan's web site, for example), so the issue in my case is probably PEBCAC.

Flash Prejudice No. 2: You can't dynamically re-size a flash page to accommodate the user's browser window.

Wrong again! A javascript application called swffit fixes that problem quite easily. I needed just such a fix because the the Killer Badger web site was designed for full-screen viewing. I knew this going into the design, and I knew that viewers looking at the site on the smaller screens you'd find on laptops might not be able to absorb the full resplendent glory of my dashboard navigation metaphor. But swffit sniffs out the browser window dimensions and re-sizes the entire swf file to fit. Brilliant.

Flash Prejudice No. 3: Google's spiders can't crawl - and consequently can't index - the contents of a .swf file.

What? Who told you that? Seriously, who? Why, I oughtta... It might have been true in the past, but not so much anymore. Here is an article that describes just how well Google can extract text and link information from a .swf file and index it right along with all the other html files out there. The technology still has a way to go, but with the growing popularity of Flash, Google is going to continue developing it. Give those code-gnomes a cookie.

Flash Prejudice No. 4: Flash Player is not available for mobile devices. It also poses security risks on other devices.

I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I say! Actually, this one may have some truth to it. But at the time of this writing, Flash Player 10.1 is due to be released within a few months (Spring '10), and it is reportedly able to render swf files to many kinds of mobile devices and tablets. Adobe's admitted security holes are also going to be stitched up, too. This article sums up the promised breakthroughs in this area. Time will tell, the pudding will be proven, and every dog will have his day. In time, the dog may even eat the pudding.

EDIT: A prerelease version of Flash Player 10.1 is available as of April 5, 2010.

Flash Prejudice No. 5: Flash applications are, well, flashy; designers too often rely on attention-hogging animations of dancing hipsters with multicolored dots swirling around their heads as screeching emo bands assault your ears with implorations to sign up for your free thirty-day trial of vaguely naughty personal hygiene products.

Oh, and I suppose all html web sites out there are tasteful and dignified? Pshhh... Truth is, the designer and the client are the ones who should be held responsible - or rewarded - for the outcome of any design. Flash isn't inherently distasteful. In the hands of truly talented designers, astoundingly effective, creative, and downright sublime results are possible. Check out level2D's Flash site. Simply breathtaking.

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