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:



Read on...


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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The Best Vector Text Effects, Ever.

Although the Vandelay Design blog is primarily geared towards tutorials for web designers, there's a heapin' helpin' of valuable information for illustrators and graphic artists as well. Like this post about text effects using Adobe Illustrator.

There's also a top 20 list of the most valuable Photoshop tutorials on the web. That's a pretty bold claim, but I think they may be right.

Now, back to the drawing board.

End of Post

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Head First Web Design

Those wacky folks over at O'Reilly Media, Inc. have put out another Head First book, this time on web design. If you're not familiar with the Head First series of how-to books, then you're either over forty years old or not much into how-to books. I'm both. But for reasons I still don't understand, Linux Pro Magazine asked me to write an online review of the latest in a long line of their eccentric but extremely well written instructional books.


You can read the full review here.

Now back to the drawing board.
There's nothing more here. Really.

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Take the Go Green Score challenge.

The latest in badger web design...

How green is your scene?
Take the GoGreenScore challenge!

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DNS is working.

As of this moment, the domain name server is now correctly directing www.theagilebadger.com to my portfolio site rather than to this blog. Emotions are running high here in the badger burrow. Much coffee has been drunk. Colorful language invoked. Success is fleeting, I know, but it seems things are going as hoped, at least for the moment.

From now on, to get to this blog, you can either go to www.theagilebadger.blogspot.com, or just click the "Blog" button on my portfolio site.

I need to figure out how to update my RSS feed to correctly grab Blogger. But that's a whole new bag of snakes.

Back to the drawing board.

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Portfolio Website Up!

All decent, respectable illustrators who operate their business in a professional manner should have a portfolio web site.

So why do I have one, you ask? Good question, smart ass.

Well, justified or not, I have one. And hopefully within a few days, my domain name "theagilebadger.com" will point directly to my portfolio site rather than to this blog. The site will have a "Blog" button that will send all my faithful readers (my mother-in-law, my wife, sometimes the dog) to these pages, which I intend to continue updating on a regular basis. The portfolio site will showcase only my best work, and this blog will concentrate more on describing my process and lessons-learned.

Once the site is fully active, you get to this blog either through the site, or by navigating directly to http://www.theagilebadger.blogspot.com/. You'll figure it out, I'm sure.

For now, you can see a beta version of the new site here. Please let me know, either through email or by commenting in this post, about anything that doesn't look right.

Now, back to the drawing board.

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I'm a WIENER! No, I mean, WINNER!

Maybe I'm both, actually.

Anyway, I just won a free copy of Swift 3D from the good people (person?) at Bittbox.com! Swift 3D is modeling and animation software that integrates with Adobe Flash, a product that came bundled with my beloved Adobe CS3 along with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and a wad of other programs that I'm sure includes Tetris and Solitaire somewhere. My imagination is swimming with ideas, and as soon as I've mastered this electronic Lego kit, I'll be able to offer my web clients a world of creative possibilities for their sites.

And that won't be too difficult to achieve, I'd warrant. I spent over a decade performing 3D modeling and analysis of aircraft and automotive components for the likes of GM and Rolls Royce. Now that I have a copy of Swift 3D, I'll be able to relive those wonderful days as an engineer, only this time I'll actually have fun doing it! And the best part is, no more ties, high-water Chinos, hip-pocket calculators, or socially awkward moments with icky girls.

Now, back to the drawing board.

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New Website Up and Running

My first toe-dipping into web design has turned into a full-fledged cannonball into the deep-end of electronic commerce. The web site for Aveena Natural Cleaning Services is now live, and aside from a few CSS tweaks to accommodate the fussiness of MS Internet Explorer, I think it's looking pretty good. If you see anything wonky, please leave a comment so I can get it fixed.

I'm happy to report that the client is pleased. And that's especially important because I'm married to her.

Now, back to the drawing board.

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