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Flash and Web 2.0
There’s been a lot of material put out on the web design blogs about the new buzz word on the block - ‘Web 2.0’, but there is no mention of Flash. What exactly is the relationship between Flash and Web 2.0?
The term 'Web 2.0' was originally coined as a buzzword to mean ‘the new web’, but it already has a (rather long) technical entry on Wikipedia.
Web 2.0’s building blocks include Ajax, Ruby, and a whole slew of social buzzwords.
There’s a lot of definitions of Web 2.0, but here’s two that I prefer:
Version A: ‘Hey, the web works now!
At worst, a self fulfilling prophecy: anything that is new and seems to work is ‘Web 2.0’, even if its been around for the last 10 years, has finally matured, everyone knows it by its original name... and is using it already. At best, Web 2.0 is simply a means of telling the general public that web content is now meeting many of expectations heaped upon it during the dot com boom.
Version B: Using the web ‘as an application platform and social network'
Web 1.0 was the ‘Information superhighway', but web 2.0 builds on this basic infrastructure, and it includes applications where
- Shared rather private data is used (e.g. syndication, WSDL)
- Site content is more important than appearance (data driven rather than UI heavy designs, e.g. blogs)
- Where development of the application itself is usually a public affair (open beta, open source languages and applications).
Like most people I’m a little confused as to what this actually means in practice. Ajax seems to mean ‘hey, browsers now support JavaScript and CSS!', and most of the Web 2.0 buzzwords are simply a way to get interest back to the web (and of course, to separate venture capitalists from their money as easily as we used to) rather than a meaningful description.
There’s one thing that Web 2.0 seems to include that is missed by a lot of people: Web 2.0 sites are properly tested against users, and that’s why they seem to work well and become popular. These sites are not 'Web 2.0', but they are something much more important - 'successful through actually fulfilling a need, good design, and appropriate choice of technologies'. Wow. There's a shock.
Web 2.0 includes certain types of sites (Google maps, Flikr, blogs etc) not because they use Ruby or whatever, but because users like these sites, and the sites therefore get lots of hits.
There are of course drawbacks to this strategy. For one thing, Web 2.0 sites are less accessible than Web 1.0 sites (because Ajax is not usually accessible), but this would not show up in testing (the vast majority of users don’t mind, so the low number of access impaired users would get drowned out in the hits graph). For another thing, Web 2.0 is aimed at traditional desktop machines, and doesn’t do well on mobile devices. Nontheless, it appears that the fundamental factor behind Web 2.0 is that users like the end result.
What does this mean for Flash?
Flash is not cited as a Web 2.0 technology, mainly because users see it most in intrusive advertising, plus the - often unmentioned - tendancy for Flash designers to design for other Flash designers rather than the end user (and of course, let us not forget clients who specify sites where 'they want a site that is as bandwidth heavy, as web-arty as our competitor's site, but even more so).
Users don’t like Flash as much as they used to. That’s not a problem with Flash. It is because most Flash site designs are not tested against their target audience, and flashy graphics are not as new and different as they were back in 2000. We can no longer get away with it because users now realize that 'Designer web art' means 'fundamentally unusable but looks nice for 30 seconds'.
That is a shame because Flash has all the capabilities that Web 2.0 has, plus Flash can include accessibility (oh yes it can!), and it runs on mobile devices.
I currently work in the education field, and all our (Flash based) applications are tested against a target audience. The funny thing is, the end results look a lot like Web 2.0 applications -
- They use websevices and other data centric technologies
- They separate data from the user interface (we design 'engines' that handle the exam data).
- Their design incorporates in-house unit testing (via people who are not the content creators)
- Their design includes the user in the production process through field testing
Thus, based on this experience, I have a third definition for Web 2.0, and this one actually includes Flash designers:
Version C: Putting the user first
Not the designer. Not the browser. Not the venture capitalist, but the user. In achieving this, use whatever technology fits, and make damn sure that you are fulfilling a need, and that the end user can actually use your designs.
Um. Or maybe I'm just describing Web 3.0.
Added 28 Nov 2005
Interestingly, it appears that Web 2.0 technologies are already making the same mistakes that Flash folks already know and love. Maybe that bit at the end about Web 3.0 wasnt the throw-away joke I assumed when I wrote it!
Added 2 Dec 2005
I've had a few emails of the 'put up or shut up kind' over this post, centered around the question 'Well, show me an application that is better than Google maps and that uses Flash as its front end'.
Easy.
How often would you use Google maps seriously? Five times a year? Yeah. me too.
I use this every day, and it gets better the more I use it. My own radio station. I get to filter the play list, and I can let others listen ot it too.
Best of all, it also describes my musical taste: I like music that features a subtle use of harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping and mixed major key tonality. I don't really know about that, but what I do know is that after a few days, it started playing music that I had never heard of, but that felt like it was part of my record collection!
NB - You have to be in America to listen to it (i.e. you have to know a US zip code... but all I did was think back to a certain TV show).
Added 2 Dec 2005
Last.fm is cool to.
Posted by motiongraphics on November 28, 2005 01:53 PM
I'd be interested to learn more about the engine that handles the exam data. How does it work? Do you use XML to link tghe data with Flash?
Posted on November 30, 2005 09:59 PM
Hi Alec.
Yeah, we use XML and webservices. If its exam data then of course you have to encrypt in some way, but if its simply reporting data (non exam based stuff) then it can go as straight XML.
We also have several engines, but they are all commercial products, so theres only so much I can say!
Outside the office, I also do some consulting work, and most of that also involves some sort of webservice (or at least, some sort of back end).
It seems Flash design is moving more in that direction (most jobs I see for Flash seem to also specify at least knowledge of XML, PHP, etc), and the days of the simple 6 page Flash site are long gone, expecially in the senior web designer positions.
Posted on December 2, 2005 08:05 AM
I would say Flash is citied as Web 2.0 technology and that Flash is soooooo Web 2.0 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4762944544960468107). As far as I understand anything that the Web 2.0 stands for can be done in Flash (thats a bold statement so don't shoot me down :)). Most Web 2.0 conferences i've seen advertised always has a strong Flash representative somewhere in the line-up.
I see Web 2.0 taking apps away from the desktop and onto the web, and with the developement of Flex 2 and AS 3.0, these kind of apps are becoming easier to build and run better than you could have expected before.
I would have thought most decent Flash jobs nowadays look for someone who can connect to external data whether via remoting or webservices or just loading static XML.
The specifics of webservices i don't know. I have used them quite a bit but have always had someone on-hand to put them in place. The beauty of them is that you can send native Flash objects and expect native Flash objects back. Lovely!
Standard XML is my view is a pain. firstchild, childNode rubbish. If i use XML i usually the same XMLUtil class i have in place to immediately parse it all to Flash objects once loaded so I can access it via dot notation. E4X in AS 3.0 sounds great although i'm still to give it a good testing yet.
Users want something interactive. Something where they can achieve, shared, store or feel part of some experience. The web is growing up, but so is Flash! We aint by no means being left behind, and in my view Flash is up ther leading the way!
Posted on December 12, 2005 12:51 AM
Hi Tink
Agree with everything.
Listening to the Ajax crowd, Ajax is soooo totally revolutionary, but to most of the rest of us, its just another dynamic UI system. Ajax even breaks the back button just like Flash, so they *must* be blood brothers ;)
Yeah, XML in Flash is a complete pain. What I tend to do is go through any XML I recieve and put it all into objects (actually, an array of objects), which sounds like exactly the same as your method. When producing XML (to be sent out to the back end, etc), I simply use string concatenation... I really hate all that XML methods and properties deal as well.
Most important issue with XML is *always delete the XML object when you no longer need it*. Flash 8 is a lot better, but with Flash 7 and below, you generally have to explicitly delete it, especially if you are using anonymous callbacks or local functions. If you dont, the web application grinds to a halt after a couple of hours due to memory leakage probs (I get the feeling this issue has put many designers off XML and Flash in the past, but its actually easily fixed).
Posted on December 12, 2005 01:43 PM
Brilliant article. The best seem to put the user first and allow them to use the web for what the web does well. Things likes del.icio.us (which finally claimed my start page from google), technorati.com and now pandora.com (thanks for that link) are really getting it right.
I agree with the design vs performance issue as well (script.aculo.us is novel, but slow rendering and a single flicker showing up in any modern browser suggests that some things are better left to flash).
Posted on January 13, 2006 05:07 AM