Soon after I bought my first computer I started building simple websites. I had all of the best animated gifs you could find, along with those awesome water ripple java applets and whatever other bells and whistles I could find. It was awesome. I wanted to push the boundaries of this new thing. To make something unique that nobody had seen before. This led me to Macromedia Flash 4. My new hobby slowly taught me how to program, and over time I got pretty good at it. Eventually I landed in New York City and found a job at a tiny little web design shop, building websites for big corporations and loving every minute of it.

During this time the internet was recovering from the big crash at the end of the 90′s and as browsers slowly evolved, so were the websites we were building. But browsers were slow to update back then, so Flash filled a need to move faster and give us more options to explore and new technology to use (and abuse!). Around this time I wrote a little javascript utility to detect the presence of the Flash plugin and conditionally inject Flash into a website or not, and I watched as it grew over the years and became one of the most used utilities on the internet.

Flash was huge. Everyone wanted a flashy website and the only way to get one that any meaningful number of people could see was to use Flash. As browsers struggled to keep up, Flash charged ahead allowing us to build some truly amazing websites. Admittedly, there was some abuse of this technology, but we still charged ahead, trying to discover and build the next generation of user interfaces. Most older companies still thought of the internet as just another medium to advertise on. They wanted a flashy website to show off to their investors and clients and cared less about building something useful. The ubiquity of the Flash plugin made it an easy choice to build these new kinds of websites. We weren’t held back by the limitations of HTML any more, and that let us all explore wild ideas and try things that wouldn’t be possible with HTML or Javascript for years to come.

But now, years later, the browsers are catching up. Mobile devices are becoming more important than desktop computers (a trend I expect to continue for years to come). As more people use the internet in their day to day lives, businesses have realized that having a useful website is more powerful than just a flashy animated advertisement.

A few months ago I noticed that SWFObject usage on the top 10,000 websites was declining for the first time ever (I believe usage peaked in the summer of 2010). Last week, Adobe announced that they would halt development of Flash player for mobile devices, and refocus their efforts on HTML. Since this news was announced, I’ve seen many sad and nostalgic tweets from friends and colleagues. Some seem to be taking the news better than others, and it’s understandable that some people are sad to see Flash go. But it’s important to remember that no single technology is responsible for this awesome thing we call the internet.

This brings us back to my younger self sitting at home in Arizona playing with Flash and Photoshop, building new things. I’ve always loved making things, and I suspect many web developers feel the same. The pleasure of making something great is what drives us, not a specific technology. So don’t be too sad about Flash evolving, or even dying. Just keep making awesome things with whatever tools you have at your disposal.

Discuss this post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3227994

If you are still looking for a Flash/Design conference to attend this summer, I highly recommend Flashbelt.

The best European Flash conference is heading to the states this spring. Flash on the Beach has been happening in Brighton, UK for the last few years and is such a good time, I think everyone should go.

I’ll be heading down to Miami this year to talk about YouTube type things, so if you are curious about using YouTube for a project, or just interested in hearing some stories about a very high performance Flash application, you should come to my session :).

In case you are interested, there’s tons of pictures and writing about past FotB events all over the place. So check it out, and hopefully I’ll see you there.

It’s taking place at the San Bruno YouTube office this Thursday, July 10th from 10:30am to 5:30pm.

Here’s the blurb about it:

Powered By YouTube is a developer gathering focused on bringing together developers to learn more about the YouTube APIs and Tools. Spend the day at YouTube’s headquarters and learn how to bring YouTube to your website, share best practices, and get hands-on with the APIs. Meet fellow YouTube API developers across a wide range of companies, YouTube engineers and product managers, and leave inspired to enhance your user experience with the YouTube APIs.

Also: It’s free, and you get a free lunch.

If you visit this page in Firefox and click the “push me” button, you will see simply “Ref is:” but no other text. If you visit in with any other browser, you’ll see:
“Ref is: [http://dev.deconcept.com/referer_tester/]“.

The problem is that Firefox doesn’t properly append the referer header to requests made from swfs embedded on the page. Every other browser I’ve tested sends a referer.

How you can help:

Visit the bug page for this issue and “vote” for the bug. DO NOT ADD A COMMENT SAYING SOMETHING LIKE “Yes please fix this bug!”. This will only annoy the developers. Simply “voting” for the bug is enough. You vote for the bug by clicking the “vote” link on the top right side of the page, and putting a check in the box next to the bug and clicking the “Change my votes” on the subsequent page.

Flash on the Beach is a fantastic conference in Brighton at the end of September, and it’s one of the best Flash and design conferences to check out.

Registration is now open, so if you’re looking for an excuse to head to the UK, this is it.

Also, next week is Google I/O (Flight of the Conchords are playing a show there!), which I believe still has a few tickets available, and just next month I’ll be heading off to Flashbelt in Minneapolis, so come say ‘Hi’ if you see me wandering around either of these events.

It uses the YouTube player Javascript API to synchronize a Google Maps widget with the video (based on the current time of the video). It was pretty easy to throw together, it took maybe 4 hours from start to finish, and I’ve never used the Google Maps Javascript API before.

Check it out.

Yes? Then head over to this signup page and let us know you’re coming. The event is on March 27th, 2008 and will be held at the Google Mountain View campus.

p.s. free punch and pie

The new version is a complete rewrite from SWFObject 1.5, so we’ll need lots of testing before we officially launch it and replace the older SWFObject and UFO scripts, and since we have Adobe involved, they will be including this embed system in the Adobe authoring tools in the future.

The SWFObject project is moving to Google Code, where you can download the source from svn, grab the latest build, or file bugs or read documentation.

I’ve also created a new Google Group for SWFObject support questions and discussion.

If you are at MAX today, our presentation is at 2:45pm in room W-196c and it’s called “Flash Detection and Embedding: An open source solution”.

If you can’t make it today, we’ll be doing it again tomorrw (Wednesday) at 11am in room W-185d.

It’s got a fantastic lineup if you are into the whole Ajax thing, so I definitely suggest checking it out.

Check out my session outline for more info.

Also: Flashbelt is only 2 weeks away! It’s JUNE already. Time to hit the upper midwest and talk Flash with all the cool Flash nerds again. If you haven’t looked at Flashbelt and are itching for a conference, this will be a nice one to check out.

UPDATE: Apparently, there’s only 50 tickets left for Flashbelt, so get your tickets now if you are planning on going!

I’m heading out to Apollo camp in the morning. I’ll get into SFO around noon and make my way up to the city to wander around until it starts, then I’ll be spending the weekend in the city visiting some friends and just relaxing a bit.

I’ll be there with a couple other Schematic folks, and we are always looking for hot Flash talent™, so say hello if you are looking for work, or just want to say hi.

I’ll be giving a talk called Progressive Enhancement with Flash that will cover stuff like:

• Using SWFObject (maybe SWFFix by then) to embed Flash content
• Using progressive enhancement to allow search engines to properly index your content and increase SEO for Flash websites
• Flash content vs. Flash style, and how to treat them differently
• Deep linking and back button support in Flash

And a few other areas. I should also be able to talk about SWFFix a bit (hopefully it will be fully released by then, but who knows).

Go check out the Flashbelt page for more info. I can’t give you a direct link to my session, but it’s listed there in the session list. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

We’ve put up a dev blog on the site, and will be asking for help and feedback throughout the development cycle, so head over and watch the blog for updates in the coming weeks.

Bobby also has a great A List Apart article out today that talks about the problems with current Flash embed techniques.

It’s very common to hear people argue about Flash websites or RIAs vs. Ajax websites or RIAs, but this is always the wrong way to approach building any website. Would you have an argument with an architect about whether to build a house out of wood vs concrete? Of course not, they would use each material to build the parts of the house that the respective material is best for. Sometimes you might want to build a shack or barn out of all wood, sometimes you might want to build an all brick house, but many times you’ll want to use the best material for each section of the house. Build the foundation out of concrete, the walls and roof out of wood.

Websites and web applications should be treated the same way. Break things down to a component level and go from there. Use the right tool for each component. If you can do it well with HTML/Javascript, go for it. If it would work out better with Flash, then why waste time recreating something with Javascript that you could build 3 times faster with Flash? There are plenty of great examples of this today around the internet:

One of my favorite examples is Google Finance. They use HTML and Javascript for the stuff that is best suited for that, and then when they need to show a nice graph, they drop in a great interactive Flash graph and talk to it using Javascript as needed. The Flash controls the Javascript, and the Javascript can control the Flash as needed.

Another example is Flickr. They started out using Flash to display all of the images, including the image notes and the other toolbar options along with each image. While this might have been a good choice as the site started out, it was soon replaced by a more efficient HTML version of the toolbar and notes system that works just as well as the Flash version. They did end up keeping one small bit of Flash so users can rotate images and see a preview before they save it.

So the next time you start planning a website and you start thinking: “Hmm, Flash or Ajax?” Instead of looking at it from a site-wide perspective, try thinking about your site as a series of components, and then choose Flash or HTML/Javascript for each individual component instead.

You can read the article here where they misspelled my name (twice!) and in the podcast they say I’m a ‘Freelance Java developer’ of which I am neither… But I can’t be too hard on him, as he’s probably not the first person to confuse Java with Javascript.

Here’s the article, and here’s a direct link to the mp3. Fast forward to around 24:00 to hear my part.

The complaint generally goes something like this:

A user has Flash Player 9 (or other version) installed on their system and everything works fine with IE6. That user then runs the IE7 update and their computer stops showing Flash content on sites like YouTube or MSN video and other Flash sites. However, if the user goes to some other sites with Flash content, the content will play just fine, even if the site requires the Flash 9 Player.

I’m not sure of the official cause for this, and am still doing some research into what causes it, but a first guess I have is that when you upgrade from IE7, the browser install is not correctly reinstalling your existing Flash Plugin, so scripts that check for the Flash Player are failing, but since the plugin file is there, if you visit a site that does not use a detection script (like SWFObject) you will see the Flash content just fine.

There may not be a solution to this for the sites using detection scripts – they rely on a series of Windows registry entries that seem to be missing after an IE7 upgrade.

For users, here is a fix that seems to work well:

1. Quit all open programs. This step is important because other programs may be using the Flash Player, and if they are, the uninstaller will fail silently.
2. Run the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller.
3. Reinstall your Flash player.

If you are still having problems after running the uninstaller and reinstalling the plugin, please post a comment with your system setup and other relevant details. (And remember, sometimes a system restart can make a difference with problems like this, so try that first).

UPDATE (1-8-2007): Added a new step 1.

Session Slides (pdf)

Links:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/
http://exanimo.com/as2/StateManager

Further Reading:
http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/progressive_enhancement.html

Enjoy! If you were in the session, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the presentation, and include ways I can make the next one better if you like.

I’ll be hanging out around London Saturday and Sunday, and heading to Brighton Sunday evening, so if you are in the area be sure to say hi.

UPDATE: Well, after a smooth flight, we landed at Gatwick, waited a bit to get through customs, and then found out Brandie’s new suitcase was missing… all that was left near mine was another bag that was the exact same color and model as hers, but with someone else’s nametag on it.
So we notified the airline, and they will hopefully deliver it when this other person realizes they took the wrong bag.

So then we headed up to London for the night (before heading down to brighton Sunday evening). Well, the first thing I tried to do out of the tube station was get some cash from the cashpoint machine. I put my card in, selected the amount, and when the machine tried to spit my card back out, it got stuck somehow just out of reach. It tried a couple of times to spit it out, but eventually gave up and confiscated my card! The lady in the bank wasn’t helpful at all, and was just plain rude when I told her the machine ate my card.

So, right now the score is UK: 2, me: 0.

On the up side, the hotel we picked in London is very nice, and in a prime location to enjoy a bit of pre-conference shopping and sight seeing, and the airline website says they found our bag and it’s out for delivery… so things should be better from here on out :)

UPDATE (12-3-2006): Well, more than 30 hours after we arrived in London, our lost bag showed up. We got into Brighton this evening around 6pm, and met up with all the other nerds at the hotel bar and headed over to Aral’s house for a little pre-conference party. And HOLY CRAP he has a nice place. He was just moving in so the furniture was very sparse, but the apartment itself was fantastic.

This is a great example of using Flash where Flash can do something better than HTML. And doing it in a way that uses progressive enhancement so it doesn’t require Flash. It’s just that Flash makes it better.

SWFMacMouseWheel is another addon for SWFObject that listens for mouse events and passes in the mouse wheel events to your Flash movie using ExternalInterface. Very cool solution to a problem that has annoyed many Flash developers. Go check it out.

SWFMacMouseWheel

SWFAddress is a small script that sits on top of SWFObject and provides deep linking for Flash websites and applications. In other words it enables the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs with page titles that can be sent over email or IM.

SWFAddress uses the ExternalInterface functionality introduced in Flash Player 8. It has been tested on the following browsers:

* Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0
* Mozilla Firefox 1.5
* Safari 2.04
* Opera 9.02

It’s a great little script, and something I’ve wanted to put together for a long time. Even better: It was designed to work with SWFObject, so if you are already using SWFObject to embed your movies, it’s really really easy to just slap in some deep link and back button support.

Go check it out.