Flash creation programs?

[tom hanlon]

> Hey folks -
>
> I'm interested in playing around with some Flash animations. Of 
> course, I don't want any proprietary software. Are there Flash content 
> creation applications that are FOSS?
>
>

I believe that php had some tools for generating flash files. Take a 
look at php.net.

I found that tackling the generation of flash files from outside of the 
flash toolbox was a pain. In particular getting a mental picture of 
what goes on in the flash player was a bit of a mental workout. A good 
book on actionscript helps, the colin mook (?) O'reilly book is pretty 
good. Find a good tutorial that explains the playhead and the timeline 
and stack that flash operates with and you may be able to decipher the 
OS tools to generate SWF files.

Look into SWISH ?? I believe it is a tool to animate text. I believe it 
operates outside of flash.

Open source stuff...
SVG might be a good way to go. SVG is an xml specification for vector 
graphics an animation that work through a browser plugin. KDE's 
killustrator writes SVG format.

Not completely open but..
JAVA, I think it is time to take a look at JAVA applets in the browser. 
Certainly can be built with free or open source tools.  I believe that 
the conflict between SUN and MS has left the version of JAVA in most 
browser to have the clunky graphic tools, pre-swing ?? I am not a JAVA 
coder so I leave the details to the experts but I recall something 
about that issue.

The 90% market share of flash as a plugin make it hard to resist, the 
decent money paid for flash developers is also hard to resist. The 
proprietary nature of the whole system is hard to endure. I presented a 
MySQL presentation at an athens OH based Macromedia conference. I found 
myself wanting to ask tough/rude/exposing questions to the macromedia 
reps all day long but I figured that nobody else there would get my 
point, so I kept quiet.  It was a Macromedia conference after all, I 
was just there to show them that you can use php/mysql to get data to 
your flash apps.

Flash has certainly gained a proprietary hold on the media/animation 
sector of the web, some of the flash tools are very cool and very 
useful, the forms stuff looked pretty nice, nested/linked and 
interactive dropdowns are nice also.
FLASH and XML seems rather promising also.

The combination of javascript/css/html that it takes to emulate what 
flash has is a real pain sometimes. This is a real problem and a 
continued threat to the use of web standards. Buying software to build 
your website is annoying but even more annoying is the risk that 
macromedia can pull the rug out from under you at any moment, forcing 
you to upgrade or breaking your applications.

I have always hoped that the OS nature of the internet and the WWW 
would be the foothold that allowed for the spreading of Open Source. To 
some extent this has happened. In a certain sense FLASH is the trojan 
horse of proprietary software that may allow the opposite to happen. 
Instead of the web helping to make all software open, flash may help to 
make the web more closed.

Best of luck in your endeavor.  If your goal remains to write flash 
animations outside of FLASH then I advise you to experiment with using 
the flash tools first and the tutorials in particular before you try OS 
tools. Perhaps Macromedia has a 30 day trial. The last time I tried to 
do what you are about to try to do it was difficult. Perhaps some OS 
tools have come along since then, or perhaps you have experience with 
something analogous to the flash player that will make it easier for 
you.

--
Tom