A Short List of Other Tech for Flash Designers and Devs to Check Out
What do you do when you aren’t writing classes or managing assets on a timeline in Flash? How do you expand you knowledge or expand your creativity? For me, if I still feel like tinkering on a computer but not really doing any Flash/HTML/CSS work, I like to find new tools and try them out. Sometimes I produce stuff worth sharing, sometimes it’s just tinkering and playtime.
As a professional, it can sometimes become more about the day to day. The grind. You need to take a step back every once in a while and experiment.
Read on.
So what tools are worth playing with? Here are some toys I have had fun with over the last couple years… Maybe if you get some time, you should check em out. In general, I would recommend just picking the ones oyu want to play with based on how much fun it looks or if you have any interesting ideas percolating that look like they could be tackled with that tool. Don’t look at it from only an angle of commercial applicability.
- Silverlight – Unless you have been living under a rock, you have encountered the Silverlight plug-in somewhere. Olymipics video, MLB and NFL have all deployed content in the plug-in. If you are not a Mac only developer, you should at least install the toolkit and try to see how easy it is to rebuild some of your basic Flash stuff in this format. The codebase tends to be a little cleaner overall, as it’s a bit more modern and has less of a history than ActionScript does.
- JQuery – Like dot syntax? Hate JavScript because of it’s lack of structure and OOP? Maybe you dislike it’s over-verbosity? Whatever your reason, give this JavaScript API a shot. It will seriously change the way you look at ECMA/DOM scripting. Since first dabbling with other JS APIs like Prototype, MooTools, etc, I have standardized on JQuery and really, I no longer fear or dread writing JS. I would like a better standardized testing and integrated IDE (Firebug + a Text editor is okay, but there is so much room for improvement)
- Processing and ProcessingJS – Processing has been around for a while. It’s now a 1.0 release, no longer Beta. You can pull some serious stuff off with it. A very robust Drawing API and support for GL. Wow. On top of that, the library was recently ported straight to JaScript, so no Applets are required to render sketches in the browser. The performance isn’t quite stellar, but really, this is an amazing feat of engineering. Expect this space to get a lot hotter as browsers start to add GL support in the impending HTML5 era.
- iPhone Dev Tools – No buts about it. Developing for the iPhone platform is hot. Apps are popping up like crazy and with the iPad on the verge of release, it is only going to get more so. So, why not get on the bandwagon and write something? Well, beyond the politics and approval process of getting your app in the store, there is the challenge of learning a very complex and expansive language, Objective C. Couple with that the CocoaTouch API and rather complex provisioning and deployment process needed to build and test on your own device and you will quickly realize that as a Flash dev, you aren’t in Kansas anymore. That doesn’t mean you can’t dabble though. If you are a student or educator, you can get free access to the iPhone dev program. Also, you can try out the Unity platform for a really powerful game creation toolkit that also will open a world of advanced 3D online gaming and possibly even Wii development.
- VDMX/VJ tools – If you are more into the visual side of Flash, doing generative graphics or have investigated using Flash a video switcher or live performance tool, you should really check into this type of tool. Perfect for glitching video or acting as a visual accompaniment to a electronic set. Completely configurable, media friendly and super powerful, VDMX is made to perform live. If you have some musician friends, use your medai production skills to augment their performances. Tons of fun!
- VVVV or Quartz Composer – Related to the VJ tools, but also capable of doing much more in terms of programmatic and generative effects, VVVV and QuartzComposer both offer node based editor spaces. These types of tools should be familiar to old-timers that played with Hypercard or Apple Media tool. If you haven’t come from that back ground, prepare your self for a bit of a learning curve, but wow, once you get rolling with these tools, watch out! The limits are way way out there.
- NodeBox and Context Free Drawing – I have lumped these two in together due to the somewhat similar outputs: images and animations. They are both scripting based drawing tools. NodeBox uses Python. ContextFree uses a set of rules called “grammars”. These grammars’ syntaxes somewhat resemble C/C++. The drawings these produce can be simple or really really in depth. Each of the apps have examples of the work you can produce with ‘em at their respective sites.
Some of the ones I have been wanting to try out, but just haven’t gotten around to.
- haXe- HaXe is a multiplatform language. While most other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), haXe is capable of outputting to JS, Flash, C++ and a lot more. Pretty cool. ECMA style programming for client-side, server-side & desktop. Are you using HaXe? Done any cool stuff? I’d love to see it.
- OpenFrameworks – At The Iona Group, we do a lot of installation work. It’s fun. Sometimes Flash doesn’t cut it. One of the avenues I have considered going down was using OpenFrameworks. Check out this video for some cool info on it. High resolution output and lots of awesome hardware integration.
made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.
So… What are you playing with these days? I’d love to see what you have going on.
