1 document structures

Ok – we might be overreacting to FlaskMX, but there is no structure and it is not open. I think what alot of us would hope for is that Macromedia would embrace SVG a W3 recommended vortor redering technology which uses xml. SVG is up to par at this stage and provides great document structures which will help us grow beyond alot of these problems.

posted at 04:03 am on April 26, 2002 by ook

2 What about the future?

OK, wonderfull aritcles. A good clarification about accessibility problem in Flash. But I’d like to read on these pages something about Flash MX and the future of web design. Macromedia think it’s Flash-based, and you?

posted at 07:45 am on April 26, 2002 by Cesare Lamanna

3 re: What about the future?

> But I’d like to read on these pages something about Flash MX and
> the future of web design. Macromedia think it’s Flash-based, and
> you?

Gosh, the PRESENT of web design is Flash-based. It’s also HTML-based. And XHTML-based. And XML-based. And CSS-based. And DOM-based. And CMS-based. It’s a lot of things, and they all meet different needs.

It’s understandable that Macromedia would take a “Flash everywhere” position. If your company made Flash, you might make similar statements. If XML was a corporate product instead of an open and emerging standard, the corporate owners of XML™ might issue equally broad proclamations.

Flash is an amazing tool, Flash MX is better than its predecessors, and the badly needed accessibility enhancements discussed in this week’s articles make it better still. But powerful as it is, and integrated as it is with Cold Fusion, XML, and so on, it’s still just one tool among many.

The future, I expect, will offer designers and developers even more technologies to choose from, and they’ll pick the ones that best serve their project and audience.

posted at 09:23 am on April 26, 2002 by apartness

4 structure, future

Flash content having little or no structure not only poses accessibility problems for users. Any search engine that chooses to index SWFs will basically get a load of unstructured, possibly jumbled text. Links will only be found by looking for obvious URL strings in things like getURL.

Of course, part of Flash’s appeal to designers is that it doesn’t force them to think logically about structure, but that’s also its weakness and makes true accessibility difficult. It’s the best animation format we have, ideal for many interactive features, and I’m guessing it’ll be one of the top video formats in a year’s time, but for the foreseeable future I’ll be sticking with XHTML for structure, text content and navigation.

posted at 11:52 am on April 26, 2002 by Matt Round

5 The right tools and so on

I think I mostly agree with Mr. Zeldman on this one, Flash has it’s place in the Web. Obviously you don’t want to use Flash, even now that it supports MSAA, for handing out technical documentation but, it might be great for generating interactive graphs for physics lectures. Just so long as those interactive graphs are as fully accessible as we can make them, Flash should be fine.

However I think that point should be that some things are easier to make accessible than others for some applications. If you have a lot of text, HTML will always be the easiest choice to implement accessibly.

And one unrelated comment, is Apple doing anything to implement something like MSAA in OS ten plus? They’d better get on this.

posted at 04:51 pm on April 26, 2002 by Farlops Industries

6 Flash and HTML - play nicely now!

IMHO, Macromedia’s not really pushing a ‘Flash everywhere’ philosophy, it just seems that way because Flash is so damn popular. MM’s attitude is more in line with Zeldman’s “just one tool among many” view and John Dowdell has an excellent article at the MM developer center on this:

“Where’s HTML in MX?”
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/jd005.html

To be fair to the conspiracy theorists, however, I can see how Macromedia is trying to have Flash be one tool among many that THEY create. It’s hard not to think so, when you look at the broad and ever-increasing scope of their authoring tools, which currently generate html, xhtml, xml, css, flash, asp, jsp, coldfusion, jpgs, gifs, pngs… the list just keeps going. And that’s just the front-end stuff!

Anyone else uneasy with this all-solutions-to-all-people strategy?

posted at 12:16 am on April 29, 2002 by Al Abut

7 SVG and flash

Quato from: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/jd005.html
Sometimes people in those threads got on an SVG rant, but that has very little relevance to this discussion. SVG is just a file format for vector graphics, and never solved the practical problem of widespread computer viewability. Flash solved both those problems years ago, and then solved reliable animation and interactivity, and is now moving towards video integration, efficient application development, connectivity and communications, and viewability on portable and embedded devices too.

SVG is a W3 recomendation with many advantages for search engines, metadata and 508 accessability issues. Flash solved “viewability” years ago! SVG is only getting going now and it offers much more functionality that an swf can. All we ask is ‘please include” svg functionallity. Adobes LiveMotion does. Remember Adobe missed the internet boat at the beginning. Macromedia had killer apps incl. flash out befor Adobe were on the drawing board. That was years ago. Macromedia, dont sit on the fence. It’s time to move on. Implement SVG in flash. In combination with actionscript … should be awesome.

In the meantime if Flashplayer 7 would support SVG It could save us an extra plugin

posted at 10:12 am on April 29, 2002 by ook

8 Re: LiveMotion and SVG

According to Adobe, LiveMotion does not support SVG. In the LiveMotion FAQ, Adobe explains why SVG is not supported (http://www.adobe.com/products/livemotion/pdfs/lm2_faq.pdf).

Considering how much Adobe has put into advancing SVG as a standard, it’s suprising that the one tool that is ideal for demonstrating how much better SVG is compared to SWF, is instead pushed as an alternative for generating SWF content.

As for accessibility, Flash MX has a major headstart over LiveMotion. LiveMotion may have a better UI than Flash, but it still falls short when is comes to creating accessible content.

posted at 09:19 am on April 30, 2002 by michael

9 Is Accessibility Possible?

While I appluas Macromedia for the effort they are putting into making flash accessable, I am not sure that it is really possible. Flash is, after all, an interactive and highly audiovisual medium. I have not seen flash used to merely convey information that would be easily accessible to an impaired user. More often, it is used to add audiovisual flair to a page or in more avant-garde sites used to create an entirely new medium that isn’t translatable into text any more than a painting is. The point of flash is to make pages cooler, and that coolness will be totally lost on users who can’t experience flash in all its glory. My recommendation? If you have important information, make it available in a non-flash format, like XML. This is better not just for accessability but also for versatility, searchability, and is generally more appropriate.

Also, do you seriously expect Macromedia to use an open format for Flash? They have a natural monopoly right now, and if they opened their format they would lose that. Flash is the best application for creating Flash content, because it defines flash content. I don’t see what advantage an open standard would offer macromedia.

posted at 03:30 pm on April 30, 2002 by Sam Clearman

10 well

SWF for a big chunk has been figured out, or at least been optimizable via FLASM for awhile now (check sourceforge).

I believe this debate is close to the whole 508 deal. If it goes through the farce of 508, then opening up to a publically open swf format is important in making those changes viable.

The biggest telltale for svg will be from the community. It is possible to create an svg interpreter for flash (new draw commands) for many basic vectors. Check out were-here or any other flash site – there are talks about flash 3d (x, y, z) engines, and many agree on some type of xml/standards input.

However, where do we draw the line between shockwave and flash? Where will Macromedia?

posted at 09:46 am on May 1, 2002 by leo m