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by chrisgannon 3327 days ago
I think we're beyond Flash because not only do we have the tools but we also have the experience for what works and what definitely doesn't. Flash was a good example of 'all the gear and no idea'. (I was guilty of this back in the day).

I feel designers are a lot more respectful (timid?) and aware of what they deliver now meaning these tools will hopefully be used in a more responsible way!

1 comments

culture advanced, I agree, but the tools are at best on-par, surely not better.

As a kid I made my first website in flash and it was good. I did not know how to program, maybe read a single book about AS2. There where no taste-less animations, just nice, smoothed and fast pagination transitions. I was especially proud to be able to decouple animation and input, so you never had to wait for the UI to finish an animation.

Now I do a lot of front-end and CSS transitions are still a hassle (especially when you need keyframes), trying to implement material design on android might be even worse (The other day I touched about 7 files for a simple pull-down menu). And all the bodymovi animations in the link drop frames in my firefox...

Yes Bodymovin is not smooth for every situation. It plays back path data rathe like a sprite sheet (but with data in arrays).

But then Flash wasn't smooth for everyone either. Yes the IDE made creation much quicker but I have developed workflows that almost match that speed.

I usually animate with Greensock and that IS smooth pretty much all the time. But then it's a mature platform so it has had a lot of time to grow up.