Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
While I agree that there ought to be a special place in Hell for the people who provide us with the stuff you're describing, there's nothing horribly wrong with Flash itself. It does provide a de facto standard for presenting stuff that can't easily be presented using HTML/CSS/Javascript.
To take a random example of really good use of Flash, take Digital Photography Review's lens tests: they present the results as an interactive Flash widget with dials you can set for aperture and focal length, a visual representation of sharpness across the frame (blue=sharp, red=soft), and even little thingies you can click to see a sample pattern from different parts of the frame at any focal length and aperture. Here, for example:
[ http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_70-200_2p8_n15/page5.asp ]
That would've been an absolute bastard to code in HTML/CSS/JS, not much easier in Java, and there would have been no way to get it cross-browser or cross-platform compatible with anything else out there, and it's far and away the most intuitive and informative way of presenting the extremely complex information behind it. In fact, it's one of the best examples of information visualization that I've come across, ever.
To take a random example of really good use of Flash, take Digital Photography Review's lens tests: they present the results as an interactive Flash widget with dials you can set for aperture and focal length, a visual representation of sharpness across the frame (blue=sharp, red=soft), and even little thingies you can click to see a sample pattern from different parts of the frame at any focal length and aperture. Here, for example:
[ http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_70-200_2p8_n15/page5.asp ]
That would've been an absolute bastard to code in HTML/CSS/JS, not much easier in Java, and there would have been no way to get it cross-browser or cross-platform compatible with anything else out there, and it's far and away the most intuitive and informative way of presenting the extremely complex information behind it. In fact, it's one of the best examples of information visualization that I've come across, ever.
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540