Could I go all Flash on ya?
I’ve gotten to use Flash a bit more lately, and as I begin using version 8 and the latest incarnation of Actionscript, I’m starting to get a jones for some further exploration of it.
I’ve played with Flash for many years now. And by play I mean that: dumb little animations, small snatches of applications (like the clock thingie on this site), and the like. But as I do more on the web, I’m starting to think that learning to really USE Flash, not just for making fun little spinny things, may be a skill worth learning.
I did spend some time with a book on building websites using Flash, but sadly like most “academic” learning the techniques left my brain quickly without a bona-fide application to apply it to. In building an, admittedly, primitive Flickr badge for a client at work (NRG – Powered By Choice) I’ve really seen how Actionscript has blossomed into a honest-to-goodness programming language, and not a scripty Javascript-lite for adding functionality. OOP implementation, strong typing, better data interaction: I wonder how much of my current code I use for this site could be rewritten in AS and used to drive a UI runner?
The framework code for this site is in serious need of repair: bloated, written as classes back before PHP had actual OOP implementation, and in some spots it flat-out doesn’t work right. There’s a laundry list of things that need to be done to get this thing into better shape. And, while I’m at it, some things I want to do with this framework to improve it. One is to actually cut pages, rather than pulling from DB, but the other may be building some Flash/AS hooks, using the backend to generate content, and having a Flash .swf drive the UI, getting data out of the DB.
This is definitely possible. Now if I could only manufacture time for it…
