10 Dec 2004

Flash Resurrection

Macromedia’s running a Flash Lite Contest, with a TV and iPods on offer for interactive mobile content. There should be some impressive winners.

Flash Lite is a cut-down version of Flash designed for mobile ’phones and PDAs. It’s something I’ve eagerly waited years for, but when Flash Lite arrived I was… underwhelmed. It’s fairly good. It’s OKish. Slightly disappointing, to be honest. Why? Well, aside from the usual mobile technology headaches (restrictions, incompatibilities, distribution, etc.), the main snag is with the ActionScript.

Flash 3 was a good animation package with very simple scripting for basic interaction (stopping and starting animations, triggering things with buttons, etc.). Flash 4 added lots more interaction but overstretched the syntax, resulting in horrible, clunky-looking code. Flash 5 scrapped this mess and opted for ActionScript which closely resembles languages such as JavaScript. Flash MX has improved the object-orientated features and client-server communication.

So which version of ActionScript is used in Flash Lite? Yep, it’s version 4, a rotting zombie rising from the grave. I realise Macromedia had to keep everything small and fast, and I’m a fan of simple technologies, but they’re asking developers to regress an awfully long way. Even Spectrum BASIC had arrays and simple functions.