An unheard-of week at work – students gone, most staff gone, pushed aside half a dozen simmering commitments and immersed myself in a week of intensive Flash training. Flash is a skill I’ve wanted to pick up since forever, but have never cleared time for. It’s not the kind of thing you can pick up by dabbling – you have to throw yourself at it, give yourself over to its strange logic, swim in its strange waters for a while. Things that are trivially simple in HTML become nuttily difficult in Flash… but with juicy pay-offs.
Used two books as references, but spent most of my time at lynda.com – a site stocking more than 16,000 online training videos on piles of common software. Haven’t checked out their non-Flash coverage, but was blown away by the clarity and thoroughness of the Flash training. $25/month gets you access to all-you-can-eat, on any topic. Killer deal.
Anyway, great to finally have general comfort with the program after all these years. And before you ask, the answer is no — this doesn’t change my overall feelings about Flash. My caveats remain: Use it judiciously, use it only where standards-based development won’t get you where you’re going, be mindful of accessibility and search issues, etc.
Do you, Scot, solemnly swear to keep your blog Flash-free, so help you the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
:)
No.
Heck, I’ve posted plenty of YouTube vids in the past, and those are all Flash. But I might have some other s’prises in the future.
Ah Scot, ya fooled me!!
Fooled in the sense that you thought I was not the type ever to put Flash on a blog, or fooled in the sense that you didn’t think YouTube videos counted?
I guess I didn’t realize YouTube’s videos was Flash-based.
But I forgive you. As long as you don’t start teaching Miles
to use Flash. ;)
Just so long as you don’t put up a Flash-based splash page, it’s all good…
Like so many other tools, the skill is in knowing when *not* to use it, and when less is more.
> Just so long as you don’t put up a Flash-based splash page, it’s all good…
And even if he does: Behold the power of cheese…er, the Add/Remove Programs applet!
Mark – Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water! Yipes.