[Hopperxx] RIP Director - January 27th, 2017

[Jim Andrews]

The Score/timeline is present in many multimedia authoring environments. 
It usually hasn't been available when developing JavaScript, however. 
And various other languages, of course. It's useful as long as it 
doesn't become a limitation to controlling things with code. It was 
useful in Director but dynamic sprites weren't officially supported and 
should have been. Also, there was no arbitrarily nestable container 
class like a div (or maybe a movie clip in Flash) in Director. But 
Director started out prior to full-on objected oriented paradigm change.

I did Aleph Null as an exploration of the possibilities of the canvas 
tag. It's no substitute for Flash or Director, but it's not totally 
abysmal. The bitmap processing speed is not very good compared with 
Director. The API is not as rich/featureful.

I can imagine using tools like Adobe Animate if they are super useful 
for a project.

ja

On 2/17/2017 10:47 AM, Colin Holgate wrote:
> Adobe Animate is Flash Pro, just with a new name. There have been some post-name change improvements, but essentially it’s identical. You can continue to develop SWFs for desktop browsers, projectors for standalone applications, AIR desktop apps (either self contained runtime or not), and iOS and Android mobile apps. All of those would be in AS3.
>
> A few versions ago they introduced custom format FLA, which means the program can be use for any kind of development. External teams are doing things with TypeScript, AwayJS, Animated SVG, and other formats. The ones directly done by Adobe are HTML5 Canvas and HTML5 WebGL (2D). If you have just done an animation you can change it to be Canvas or WebGL with a single menu item selection. If there is a lot of code you would have to redo that, because CreateJS and WebGL are quite different syntax to each other. CreateJS is similar to AS3, but enough different to make it hard to automate a conversion of the code. The CreateJS team are working on a version that can use the same syntax as is used for Canvas, but to publish to WebGL.
>
> The CreateJS team themselves don’t use Flash Pro or Adobe Animate, they do code everything in text editors. Which means having to do a lot of things that an IDE can make easy for you. I work in HTML5 Canvas just the same as I do in ActionScript, with graphics, buttons, movieclips, using the library, and so on.
>
> There are some limitations in HTML5’s Javascript compared to ActionScript, but you learn ways around most issues.
>
> So, in thinking about whether you might just hard code and not use the Animate IDE, try to imagine making some of your Director projects, but without being allowed to use the score or the cast window.
>
>   
>> On Feb 17, 2017, at 11:53 AM, Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com> wrote:
>>
>> How do you find working with Adobe Animate, Colin? What are the main advantages over hand-coding? Main disadvantages? What does it obviously need that it doesn't have? How does it compare with the old Flash IDE? How easy is it to go with the flowchart vs the timeline?
>>
>> ja
>>
>>
>> On 2/17/2017 7:29 AM, Colin Holgate wrote:
>>> Although I did do a lot of Director and Shockwave work, almost all of what I have done in the last 17 years has been in Flash Pro (now called Adobe Animate). That includes all of the mobile apps I’ve worked on, and all of the HTML5 work I have done.
>>>
>>> Many people are looking to Hype and other tools because they either always hated Flash, or now hate Adobe. I’m sure the same people will still be using Photoshop and Illustrator, or even have CC subscriptions, so it’s a weak argument.
>>>
>>> So, if you do need to do Flash or Shockwave like things for clients as HTML5 activities, you shouldn't rule out Adobe Animate because of previous bias.
>>>
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