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 webslinky: a decade of flash
This week, happy birthday to Flash. Flash, the application responsible for making whizzy websites go whoosh, is ten years old. That's almost as old as time itself in terms of the web.To commemorate the occasion, Adobe have created a gloriously overblown tribute to Flash - in Flash of course. In an irony apparently oblivious to Adobe, their tribute manages to perfectly typify the stereotypical Flash site: long loading times, rich multimedia and unnecessarily elaborate navigation. But by now it couldn't really be any other way. This is because with each new edition of Flash, the animators, illustrators, designers and programmers who use it have pushed the software's limitations as far as possible, and each time Flash's developers respond by adding new functionality. If you want quick access to information, chances are you won't choose a Flash site. But for the patient, as a source of entertainment, Flash comes into its own. By way of example, here are some of my personal favourites from over the years: Still a reliable source of chuckles – not to mention inspiration – is Home Star Runner. What started out as a set of characters for witty children's stories has become a whole animated universe, an independent institution of lovingly crafted cartoons and interactive distractions. Odd Todd, the crudely animated antics by (and of) an unemployed victim of the “dotcom crash” rose to popularity around the same time – and has changed little since. If Odd Todd is the Flash community's answer to Mr Benn, then London-based agency Tokyo Plastic is more like Studio Ghibli. Turn your speakers up, because along with minimalist, vectorized 3D, Tokyo Plastic's creative pieces make full use of high quality audio. Of course, linear animation is just the tip of the iceberg for Flash. If you like your interaction obtuse but clean, you could easily spend half an hour at Vector Park, while if you like it rapid and bewildering, see if you can work out how to use Fluid without it floating away or before you get a headache. This year especially has seen the proliferation of Flash as a serious video delivery platform - which can't have pleased those fuddy-duddies Real, Microsoft and Apple. Its role in the success of YouTube should not be overlooked, but perhaps it's the possibilities for merging video with other technologies that hold the most potential. And you don't have to look far to see what I mean – look at what BBC History have been up to. What are your favourite Flash sites from over the years? Webslinky would love to know.
David Thair
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related info
 useful linkswww.homestarrunner.com odd todd: cartoons www.tokyoplastic.com www.vectorpark.com www.fluid.nl youtube: karl's video bbc history: cdx game
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 webslinky #102widgets  webslinky #101web 2.0  webslinky #100directories  webslinky #099cute cats  webslinky #098tiny stickers  webslinky #097alternate worlds  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
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