Discuss the commercial viabliity of Actionscript 3.0 and pure coding for simple corporate websites/promotions. Is it really viable? I doubt it. Isn’t coding an entire website from scratch (purely using Document Class), which can be rewarding and gratifying to a programmer, rather too tedious and unfriendly for designers?
I can see how code is more organised in Actionscript 3.0, but it can also be a lot more troublesome in various aspects.
I find coding a website’s visuals can be far mroe time consuming compared to simply drawing it in Flash, don’t you think? What for code in an animation when it can be simply done with Flash’s authoring interface? Of couse, a good programmer does this with the built-in BitmapData engine to support much faster performancce. I guess it’s all a matter of picking one’s battles. How exactly do you draw the line between getting obsessed with the sophistication of code and performance vs delivering the design brief for a corporate piece of work?
I jsut wished that in Flash Authoring in As3, there could be more features such as dumping Bitmaps, Buffers, BitmapDatas, Sprites or whatever classes to the stage, and than visually coding stuff in AS3 using the Flash authoring, rather than typing rudimentary nonsense like “import flash.geom.blahblah”. It’s just so backward…you tell me. Right now, all the special classes like Bitmaps buffering BitmapDatas and Sprites etc. etc are all for programmers…not for designers. It’s this gulf that is kinda sickening.
Coding in general are intricate pieces of interactive work. THe thing is, how do you apply your code fast to fit a particular a project without having to do lots of retyping and cumbersome programming from scratch? Does a programmer built up his canon of codes which can hopefully apply to commercial projects, from which later he can copy and paste stuff? How exactly does an interactive designer work in a real corporate world (not doing applications and stuff…just promotional stuff and websites) and does Actionscript 3 really help in that aspect? THe problem is, most coporate work isn’t reusable…it’s a 1-time launch and that’s it. Because of that, doing such stuff in code is pointless when the effect could be faked.
So, it all boils down to whether you wish to draw the effect vs coding it, and having to measure up priorities…
