Recognizing Project Potential

In this section, we provide an overview of the categories of Flash projects that you can produce. This is just a starting point to prime your creative juices and break through any selfimposed limiting perceptions that you may have about Flash media. The categories we have devised here are by no means industry standard terms — they're broad, generalized groups into which most Flash development will fall.

Linear Presentations

In the early days of Internet growth, Flash shorts (cartoons) were the media buzz. These cartoons generally played from start to finish in a very linear fashion. Generally speaking, these movies load and then play — and count on catching the user's attention through the story and animation. These movies sometimes contain advanced ActionScript for animation, including randomized movement or content.

Note 

Linear Flash presentations do not necessarily have to be displayed within a Web browser — or even online. Several film-production and advertising companies use Flash to create high-quality animation for use in broadcast TV and feature films.

Interactive Presentations

Interactive presentations represent the next step up from linear presentations. They provide the user control over the way information is presented, the flow, or the experience altogether. Usually, Web sites of any construct will be considered an interactive presentation. If you have information or content in a section somewhere in a movie or Web site, then you probably have an interactive presentation. An interactive presentation will enable end-users to choose the content they see, by enabling them to navigate throughout a site, bypassing some content while accessing other content. A Flash movie in this category may have all the content viewed stored in a container movie, or across several Flash files linked to a main site.

Data-Driven Presentations

The data-driven presentations category of Flash development represents any movies that load external data (either dynamic or static) to deliver the presentation to the user. For example, a weather site that uses Flash may download dynamic Flash graphics of precipitation maps to display to the site's visitors. These graphics may be customized for each user of the site, depending on where he or she lives. Data-driven may even simply mean that text information within the Flash movie changes from time to time. Simply put, any time information is separated from the actual Flash movie, you can say it is data-driven.

Data-Driven Applications (or Rich Internet Applications)

The data-driven applications category is somewhat loosely defined as those Flash movies that enable the user to accomplish some sort of task or enable a transaction from the Flash movie to use an external remote data source. For example, an online Flash ATM (that is, bank machine) could allow a bank customer to log in to the bank's secure server, and transfer funds from one account to another or pay a bill. All of these tasks would require a transaction from the Flash movie to the bank's server. Another example could be an online Flash shopping cart, in which visitors add products to their virtual carts, and check out with their final order. Again, these tasks would require data to be sent from and received by the Flash movie. The term Rich Internet Application, or RIA, was coined during the Macromedia MX product line launch, and implies the use of integrated data and rich media within a graphical user interface (GUI), in or out of a Web browser. Typically, RIAs combine Flash movies with one or more server-side technology, such as Flash Remoting MX and Flash Communication Server MX.

Web Resource 

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