Flash Designer/Developer

by Dan Geller

Part I: Background and Job Description

As a Flash Designer and Developer, I am called upon to help create multimedia rich Web sites, CD-ROMs, Marketing Presentations, Product Tutorials, Web content, and even some video.

Flash, in and of itself, is an authoring program (much like Macromedia Director), coupled with a powerful scripting language (ActionScripting), and compressed vector output, which enables users to create fast-loading, streaming content for the Web and other screen-based media. The media Flash creates can be embedded in Web sites, played back from CD-ROM, or even exported into video production. In addition, development is being done to port Flash's content to small screens like Palm Pilots and cell phones.

See some examples of my work on Course.com. Last year, I produced this PC Repair Demo and this SAM 2000 Screen Tour.
-Both require Flash Player.

Getting into Flash

Although this article is about Flash development, the reality is that I design within a wide range of media, including some print design. Maybe ten years from now, we'll find that there are just "Flash Developers" who have never touched a print piece or edited for a video campaign. But for now, like myself, most people involved in multimedia have had their turn at bat working in, and may have studied other areas of design and development. I studied communications at Indiana University. That allowed me to involve myself in a mixture of TV/film production and marketing. Then I studied design at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. And then, seeking to make a more complete jump into multimedia, I went back to New York University to study that.

Having worked in print and video, I quickly jumped into learning and using Macromedia Director, which was the pre-web, pre-eminent multimedia application. Then, as the world of the Web matured, I worked with HTML, while also doing some video production from time to time.

It was around 1996-1997 that Flash started showing up. It was the perfect platform to marry my growing interests in design, multimedia, programming, marketing, and communication into a file that could actually be played back without waiting for a 10-minute download.

Working with Flash

In reality, most Flash developers like me use Macromedia Flash, in conjunction with other popular design and development tools such as Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver, 3D Studio Max, HTML, and JavaScript to help create their final output. However, the core experience when working with Flash is its authoring environment, and utilizing ActionScripting, it's programming language.

ActionScripting has greatly matured since the first release of Flash and is now a robust object-oriented language based on a European JavaScript standard link. Some of the great new features in ActionScripting make it easier for flash to communicate with other multimedia apps such as Macromedia Director, or with back-end Web databases. In addition, the Flash development community continues to grow as both a source of information on how to use the tool, as well as a force pushing for further development in future Macromedia releases.