Re: Vexille

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:26:23 +0100, SpaceGirl wrote:

Phil Yff wrote:
On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:12:27 +0100, SpaceGirl wrote:
I really wish people would stop using Flash in the mistaken belief that it
is a website tool.

You're the one who is mistaken :) Flash can be used to make entire web
sites. The problem is... most designers have no clue what they are doing
and make a terrible mess.

Our Japanese magazine is 100% Flash. :)

Not to take sides in the Flash debate, I'd like to step back and look at
the issue from two perspectives - Art and IT.

Art can never be completely severed from the medium. Michelangelo's
sculptures are remarkable not only because of his skill but the painstaking
care he took in seeking out the right stone. Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
would not be what it is if it had been painted in water colors rather than
oil. Nevertheless, the work of art itself rises above the materials and
tools used to create it - stone, hammer, chisel, paints, brushes, canvas,
etc.

Like "Starry Night", a well designed web site is a work of art. Like
"Starry Night", the tools used to create it and the media in which it is
delivered are part and parcel of the work of art. From that perspective,
the web site artist should be very sensitive to the tools and media of the
site just as you have put some thought into your selection of Flash.
Nevertheless, just as "Starry Night" is far greater than the canvas, the
paint, and the brushes used to create it, a web-site is more than the
technology used to create and deliver the content of the site.

IT developers have been taught for decades to adopt a structured modular
approach to development. The more programmers intertwine code in a tightly
coupled manner, the more likely the result will be a Gordian knot that
becomes difficult to manage. In business applications, it is important to
separate data from process from presentation. In other words, the source
information is kept separate from the business rules that act on the
information and both are kept separate from the means of delivery. That
way, the same information can be sliced and diced time and time again and
can be reused in a multitude of practical applications in a time, place,
and format of the recipient's choosing.

Multimedia would be wise to adopt the equivalent XML model - separation of
content from structure from style. Chances are the audio and video used in
a multimedia website were not originally created in the format in which the
audience sees them. From an IT perspective, the best designed sites are
the ones that preserve the integrity of the original source audio and
video, transform it as required for the web-site, and deliver in the format
of and to a platform of the recipient's choosing.

That creates a little more work in the planning and construction of the
website. Nevertheless, we have mature technology that supports this
approach. Moreover, the additional investment of time, money, and
resources yields huge benefits in universality and longevity.

Mata ato de,

Phil Yff

I couldn't agree more Phil, and this is exactly how we work! Techically
BSJ looks something like this:

MySQL > PHP > WordPress > HTML
MySQL > PHP > WordPress > RSS (Atom)
MySQL > .NET (WordPress bridge) > XML > Flash
MySQL > .NET web service > RSS (Atom)

Flash & RSS & HTML/CSS are just presentational layers. We could at any
point swap them out for something else (a different renderer for mobile
devices perhaps). As far as the Flash goes, nothing is pre-made as far
as content is releated. It's all from the same database, using XML as a
transport for the data. Someone could equally write an XSLT script to
take the XML and generate yet another UI, if they wanted!

Blah anyway I feel dirty now. Back to PhotoShop, enough programmy talk :P

I'm a strong advocate of using XML in any publishing venture. Not only can
it provide cohesion to loosely coupled components that can be maintained in
their own right and presented according to the user's preferences, but it
can also manage multilingual versions of an electronic publication ensuring
that version control is maintained across the different languages as the
source evolves and changes.

Mata ato de,

Phil Yff
.

Relevant Pages

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