Hello! I recently been thinking about learning something else to compliment my HTML/CSS skills and I can't decide between Javascript or Flash. I tried reading a little bit about JS and it seemed kinda overwhelming. I don't know much about Flash so I have no idea how tough it would be to learn that as well. I have a vague idea that Flash uses 'actionscript' which is similar to JS....or so I think? Maybe someone can guide me in the right direction? From personal experience, which skill should I focus on picking up? Eventually I am going to learn both, but I would like to know which one might be easier or even allow a better transition into the other one? Thanks in advance.
at the core of javascript and actionscript is ECMA script, so yes, they are similar. from personal experience, as a programmer - learning both is easy but flash can be really annoying when you go beyond the actionscript side of things. setting up scenes, tweening / animation controls, all sorts of quirks... its a different ball game. to be honest, i have been noticing a growing trend amidst the hardcore js community to prove most effects achieved via flash can be done just as easily in javascript. of course, you need a decent javascript framework to pickup which can help with animations and effects. anyway, i'd learn javascript + framework like jquery, mootools or prototype (best 3 for visual effects).
I already purchased a javascript book and was reading through it, but then I remembered I've been seeing a lot of demand lately for flash so I wasn't sure if I should back up and start there. I don't think I would have too much of a problem learning the animation side of flash. I'm just worried about the code aspect of it. I guess I will stick with my original intentions then of learning some JS. Especially after you said a lot of things can be achieved just the same without using flash. If you don't mind me asking, where does AJAX fall into all of this? Thanks a lot!
The syntax might be similar, all the libraries and many of the methodologies are different between JS and actionscript. If you're going to do actionscript, skip macromedia flash (tm), save a thousand bucks by using flashdevelop(.org) Apparently, according to a friend of mine with years of flash exp, macromedia's flash IDE has serious bugs that hamper ease-of-use. As for the struggle between flash and js; i'm one of those people who's tried to re-create advanced graphics in js, but i am of the opinion now that flash/actionscript has a much faster graphics engine. You can do more (complex) animations, faster, and at less CPU cost, in flash. But to answer the OP's question: You need a bit of both these days, to stand out in the crowd of developers. You need to understand how PHP and HTML work together with a JS-lib and AJAX. That's the nuts and bolts of the device that is a website. Flash would be the polish & shine. While you can make complete sites in actionscript/flash alone, and you can do pretty much EVERYTHING from flash that you can do in HTML / JS (there's interfaces towards the DOM & JS on a page), i don't think that's the best design filosophy, as only people with flash can see your site then. So learn a bit of jQuery, and sign up to their mailinglists. There's a ton of information floating by daily on those lists. You can search those lists on google by adding "site:nabble.com" to your search terms. So if your focus is design, focus on actionscript, gimp and photoshop (first). If your focus is more allround, definately dabble with jQuery until you've maxed it out. Then there's things that only flash can do correctly, like this videoplayer i'm working on here; http://veerman.ws/fdvp/ (sound turned off for dev) IMO, it's best to use flash for special components that require good graphics performance.. But you need to know something about HTML, the DOM, and AJAX, before you can make any components.
AJAX is the new glue that puts pieces (components) of a website together. Pages can get so complex these days that it's a good idea to load them in pieces. The latest version of my CMS loads and initializes a frontpage in 1.5 seconds, but to start up the admin interface takes 5-10 seconds, because of all the property-editors it has to fetch skeletons and flesh(content) for. Almost all my loading is done through AJAX.