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Flash vs. Director Flash or Director; its not an easy call. Flash and Director perform many of the same functions. With each upgrade they are more similar and several industry insiders are predicting the merging of these apps. Until this happens lets address the question of "When to use Flash? Director? Or both? At one time, Flash was considered an animation package with limited scripting, and Director was a scripting package with limited animation capabilities. Now with Flash 5.0 and Director 8.5, this distinction although still true, is less accurate. Flash is no longer limited by 20 predefined scripts and Director 8.5's animation has been greatly modified for web performance and file size. The word Flash is a hot little buzzword when it comes to webimation and interactivity. When a new Flash project is presented, always begin by asking "Why Flash?" One must first look at the client's objective, then determine which application is best suited to achieve that goal. The only instance when Flash is undoubtedly the best option is if a project is completely vector (Illustrator or Freehand art) and has only minor amounts of animation occurring simultaneously. If you think back to the last Flash piece that ran well, and had impact, most likely you could easily count the number of items moving on the screen at any given time. Although it may seem like more, there are never more than 5 objects moving at once. On the other hand, one disappointing example had a continual river of numbers flowing from top to bottom and vice versa. Try counting how many things are moving at once. You cannot. There was too much animation happening simultaneously, requiring too much system memory, and poor performance was the consequence. (With ActionScript you can increase the amount of animation occurring simultaneously, but it will still drain system resources.) What are your options if the end result will probably consist mostly of raster art (Photoshop)? First ask, "Can you streamline the images in the presentation?", "Are all of the images essential to the client's objective", "Can you remove some?", "Can the images be grayscale or duotone?", and "Can they be redrawn in vector?" If the answer is consistently no, then Flash is not your solution. If your output file cannot be streamlined, Director should be strongly considered, whether or not it will be viewed online. Online file sizes of Director and Flash that contain mostly raster art are similar in size. One recent test with 28 raster images showed that Director's net file was 153k SMALLER than the comparable Flash file. The reason for there similarity in size is due to their plug-ins containing the projectors to run them. The Director plug-in is approximately 2 megs, whereas Flash is approximately .3 megs. Because of this, Director currently only has a 58% integration into the plug-in distribution market; Flash has 98%. However, online use of Director is continuing to grow. All new computers come with the Director swf plug-in, as does all upgrades to Netscape and Explorer. For the creation of CD-Roms, Trade-Show exhibits, Kiosks, and other non-web uses, Director offers better control and more stability for these projects. One bonus when using Director is its ability to easily integrate Flash elements. For email distribution where file size is a main priority, Flash is preferred The minimal Director executable file (.exe) size is 2 megs; Flash is .3 megs. The number of raster images required and the level of interactivity will affect the ultimate size of the Flash project. Think streamline. Lastly, when syncing audio or importing movies, Director is superior. Audio in Flash is not precise and should be used for background noise and sound effects. Only if "close counts" should you let your clients think Flash. Voice-overs need to be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on synchronicity. Below is a quick summary.
-Christopher |
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