Tag Archives: Flash

Robot Repair⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Yesterday I read Alan’s post Right? or Choice? To Repair (or Joy Thereof) #DLINQDigDetox – CogDogBlog. One thing in particular caught my eye:

And yes extend broken devices to broken technology. Can’t play old flash content? Try Ruffle.

I’d not heard of Ruffle, but I though it was worth a quick try. I searched my hard drive and was delighted to find  rommy.swf.

Rommy has been reborn several times, born as a HyperCard stack in the 1990s, then a SuperCard project, arriving on the web via the Roadster plugin that ran SuperCard projects. The final incarnation was in flash (although I might have a javascript effort somewhere).

Anyway I uploaded the swf and htlm file, adding the link to the ruffle javascript library & it worked not only that it works on an iPad.

I don’t suppose it is of much use in the classroom now, back in the HyperCard days I though the idea of pupils creating mazes and then getting their partners to write instructions to go through them was a good one. I had not see it else where is such an easy to use fashion.

The featured image is a gif captured with licecap, it doesn’t make the annoying beeping that the real one does.

Wick⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Last week I posted about the end of Flash, one of the thing I regretted was the loss of a tool to teach animation.
This week I noticed Wick: The Internet’s Free and Open-Source Creation Toolkit. This  works best with Firefox and Chrome. It make javascript animations that can be exported as a webpage. I’ve put one in the iFrame below.

Direct link: jj-test-wick

It looks like you can do a lot of cleave stuff with JavaSCript, but the editor supports the use of motion tweens and clips that can have their own timelines and tweens.

My skills in this department are limited, but if you look closely you will see the person in the animation is moving his arms and legs. They are a clip.

The flash vacuum is being filled before it exists.

Flashback⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Last week Adobe announced that they would stop supporting Flash in 2020.

Although in the age of mobile and tablets Flash content has become less important there still is a lot of educational material, especially games, that uses Flash.

Back at the end of the last century I used flash to make resources for teaching I even used this old one and this one in class this year.

I also used Flash to teach animation in class. Although Flash is expensive at the time I used it you could get cheap education copies and the software was less complicated.

Sandaig Primary School: Computer Club (on the Internet archive) still has some of the work we did.

I’ve just had a trip down memory lane, Littlefish Flash lists some of the things I did with Flash and also links to a pile of worksheets I made for my pupils.

Looking back I remember how exciting, for me, to be able to learn and teach about layers, frames, bitmap and vector graphics.

One of the introductory exercises we did was to use flash to trace our faces. The same technique was popular with my class using iPad apps this year.

I’ve read a lot online about the problems with Flash over the last few years. It uses too much energy for mobile and has regular security problems. Despite this and the fact it was priced out of my classroom when Adobe bought it I am a little sad that old flash content will either vanish or be hard to view in just a few years.

Playing about with Flash…⤴

from @ Digitalkatie's blog

Download Blobs

It's my first project since downloading the trial of Adobe Flash.

My inspiration was the little blob animations you get when iplayer is loading CBeebies programmes! Sad, huh!

I couldn't figure out how to get the blobs to wobble well.  I'll try again later.  Not bad for my first animation after my training course yesterday though!