Blast From The Past

So, here lately I've been attempting to clean up the horrid fucking disaster that is my data archive, with...some progress. One of the things I've been doing and have needed to do for some time is go through old bookmarks and screen cap the data before it's lost forever in a sea of virtual nothingness. If there's one thing I've learned online it's that things NEVER last, so get while the gettings good I say.

Anyway, I came across this lil gem in my efforts from 2K6:
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2006/04/onideus_mad_hat.html

In which Joe and his lowly band of virtual ass slurpers decide to try and take on dat mean 'ol Mad Hatter! You get three guesses how *THAT* turned out, and no, the first two don't count.

Sho'nuff, when the heat got put on lil Joe and his friends, including a particularly mouthy little ass hat named Waldo Jaquith...yup, they started censoring out my posts and then finally just blocked me from posting altogether, but then...can you blame them? I mean, here you have a guy like Joe who has been running all over the grid trying his absolute best to pass himself off as some kind of a web developer and then along comes the proverbial bad ass of web coding himself and just slams the fuck out of the guy...yeah...running away was pretty much his only option.

The reason I brought this old post up though wasn't just to rag an lil Joe and his butt slurping friend Waldo...although granted I am enjoying that part of it. No, the primary reason I bring it up is because it gives me a good chance to go over some of the COMMON MYTHS about Flash. Now, where shall we start with this...how about this comment from Waldo Jaquith (who claims to be a web developer):

"You can't print it, you can't style it, you can't make it accessible and when used as this joker uses it, you can't link to individual pages."

Now, I think Waldo is a real good representation of what I call "college flunkies". See Waldo probably went to some hoity toity, over priced, rich kids college and got some sort of poser class degree in web development or some shit. Nice and all, but there's a ~real~ problem when flunkies like Waldo get out in the real world...they have no skills. Or rather, the only skills they have are what they learned in college and once that spoon fed education stopped, so did their future. The world of web design is one in which things are in CONSTANT motion. And if you can't keep on the ball, if you can't continually learn ON YOUR OWN new technologies and forms...yeah...yer just a college flunkie, plain and simple.

The fact of the matter is Waldo's comments would have actually made some sense...in the mid 90s. Unfortunately for Waldo Flash has grown leaps and bounds since then and is currently the absolute best front end available for web design...provided you know how to use it. Now I'll be the first to admit that there are a *WHOLE* lot of people running around using Flash who have no fucking clue at all as to what they're even doing, but keep this simple rule in mind...just because *YOU* can't do it...doesn't mean it's not possible. In other words never use your own limitations as the basis of measuring a technologies worth.

Let's start with that first one...
"can't style it"...

/_test_platform/Forum_Template/

Huh, look at that. Yup, you sure can style it! With CSS, XML or pretty much anything else you like for that matter.

Let's look at this one now:
"you can't link to individual pages"

Oh really...
/index.php?loc=our
/index.php?loc=video
/index.php?loc=graphics

LOL, so simple...well, for me anyway, not so much for an amateur I suppose. ^__^

Next up:
"You can't print it"

Ouch! Boy that one *REALLY* shows how out of date this Waldo guy is. I mean, hells bells, Flash has had print support since VERSION FOUR:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/128/tn_12838.html

*snicker*

Very nice too since the developer gets to control what can and can't be printed by the end user. Of course keep in mind that, that's only going to stop the kiddies like Waldo, experts like me can of course print screen content, or, my favorite, decompile the SWF files and rip the content out directly!

Well, I think this post is long enough for now. If anyone comes up with some new ideas about what they think Flash can't do be sure and fire up a comment and I'll set ya straight. Again though, never ASSume that something can't be done just because *YOU* can't do it or because you've never seen anyone else do it. Your own ignorance does not a good comparison make.