As its uses continue to entice, astound and sometimes even repel us, I'm sure we all can agree that we are well-steeped in the wonders of Flash. We all have our favorite Flash-driven websites. Surely, some of us have played a Flash-based game or two. Or maybe — don't tell Mom — we've even wasted time drooling over a risque Flash-based personal ad. I see you blushing!
Adobe recently came out with a new version of Flash Professional. And, as usual, they seek to plaster themselves for good on the 98% of (at least Flash-player enabled) desktops. Let's show them a little one-two if we can, by pulling out our favorite gun: the alternative product.
The advantages of choosing a lesser-known source for a similar ware can sometimes outweigh the obvious downsides. Mostly, the reasons are economic. Expense is lowered at the onset. Since you're not buying into a brand name lock-in, you're not forced by reason of already-expended budget considerations (or contracts) to continue using that software if you dislike it, or if it doesn't work for you. Also, support for the product is often faster, less expensive, can come from a variety of sources.
Finally, if the smaller company with the cheaper product goes out of business and support evaporates completely, your purchase of their software probably won't be the worst economic decision you've ever made.
To sum up the last article I wrote about making Flash with not-Flash, we were trying to find the best bit of open-source Flash authoring software to meet our modest needs. We decided that any solution we chose didn't need to be as complex (or as expensive!) as Adobe's Flash, but that it should be functional enough to build some basic elements required for user interaction. We needed to make a set of buttons to control the playback of a music file. We also needed to convert animated .gifs to .swf movies and do some wiggly, jumpy text stuff. We decided that Windows-based SWiSH was the winner and gave it 4-and-one-half bananas.
At the time the last article was written, SWiSH was still in its most nascent stages of development. So, where does this rebel stand now? Can it compete? Well, we're about to find out.
Before we go on, I should mention that there are now several branches on the SWiSH-ing tree: SWiSH Max, SWiSH Video, SWiSH Pix, SWiSH Presenter, SWiSH Studio, SWiSH Jukebox, and a set of downloadable site templates called SWiSH Sites.
The main meat of the SWiSH application suite is SWiSH Max. It's where most of the building happens. So, before we get into the other, more specialized applications, let's look at the features and basic functionality of SWiSH Max.
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