I was wondering if there was a general list of known pitfalls to avoid with Animate, regarding future-proofing, dependencies, etc?
Prior to the release of the iPhone, I developed websites with Flash elements. Shortly after the iPhone, I suffered a head injury - and when I started to recover, everything I'd ever created was a broken mess.
But that's just not with Flash - my CMS's were destroyed by a new version of PHP being installed on the server, etc. Really, the head injury just couldn't have happened at a more opportune time 
I realize it's not possible to future-proof anything, because who knows the future?
But, if the code that Animate publishes has a zillion dependencies, any or all of which could be "deprecated" at any point in time, leaving everything broken - I'd just really appreciate any heads up on those features it would be best to avoid?
What makes me most nervous - so far - is that multiple canvas elements should (apparently) be embedded using iframes. You'd think Adobe would have enough resources to provide a solution that isn't a "workaround" to their own code - but apparently not?
And I plead ignorance across the board. Maybe I'm an idiot and iframes are the most elegant solution? But, if so, then why was I forced to hunt for an answer to that problem on this forum? Wouldn't that be a very common issue, and shouldn't Adobe have an official solution, at least by now? Multiple instances of Flash were never an issue.
From my standpoint, animation is cute enough - but it's not so cute that I'm willing to force what might be hobbled code into my sites. No way I'm ever touching a CMS again, and - if I can - the farthest I'd ever go with PHP is the include statement I'd very much like to avoid technology that I don't understand.
For me, Animate would be a cool tool for quickly and easily producing animations that I can integrate into my designs. And I'm very much hoping to hear back that it's very solid and that the iframe nonsense is likely only because Adobe would like to help try to "inspire" me to use Dreamweaver to manage my sites?
But I'd greatly appreciate ANY feedback on pitfalls to avoid, and whether folks trust that Adobe has future-proofed whatever "code" is output by Animate as best they can.
Thanks!
6
Replies
Sorry, I was doing my best to plead my ignorance on iframes. Does Adobe have a write-up on embedding with iframes?
I'm honestly just getting my feet wet - and, once I ran into the iframe suggestion, I then ran across complaints that it doesn't work in responsive design, breaks various browsers, etc. That's what made it sound non-standard or I guess like "nonsense"?
With .swf, there was a very standard method for embedding the content. Then Apple decided to forever ban swf - for whatever reason? - and now we have Animate. I click "publish" and I get what appears to be a self-contained website with a ton of code I don't understand and honestly don't care about - as long as I never NEED to worry about it.
I'm sure you're aware of how coding forums can work sometimes - if there's ever a problem with the code, then I'm always the idiot who shouldn't even be using it without I first get my Ph.D. "Yeah, well you should have thought of that before..." Well here I am, trying to think of that before?
For my purposes, whatever "code" Animate produces must be self-contained. In case I'm wording that wrong, what I'm trying to communicate is that, lacking the .swf container that worked just fine until Apple blew it up, I'm very much hoping that the "files" Animate creates work pretty much exactly the same way?
Only instead of a swf, I just need to produce a directory, for example called Animate, stuff whatever Animate published into that directory, and call those .html files with an iframe?
I'm honestly pleading my ignorance - I'm basically stating:
"Wah! I liked swf. Apple messed it up! Now I get all these files I don't understand. I just wanna animate my pretty stuff and use it like I did back when it was still swf before Apple screwed everything up on me!"
Then I could ignorantly go off on Apple and Adobe for why that ever happened - as I have absolutely no clue - I get maybe iPhones were initially underpowered, but it seems like they could easily handle swf these days? But again, I'm completely ignorant on all that.
Thanks very much for bothering to reply. Given iframes apparently are the perfect solution, is there a full write-up anywhere, hopefully by Adobe, on best practices, etc?
Otherwise, my true FEAR is that I create an awesome animation I love, I'm all ready to "plug it in" where I want it on the site, and then I hit up a forum like this when it doesn't work, and the gurus are telling me, "Well you're an idiot. You should have known that would never work with iframes. Go get your Ph.D. or just shut up with your whining, you stupid moron who doesn't understand any of the code Animate outputs when it creates all these files that used to be a .swf that no one ever expected you to understand, but now you need to know it inside out or we're just gonna keep calling you an idiot for daring to use code you don't understand."
And I think that's probably actually the nice way they'd be telling me I was in way over my head, yeah? Anyway, that's the most major trap/pitfall I'm very much hoping to avoid.
I (think I) understand that I need to become just as proficient with Animate as I ever was with Flash. What I'm NOT willing to sign up for is becoming an expert in all of the various code that Animate then produces. If that's the case, then I just need to avoid Animate until "things settle down", right? I'm also not willing to learn binary code or whatever was inside SWF that I couldn't read
Thanks!
Hahaha! Yeah man, I may have had too many gin & tonics before deciding to answer the question. I hope I didn't muddy the waters.
I'm in no way, shape or form a coder. I use Animate to draw/animate and I should've stuck to that.
AdChoices