What is a Print?

April 24, 2001 5:57 PM

What is a Print? is perhaps the coolest bit of informative interactive Flash work I have seen. Well explained, meaningful interaction (not just click and watch), clean, and the transitions aren't too slow. Nice. (Props to xplane for the link.)
posted by jplummer (15 comments total)

Andy Warhol assistant not included....
posted by jessie at 6:03 PM on April 24, 2001

Very cool. Flash at its best.
posted by keithl at 6:53 PM on April 24, 2001

I only wish real etchings were that easy. (-:
posted by alan at 7:14 PM on April 24, 2001

It's great to see Flash being used like that. When I see stuff done by The Chopping Block, I'm always inspired and humbled. Besides, how many design firms have a theme song performed by They Might Be Giants?
posted by barkingmoose at 7:41 PM on April 24, 2001

similar but not the same, this is a useful and quite usable piece of flash. not too big, clever faux 3D, and it does something!
posted by afro at 9:19 PM on April 24, 2001

This site was actually last weeks CommArts Site Of The Week. A great resource if you didn't know about it already.
posted by brian at 12:50 AM on April 25, 2001

I am refusing to 'download Flash 5' at the moment. Why should I? I don't ask people to download a plug-in just because I've chosen to work with Zope, or include CSS, or eat Weetabix in the morning for breakfast, or whatever. Why should I waste my time?

I got about ten thousand pop-ups here, and a screen which - along with beautiful prints of Old Masters, etc - included scraps of code.

Very nice background colour, and 'lots of potential'.
posted by leafy at 4:28 AM on April 25, 2001

The flash described in the first post, as well as the one of the maze-like gallery are really great.

I don't understand why people - mostly other web designers, it seems -- are so opposed to flash. Sure, it's been overused and abused by people. But so has HTML. That doesn't mean that HTML is bad and should be eschewed.

I guess it's something about being part of the "in crowd." If Zeldman, or whoever, doesn't like it, then the rest of us can't like it either, or something like that. I really don't get it.

As for not downloading an updated version of Flash, just for the sake of being obstinate, I don't get that, either ... Flash makes it easy to keep up to date. The download is fairly quick, and the installation is painless.

If browser updates were this easy, we could all use CSS and DHTML and everyone would be able to appreciate our hard work and bleeding edge style.
posted by crunchland at 5:40 AM on April 25, 2001

(Posting the off-the-top-of-my-head reaction here...)

"I am refusing to 'download Flash 5' at the moment."

Good for you.

"I don't ask people to download a plug-in..."

I'll make sure you get a cookie. (The baked good, not the little text file.)
posted by CrayDrygu at 6:55 AM on April 25, 2001

“I guess it's something about being part of the "in crowd." If Zeldman, or whoever, doesn't like it, then the rest of us can't like it either, or something like that. I really don't get it.”

With all due respect, screw Zeldman-or-whoever. Flash should be the least of Web Designers' worries. Half of the morons out there designing sites still can't code their pages with simple cross-browser compatibility checks like, oh, closing your table tags or putting form elements between <form></form> tags. And, as far as practicality goes, Flash is far more useful than nearly every Java app I've ever seen. Nothing like crashing the browser of every other visitor with your rippling water effect or Java-based counter. Ugh.
posted by Danelope at 7:27 AM on April 25, 2001

my mother is a print maker. she teaches at university and i forwarded her the url. great stuff.
posted by Zebulun at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2001

Negative points for having a trap page. If you don't have flash 5 (or their autodetect thinks you don't) you're redirected to www.moma.org/whatisaprint/noflash.html and your back button is broke. DON'T DO THIS.
posted by jfuller at 10:13 AM on April 25, 2001

Since when does Zeldman hate flash?
posted by alan at 9:31 PM on April 25, 2001

A mean-spirited trap page (5 minutes+ to re-boot!); with graceful on-line expositions of image-printing techniques for artists. For happy sighted humans (with 130,000,000 photo-receptor cells per eye) links like this are unfair.
posted by 1strang at 6:44 AM on April 26, 2001

Apologies if I mischaracterized Mr. Zeldman. His was the first "A-list"/cult-followed name that popped into my head.
posted by crunchland at 7:03 AM on April 26, 2001