Alex Garneau

Hunted down from the computer jungles of NAIT all tangled up in a Kinect cable-trap, this slightly over-enthusiastic developer joined the team for the Flash programming experience and found himself taking a wild ride through programming technologies he never knew existed. Though he still gets a lot of Flash experience doing a few projects with the new technologies Adobe is still somehow releasing, much of his work and efforts come from learning and applying Javascript, HTML, CSS, SASS, and even the Google Dart language. He anticipates and accepts the usual challenge and enjoys making flashing lights go boom on the screen in his spare time. Keeps a pencil and sketchpad with him in case his mind starts going off on tangents, as that's usually how a child of two artists relieves stress. Makes great effort to keep things positive and PG-13 at all times, so nobody is afraid to ask him to share his thoughts on anything. His dream job is to do some crazy things with the Kinect. Talks to his computer frequently. Nobody around him thinks it's strange.

The Evolution of Video in Flash

Back in the good ol’ days, Flash was very popular among many for playing media. It was used, online and offline, for displaying animations, showing presentations, and general advertising. Though there weren’t all that many options back then, such popularity still came mostly because it was simple. It was able to animate vector art very smoothly as opposed to large, clunky .gifs, as well as allow users to use simple interactions like mouse clicks and keyboard input. Macromedia Flash itself also had a very simple interface and UI, and was used in schools all over to help teach students multimedia and animation.

As the internet evolved, so did Flash. As video playback started to become popular, Flash had no choice but to adapt to keep up with competition and provide its users with the best experience possible. This involved cutting corners, taking back-doors, and even adding a whole new programming language to the mix at one point.

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