Macromedia® Flash™ MX 2004 for Rich Internet Applications

Introduction

I really wanted to call this book Replacing Web Pages with Applications. Or, something even more provocative such as The End of Web Pages. Considering that Macromedia Flash is the tool that will bring such changes, I suppose it’s only fair it’s in the title. But I still think we’re at the beginning of a real change.

When new technologies arise, people tend to impress old metaphors onto them. If you look at the first motion pictures, they’re little more than a camera pointed at a stage play. When D. W. Griffith decided to move the camera to different positions and insert carefully timed edits, it was a major revolution. In the case of the web, the whole concept of “pages” comes from books. Books are good at what they do, so there’s ...