Karl wrote:
IN a textbook I could see a place for some small flash animations, for example to represent some organic reactions. I poked around the site but found nothing definitive, except a lack of mention of flash usage. Could using flash animations in some contexts be a viable option?
Heavens no! Macromedia Flash is a proprietary software program that users would have to install separately from their browser. In many cases this is difficult or impossible (thinking of Linux and other non-MS/non-Apple OSes). Animated GIFs are much better because they work in nearly every browser without requiring the user to install a plug-in. But all GIFs have possible patent issues and are therefore not a great option either. Hopefully MNG (the animated version of the open source PNG image format) will be supported by IE soon (users of IE need to install a plug-in to see these last time I checked). Heck I say we should use MNG for the textbooks since by the time any one textbook gets any type of attention IE will probably be able to display MNG animations out of the box.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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