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Bureau Blank goes from Flash to Open Web Technology

Bureau Blank is embracing the new wave of technology and advancements on the web.

It was only a few years back that the best (and most reliable) way to provide rich interactive experiences on the web across the slew of browsers was to create said content in Adobe Flash. Flash, a third party plugin for internet browsers, could be found installed on most users' browsers so that you could be sure a high percentage of users would be able to access your content.

However, Flash is a proprietary third party technology developed by Adobe, and thus not in line with the openness nature of the web. To create content in Flash, you need to purchase Flash from Adobe. If you created the content with the latest version of Flash, users would likely have to upgrade to be able to view your content if their Flash player were not updated. For some projects you did not really have a choice. Flash provided a rich interactive solution to a problem, and it was something web technology at the time could not recreate.

Times have changed, and over the past few years the web has significantly matured. Advancements in technology and support by browsers has grown by leaps and bounds with such things as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and the jQuery JavaScript library, amongst the numerous useful libraries available. A JavaScript library is pre-written code that you can integrate into your projects to allow for easier development, and provide some useful capabilities. JavaScript has such a vast community of developers that you can also easily find JavaScript plugins for these libraries that help extend their capabilities even further and create much of the same functionality that Flash could provide. Now you don't immediately need to turn to Flash to create rich interactivity to enhance your content. You can do it all with the free and open technology at hand.

Take for example Bureau Blank's solution to the Admiral Center's home page design. The Admiral Center is an organization that helps high profile celebrities with their philanthropic goals. Bureau Blank wanted to provide an interactive experience to the user when first arriving at the Admiral Center web site, and showcasing the number of high profile members that work with the Admiral Center. The solution was to create an interactive carousel of the high profile Admiral Center members. Up until now, our only choice for accomplishing this would have been Flash, but we wanted a solution that would be accessible on all platforms, including modern mobile devices, such as the iPhone, iPod and Android, independent of Flash.

By not using Flash, we could also easily integrate the content of the carousel with our Content Management System (CMS) for the Admiral Center, and allow the site administrators to change the content of the carousel as easily as any of the other content on the web site.

Bureau Blank's solution incorporated all of the modern web technologies mentioned above as well as a JavaScript plugin for the jQuery library called Roundabout. This is a very robust plugin that can create carousels of different types based on the structure of the HTML code, and has a variety of settings.

By keeping up to date on the latest in web technologies and trends, and adopting the openness of these technologies, Bureau Blank is working to provide sophisticated solutions with rich interactivity at a fraction of the development time for our clients.