There has been a ton of hype, speculation and news recently regarding Flash's impending demise. I won't go into the details because it's been hashed over repeatedly and I really don't feel like beating a dead horse.
As a Flash and Flex developer I have a huge vested interest in where the Flash platform goes and whether or not it survives. I stumbled across this video interview with Jesse Freeman (aka the Flash Bum) where he talks about his take on Flash's future (skip to 10:20).
Personally I think Jesse is mostly correct. Mobile is critical to Flash's future success and it must keep evolving.
The world is moving to a constantly connected, mobile environment where devices quite different from the traditional desktop/laptop will rule. As someone who has been involved with early development using Flash and Flex technology on mobile devices I can say Adobe has done a good job with their recent push to get Flash running on devices (1000% better than anything Flashlite was), but there is still a lot of work to do. I'm excited and encouraged by the work they have done with industry leaders in the mobile arena via the Open Screen Project and I honestly believe Flash will be a large player in mobile development for the same reason it currently is in the desktop/laptop environment, they give developers a consistent platform to deliver applications and content with across devices, something no other company or open source initiative offers.
For Flash to succeed Adobe needs to keep the platform evolving. I have worked with Flash (and Actionscript) since Flash 4 was around, over ten years ago. Today's Flash is lightyears ahead of anything it was ten years ago. It has evolved from a simple animation program to something you can create complex websites and internet applications with. Actionscript is now on it's third major revision and approaches more traditional languages like C and Java in terms of usefulness and potential. As a developer (in any language) if you sit down and objectively consider what is possible to run in almost any browser today through the Flash plugin it is almost mind blowing the functionality and performance that can be delivered. Things that were only possible a few short years ago in full blown, heavy client applications that needed to be installed on a computer can now be delivered rapidly through the browser, anytime, anywhere.
Jesse seemed a little pessimistic about Adobe's ability to keep Flash/Actionscript from becoming stagnant and going the way of the Doodoo bird. I'm more optomistic, having seen where Flash, and more importantly Actionscript, was, where it is, and where it's heading. I think if anything, Adobe will put more focus on Flash and continue to rapidly push it ahead of competing technologies like Silverlight and to a lesser extend HTML5. Actionscript, as it becomes more rounded and powerful, will become more mainstream and entrenched, much like Java has from it's early days.
In closing, I could list out many of the things you can do with Flash/Flex/Actionscript but the video below does a nice succinct job and paints a better picture than anything I could say.
Derrick Grigg is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) freelance contractor based in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in architecting and developing applications using a variety of technologies, most notably Flash, Flex and Coldfusion.
Jun 09, 2010 at 7:37 AM
Go away! Flash is annoying and performance eating (not just the video part but pure animations too - albeit most likely badly scripted) and it's absolutely your fault to tie yourself into that single vendor proprietary platform. You earned enough money with this in the past. Don't expect any sympathy now.
Jun 09, 2010 at 8:03 AM
Flash is a lot better than craps like Silverilght and HTML5 will not be fully supported by IE for at least 3-4 years so ... even if someone want to remove flash ... no way.
P.S. if flash is too laggy on your machine .. stop using macOsShit
Jun 09, 2010 at 5:42 PM
Right on. Other than being a very effective smear campaign by Apple because of their need for closed syetems (how's that for Doublthink?), I do not understand the vitriol aimed at Flash at all. As a Flash developer, I also have a large vested interest in seeing Flash succeed. And I have also developed and seen developed some truly kick-ass and amazing things with Flash that just simply could not be done with any other technology, be it HTML5, JavaScript, Unity3D, Silverlight, or any other.
The propblem with all the trolls baying for Flash's demise is that they are all suffering from selective amnesia. Flash has moved beyond annoying ads and cutesie little games, like eight years ago, even though it is still possible to do these things. (When was the last time a non-Flash web page with animations and dynamic interaction ten years old still worked?)
Flash is now an enterprise-capable SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM. Flash has not died; it has transcended the web, superseded browsers, and in doing so has become an integral part of the connected computing experience we take for granted.
Until one day, an evil wizard in his white tower said, "Flash is bad! No more Flash!" Problem is, declaring the death of Flash on the web is like dismembering yourself and blaming it on the appendage that it hurt so much.
Jun 11, 2010 at 2:35 PM
I've worked on many Flash powed applications and websites. Currently I turn down clients that want full Flash sites unlesss they are willing to pay for a quality implementation of a Flash site.
Currently, if a user doesn't have the latest version of Flash and the Flash site uses player 10 native 3d api, the user don't see anything. This is wherew smart implementation comes into play, where you could gracefully degrade the user to a compatible version.
Most developers don't care to implement things like that. In turn, the end user (especially myself) will close the site and forget about it.
If a company has a product or service they want to expose, you should not develop your site only in Flash. You should offer a same type of quality html site that is just as dynamic as the Flash version, which is completely possible.
I've never consider myself a developer of one tool, since I enjoy using different platforms. That is the problem with 100% Flash developers is that they are stuck in Flash, which makes me a sad panda. All this talk about platform evangists isn't good at all because those people only 'believe' in one platform.