Flash is most likely the technology that will take over entertainment media in general.

Hello everybody, and thank you for your great responses.

I just returned from the MAX 2004 conference in New Orleans and, as I expected, everything was Flash, Flex (Flash on Enterprise level), and ColdFusion/Blackstone.

Macromedia seems to be not only charging full-steam ahead with Flash but, based on what indicated, positioning Flash into the now emerging mobile market.

Here are just a few sobering statistics:

Over the next 5-years, Flash will have nearly 100% penetration into the mobile market with most mobile products becoming Flash based.

The mobile market, during that same period, will be an $80-billion market.

At present, only 3% of customers complete a transaction in a conventional e-commerce site. However, with Flash, that number goes as high as 8%.

Those are incredible numbers that are tough to ignore and write-off. As was easily shown at MAX, Flash is no longer a nice decoration for a website; but the tool that will move information technology well into the 21st century.

There will be more in the December issue of the journal.

Keep writing,
Charles E. Brown
Editor-in-Chief
MX Developer's Journal

First let me say that I really like flash. I like being able to use fonts and control layout with complete confidence that it won't look goofy in some browser. However, to say that the industry is going to flash is simply an overstatement.

As some one else mentioned there are problems for flash based sites as it relates to search engines and more importantly accessibility. HTML based sites are often terrible in their support of accessibility, but with the adoption of CSS and education, this is improving dramatically. Flash has been inaccessible for people who rely on assistive technologies. However, the newest versions of flash now allow for support of assistive devices like screen readers, but again it will require education of designers/developers to take advantage of these new features. Which leads to my fundamental problem with adoption of flash on such a wide scale... versions.

The main benefit for using flash was to dispense with the tedious task of writing code/html for x, y, z platforms and a, b, and c browsers. While flash is not affected greatly by the platform issue, we now have versions of flash which do not support some of the nifty (and essential) new features. And now we have to do, not just flash detection, but flash version detection.

I just worked on a project where I wanted to use styles with XML content displayed in a flash interface. At first I saved it to be backward compatible with older flash players... and then I noticed that the styles did not get applied... Yes, users can be prompted to upgrade their player. But as they say in retail/e-commerce, every step between the customer and the purchase of your products is yet another hurdle or barrier the customer may not jump.

So while it is great to see flash address some of its earlier shortcomings (which I would think that the accessibility features can also be used to address the search engine problem) it introduces another problem or more accurately, suffers some inherent problems of delivering content to a client. A client not maintained or controlled by you. I look forward to using flash in any project I can, but it is still going to be limited by what the projects requirements are and not what I want to do.

I agree with Marcellino Bommezijn  the Flash hype is within the industry. Clients normally do not understand the difference between HTML, ASP.NET and Flash. However, it is our responsibility as designers and developers to educate them.

I completely disagree with Kim Buttery's opinion. She must be looking at sites that were created in Flash 4  1998 technology. Since the release of Flash 5 and Flash Generator, developers have been able to build fast loading database driven information based sites. Over the past 3 years we have seen a huge success in database integration with the release of Flash MX and then Flash MX 2004 with Action Script 2.0.

In regards to the comment on download time, Flash is NOT to blame. That argument also holds true for HTML sites that have large 100k JPEG images or sites that have 1 image sliced into 20 images. The download time has everything to do with how the developer/designer builds the site.

The only thing I have left to say is this... Flash is currently the best tool to build intuitive dynamic websites. But like HTML, Flash will one day be replaced by another great technology and as web developers we should embrace these new technologies. Hopefully the next new technology will allow search engines to index Flash content. :o)

Marcellino, one of the greatest tools you should look at for your Flash site is ActiveCMS. Take a look at in depth features at www.activecms.net... This tool give your customer the ability to maintain, manage and even build their entire site. That's one of the rare full Flash Content Management System...

I am sure Macromedia would like this very much to happen :-)
As i look around when i read your article (Where is the industry going?), i couldn't really find a lot of full-flash based websites and either tools that would help me create, standardized and exchangeable tools to create these sites. As a webdesigner/developer, i don't have a lot of requests from customers for Flash (only the intro's and banner stuff). I think the hype is within the industry itself, but not the customer/client side. I think IBM knows where we going, but you will hear about this soon.......

Actually, since flash can interact with XML so well, it is not really a client-side technology in the sense that HTML is, HTML is limited to what you can "strap-on" whereas flash is ready to interact with anything from databases to ASP scripts through XML and therefore is as much a server-side solution as ASP.NET At least that's how I feel about it. Let's not forget the fact that flash is the same in every browser that supports it. I can't think of any other language or technology that behaves the same no matter which platform the user is on.

"In my opinion, client-side technologies, such as HTML and related scripts, have run their course and are relics of a past state of technological evolution." ...Is Flash no longer a client side technology!?

I have to add a comment in response to what Kim said: While it is true that there is a bunch of flash out there that detracts from the website content, that is not how it has to be. Carefully designed flash can be very very quick to load, If the full capabilities of Flash are implemented, it can be faster than HTML regardless of bandwisth. I have developed .swf's for sites that weigh LESS than 1.5k. Yes that's right. Many of the .swf's I have put on websites actually appear FIRST on the laoding of the page. Poorly built flash IS slow and cumbersome, but that is poor design, not the fault of Flash. It is vital that these misconceptions be destroyed so that flash can fluorish as it deserves to. What other web technology is capable of doing almost anything you can imagine? only Flash.

I perfectly agree with the fact that Flash is THE most powerful development tool available today and for some more years to come... In our case (ActiveMedia, www.activemedia.qc.ca), we can prove it's true since 4 years because we have surely THE most advanced software ever built in Flash with a complete ERP (251 modules), a complete CRM (54 modules) and a very complete CMS solutions (95 modules) entirely build in Flash since some years. We use Flash for building powerful management software that compete SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, PeopleSoft and more in their own domain. We also take a big advantage of the one-code-fits-all feature by having deployed hundreds of mobile solutions (PocketPC). We're now really proud to win contract over six "Windows" competitors with our Flash solutions, it's a great to see that this "emerging" web development platform now beat pure windows software in performance and features (We don't like using "emerging" when defining the technology because we deploy software since 4 years!!!). With our 10,400 online users, we can confirm you that THIS is the web technology to use, even for building traditional management software. But for now, Macromedia promote Flash "only" for Rich Internet Application, wich are 500% better than HTML, but 2000% less than what Flash can do... One step at a time, HTML coders will be hard to convert :-)

Flash is here to stay and is destined to get significantly more widespread. With the release of Flex and the upcoming release of Coldfusion 7, Macromedia is about to put Flash everwhere, but not in the traditonal "Flash" sense. Flash allows for significantly improved visualization of data and improves the user experience tremendously. Flash-like technology is the future of the web (look at all the major automakers) and contrary to previous comments, with the right bandwidth, Flash pages load almost as fast as data intense html pages just with many more user-friendly features.

I disagree, my use of the web is for information NOT flash. I find the sites with flash are slow to load, while I wait to see if here is worthwhile data I am loosing time looking for data that can improve the health of my patients, or slow down the students in my classes looking for better informaton . When I go to commercial sites using flash the pictures get in the way of information. Flash is nothing but Hype! All emotion, no reality.

"In my opinion, client-side technologies, such as HTML and related scripts, have run their course and are relics of a past state of technological evolution"

I am glad that you included that people should not abandon old programming languages for new ones, because the quote above was the only peice of your article that I hada problem with.

I have found that Flash simply builds upon what is there and does not say that it is the end-all of web design. Using HTML, CSS, XML, and XSL in text windows has opened a whole new world to how I create interactive media. Adding more dynamicism and easing the upkeep of sites after the project timeline has run it's course.

As far as the comment that John Rossey made on searchable text in flash peices I think that is a vaild concern and one that should be addressed.

Does html inside of a flash text window become searchable by spiders? This is something I will have to check on, for honestly I do not know.

Regardless, I am glad to see Flash here and have used it since Actionscript first came to be. I share in your excitement to see where Flash will take the web, and hope that we embrace all languages and use them as they are intended.

I agree that flash is the technology that will take over the web, but how will MM overcome the search engine issues that currently keep e-Comm sites from using flash on their sites? I develop for Flash as well as e-Commerce, but rarely the both in the same project. E-commerce people always say they don't want to use flash because of the lack of recognition by the search spiders.