Is Flash The Future Of The Internet?

[greeneagle]

Is Flash The Future Of The Internet?

We want Flash Developers Input in this Marketing Forum thread!

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=49699

Ken

[ctabuk]

I thought you had enough on your plate!

David

[greeneagle]

David,

You and I both know that the Flash Developers over here might be interested in contributing "Straight From The Horses Mouth" on this topic!

I want to hear it straight from the source after they review the sites I have posted!

I want to hear their take on whether that is where the Internet is going, in their opion!

I have posted several impressive Flash sites in that "Marketing Thread" and I want it to come alive from Flash Developers "in the know"!

You are D___ right I have more on my plate than I need right now, but "The Future of the Internet" and "What Monies are Lining Which Pockets Right Now" are important topics for my and many other company’s futures!

I sincerely hope we can draw some of the experts over here to offer their expertise for us, over there!

Ken

[irodgers]

Judging by the age of this post the question is - Was flash the future of the internet?

Only joking, I'm still hoping that Flash will be more widely used and understood. There's a lot of stuff about it being bad for SEO that just isn't true.

[GoaTrancer]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

Is Flash The Future Of The Internet?

We want Flash Developers Input in this Marketing Forum thread!

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=49699

Ken

How do u think? When will we open total 3d web worlds (more advanced then VRML) but non this pages.

[jgarner]

Originally Posted by irodgers

Judging by the age of this post the question is - Was flash the future of the internet?

Only joking, I'm still hoping that Flash will be more widely used and understood. There's a lot of stuff about it being bad for SEO that just isn't true.

Agreed. There used to be a lot of problems as an SEO Specialists that I would run into with Flash sites. But My designer friend can do some really neat things in 8 that makes use of readable text, thus creating some of the most beautiful (yeah I'm secure enough to use such a word), SEO friendly sites. I think Flash is the way of the future. AND THE FUTURE IS NOW!!!...ahem...sorry.

[levelfourdesigns]

Flash is absolutely the futre of the web... Flex has been released to increase the platform a bit, but either way they are the same technology, being pushed on a player format that has 98% customer base, mobile platform, etc.

Not only are high end companies using it to leverage their products. Nike.com and others are leveraging it in small doses, but RIA's are on the rise and will soon make the business we do on the Internet more interactive.

If you look at it from a developers side, we can use flash remoting that leverages all the cool things PHP, ASP, and JAVA can do. We leverage ActionScript and the flash player for all the cool things it can do design wise. We aren't talking about just flash, but the fact that IT can interact and use a lot of other web technologies, while the others can't simply digest any services but their own.

Next step, integrate a full 3D engine like shockwave into the ever popular flash player customer base and programmers have unlimited abilities in development in a portable platform...

just my two cents worth.

Josh Jones
www.levelfourstorefront.com

[orangemike]

Is it tacky to mention how much many end users hate Flash; and how many folks out there still find it makes a site unusable due to download times and display issues?

[Irishjim]

Although your call to arms is for flash developers, Josh, as a "former" flash developer, I'd like to chime in if you don't mind.

Certainly flash has problems with the search engines. Anyone who doesn't think so, isn't looking at SERP's.

I suspect this is more the fault of the algorithms than the designers but some if this fault lies with the ego entry page that has become such a pain on the web.

Can you imagine in the real world (you mean this isn't real?) telling someone they'll have to watch your crappy home movies before they can buy something from you?

All this aside, here's where I think Flash goes really wrong.

It takes a good bit of expertise to develop an fla file that can be converted into a swf file.

Sounds tidy but what does your client do when you jet off to Spain and decide to persue wine tasting for the rest of your life?

He's out in the cold.

We had this same problem a few years ago with Java and this powerful tool fell afoul of the public when folks were left by their web gurus and found they had tools they couldn't modify.

I liked it... even learned how to do it but it was too cumbersome for the general public and JavaScript eventually took over as a primary navigation tool.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy ramble but my money says flash will stay around as long as it's a good little puppy and doesn't take over the whole site.

[bj]

Flash is absolutely the futre of the web... Flex has been released to increase the platform a bit, but either way they are the same technology, being pushed on a player format that has 98% customer base, mobile platform, etc.

Fully one third of the US is still on dialup. Until this changes I don't see flash being the be all and end all you make it out to be.

Though I think flash does VERY well at delivering video and audio content, I would dispute that anyone can say it is the definitive future of the web. Yes, it has its place. Personally for GUI on the desktop it's often ideal. Tutorials? Fabulous! But until we have much more bandwidth available to many more people on many different devices and in many rural areas of the country, I don't think that a blanket statement like that has validity.

I would also dispute the validity of the 98% customer base. One of the most POPULAR downloads at FireFox is the FlashBlocker extension, which says a lot about the feelings of people who are having flash plugin installations shoved down their throat whether they want them or not. It's obvious a lot don't.

Where did that statistic come from? Flash Developers? Adobe? Where?

And was that statistic a pre-IE lawsuit thing or post-lawsuit?

[greeneagle]

Irishjim:

"Certainly flash has problems with the search engines. Anyone who doesn't think so, isn't looking at SERP's.

I suspect this is more the fault of the algorithms than the designers but some lies in the ego entry page that has become such an eyesore on the web."

I think that is just part of the story Jim...Most "Flash" pages I see don't have much content, at least not real spider food. They tend to focus on a flash in the pan with no meat cooking, similar in content to code ratio as many little HTML online business card Sites that never go anywhere either.

I think Flash is better deployed to augment a Site, not build it.

Ken

[orangemike]

Originally Posted by Irishjim

I suspect this is more the fault of the algorithms than the designers but some lies in the ego entry page that has become such an eyesore on the web.

Can you imagine in the real world (you mean this isn't real?) telling someone they have to watch your home movies before they can buy something from you?

An "Amen!" for the gentleman from County Clare, from a fellow whose people came from Fermanagh. The only thing a lot of end users know about Flash is, "That's that annoying crap I have to sit through before I can actually use so many websites." Not a wise use of technology, to start off by irritating your guest!!!! I've yet to see a one of those 'ego entry pages' (love the phrase) that was other than an irritation.

[jacobwissler]

A website done in 100% Flash has value only to a company like Nike, that has only one key word: Nike. Flash can be used to create a lot of wiz bang amazing stuff www.seohouston.com/intro.htm but for the normal business that wants to create sales the future is Flash embedded on an html page, which will allow for both proper optimization and show.

You will notice that I have embedded the Flash in a way that validates W3C. http://www.seohouston.com/webdesign/index.htm (P.S. Ken from Mountain Eagle taught me how to do that).

[csutoras]

For all my years on the internet the only thing flash has done for me is have me searching for the skip button or clicking the red x.

I have been impressed by the very minimal use of it in some regards but overall it is best left to cool video games you can play online.

I do like some imbedded flash in say a logo or in menus but when it is a intro it is annoying and nothing more to me.

Why do we forget so much in the chase to look cool and rank high that the customer still has to be happy. Flash doesnt make people or customer happy. It only makes the developer and the owner of the site happy.

This is audio on the site all over again.

[philscanlan]

XML and web services, as a transient means of exchanging information between applications (including flash), are the future of the web.

If flash is the future of the web, I want nothing to do with it.

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

Nike.com and others are leveraging it in small doses...

Yeah, speaking of nike.com, I was on that site couple days ago trying to simply VIEW the products and information. You spend so much time learning how the UI works (gone are your standard scrollbars; gone is my ability to search text within the page), that you don't even remember what you were looking for in the first place. Grrr.

Full flash websites are a HUGE mistake. Flash should be use sparingly, like embedded images, etc. to enhance the aesthetics of a page. I'm not going to reiterate all the usability problems it creates. Not to mention that SWFs are these self contained insulated objects that can't interact with the rest of the internet (e.g. search engines)

Nothing is more important than the information and flash UI's just get in my way. If I want to see special effects and useless crap, I'll watch a movie. The only type of case that can justify full use of flash is something like an artists portfolio website or something similar that is all about the visual.

[csutoras]

Originally Posted by jacobwissler

A website done in 100% Flash has value only to a company like Nike, that has only one key word: Nike. Flash can be used to create a lot of wiz bang amazing stuff www.seohouston.com/intro.htm but for the normal business that wants to create sales the future is Flash embedded on an html page, which will allow for both proper optimization and show.

You will notice that I have embedded the Flash in a way that validates W3C. http://www.seohouston.com/webdesign/index.htm

Even for the sake of this conversation i could not even watch the flash all the way through. And i am a patient searcher.

[qirexsys]

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

Flash is absolutely the futre of the web...

Heh... I used to say that, back in the day. I used to proselytize to everyone about how "Flash is the future, the future is at hand, behold that which is amazing and true!" Then I found out about web standards, usability (and the tendency of flash developers to make wholly unusable sites), and myriad other reasons why Flash is called "Flash" and not "Perpetuity". That's not even touching the SEO aspects, which (I'm sure) have been much improved since the olden days. I can't think of one person I've worked with that started using Flash and didn't say the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I dig Flash, I love the stuff people have done with it, and are doing with it, but I can't say that it's the "future of the internet." No way. It's had plenty of time to become the future (and it *has* matured tremendously, no doubt about it) but I still maintain that Flash has its time and its place, and will never become the ubiquitous standard for web development.

All that being said, it may not be the 'future', but it sure isn't going anywhere. There's plenty of support for it, plenty of interest from artists, plenty of end-user knowledge of it, and it really does put out attractive stuff. I think it'll continue to march into the future with the rest of the web technologies (as opposed to fading into obscurity), but "the future of the internet"? I'd better call Al Gore and ask him... ;)

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

I think Flash is better deployed to augment a Site, not build it.

Right pieces of Flash on websites are a great thing and can really become link bait itself, but to say Flash is the future of the internet is not true. As BJ pointed out 33% of the world I still on dial up and as Jim pointed out flash entry pages are a terrible idea and pages composed entirely of flash are SERP poison.

[orangemike]

Originally Posted by csutoras

For all my years on the internet the only thing flash has done for me is have me searching for the skip button or clicking the red x.
...
I do like some imbedded flash in say a logo or in menus but when it is a intro it is annoying and nothing more to me.

Why do we forget so much in the chase to look cool and rank high that the customer still has to be happy. Flash doesnt make people or customer happy. It only makes the developer and the owner of the site happy.

This is audio on the site all over again.

It's just puttin' lipstick on a pig (also the title of a great new mystery I just got a review copy of, by the way).

[levelfourdesigns]

Aarrgggh.. I'm up in arms!!!!

98% comes from the 10 year trend statistic from any website statistics place, yes, even adobe shares these stats.

and I think all the negative conotations about flash here are being referred to as designer flaws, not flaws in the technology.

pages can easily be user friendly to update.
intros eliminated
small download packages, as small as most others, 15k, 20k?
we can eliminate all the design and have a basic HTML/PHP looking page that scrolls for miles...

I thought we were discussing is the platform more powerful and the future, and yes, it's more complex, of course, that's because you have to be smarter than html 2.0 to work it...

I still believe it's more flexible and more powerful than other platforms, but let's not mix up design flaws with platform power.

just my two cents worth!!! don't shoot me...

[iany]

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

just my two cents worth!!! don't shoot me...

Of course the fact that you are promoting a flash based CMS elsewhere in the forum has absolutely no bearing on the matter.

[qirexsys]

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

Aarrgggh.. I'm up in arms!!!!

98% comes from the 10 year trend statistic from any website statistics place, yes, even adobe shares these stats.

and I think all the negative conotations about flash here are being referred to as designer flaws, not flaws in the technology.

just my two cents worth!!! don't shoot me...

Hey, whatever makes you happy. The technology itself is pretty snazzy, and it *does* do quite a bit - but I'm not convinced at its efficiency beyond the ability to present vector graphics and animations. Ack, but I'm not even interested in getting into it - it's like the old PC/Apple debate.

And you're definitely right that a lot of what's being referred to are designer flaws, but Flash really empowers these flaws. It's not just negative connotations... it's 10 years worth of maturation to develop a general opinion.

More powerful or not, I think anybody would stand up for their 'technology'... Perl people love Perl, Python people love Python, PHP guys swear by PHP, ASP guys rave over that horrendous travesty called .NET, and so on and so forth.

Do you really think Flash will replace all the other web development technologies? Do think it's scalable to the point where, say, Amazon could be an entirely Flash site?

Java is one of the most flexible technologies of our time (at least on paper)... people touted it as the future of programming (well, Java people did)... it's pretty common these days, but it lives side-by-side with plenty of other technologies, some new, some old. Everything has its place, Flash (I believe) more so than many, many others.

[qirexsys]

Originally Posted by orangemike

It's just puttin' lipstick on a pig.

Lipstick on a pig? Man, I have never not wanted to know more in my life...! ;)

[magic_majax]

By rights SVG should have replaced flash by now but it took so long to get any browsers to support it and Abode didn't get their plugin running too well. It might prove to be like VHS versus Betamax, SVG being Betamx, better but not so widely used.

Doesn't macromedia own Abobe now, or is it vice-versa? Anyhow it sucks. I don't run Flash on my browsers, I figure that I can afford to miss any site that forces me to.

I've seen some truly awful flash websites and then I've seen the client replace them with the same clueless mickey mouse web designers who designed the original monsters.

Flash ads are a real pain, I just won't run flash at all, I'm on 56k dial-up and my processor sucks.

SVG is really funky, though there's so much of it, it's a really baffling doctype. SVG and SMIL, people have talked about that being the future, I don't know, but the internet is globl and I don't know how soon the world will all be on broadband.

I'd still like to see SVG more widely used and supported but Flash is there at the front, it's proprietry and there's a lot of commercial interest behind it.

SVG is a really powerful tool but there's not that much third-party software around to deploy it, unless you count text editors of course.

[Peter (IMC)]

Flash will never be the future of the internet simply because you need a 3 months course to be able to do something with it.

HTML on the other hand can be learned quickly, not to mention all the editors that take all the coding out of your hands.

Flash is visual, HTML is text. Even users still prefer to read rather than just see. A picture may be worth a 1000 words, but without words the picture doesn't say that much. TV without sound is as bad.

[bj]

98% comes from the 10 year trend statistic from any website statistics place, yes, even adobe shares these stats.

That's pretty misleading though, considering that even FIREFOX (how could my fave browser do this to us?) cannot be installed without the plugin. And it's impossible to uninstall. I tried. And was HAPPY when I found the plugin to shut it off, so I wouldn't have to watch any more dancing pink flamingoes trying to sell me mortgage money. Just because people have the plugin (and not by choice) doesn't mean they want to watch or DO watch the flash stuff. Most of 'em see it starting and head for the hills. Or they've installed an ad blocker or a flash blocker that allows them to CHOOSE if they want to see it. Many don't. I think those stats would be much more interesting and true if they showed who stayed for the full download, or more importantly, how many flash downloads were blocked.

I designed a site for someone. He had it up for a year, it was doing very well for him, steadily climbing, but some guy like you, a flash developer, came along and talked him into a bells and whistles site. His stats and his SERPS have PLUMMETED. And he'll eventually be back, if he isn't too embarassed, since I told him so.

Can Flash sometimes be used intelligently? Yes, but I've seen far more total abuse of flash than I've seen good use. Which is why I chose to block it even though I've got broadband. And you don't even wanna HEAR what my friends on dialup say about it.

[jacobwissler]

People need to be able to see and read, they need something visual and some text to explain it. The search engines also love the text. Flash as an intro is very 2001. Flash embedded on an html page adds color and movement to a boring document.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

<snip>
If you look at it from a developers side, we can use flash remoting that leverages all the cool things PHP, ASP, and JAVA can do. We leverage ActionScript and the flash player for all the cool things it can do design wise. We aren't talking about just flash, but the fact that IT can interact and use a lot of other web technologies, while the others can't simply digest any services but their own.

<snip>
Josh Jones
www.levelfourstorefront.com

Cool? It's not about cool.

It is about form versus function; and, too many Flash fans seem to have forgotten that form follows function.

Until they learn this fundamental, Flash will continue to be all sizzle and no steak.

[minorgod]

I've been using Flash since it was still called FutureSplash and I believe it is very useful for many applications, but to call it "the future of the web" is way too optimistic (or pessimistic depending on your viewpoint).

First of all, despite recent advances, adding server side interactivity to a Flash movie is a MAJOR pain in the butt. You have several options, but none of them make your life much easier. The same thing I could code in a day with PHP would (and is taking) several weeks to do using a combination of Flash Remoting and PHP (AMFPHP). The complexity is several orders of magnitude greater when using Flash than when using something like PHP and development times and costs are also higher. For many applications, AJAX is simply a better fit because it is easier to retrofit an existing PHP/ASP/JSP/CF page with some Javascript than it is to rewrite an entire application in Actionscript. If all you want to do is display dynamic data without a page refresh, I'll take AJAX over Flash for now.

Take the Flash UI components, which are supposed to make creating common UI elements such as ComboBoxes and scrollbars easier. The components are not only infuriatingly difficult to use (forcing designers to grapple with issues such as event objects, listeners, callback functions, dataproviders etc), but are not always backwards-compatible with previous versions of the Flash IDE. If, for instance, you created a Flash movie using Flash MX using the v1 components and then two years later tried to make some minor changes using Flash 8, all your components, and very likely your whole application will break unless you replace all your component libraries with the old versions from your old installed version of Flash MX, assuming you still have it. Or you could rewrite parts of your application to use the new component architecture AND manually replace any static components anywhere they are used in your movie. Compare that to the one or two lines of HTML it takes to add a (permanently backwards compatible) UI component such as a combobox to a web page and you can hopefully see my point.

And then there's the search engines. Yes, some search engines can index Flash content, but since there is almost never any logical flow to the content inside an .swf file, search engines have little hope of ever making any sense of what they find in an .swf file. There is no logical semantic structure built into Flash movies the way there is with standard HTML/XHTML/XML pages. For instance, search engines have no way to know if the first piece of text they find in an .swf file is more important than the last piece of text it finds. Unless you design your text content to be loaded from external sources that can be indexed/viewed independently, such as using XML or text files, there is little hope that search engines will ever be good at making sense of the content inside your Flash movie. There's simply no way for a search engine to know where any given piece of content belongs in relation to any other piece of content inside a Flash movie. That's the whole "raison d’être" for HTML standardization to begin with. This is the issue that Adobe's Live Motion and SVG format tried to address by making all the source files into XML files that could be read as plain text. After receiving a resounding silence from developers who saw through LiveMotion as an attempt to usurp the .swf format when it was still owned by Macromedia, Adobe has apparently resurrected this XML format in Flex. I have yet to touch Flex, but it seems like it might make some progress in addressing some of the shortcomings of the .swf format...assuming you actually published Flex source files on the web instead of exporting them to .swf files. Since I'm not sure how Flex works, I can't comment on that issue. Suffice it to say, that Flash will continue to dominate motion graphics and possibly video on the web and we will continue to see more and more sophisticated applications designed in Flash, perhaps we will even see some commercially successful desktop applications built with it (ala Apollo or solutions such as MDM Zinc which I use to do just that). As for Flash replacing the foundations of web technology as we know it, I think that's as absurd now as it was back in 2000 when I was making similar claims about Flash myself. Now, with a few more years of development experience under my belt and some hard lessons learned, I have a different view. When your goal is to display information with ease and economy, standards-based XHTML/CSS will be the top choice for developers and end users for a very very long time to come (maybe one day, we will even be able to reliably draw a box on the screen with it!). It's relatively easy to use, implement and consume. When it comes to server-side scripting, nothing, and I mean NOTHING beats PHP. Anything you can do in ASP/ColdFusion/etc...I can do faster in PHP with fewer up-front expenses. When it comes to animation, video, or more sophisticated web applications, Flash is a great tool, possibly the best tool and I use it every day, but it has its limitations and the learning curve is about as steep as they come, especially for the average programatically-challenged web designer.

[minorgod]

Originally Posted by deepsand

It is about form versus function; and, too many Flash fans seem to have forgotten that form follows function.

Until they learn this fundamental, Flash will continue to be all sizzle and no steak.

Have you done much web browsing since 2001? That used to be the case, but most Flash developers I know have since started to "get it" and are using Flash for a helluva lot more than a bit of superfluous "sizzle". Try finding another way to distribute video that is compatible with 98% of the computers on the web today. Try finding a better way to embed a lightweight MP3 player in your page (see www.woot.com). For that matter, try embedding a custom application with any arbitrary functionality into a web page with the alternative language (Java) and see which one performs better, looks nicer, has a smaller memory footprint and shorter download time. Your criticism is losing its relevence by the minute, though I agree that used to be the case. Now most people "just say no" to flash intros and other similar garbage.

[hmoulding]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

Is Flash The Future Of The Internet?

I don't even know wtf that means. "The future of the internet" is what?

The present of the internet is everything that people bitch about when you mention Flash. Sure, those are design flaws, but that doesn't change the FACT that sites that employ Flash are crap, for the most part. In fact, no other presentation platform has contributed as much to making the web an annoying and uninformative medium.

I doubt that'll change in the next ten years. Other internet technologies (e.g. XHTML/XML/CSS/JS on the frontend and whatever on the backend) seem much more capable than Flash at meeting the real challenges of the next ten years by being able to move between presentation platforms (mobile phone, palmtop, voice, machine translation, SOA, etc).

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by minorgod

Have you done much web browsing since 2001? That used to be the case, but most Flash developers I know have since started to "get it" and are using Flash for a helluva lot more than a bit of superfluous "sizzle". Try finding another way to distribute video that is compatible with 98% of the computers on the web today. Try finding a better way to embed a lightweight MP3 player in your page (see www.woot.com). For that matter, try embedding a custom application with any arbitrary functionality into a web page with the alternative language (Java) and see which one performs better, looks nicer, has a smaller memory footprint and shorter download time. Your criticism is losing its relevence by the minute, though I agree that used to be the case. Now most people "just say no" to flash intros and other similar garbage.

I'll not dignify your suggestion that I'm unaware of the present with a substantive response.

I will say that I find far too many sites using Flash for no good reason, with the result that it greatly hinders the functionality of such sites.

Most sites need to deliver text as their primary content; Flash offers no advantage re. such.

[jacobwissler]

If someone knows the future of the Internet, please let us all know, so we can get rich. Few other people you might want to tell ... Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are trying to figure it out, too.

[carlos_p]

Pardon my bluntness (I've had this consersation so many times...), but saying Flash sucks as compared to HTML is just plain dumb.
It's completely irrational to judge a technology (Flash) by its bad use (crappy intros). That's like saying cars suck because of car accidents.

In the early days of the web, someone (I can't remember who) said that if you showed Shakespear a web page he would say "I see, that's English. So what?". Flash and other so-called "rich-media" front-end technologies are most certainly the future of the internet — as far as a technology for human interfaces goes.

I'm a designer and a developer. Yes, I use Flash. No, I don't do crappy intros. I advise my customers to not even think about placing an intro on their websites. But there's a big difference between designers like me and millions of people building websites out there: I am a designer, by education and by trade, not some wiz kid or a senior citizen with a lot of time on my hands, or even one of those clueless IT pros who are "at home" with computers and just 'cause they know their way around the software think they are designers too.

That's one problem. Another one is that the software itself is so easy to use, anyone can do something with it. What I mean is if you want to sculpt a statue, paint a portrait, or build a house, you have to have the skills to do it; the tools won't do it for you. (IMO, the end of the 20th century should be known as the COPY+PASTE Revolution; and Mankind will never be the same...)
Furthermore, if you build a crappy house it comes crumbling down on you so you don't get a chance to build another, whereas building crappy Flash isn't hazzardous to your health, so you can do it all your lifetime.

Problem #3 is that many people using Flash don't go the extra mile in order to produce a professional piece of work. You have to tend to a lot of issues when you develop a website.
For one, few people actually know that the planning stages of a web design/development project actually take longer than the development stages.
Furthermore, you have to pick the right tool for the job:

Q — Do I need a web site with the main focus on text content and no dynamic content?
A — Use HTML;

Q — Do I need dynamic content?
A — Use scripting languages like PHP;

Q — Do I need a dynamic, visually rich, responsive interface?
A — Use Flash;

Q — Do I need a custom server component like a socket server?
A — Use Python or Tcl;

...mix and match the above according to your needs.
The next (current) big thing is Flash front-ends hot-wired to servers via Flash Remoting and the like.
A lot of my current projects go that way: you get a "thin client" Flash front-end which connects to the server via Flash Remoting and enables you to pull complete and wholesome data structures from your databases. Building web applications like this brings these main 3 advantages:
1-A "thin client" means there's almost no content in the Flash file and it loads very quickly (quicker than most medium-sized, medium-compression jpegs);
2-You get a proper, interactive GUI on your web application;
3-You get near-instant updates on your data (depends on how large are your datasets, of course);

IMO, the future of the web is closely tied to the future (and the present) of Flash.
And the future of computer software is closely tied to the future of the web...

[kgun]

1. Flash is in 2006 one among n technologies used to build digital goods and services(, including web sites and that is perhaps not the best use of the software today).

2. Flash, SEO and Optimization - How To Properly Use Flash On Your Websites.

Everything can be used and misused.

P.S.
Who are impressed by an animated applet / servlet on your site today?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by carlos_p

<snip>

IMO, the future of the web is closely tied to the future (and the present) of Flash.
And the future of computer software is closely tied to the future of the web...

The bulk of your post dealt with the subject of choosing the right tool for the task at hand, and was spot on.

However, to conclude with the statement that the "future of the web is closely tied to the future ... of" a particular tool does seems to be contradictory to that which preceeds it, unless you also believe that text will cease to be the primary content of the web.

[Xty]

I had to check the dates of these posts to make sure I wasn't back in 1999. Many of you folks sound like Jacob Neilson clones. All of your disgruntled views of Flash have to do with poor choices made by the designers and certainly have nothing whatsoever to do with the technology that is Flash. Out with Flash. It sucks! Now, lets extend your arguements and pick on something basic - like HTML. How many pages have I visited over the years with such hideous background images that I wouldn't be able to read the text even if it wasn't red? Out with HTML! It sucks. How many sites have I been to with music embedded in such a way as to not provide an off button? Out with HTML. It sucks!
PS I think search engines are way over rated.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Xty

I had to check the dates of these posts to make sure I wasn't back in 1999. Many of you folks sound like Jacob Neilson clones. All of your disgruntled views of Flash have to do with poor choices made by the designers and certainly have nothing whatsoever to do with the technology that is Flash. Out with Flash. It sucks! Now, lets extend your arguements and pick on something basic - like HTML. How many pages have I visited over the years with such hideous background images that I wouldn't be able to read the text even if it wasn't red? Out with HTML! It sucks. How many sites have I been to with music embedded in such a way as to not provide an off button? Out with HTML. It sucks!
PS I think search engines are way over rated.

Of course it's the developers! Did you really think that we here don't know that?

Therefore, unless and until the developers learn that form follows function, the use of Flash sucks.

[Xty]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Of course it's the developers! Did you really think that we here don't know that?

Therefore, unless and until the developers learn that form follows function, the use of Flash sucks.

Therefore, unless and until the developers learn that form follows function, the use of HTML sucks.

[bj]

Of course it's the developers! Did you really think that we here don't know that?

Therefore, unless and until the developers learn that form follows function, the use of Flash sucks.

Just to put this all in perspective, I'm not the only one here who has b*tched about flash and the awful uses it's been put to. I'm also a web dev. I also USED TO DEVELOP with flash. From what I see here I'm not the only one who can make those same statements. I think any of us who truly love what we do work hard to keep getting better at it. And there comes a realization that yes, it's hard to hammer a nail in with a socket wrench. Most humans learn and mature over time, or at least that's the theory, though there are a few I've come across who have made me doubt it. Bottom line is if you don't keep improving your skillset you are dead meat in the webdev business.

Do I think flash will see a strong resurgence as a video and audio delivery platform? Yes. Do I see it doing the job of xhtml/css/php/mysql to present text information in a logical, dynamic, and fast loading manner? No. At least not yet and maybe not ever.

And for the record, the Ajaxians are going through a similar trial by fire right now. Gratuitous use of Ajax tricks are almost as awful as flash splash pages were in their day. The newest "toy" always goes through its trial period.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Xty

Therefore, unless and until the developers learn that form follows function, the use of HTML sucks.

Yes, but:

1) HTML is not the subject of this thread; and,
2) The inappropriate use of any tool is a matter different from the poor use of such.

[Xty]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Yes, but:

1) HTML is not the subject of this thread; and,
2) The inappropriate use of any tool is a matter different from the poor use of such.

1)I use HTML as an example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
2)How do you figure that?

[carlos_p]

Originally Posted by deepsand

...unless you also believe that text will cease to be the primary content of the web.

I don't think I agree with what I perceive as your understanding of "text" in the first place, and the context in which you put it. In discussing these issues we need a finer grained analisys. Are you thinking about HTML when you're talking about "text"? Ther's text in Flash sites and applications, there's text in movies, in audio files, in billboards, in books...

I'm looking at this issue from this perspective: in talking about the "future of the web", I'm thinking about (existing and new) technologies and new ways of using these technologies. We all know written text will always have the larger share in human communication. People who prophetizesed the "end of Print" were proven wrong. Television didn't kill books, nor cinema, nor radio, for that matter. The web didn't kill neither.
The way I look at it, the web is an infrastructure which will (and must) convey richer content. It's a known fact mankind never takes full advantage of its resources and scientific advancements (Hey, I still write on the whiteboard in my lectures and multimedia classes!). What I'm talking about is how we will evolve in the use of these technologies (e.g. Flash) and in the way we convey information through the web. And I think Flash will have an important part in this. Even if it's just because it raised the issue (yes, even people who nag about Flash are contributers here); or even if it turns out to be a stepping stone for another, more empowering, technology.

But there's one very important aspect of this discussion which maybe is being undervalued: what really matters is the use people make of things. For instance, cell phones were created simply to provide people with a mobile means of making a phone call: nowadays, their use is shared between phone calls, text messaging, digital photography and distasteful movies/ringtones/MP3s. We must look out for people's needs. If the public has the need for streaming videos will you shun the technology because SEs can't index the content?
Furthermore, this isn't a case of "pick one"; HTML won't wither and die because of people using Flash.

And let me ask you: have you all even considered that some people might have higher priorities for their website than SEO? Someone here mentioned Nike... do you think those guys are concerned about how they rank in search engines? Of course this is an extreme example, but there's a lot more to marketing and branding than SEO, and it seems to me a lot of people in here are too biased in this matter...

[Andilinks]

Originally Posted by levelfourdesigns

Flash is absolutely the futre of the web...

If this is true it is the far distant future not the immediated future for all the reasons that have already been mentioned.

For the "present of the web" flash remains an artsy novelty. A fun and sometimes wonderful thing, but not why we use the web, most of us.

[texxs]

Another reason that many corporate networks and savy home users are blocking Flash or turning it off is that it's become spyware. It's gone betyond just it's own special flash cookies that have to removed manually. The flash player is now communicating with adobe.com directly even when movies aren't loaded.
The latestes version of ActionScripting also allows acess to hard is aloso allowing developers all kinds of tracking ability. I'm a Flash developer myself and I have most Flash blocked in my browsers.

Also have you seen the fits IE throws when it comes across a flash movie? Microsoft has the Bush admin on their side, Flash doesn't stand a chance.

Oh well it's practiclly been ruined anyway.

[Skywoolf]

With very few exceptions I find any site that uses flash to be a major turn off.

Used in very small sections or in specific areas (NOT a splash screen) it can be usefull but that's it for me. I mostly visit sites for information and while I can appreciate good graphic design I am really far more interested in finding what I need easily and efficiently.

Good graphic design and even animation can of course improve the userbility of the site but if you have flash that is just there for pretty effects then by the second or third visit it is becoming a drag and just wasting my time waiting for large pages to load.

[BobbyBill]

I think most of you here are stuck in your ways, and a little afraid of change. Flash may very well be the "Future of the Internet". It only has one real inadequecy, spidering. The three major search engines all recognize the popularity of flash, and Adobe recognizes the shortcoming. Efforts are being made on both sides to remedy it. Imagine if G, MSN, and Y are all able to read the Flash content and spider its links.

As far as load times, you can make a very animated flash site that loads just as fast as any graphical html site. If you go even more simplistic, you could probably make a flash site that is nearly as small as a plain html site, but far more attractive. It just depends on your audience. Flash is very versatile.

As far as the "Pink Flamingos" go, which I will interpret as the abundant cheesy flash sites out there with strange navigations. All that means is people like me who put large amounts of thought into how a flash navigation works as well as how good it looks will get more respect. It doesn't mean the medium is bad. There will always be awesome flash sites out there with well thought out navigations that clients will point me to and say, "I want a site like this!"

Flash isn't there yet, but if adobe plays their cards right, it very well could be. My current project is a site that's about 50% flash. I'm making sure to not get left behind if flash does take the next step. If it doesn't I still have some nice looking sites that are fully spiderable.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Xty

1)I use HTML as an example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
2)How do you figure that?

It's a false analogy, in that inappropriate use and poor use are 2 entirely different qualities; i.e., they are members of different classes. in the language of logicians, your analogy makes an error of class.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by carlos_p

I don't think I agree with what I perceive as your understanding of "text" in the first place, and the context in which you put it. In discussing these issues we need a finer grained analisys. Are you thinking about HTML when you're talking about "text"? Ther's text in Flash sites and applications, there's text in movies, in audio files, in billboards, in books...

<snip>

Text - a human-readable sequence of characters

For the purposes of rendering such, Flash offers no advantages whatsoever.

[bj]

Part of the problem is the HUGE PR hurdle with it from the awful uses it has been put to.

Anyone who is looking on the web for information will quickly become annoyed trying to find it or use it in any meaningful way if it's wrapped up in flash anis.

Let me give you an example of this. A friend and client who is a writer wanted to quote something JK Rowling said on her site. Though the site has recently been changed (and just barely made somewhat more accessible) up until recently it was all nothing but a flash animation. If you currently click the "accessibility enabled version" button you'll see the version I'm talking about, though this is supposed to be the "improved for accessibility" version. My friend wanted to quote a sentence and tried to highlight it. Go ahead and try. You can't highlight. You can't right click and copy. And you can't paste. JK Rowling has since added a (butt ugly) text only version since.

A user with poor vision can increase the text size, but only to what the flash designer deemed was a large enough text size. All true control has been taken out of the user's hands.

Now this is an absolutely gorgeous site, or at least the accessibility version is. But the first rule of web design is don't piss off the visitors or they'll leave. JK Rowling pissed off a visitor. Obviously she must have pissed off more than a few since the site now has more than one version, so someone who works for her must have been savvy enough to pick up on the lack of visitors to her inner pages in the stats.

The site still has a ways to go. I tried clicking the english version (the little brit flag) and was told I'd have to turn off my popup blocker to "experience the site", which rather ticked me off. No, I didn't turn off my popup blocker. I shut the tab and went elsewhere.

Now, until flash sites that present text give the same functionality we're all used to having on html sites these sites are going to piss off the visitors. Until flash sites take user experience and expectations into account they're going to piss off the visitors.

Obviously JK Rowling doesn't have to worry about name recognition or google serps but if she wants people to enjoy her website as much as her books . . . she should consider ditching a huge portion of the flash.