Keith Peters (author of Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 and others) has a great post about 'why people hate flash.' What's great about this is Keith's responses to each objection. I particularly have experienced this kind of sentiment in the classroom and the workplace.

There are right and wrong uses of Flash out there and it really depends on who's developing the site/project to bring out the full potential of Flash without all of the catch all's and don'ts.

What I have noticed lately are two examples of sites that I have used for a while now that have transitioned from Flash to an HTML/JS/CSS solution. The most shocking of these is Adobe TV. The site was a Flex site for the longest time, but recently has switched. Keith mentions in his post how large Flex sites can become and I can imagine all of those video assets building up file size too.

Another site that was all Flash, My Coke Rewards, had a lot of the difficulties listed in Keith's post. It seemed like logging in took forever and the site components took a long time to load, to the point that it was painful. Now the site comes up a lot quicker and communication is better.

The other curious point that I have to bring up is that a majority of major corporations have all Flash sites. Listings of the top 100 sites and such point to Flash sites more so than HTML sites - for good reason, I believe. The potential for greatness is there, it's what the developer does with it. The Ford 2010 Mustang site for example, is absolutely amazing.

I don't think Flash is going away, but it is getting a lot of competition these days, which is good for Adobe.

Labels: Flash