To Flash or Not to Flash

One of the sticking points that I've often encountered amongst designers and users is the use of Flash. The platform that Macromedia developed (and Adobe eventually took over) has started many fights about what's actually good for the user experience. In the olden days, completely Flash driven sites were commonplace and were often the source of many an 'Ooooh' and 'Aaaah' at a web designer's desk.

The original concept and implementation of Flash was fairly simple, so having a nifty little Flash site was not altogether difficult to put together.But like the blink tag and animated hamster gifs, just because it was common didn't necessarily make it good. Flash sites were notoriously impossible to bookmark, their content difficult to maintain, media compression technology was still in its infancy which often led to large downloads, and high speed broadband was not nearly as commonplace.

But time marched on, and software, as it often does, got an upgrade. ActionScript 2 was developed, and with it came a whole host of new ways to use Flash. And then of course, ActionScript 3 came along, and the ante has been upped again. Flash has steadily moved from being an animation program to a coding platform that can control animation. Having used Flash for years, it was enough to make my head spin, because I essentially had to learn Flash all over again. And again. And again. But is it worth it?

What does Flash give us that Javascript libraries like YUI and jQuerry can't? Why spend the massive amount of time it takes to retrain oneself to relearn the platform? I think the answer is the same as it is to the question, Why does George Lucas insist on making bad Star Wars prequels?

Because he can.

Sometimes Flash seems like the obvious solution to a problem- rotating ad banners, highly interactive or media rich sites, and of course animation. But there isn't much that I personally have seen Flash do that could not be accomplished with non-proprietary technologies. And now, HTML 5 rapidly approaches, and with it comes the promise of video embedding and fluid animations. The reasoning to make lousy prequels to movies, just like using Flash for projects, is getting harder to justify. I think Flash has been a bandaid solution to our multimedia needs on the internet, and its time may soon be coming to a close.

Hopefully I'll get to see if I'm right before the next Star Wars movie comes out.