In January, if someone asked me what I thought about Flash then I would have probably slated it. Now at the end of the year I find myself tinkering with ActionScript 3.0 and appreciating it as a platform upon which rich internet applications can be built. Perhaps more than Ajax, 2006 has been a great year for the Flash platform.On the technology side, June saw the release of Flex and Flash Player 9 - giving developers a very flexible and refined programming language in the form of ActionScript 3.0 and a set of components specifically designed for creating web applications. We have also witnessed the explosion of Flash Video, helped by the popularity of sites such as MySpace and YouTube. As a result, Flash is now the number one technology for video distribution over the web, and adoption of newer versions of the player has been increased significantly.On the creative side we are now past the stage where we have Flash-based intro animations for sites, and totally Flash-centric micro-sites also appear to be on the decline. Instead we are seeing Flash being used as part of progressive enhancement, often in conjunction with traditional HTML content. More and more, I’m seeing pages which I’m not even sure if something is HTML or Flash - I like that feeling, and I think it makes the technology much less intrusive, which in turn makes for a more compelling user experience. A good example of this is on the Sony Ericsson website. Designers are finally starting to realize that Flash is not the answer to everything, there are things that Flash is really good for and things where it is better to stick with HTML/CSS.Moving into 2007, what’s next? I can see Flex (really I mean ActionScript 3.0) being used across the Web and even more examples of Flash and Ajax working together to create great experiences and solve common problems.I’d like to see advances in how search engines interact with Flash content - one of the number one challenges for anyone who is building Flash websites is SEO. Google makes a token effort to extract keywords from Flash documents, but nothing of the semantic structure is preserved, meaning that Flash pages often find themselves with a much lower search engine ranking. Any solution here needs to come from both Adobe and the search engines - Adobe need to create a solution, or perhaps refine what is available, and the likes of Google and Yahoo need to take responsibility for implementing it. Will it happen? Hopefully, though I wouldn’t put big money on it!The final flash-related technology which I think will make a difference in 2007 is Apollo (just search this blog for more information!). I predict a move to the desktop for more Web applications, and support for offline-mode in many of these applications. Should be fun!In January, if someone asked me what I thought about Flash then I would have probably slated it. Now at the end of the year I find myself tinkering with ActionScript 3.0 and appreciating it as a platform upon which rich internet applications can be built. Perhaps more than Ajax, 2006 has been a great year for the Flash platform.On the technology side, June saw the release of Flex and Flash Player 9 - giving developers a very flexible and refined programming language in the form of ActionScript 3.0 and a set of components specifically designed for creating web applications. We have also witnessed the explosion of Flash Video, helped by the popularity of sites such as MySpace and YouTube. As a result, Flash is now the number one technology for video distribution over the web, and adoption of newer versions of the player has been increased significantly.On the creative side we are now past the stage where we have Flash-based intro animations for sites, and totally Flash-centric micro-sites also appear to be on the decline. Instead we are seeing Flash being used as part of progressive enhancement, often in conjunction with traditional HTML content. More and more, I’m seeing pages which I’m not even sure if something is HTML or Flash - I like that feeling, and I think it makes the technology much less intrusive, which in turn makes for a more compelling user experience. A good example of this is on the Sony Ericsson website. Designers are finally starting to realize that Flash is not the answer to everything, there are things that Flash is really good for and things where it is better to stick with HTML/CSS.Moving into 2007, what’s next? I can see Flex (really I mean ActionScript 3.0) being used across the Web and even more examples of Flash and Ajax working together to create great experiences and solve common problems.I’d like to see advances in how search engines interact with Flash content - one of the number one challenges for anyone who is building Flash websites is SEO. Google makes a token effort to extract keywords from Flash documents, but nothing of the semantic structure is preserved, meaning that Flash pages often find themselves with a much lower search engine ranking. Any solution here needs to come from both Adobe and the search engines - Adobe need to create a solution, or perhaps refine what is available, and the likes of Google and Yahoo need to take responsibility for implementing it. Will it happen? Hopefully, though I wouldn’t put big money on it!The final flash-related technology which I think will make a difference in 2007 is Apollo (just search this blog for more information!). I predict a move to the desktop for more Web applications, and support for offline-mode in many of these applications. Should be fun!

Tags: 2006, 2007, actionscript, Adobe, flash, flex

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