Goodbye! Flash

I am of the same view as Vijit Coomara about FLASH. I always look for a “skip” link on flash intro, which looks like an useless animation done flashy.

I would like to share, few of my previous experience on flash and flex.

I was a flash movie designer during the years 2003 and 2004. It was a part of my professional work along with Java design and development. I have designed Mathematics and English flash tutorial for kids from kindergarten to grade 8. These tutorials contain audio, video and animations used in Java Swing application. The reason we chose to design the flash movie was that we wanted the kids to have a better understanding of the subject, as they are required to do the activity right after the flash tutorial.

I have also designed flash advertisements for personal projects and various other sites between 1999 and 2002. I had done the first couple of them with interest and the rest because I had no other choice. Gradually I came out of it as I felt I wasn’t doing anything useful other than creating movies which were viewed just a few times and mostly skipped.

I have developed flash movies using flex. As a programmer, I am comfortable developing flash movies using flex.

I am proud of the design that I have done for the students. It proved to be very useful for the students to learn the concepts. I am not satisfied with the advertisement designs that I had done on flash.

I don’t like to develop an application wherein the user is required a plug-in to view. The plug-in era is almost over and new technologies have started to come out.

The user interface should be able to deliver the information and the functionality but not cool effects and animations. The animations are required in certain areas of the user interface to provide more information within the given space. When designing the UI the designer’s mind should focus on the business and not on the animation. I think it is very difficult to achieve this in flash. From my past flash design experience, even though the designer focuses on the business the customer asks for the flashy animations.

HTML5 aims to eliminate the plug-in-based RIA technologies such as Adobe Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFx. I am not a fan of Adobe Flash or any other similar technologies Silverlight or JavaFx. HTML5 is the one that interests me.

Here is an interesting article by Jeremy Allaire who had helped create the Macromedia MX Flash:
The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps