Happy New Year. I think 2010 will be a hugely significant year for flash and flash developers and I am excited about Flash in a way I haven’t been since Flash 5 came out.
Back in 2000 (god that sounds so long ago now) the Flash community was doing amazing things with the tiny coding window in Flash 4. People made lookup tables because we didnt have sin and cos, stretched lines ’cause we didnt have a drawing API and sequenced images to fake video. Praystation was inspiring everyone to post and share experiments and with his Psycho studio Brendan Dawes built one of the first flash apps. and certainly the first flash video editing app (without using video!). And then Flash 5 came out, with a real coding window and Actionscript and the possibilities suddenly seemed endless. Brendaw Dawes suggested we would see a whole new era of flash apps. (which he called flapplications – thankfully that didn’t catch on). I was so inspired that I built a simple 2d/3d floor planning tool called smallblueprinter (it’s still the original code – flash 5, pre-drawing api).
But in spite of all the excitement and discussion about flash apps (and subsequently RIA’s) only a small number of flash apps emerged. Mostly people kept making games and glossy flash sites for movies and softdrinks…………….until recently.
Recent Pessimism: However before I go into a rant about how great things are now I should make a passing mention of the prevailing pessimism that has been present in the Flash community this year, and why I dont subscribe to it. There has been a fair bit of doom forecasting on blogs with chants that either HTML 5, AJAX or Silverlight were going to come along to kill flash. (ref: bit101- flash what is it good for) Im not worried, html 5/ajax is great for some things but it’s not the best solution for everything (just like Flash) and Im not convinced that Microsoft really cares about Silverlight beyond video. Of’course there has also been a fair bit of despair towards Adobe in recent times. To me CS4 felt like the end of a relationship. It said I know we’ve been together for a long time and you’ve been very loyal but I dont want you around any more and to prove it I’m going to make myself uglier, more cumbersome and full of bugs. Go hang out with Flex, the new hot chick, she’s got the things you always wanted me to have. Basically loyal flash developers have been rewarded with confusion and rejection.
And yet I’m really excited!
But I can ignore the pessimism and Adobe’s mistakes. Because now, at the start of a new decade, I think we are finally seeing the emergence of what some of us were imagining almost a decade ago. In recent times quality Flash apps have finally arrived. And there are heaps and they are mostly excellent.
There is a whole wave of flash based image editing apps. such as Fotoflexer and Picnik and Splash up and the whole aviary suite . For a while there it seemed like every new startup was building a flash based online image editor!
Power Point has always been horrible, but Microsoft’s dominance prevented anyone trying to make something better. But web apps make trying something new risk free – and finally we have some fine alternatives to Powerpoint – such as SlideRocket – which is a better power point – or Prezi which completely rethinks presentation software.
And of’course there are whole range of audio apps, and design apps and data viewing apps etc… see Inside RIA’s list of the top 50 most usable for a starting list
What this all amounts to is a fresh vibrant environment with people all over the world building real apps. with flash (not just widgets) and building real businesses around these apps. Add to that the fact that AIR is now mature enough that you can quickly turn your flash app into a old style download app (see the balsamiq mock ups blog for an AIR success story). And in 2010 we will see Flash CS5 which will properly integrate with flash builder and hopefully be better designed and bug free.
And finally most of these flash apps have been developed by a small team, in some case just one person (like each of the Aviary apps). So if you are a Flash developer in 2010 then there is an exciting world waiting for you. Sit down, have a think, come up with an idea for a cool application, build it, stick it online and get people using it, sell an AIR version and maybe even stick out an i-phone version. It’s to time to be excited again.
I share the same excitement. Happy new year to you, with lots of success in your flash projects.
thx David for this article – we’re ready for a great year – nice, fun, exciting flash apps that fill a need !