(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

I took the first half of a daylong course in Flash today. What a time to read this.

Okay, I'm not too concerned. I expect that experience with one such program will help me with others. Including Microsoft Silverlight, which installed itself on my computer surreptitiously, but my research suggests it's legit and harmless. By Microsoft standards, anyway.

Besides, when I took a course in Java in fall 2000, my prof warned that it was on its way out the door. It's still here in some capacity.

Comments

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

What they're all overlooking is that Flash does plenty besides stream videos. Most of the successful independent casual games that get retooled as precious iPhone apps wouldn't exist if they hadn't been Flash games on the web first. This is, of course, why it's possible to monetize works that started out as free, and the whole model would collapse without the existence of a format that works on the web but not on a phone, so Flash can't really disappear.

[carlfoxmarten]

Flash is still a major web standard, and that won't change just because one company won't allow it on their tightly-controlled platforms.
(plus, there's evidence that Apple is starting to fall from its originally-high position as a status symbol, especially with how closed and exclusive they're being)

I haven't tried learning Flash or any other competitor (aside from HTML and JavaScript), so I can't really compare them, but I suspect that once you know Flash, other stuff like Silverlight and such should be easier to learn.

[octan.livejournal.com]

As long as there are things like Homestar Runner, there will always be a need for Flash. To wit, Homestar Runner had to reduce its podcast to one episode at a time, and then eventually dropped it entirely, because it was such a drain on storage space and bandwidth compared to their pure vector cartoons.

I could see (and in fact hope to see) SVG eventually evolving to the point where it can replace Flash, but until then, Flash will always have its uses.