FLASH GOLDEN YEARS: PAST OR FUTURE?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29 2003 @ 02:23 PM

Reading Owen's and Eric's posts brought me back some nice memories from the beginning of my career as a web designer/technologist. To be completely honest (and risking to sound a little cheesy), learning about Flash changed the course of my life about 5 years ago.

I remember the first flash site I ever saw was Gabocorp (which has been recently relaunched, after years....). The experience was kinda tricky, since some folks were trying to trick me, challenging me to recreate those effects with my conventional techniques (conventional at the time, we are talking 1998 here). As you might expect, I was puzzled and wary... until I attempted to save one of the images, and realized that wasn't and animated gif.

Well, lots of things have changed since then. For me, Flash was first the ultimate generator of computer art, and I used it almost exclusively for that, until ActionScript was revealed. Today Flash painfully evolves toward the distributed applications market, and despite the controversial discussions and currently unsuccessful financial aspects surrounding it, I tend to think Flash is yet to have its finest moment.

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MIKE BRITTON

OCTOBER 29 2003 @ 03:23 PM

I agree. The current backlash is from people who are experiencing the learning curve, or people who are wary of MM's legal restrictions. In my opinion, once people get over the learning curve and MM allows developers to distribute their source, there will be no stopping Flash (as usual). NO ONE wants to continue coding the presentation layer using middleware frameworks meant for business rules.

BRANDON

NOVEMBER 1 2003 @ 12:41 PM

i remember that i started working with flash 3 a few months after it came out. i was amazed at the simplicity of creating animation. no long after, a buddy sent me a link to http://www.eye4u.com and after i saw that... i was more amazed but also a little discouraged. i thought.. why bother? these flash developers are SO ADVANCED?? of course i'm glad stuck with it. and so it seems the glory days of flash are always in the present for me. every version of flash has some learning curve with new features but soon after, there is always a huge bump in flash programming. i think the internet had a false golden age but i think flash will continue in it's own indefinitely.

OSCAR TRELLES

NOVEMBER 3 2003 @ 10:53 PM

True. So far, the present has been the best time for Flash, that's what the future looks exciting. However, Flash has moved on from being an artistic expression, maturing into a development environment. That's why, in a sense, those nostalgic 'golden years' of Flash are gone, as well as the skip-intro madness... I hope :)