Is Anyone Still Using Flash in their Web Design?
Think back about 8 years ago. The year was 2003 and Macromedia Flash was the hottest thing on the web. If your website was built in Flash then you were hot stuff. Sites like 2Advanced were the envy of many web designers - one of them being me - and set the standard for Flash development. It seemed like if you weren't using Flash you were behind. Funny how things change.
Now, think about the websites you visited this week or even today. Did any of them have any hint of motion graphics, flash animations, or any other crazy moving object? I didn't think so. So what happened to all the fancy animations?
First of all, I personally think that people just couldn't justify the expense of a Flash developer. Ranging anywhere from $50-$300 an hour, Flash developers priced themselves out of the market. That's not to say that their skill set is not worth that much, but if HTML costs $25-100 per hour it's just hard to justify having the bells and whistles that Flash offers.
Secondly and more recently, the rapid growth of Apple products in the mainstream marketplace has had a significant impact on web developers' usage of Flash. If you don't already know, Steve Jobs has an apparent distaste for Flash because his Safari browser does not support the Adobe Flash Player Plugin for browsers. Think about that impact for just a second. Think of all the people you know that used to have a PC and now have a Mac. Now, think about all the iPhones out there....that's a lot of devices that don't support Flash.
Finally, many of the animations that Flash could provide (such as slide shows, navigation menus, and interactive maps) can now be accomplished through JQuery (libraries, scripts, and plugins) and CSS which are supported by all browsers (including Safari). Additionally, the JQuery development community is rapidly growing and many JQuery developers provide Open Source solutions that are at the fingers tips of web developers.
That's not to say that Flash doesn't have it's place. In recent years, Flash has morphed into an application development platform and is still a very powerful development tool given the right circumstances.
So what does that mean for you? Not much really, just don't go calling your web designer (especially us!) asking for Flash development. Chances are, that person will want to provide you with a JQuery solution instead which is a much better idea.
For more information on what is available to you by using JQuery, please visit http://plugins.jquery.com/.