This blog is about...

...my journey in building successful Web2.0 startup businesses and developing useful Web2.0 applications/sites. No I'm not gonna just talk about marketing and monetizing, I'll also be talking about designing and programming from bottom-up...! ;)

Is Flash still appropriate?

Flash RocksA few years ago when Ajax started to get really famous as an alternative solution for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a lot of people started bashing Flash, saying that Flash is bad considering its implementation - its loading time, its scalability issues, and especially the part when Flash contents can’t be easily indexed by search engines or be bookmarked. As a huge Flash user back then, I get pretty frustrated over this new development. As I remembered correctly, a few years before Ajax, Flash used to be the king of all. People praised it for delivering the only proven cross-platform solution over the net and putting Java Applets to shame. People were magnified by Flash’s ability to create stunningly eye-catching effects and interactivity that no one has ever thought possible to be done inside a web browser before. Websites like 2advanced.com got very well respected within the Web community of that era.

A few years later, things started to change. Topics like SEO and “friendly URLs” get tossed here and there. Online bookmark applications like del.icio.us and BlinkList started to get into the mainstream lane. All these new adoptions has revealed Flash’s weaknesses in Internet’s content indexing.

However, there were a crowd of people who still believed in Flash and injected it into the Web2.0-sphere. Suddenly web apps like Geni, Scribd and SlideShare sprung up into the Web 2.0 scene introducing Flash as their core technology and proving the true power of Flash in interactivity. People started to realize that with the right application, the strength of Flash can actually be put to good use. This is for the people who keeps bashing Flash out there Tongue out

“A 100% Flash website” may be somewhat impractical at this age, but Flash itself, is not. It is still playing a huge role in the Web 2.0 scene for its flexibility and cross-platform adaptability. Think about it… there wouldn’t be YouTube if not because of Flash. Wink

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