I’m starting to get a sense of the populations that make up the Flash world. As with most technology landscapes, there are a range of groups that make up the whole, some masters and some beginners, some teachers and some fakers. What interests me is finding out what the boundaries say about the price of living in that landscape and as a visitor what you have to plan for if you’re going to get what you want out of it.
There are people at the upper level of mastery who produce very beautiful and smooth output, and my sense is that these folks build everything from scratch. As Flash MX 2004 reaches out a new broader hand to the VB-style drag-n-droppers with a set of (almost) enterprise-ready components, the good work of spreading the word is taken up by a dedicated group of vocalists. These tutorials and articles are found on blogs, Macromedia’s site, and various community forums. Check out Ultrashock for a prime example and a good starting point for links in all directions as well as some great eye-candy samples.
The feel of Flash is that it’s coming together right now, that the new set of components and the new truer OOP language in AS2 are critical, markers of an inflection point. Except that I’ve been hearing this from Flash people for awhile, that with Flash 5, then 6, there were changes as well. And each time, the pros learn what works and what to avoid. The rapid changes are required — Macromedia’s racing against a shrinking window before Microsoft releases their nascent response (Avalon?). But the price Flash folk pay reminds me of some time I spent as a subscriber to MSDN trying to keep up with the latest APIs from Redmond. Brutal pace, makes Java look positively serene.
Between Flex (now in Beta) and Central (not sure how it’s doing…) and the continuing spread of the players (the latest numbers show continued growth in penetration, around 92% for FP6 I believe), Macromedia are certainly laying out a broad landscape for developers to invest in. I continue to believe it’s potentially fertile ground, but the gap between the hype and the reality needs to be understood by anyone contemplating production use of the technology.
But when you see great stuff that breaks free of the limitations of HTML and yet still runs in almost everyone’s browser, it makes me think we will find a way to get to the next generation of web app sooner rather than later.
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