What do you expect from the outbreak in the near future?
A recent work article by steve link got me thinking about the future of outbreak. I'm learning ActionScript 3.0 in my research, but is this the right solution? I was confident that I will be able to create an as3 app for iphones / ipads soon. It seems to me that while I am left with the flash, the market will be polarized by apple and adobe, and you will always double work for customers or just lose half of them. What decision would you make as a designer if you were still in university and intend to become a freelancer?
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This question has been repeated many times. For my opinion on the future of flash, please have a look at this answer: Should I ditch Adobe Flash for HTML5 and <canvas>?
If you are a designer, you will probably do a really good job with Adobe Creative Suite, including Flash CS3 / CS4 / CS5. CS5 will be able to export HTML5 in the near future: http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash-html5-canvas-35409730 . You don't have to worry too much. OTOH you should bear in mind that any CS5 export is likely to perform worse in HTML5 than in a flash player.
From my point of view, as a developer, I think there is no harm in learning any language, although ActionScript 3 is relatively boring and easy to understand. However, this makes it a good language to learn programming, including many best practices. The most important things you learn as a programmer transcend languages. The more languages you try to fully understand and use, the better you become at understanding the approaches they are promoting.
My personal advice to web developers is to look at haXe . It is a much more powerful, elegant, and expressive language than ActionScript, and allows you to navigate across many platforms. It is enough to build an entire web application on "classic" platforms with one language. haXe C ++ allows you to create native iPhone apps using a port based on the SDL Flash Player API, although it is currently not entirely clear if Apple will allow distribution policies. However, it's a community-driven open source language that moves very quickly and adapts to change very quickly (for example, unlike ActionScript, haXe can use Flash Player 10's opportunistic algorithms for fast memory access) makes you an independent developer.
edit: I have personally scrapped plans to tweak the platform until Apple wants to loosen its highly forensic policies, as I believe this behavior is impossible. However, I think Objective-C is a great and inspiring language, so you can really take a look at it.
Greetz
back2dos
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I think the outbreak death reports are grossly exaggerated. Flash has always been the "bad guy" - self-proclaimed pundits have always proclaimed loudly that Flash sucks and comes out, but oddly enough, I've never had to deal with a lot of Flash working. There is something you can do quickly and easily in Flash that can be much more complex or denser without it. This is a terrific tool and will be used at least to some extent for the foreseeable future.
However, even if Flash on the Internet makes it through the dodo path in two years (which it won't), it is still a valuable tool. It's a great way to learn Object Oriented Programming, and its use goes far beyond the brilliant websites. You can use something like Flash Builder in Eclipse to get used to working in a coding IDE, you can build AIR applications to deploy to different platforms, you will soon be able to publish commercial applications to all major phones, including iPhones, etc. I had a lot of fun with him lately while working with Arduino - it's just a hobby project, but I am trying to build a small helicopter that I can control from an AIR application. I would be curious to see someone doing this in HTML5.;)
Flash is incredibly powerful - your abilities are largely limited only by your imagination and willingness to figure out how to make it work. It's really weird to read all this about how (some) browsers can now play (certain types of) videos one of their own, ergo Flash Dead. How unimaginable. :)
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This is a difficult challenge. Flash is quite the dominant technology at the moment when it comes to multimedia websites. Flash is also very popular for delivering mini games. I really think that Flash video, which currently also dominates, will gradually be replaced by HTML5 technologies. I'm not sure if Flash can be easily replaced when it comes to these media intensive sites. There are many very talented people out there who are comfortable with Flash, who may be reluctant to embrace other technologies. I would probably hedge my bets and be happy with Javascript and other HTML5 technologies.
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The Apple vs. Adobe controversy reveals two opposing views of mobile computing.
Apple wants its developers to do their best to eliminate middleware. The goal is to provide the best possible user experience.
Adobe wants its developers to publish their work on as many platforms as possible. The goal is to reach the widest possible audience.
Nobody knows which species will win in the future. The mobile war is just beginning ...
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I think it depends on how far into the future you want to look and what you think is most important. The flash on your desktop won't die for a long time, if ever. If that's good enough, keep going where you go. If not using flash storage on the iPhone / iPad is an unlock deal, you really only have two options - Objective-C or HTML5.
HTML5 is definitely gaining traction, but it cannot be used directly in all browsers and probably for a while. However, in the mobile space, the mainstream smartphones are pretty well supported.
There is more than one platform / technology / language that can hit everyone. If I was going to bet on the future, I would say HTML5 is going to win across a wide variety of platforms. And given that it's growing, I'd bet there will be a lot of demand for good developers in this area in the next few years, but don't expect the path to be completely paved for you. You will have to get your hands dirty. If you are looking for a decent editor, I use Netbeans, but I also do Java development, so it makes sense to me. However, search around and you will probably find a decent set of tools that will work well for you. This is a very active space.
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Personally, I like the flexscript language used by Flash, it is more structured and object oriented than Javascript. Also it has real inheritance rather than prototype based crap and compiles to bytecode. For an artist, Flash is easier to use thanks in large part to the tools available.
I hope for better browser integration. The current Flash plugin is clunky and crashing for many users, and the plugin system makes it poorly integrated into the page flow.
With HTML5, I think the browser plugin idiom is dying altogether. Everything from video playback to fantasy vector animations can only be done with HTML + Javascript. Even a standard for 3D graphics on web pages is in the way (O3D).
I am also wondering how Adobe will deal with the current platform / operating system / browser explosion, especially in the mobile space. At the moment, Flash support for systems other than Windows on PC is not very good.
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Just as projects like SVGWeb bring SVG capabilities to browsers that don't have their own SVG, I would expect if / when HTML5 gets a Flash hook, there will be conversions from existing Flash to a non-Flash browser. In fact, Adobe already has a Flash to iPhone conversion with Flash Professional CS5. IMHO, there's too much Flash content out there in the wild for that to happen eventually, and too many people for whom ActionScript is their primary (or only) language shouldn't be there for any kind of transformation.
Career, clear long term trend from Flash, and I agree with Tom that hedging your bets is smart. However, HTML5 is still pretty new and you could make the bad mistake of ignoring Flash at this point. Thanks to conversion technologies, the Flash skillset is likely to be used for at least a few years.
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