Hello Macromedia Adobe !
Last year, we’ve seen a very interesting move of buying Macromedia with all their big assets like Flash, Fireworks, JRun, ColdFusion and a “foto-realistic” Dreamweaver. =O) Lately i’ve seen a lot of pages, using visual javascript libraries like “Script.Aculo.Us”, “Rico” and so on, which are starting to replace the Flash animation.
One of the designers i know, told me a story that while submitting a work proposal for a client she was referencing to the use of one of those libraries, as a “Flash-kind Animation” and i caught myself thinking that it is probably the most common explanation for their’s use. Today i was visiting Microsoft Visual Studio page and have noticed that they also have moved away from using flash animation into the direction of the javascript libraries. This page from the Blizzard Entertainment represents another example of moving away from the flash solution. I believe that this year will mark a lot of redesigns moving away from the flash animation to the use of the javascript libraries.
Why ? Because they are “lighter” as components, most web-designers and web-developers know how to use javascript, because they do not require the presence of a flash designer and no Adobe fees are required ( for aquiring the Flash solution ).
So what about the future ? Is it going to disappear ? Substituted ? Ignored ?
No way. There are thousands, if not millions flash fans and users. Also, flash has its own market, which i believe, is about to be changed a little bit.
While having no real competition (as at this very moment =O) ), for any rich-client working with some data and creating some visual impact, we are going to see some real changes in the nearest future. Yes, i am talking about pages made with Ajax (XmlHttpRequest) joining with those visual libraries.
Having done one site almost =O) completely with Javascript and Ajax, i have to say, that though without any doubt, it is not the most perfect site on this planet, but still with a nice visual impact, i confess of starting believing more and more in the future of this solution. (Almost, because there was one little thing, which by the design requirements was possible to do only in flash).
Of course, we are facing just the very first generation of those visual javascript libraries, and the solution is far from being perfect or even reaching the Flash level, but i would say, that in the next coupple of years, this solution is going to provide something pretty similar with the flash, if of course Flash is not going to advance.
When is it all going to happend ? Starting from yesterday.
I am excited to see if the Adobe is going to react in some way.