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The A-Ha moment. When the Flash Platform Becomes More Than a Toy For Your Client
I recently had the pleasure of spending a full day at a client’s site along with some representatives from Adobe. It was great day for networking, introductions and demonstrations. A number of technologies were shown, from Acrobat 3D to LiveCycle, to InDesign/InCopy and finally Flex with Data Services. This client is already using Flash on their site in a number of presentational media methods, and also in their eLearning initiatives. I wold be willing to bet this profile fits a lot of large corporations current state of media affairs. They have recently begun transitioning from some other print publishing tools to the Adobe Creative Suite. They really haven’t tapped into using Adobe tools for business applications yet though.
I have a couple theories on that reluctance. Much of that is due to their long entrenched legacy systems, built using a myriad of technologies. Some of it though is due to what I am dubbing the “Flash Hangover”. You know what I mean, right? The hangover from the type of Flash that caused Jakob Nielsen to write the Flash: 99% Bad article so long ago. You know the type. The Skip Intro Flash. The extra beepy or seizure inducing Flash. The un-backbutton friendly un-search engine friendly un-content management system friendly Flash content we’ve all come to know and loathe. Flash is either viewed as a acceptable annoyance or a toy.
It’s clear to everyone deep in the industry that Flash Player 9 and the current state of affairs in the Flash ecosystem is a little bit past that, but for people that are only tangentially involved in the electronic publishing aspects of a large corporation, the A-HA moment has probably not happened yet. I witnessed it happen for a room full of people the other day, and I’m sure there are many many companies out there may need that moment to push them away from the tired old HTML powered apps they currently have a towards true RIA development.
Silverlight does not have this hangover to recover from, and I must say, we had many of the people at the event asking about a comparison to Siverlight in regards to the data services we were seeing displayed in the very cool Flex visualizations.
It should be an interesting next couple of years.
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Posted on May 24, 2008
Gilbert Mizrahi May 24
Chad,
I agree with you 100%. I have seen in many blogs (not related to Flash/Flex) that for many Flash still an animation tool to do those annoying Flash intros. Most believe Flash is good to display videos and to do e-learning applications that put “kind-of” PowerPoint in a web friendly format.
When I explain that the Flash/Flex ecosystem allows developing powerful RIAs that can consume data from many data sources and more, many still skeptical.
However, I see a trend towards the A-HA moment you are talking about. Everyday there are more and more great RIA examples all over the web, and corporations, and non-yet-Flash/Flex developers are starting to take notice.