The End of Flash as We Know it.

if you haven’t noticed lately, MTV has dropped their totally Flash Enabled website.  It looks like they are returning to what matters most in a website…a usable presentation layer.  I dunno guys, but it seems that ever since Adobe took over Macromedia that things haven’t been the same.

I used to have a blast going to the Flash Forward conferences and hanging out with the guys from the Macromedia Flash team, but Flash Forward is not what it used to be.  I think Lynda is a nice person and did a great job, but the Flash Forward conferences were taken over by her around the same time as the Macromedia acquisition.  Therefore I don’t blame Lynda for making Flash lose it’s steam.

Years ago we used to rave about Flash and how you couldn’t do the things with html that Flash could do.  But then the SEO weenies would tell us, hey, Flash is bad for you.  It could be detrimental to your company’s presence in the organic web.

But the “Flashers” struck back with easy to use navigation schemas and easily consumable XML markup.  SEO love XML, right…Of course.  But still, I call it bad luck by association with the Adobe relationship.  I think Adobe should just stick to making Photoshop. 

But still, why do I think the end is near for Flash?  Here is my list, feel free to complain and rant about it:

• Controlled by Adobe now, not young go-getter developers.
• Back button still doesn’t work
• AJAX is more lightweight and consumable.
• Accessibility mandates will cause a sharp drop in Flash development.
• Microsoft Lawsuit regarding object embedding format of the Flash Player.
• What did I do with that blasted FLA file?!
• MTV abandoned their total Flash website.

So there you have it…why the end is near for Flash, or atleast Flash as we know it.  I think Adobe will soon see that their is only a need for light-weight approaches for Flash, such as banner advertisements and simple animations.

AJAX and DHTML (and certainly CSS3) will do provider more, manageable solutions for future interactivity of web design.