Flash - Will it endure?

I've been hearing a lot about the forthcoming HTML 5 lately, and how it is supposedly going to retire Flash in terms of its career in web design. What makes me wonder is....will Flash still continue to be developed if only for the sake of animation and applet creation?


I remember back when Flash came onto the scene, we were on dial-up internet at the time and any website at all which used it didn't just take a long time to load (even images at that time took minutes to appear).....it completely crashed the computer. I hated it so much back then because browsing the internet was like playing russian roulette, trying to avoid the websites that may lead to another 15 minutes restarting the system. But as time went on and things improved we were able to see bits and bobs of it in action....I still remember the matrix-style animation which had everyone amazed with what could be done with it, especially when it became 3D towards the end.




And although it's been around 10 years since then, and technology has sky-rocketed into the age of gaming and social networking....Flash is something, in terms of web design, which still doesn't seem to have made it....with many web designers shunning it for its poor user accessability and choosing to keep their sites low key using languages such as Javascript, CSS and HTML to code them.
Whilst some sites can use Flash quite effectively and end up with a really stunning website, others still crowd their pages with it and even now it can still take a while to load them.

Even with plugins installed and updated every so often, I sometimes still come across flash websites which refuse to load. The deciding factor, however, may lie within portable media devices such as mobile internet technology and iPod/iPad gadgets where few (if any) flash websites will display at all.

....which is where HMTL 5 comes in.

HTML 5 is the latest version of the common web language which most people have at least a little bit of knowledge of, even this blog post has used it, I never imagined that the HTML short course that I took in the late 90s would still be of such use today. And yet what i'm hearing lately could very well help me to understand the other programming languages used in games development which i've never been able to get my head around.

Basically the new version of HMTL will apparently have the capability to be able to display Flash-like elements, but without the need of a dedicated plugin, meaning that designers could create flashy, creative, interactive websites without comprimising uesrs not having the ability to view them. It will also mean that these websites would be viewable on all mobile and iPod-like technology, all-in-all making Flash unnecessary in the world of web design.

Another thing that I have been shown with regards to HTML 5 is its abilities for games development, whole 3D games of the past having been re-created using just HTML! I think that this could very well mean another great surge in independant games development amongst individuals.


Although this is just the hype i've been given, whether it will eventually live up to this remains to be seen. But I do wonder what future Flash has in the next few years to come....
I don't think that it should be completely forgotten as its uses span more than just web design, if it were not for the effective use of Flash I wouldn't have had the success that I had in my Japanese studies recently.

I don't really know the ins and outs, but from what i'm hearing it's looking like a bright future for web design. But is it the end of the road for Flash?

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