KIRUPA.CHINNATHAMBI

A few months ago, I was requested by Mark Angeletti from search-this to answer five questions about Flash both from a technical as well as a non-technical/business point of view. You can read my answers as well as those by well known developers Bartek Drozdz (Fantasy Interactive) and Keith Peters (bit-101) in the following location: http://www.search-this.com/2007/08/08/3-flash-masters-answer-5-flash-questions/ (my answers are the ones flagged in red)

For easy access to just my answers, I have pasted them below:

1. What do you see as Flash’s key asset(s)?
   The main asset of Flash is how easy it is to go from launching the IDE, creating the content, and publishing the content to the web for others to access. As long as the user has the Flash plug-in installed, the content displays consistently with little variation across browsers, platforms, etc. If the user does not have the Flash plug-in, downloading and installing it is very straightforward.
    
   It is this, usually hassle-free, experience that makes Flash unique when compared to a host of other development platforms. This focus on simplicity on the deployment side help it to gain a lot of trust both with regular users and designers/developers who want an easy way to create and distribute interactive content.
    
2. What do you think is Flash’s biggest weakness?
   Macromedia (and now Adobe) spent and continue to spend a great deal of effort trying to make the lives of designers easier. With each subsequent release, the integration between Flash and other applications such as Fireworks, Photoshop, etc. sees marked improvements. Beyond integration with other designer applications, features centering round drawing become much better also.
    
   Despite the improvements made for designers, I feel that Flash could offer a lot more for developers. The introduction of ActionScript 3 is great, but the tools for writing and debugging the code are very rudimentary. Even with Flash CS3, the code editor provides very limited functionality for developers who are accustomed to features found in other popular IDEs.
    
3. If you could change one thing about Flash what would it be?
   The one thing I would change is how the components are loaded in Flash. Right now, using components greatly increases the file size of an animation. A blank Flash SWF file is around 40 bytes, and adding, for example, a simple Button component inflates the file size to 15kb. Creating your own simple button from scratch with Up, Over, and Down states takes up less than 300 bytes. The Button component isn’t alone, for you experience similar file size increases when using the other components also.
    
   Part of the reason is that large parts of these components are defined and stored within the SWF itself. My solution to this problem would be to store the component parts in the Flash Player instead with the SWF, storing only the component parts the user modifies. With this change, adding components will no longer increase the SWF file size as rapidly as it does now.
    
   While the SWF size will decrease, this solution will increase the Flash Player’s file size. In the end, I think the benefit of having smaller SWF files sizes when using components offsets the gain in file size found in the one-time download of the Flash Player.
    
4. Has Flash’s popularity peaked?
   No, I do not think the popularity of Flash for end-users has peaked. A few years ago, nobody outside of a few individuals would have guessed how extensively Flash would be used to deliver videos on the web. As you are reading this right now, I am sure somebody out there is working on something else (maybe using Flex or Apollo) that will push Flash in a new direction.
    
   To take a broader view by looking at developers, unlike in the past, the RIA space has gotten more interesting with technologies ranging from Silverlight, JavaFX, OpenLaslo, JavaScript, etc. competing for user and developer attention. Developers now have a choice in picking the right tool for the right job, and the tool chosen may or may not be based on Flash.
    
   I believe this increased competition gets a lot of developers familiar with non-ActionScript languages to target the web. This is not a zero-sum game, so while the percentage of RIA projects using Flash might decrease, the quantity of developers who target Flash will continue to increase at the same rate as it has since Flash was first introduced. To look at it another way, Flashers in the future will have a smaller piece of a much, Much, MUCH larger RIA-flavored pie.
    
5. What will Flash look like in 3 years?
   In three years, I think Flash will feature hardware graphics acceleration. Right now, even the lowest-end computers feature graphics cards capable of breezing through fairly complex visuals, but Flash’s lack of hardware acceleration leaves such functionality beyond the reach of developers.
    
   Ideally, Flash will combine some of the best elements of the Shockwave Player. The Shockwave Player features hardware acceleration by default with support for DirectX and OpenGL, and the Xtras extensibility model allowed developers to provide more functionality to users on an as-needed basis.

Thanks to Mark Angeletti for giving me the chance to talk more candidly about Flash. There is some extra discussion of this on a kForum thread covering the interview.

Cheers!
Kirupa