In an Ajax desktop scenario (iGoogle, Netvibes etc); how many separate Flash "widgets" can you load before memory usage becomes a problem?
Does each Flash instantiate a separate Flash player? Or is there just one Flash player / browser, so memory usage is only dependant on the memory requirements of the swf?
Or is this something that differs between browsers?
Flash itself runs fairly lightweight. The actual movie content (big graphics for instance) and what it does (complex animations) will have a big impact here. And of course, when asking about impact of memory consumption you should frame it in the context of target machine, because my machine with a gig of memory and proper virtual memory set up will do better than my mom's with 256k. So, as with many things in programming, the answer is: it depends.