I'm currently looking into developing Facebook applications and was planning on using Flash as the basis of my application, I have test built some simple PHP Facebook applications and I know enough about action-script 3 to start me on my way, but the API for Facebook development in AS looks far more tedious than the PHP one.
my question is would I be able to create interactive graphics (games) like we see across the web in the HTML5 canvas class? and which would be simpler?
HTML5 doesn't truly exist yet outside of the basic support in the various browsers. We're a couple of years off from true saturation since it won't be until IE9 and FF4 are released and then widely adopted.
You could use the Google Code project to enable canvas support in IE however until then:
http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/
And yes, you would be able to create some interesting games with canvas. I do however believe in the short term you'd have a wider array of options with Flash.
Flash will definitely be easier since it is mature and there are lots of game engines built for it. Canvas would work on iPhone, but many other browser versions don't support it.
I'd say it isn't quite ready for primetime yet.
I'd suggest to stick with Flash until html5 becomes a mature option and there's at least one robust IDE in the market.
Canvas and SVG are new but it's ramping up fast and I'm seeing a lot of article/demos all over the place, including the right hand side of this page. Your only real problem might be that IE won't handle it and I don't recall if Microsoft said it would (adding even more to IE's demise on the web).
It totally depends on what you're doing. If the features you use in Flash are only those provided by HTML5, the you probably should. Otherwise you just can't.
Here are some of my thoughts in response to similar questions:
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back2dos
Not yet. I would port all the site to HTML5 keeping the old flash version, just using one or other version checking which navigator is accessing the page.
There're always two sides... On the one hand HTML5 is faster and (isn't going to) require any additional plugins. But it looks like that HTML5 isn't going to be fully implemented earlier than in 2018 to 2020. Until then you have to use other plugins or addins...
As for Flash...It's for now nearly the best practice you can use for RIAs. You can implement 3d, video, MP3s and so on and so on. So I would say Flash is the best technology at this moment. But it's on you to decide xD
P.S. Look at all this facebook apps... only flash...