should web developers learn flash

Question

and is flash being replaced by another standard like html 5 completely?

Answer 1

learn flash: no.

learn flex: if you need to.

There are many ways of creating rich interfaces on web like flex(its actually flash with some html like controls). And i see none of them are gonna dominate the field and there would never be one way of writing client side code(html, flex, silverlight, JS ...). And new ones will emerge i think a web developer should be aware of all and use whichever the project needs. There will never be one good solution for all.

Answer 2

In my opinion, there is no complete replacement. I think you should consider Flash, Silverlight, Java FX, Html5, Adobe AIR (or combination of those) depending on your project goals.

I never learn in details such technologies, because it is possible some of them to die, before I need them. But keep an eye on them, so I know what they can do and learn the corresponding thing in action.

And also, despite the attempts of Steve Jobs, I think Flash won't die soon :)

Answer 3

Web developers should learn what Flash does, and what other things like HTML4, HTML5, Flex, Silverlight, and so forth do. By and large they don't do the same things, and where they do similar things, they use very different skillsets. Once you know what these things do, and what you want to make, you'll know whether you should learn Flash.

But as for the specific Flash vs HTML5 question, it's not really a comparison yet. The only place they squarely overlap is video, and that's not really something that takes a lot of learning. If you want to make animations, games, and so on, realistically it's going to be a while before <canvas> gets you very far - at least until there's some tooling, the tag can be seen by more users, and there are some supporting libraries for it.

Answer 4

No, Flash Player and other mentionable browser plugins (Silverlight, Unity, Java FX, O3D) will not be replaced by web standards in the foreseeable future.

Web standards move slowly and have to be implemented by every major browser vendor and then updated by all users to be actually usefull. To understand what this means, one should consider that IE 6 still has about 9% market share today.

In contrast to web standards, a 3d party browser plugin is maintained by only one company. If that company decides to add or alter features of their plugin, all they have to do is to implement the changes and have users install according updates.

Thus web standards are feature designs that need to satisfy a committee consisting of several major companies, who have different interests and ideas, and that has multiple implementations that must be written, tested and fixed.
In contrast, 3rd party plugins stem from a feature design made by one company, with only one implementation to be maintained by that very same company.

For this reason, 3rd party plugins will always offer functionality web standards will implement much later, if at all.

As a comparison: Flash supports vector graphics since its release in 1997, streaming audio since 1999 and video since 2002. HTML5 is barely implemented on some browsers and the standard is due for 2022. Now everyone is so excited about HTML5, since in a near future some (possibly incompatible) implementations will be able to do the things Flash did in the last millenium. yeah!!!!

The biggest problem here is ignorance and arrogance. The ignorance causes further arrogance and the arrogance causes further ignorance.

The truth is, web technology is always far ahead of what is actually implemented. Since a few years, everybody is hot about AJAX. None the less it relies on techniques that have been available and used since more than a decade. Youtube was launched 3 years after Flash had streaming video capabilities. And only since a few years has internet video become the new trend. While now everybody sees the new trend, they're excited that it'll one day no longer rely on 3rd party plugins. How great.

The web as a platform is very often looked down at by classical developers. That is, because they assess only what they see and infer from that, that the available technologies are not capable of more. In turn, many web developers look down on Flash developers, since they make the very same mistake. All they see is banners, video player and poorly created multimedia sites loading for ages and annoying visitors with awful sounds. Rest assured: once HTML5 is available, such sites will be created in HTML5 as well.

The main point is, Flash is a platform capable of creating great apps, such as Phoenix, Sliderocket or Tanki Online, just to name a few outstanding ones. Flash supports P2P communication, video/voice transmission, TCP and many other things that are really far from being exploited in any major apps. Flash for example currently provides all necessary means to move chatting (IM, audio, video) into the browser, which may hit the web like web videos hit it years ago. Who knows.

HTML5's role is not to replace Flash but to provide better semantics and utilities for common information presentation in the web. The task of 3rd party plugins is the presentation of uncommon information and to provide features that are potentially the basis of further innovation.

These technologies, including HTML, all have their place. And depending on what you're planning to do, there's always the right tool.

greetz
back2dos

Answer 5

I don't think as a rule Web Developers SHOULD learn Flash. It's much more important in my opinion to focus on creating valid, semantic mark-up that adheres as close as possible to standards.

Now that's not to say that they shouldn't learn Flash. Flash is a very useful option available to developers to enhance websites, along with many other frameworks and technologies such as those mentioned in some of the other answers here.

It's going to be some time yet before all the major browsers fully support HTML 5 so it's not like it's going to replace Flash and similar technologies any time soon. There are also a huge number of properties on the web that are reliant on Flash so there's not likely to be any quick rush to abandon the technology either.

HTML 5 provides some very exciting possibilities for the future in terms of embedding content into websites and applications but that certainly doesn't mean that there's any problem with learning Flash now.