Given time there will be plenty of bad HTML5 projects/ads/interfaces. It’s sad everyone has to jump on the bandwagon of picking on the technology instead of poor development and QA.

Having worked with both, I’ll likely keep working with both (as well as other tools) – and just keep making great things with the tools that are best for a particular job.

Earlier this week Adobe released a statement that many pundits have jumped upon to say that Flash is dead, that Steve Jobs was right, and that Flash is circling the drain. As someone who has worked with Flash for over a decade, I’ve found this whole debate sadly fascinating. I’ve found myself having to explain to so very many friends, colleagues, and family that this issue has many facets to it and not just the simple concept of HTML 5 vs Flash.

Having the chance now to work with both technologies, I find both interesting but both tools have their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had a good deal  of experience working with (over 10 years) working with Flash, Flash on mobile, and more recently HTML 5 (on various platforms). I’ve worked with Flash on Pocket PC, on the Leapster, on Nokia phones, and with Flash on the iPhone (yup – really). I’ve made video playback work before there was official support for it, I’ve made complex finger driven interfaces, and optimized all kinds of content to work in small form factors.

Any seasoned developer will tell you when asked what tool do you use, will reply that they use as many tools at their disposal to do the best job they know how. As a Flash Developer I never just worked in Flash, or made a project solely out of Flash, even if the end result was primarily a flash asset. As there are so many tools available to a web developer and many ways to use the tools, you constantly run into other developers using tools in not the best ways. Even the simplest web banners have the potential to run it very bad ways on a persons computer, and often times they do.

The thing that keeps bugging me about this whole issue is that so many people blame the tool or the plugin for running poorly and doing odd things, but never blaming the developer, or even their own behavior (what you have 75 tabs open in 3 browsers?), or the browser manufacturer for their issues. Just a blanket statement that flash runs poorly on my computer, and I don’t want to see it on my mobile device.

What so many people take for granted is that Flash pushed much of the web to what we see today. Watching video on the web was an unbearable pain until Flash was able to support it. No one remembers that there were 3 codec’s out there that never could gain market share, even Apple’s Quicktime. Much of the User Interface and User Experience you experience now is due to people experimenting with Flash, even if it’s written in JavaScript. Flash does have many shortcomings, but it’s allowed people to try to express themselves in ways that using other tools would have been too cumbersome.

Part of Flash’s success is due to the unified environment it allowed developers, unlike the fragmentation that browser supported technologies had to deal with. A flash asset will generally act much the same way in any browser with the same version of the plugin, where HTML/JavaScript could and would act wildly differently in each of the different browsers, for any number of their different versions.

However things have gotten more stable, the major browsers are adhering more to agreed upon standards which has allowed HTML 5 to do some of the more visible tasks that only Flash has been able to accomplish to this point. And this is a  great thing. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me and ask for a flash video player, that they need this instant, that it should just be a simple task, but yet the client is asking for some small customization that ends up taking forever. Or they can use the HTML 5 tag and just embed the video file on the web page, I’d love to opt for the second option…

HTML 5 can accomplish many of the things Flash does today, and again this is a great thing. However no one has seemed to realize that the flash player plugin usually iterates quite often, and with that iteration comes new things that player supports. For HTML 5 to iterate there is a lot more work involved, by a lot more players.

Anyways this is a much more complex issue, I haven’t even touched upon what the difference between the development environments are like. Still though I’d like to finish this us with a quick comment…

I develop for the web, and I use the best tools that I have and know how to use to the get the job done, and done well. It could be a tool that’s available today, or one that gets invented tomorrow, and we can figure out what’s best for your project at the time things kick off.

Often in my career I’ve had to integrate with data stored in a database in a Flash Application. Usually I don’t do much of the database work or planning, just enough involvement to work with the back end engineer to get the data I need in a service that they write, or conversely send them the data that they need to a service they set up. Basically just working on the handshake between the two sides of the application. That’s not to say I don’t understand what they are doing, or even what they are able to do; I just found it was never my focus and there have been holes in my education working with databases. I’ve always found it important to know as much as I could about the other side of the application so that when we would troubleshoot bugs later on, I could identify quickly what needed to be worked on.

So this week I saw on AppSumo.com an offer a PHP / MySQL course at a nice discount that seemed pretty worthwhile. Something I could review all the basics with and fill in a bunch of gaps in my education. There are 155 lectures broken down into 14 chapters, so I figure I can get through this in a couple of weeks if I run through a chapter a day.

Following this I’m planning on going through ThinkVitamin’s newly re-branded  site TeamTreeHouse.com. I’m feeling excited to be learning again!

I personally like the contract to hire way of doing things because its a win-win situation for both sides. The employer can actually see how you work and do things, and if you integrate well with an existing team. And from the potential employee side of things you can see how the company actually functions, what the working environment is likes, and how the average day works to see if it fits their expectations.

I’m available for contracting (if this suits your needs). I can work on new or existing projects, and quickly find my way around any existing project you may have. One of the benefits of working with Flash and ActionScript for so long is that I’ve been exposed to many different working styles, and can adapt to them quickly. I can be available on-site or work remotely as necessary.

Many of my more recent projects come from a huge code repository which is not mine to share (even if I contributed to is significantly). This is the type of thing I can open up in person during an interview, however its not the type of thing I can easily share as an example of my code.

The projects contained in this section are not meant to be huge long term projects, but fun things I knock out in an afternoon or two in order to show that I can work in ActionScript 3 and Flex (or Flash Builder), or whatever tools I choose to create them. Then by offering the source I can also show how I work, my coding style, and my conventions.

I’ll be adding projects as time allows. Go have a look and enjoy!

Well one of the biggest pieces of news that came up was the name change of Flex Builder to  Flash Builder. The name change leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand its way more descriptive of what this tool actually does, on the other hand  this is an easy way to confuse the vast number of people who dont’ deal with this tool directly. However I welcome the name change and look forward to using the new tools Flash Builder and its companion Flash Calalyst.

Flash Builder has a good deal of improvements, however the biggest improvement is the comanion tool Flash Catalyst which makes the foundation of the trasnition between a design comp from Illustrator or Photoshop to a Flash Builder (Flex) projecet.

Flash Catalyst makes the connection and transition between Designers (and their Design Comps) and Developers (making functional prototypes) easy to manage. Instead of exporting peices of a comp as a bunch of seperate graphics which get implemented with some code, you can import an Illustrator or Photoshop document into Catalyst and apply functionality to it. Imaging taking a scroll bar comp, selecting all of the scroll bar elements, and through a dropdown applying scroll bar functionality to it, then identifying the individual assets (i.e. the scroll track, the thumb, scroll arrows, etc…). Thats all you have to do to have not only a functional scroll bar, but one also completly styled by the designer withough having to create some kind of contrived skin, or the developer poorly recreating the elements as vectors so they are easier to deal with.

The other huge benifit to Flash Catalyst is that early in the design process you can quicly create a mockup that has basic functionality which helps in so many ways. It’s so easy for a designer to throw together a mockup or comp that looks nice but has fundamental interactive issues, or a bad user experience. A designer can easilly apply functionality to most any part of a comp and test it out, the client could even play with it to reduce misunderstandings that offen occur when looking at static images of a proposed project.

So Flash Catalyst has me really excited, and it creates many if not all of the basic elements you need for your  Flash Builder (Flex) project so all that should be left is to apply logic and data. The integration between Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst I would expect to literally save days of development time in my future, and also output a nicer user experience as well.

I’m currently working with the trial versions of Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst and I’m really pleased. Thanks Adobe!

I really enjoyed the event, drew a lot of motivation from it, got to meet a lot of really cool people, and I’m looking forward to the next event. You should join me there next time…