Learn what you need, as you need it. If you have a project in mind that you think might require flash, then launch head first into that project and learn as you go. Dont spend big $$ on learning software unless you really cant figure it out yourself, because everything they teach you will be old soon anyway, and you constantly have to keep retraining yourself in this field.
Flash is actually still useful. For the immediate future, you can make money with it. In the distant future, it will probably still be useful for games.
True. This is the one area that I expect flash to die in hard. Unless it very quickly gains GPU acceleration, multi-threading etc.
I prefer you to learn it soon ! because some times few backend tools add much more exposure in your Profile! I would criticize to the people who say Flash is crap to use with! around 30-35% running on Full-Flash Platforms
You're right about that. It's still useful for 2D style games though. One of my biggest gripes about Flash is lack of GPU acceleration though.
I have played several 2D games in flash that push it beyond its capabilities - for example Raze. Which I personally find shocking, I can play Crysis at only 50% load but not simple Flash game? (And yes, I talked to the guy who made that game - they optimized the ___ out of it).
Flash is a very powerful tool for multimedia, gaming, interactivity, advanced applications, fluid user interface and 3D on the web. The flash plugin is installed on almost every pc in the world. Some of the world's most played games are built with flash (farmville) and some of the world's most visited sites (youtube, vimeo etc..) would never have succeeded without flash. Those predicting its death assume that the team behind flash player will stand still and just watch as the web evolve with html 5, which is of course not the case. Flash, as well as other browser plugins, have always been a way to extend the capabilities of the browser, so by the time html 5 becomes available, flash will be charged with new features that can't be achieved with html 5 thus pushing the envelope once more and showing what the web can be.
If you want to become a web designer. And if you are really serious in this field, then not only flash, learn everything that comes under multimedia and animation. Go for a right animation institute. Don't kill the dream, just execute it~
Learn flash, it is very useful for animations and SE are starting to learn how to index some flash elements like text. Perhaps in a year or 2 google will be able to index flash properly. But I agree learn a SSL first like ASP or PHP. Choose PHP though cause it is free and it has a lot of people willing to help you learn it.
You have to learn Flash and also if you are interested in programming then learn Flash Action Script too.
Flash is beginning to die now, as everyone else has said, for web design you can easily use jQuery+HTML5 to achieve the same effect while not making your page load slowly.