Flash - is it out ?

I am administrating a big project that would have a good use of flash for the functionality. This is a project that will last for many years and I cannot risk that the site/project gets out dated because of the coding type. So will flash last and will browsers support flash in the future ?

 

I personally feel that full on flash sites are being outdated, but as you are only using it for menu's it will most likely be fine as long as its got a 'fresh' feel to it. I doubt browsers will stop supporting flash but in my opinion flash is on the way out of websites, I feel that with what is available to create with javascript/ajax/css now that flash really is out of date.

 

If I use flash it will not be only for the menus, it will be for all the functions. Its an interactive project.

 

I'd be careful using flash for functionality. It's the most difficult to maintain, update or debug

 

What would you use for complex interactivity ? Its a site that will feature sounds, letting the users making their own versions of music by starting and stopping sounds at their choise. But some sounds should be possible to start after two minutes from the first sound started and so on. And some sounds should only be possible to play together with certain other sounds.
Also volume controls, pan controls should be applied.

 

ahh, well in that case I would actually use flash. It would be your best bet for achieving local application-like functionality

 

In my personal opinion, Flash was never 'in'.

 

According to the most popular websites in the entire world (Youtube, myspace, etc), your opinion is entirely wrong!

But, ahem, thanks for sharing

 

How can an opinion be wrong?

 

An opinion can never be right or wrong. As it is an OPINION.

Well for that type of site I think flash is your best option.

 

Thanks. Is there anything else than flash that can provide the same options ?

 

If it is overwhelmingly contradicted by fact

 

Yes, I believe it will be okay, the flash toolbar does support other .swf files compiled in different versions of Flash, and will do so in the future. Dont worry about it.

 

Ok, thanks, then I just need a designer to make it not look like flash hehe.

 

An opinion cannot be wrong - dumbass.

 

100% flash sites are out! It's so bad for SEO and hard to maintain, CMS is in

 

I think it's pretty much safe to say yes. too many websites had already implemented flash into thire websites and a lot of ads out there are flash based. I think flash is here to stay (although, personally I don't think it's a good idea to build the entire website based on flash).

 

Use of flash is neither good or bad in itself. Yes, the browsers will continue supporting it for the forseeable future.

However, Know the limitations and deal with it accordingly. As mentioned above it is very bad for SEO, and although it might improve some, if you plan on having these pages show in the SERPs you will need to put the Flash on a spiderable page with text on it.

Another option is to only have portions of the site in full flash, knowing these pages will not do well in searches, but you have aother pages on the site that will.

If this is a client type application, maybe having it show in the serps doesn't matter.

 

I'm going to say yes, check what me and my development team are working on at the moment. www.greenlush.com, many AJAX frame sets to give that flash type effect. Flash is out i say, only use is for youtube type videos ect.. Cant believe im saying this as i used to be a right flash monkey

 

SEO is not important for that part of the site so I do not care about that part.

Then again AJAX may be out in 2 years time