Internet is not built around Flash.It exists to compliment what the regular web cant (Device access, DRM enabled video etc) Have you tried running any content rich html5 app on an iPad? It rendering frame rate is so bad that it is unsable.
IMHO, right now , Flash (while being a resource hog) is the best medium to deliver "engaging-rich" content on the internet.
The point is that the iPad is helping, and will continue to help, HTML5 become the new best medium for rich content. Apple isn't always concerned with using whatever is best or most practical at the moment. Sometimes they want to help along less established technologies that have the potential to be even better.
Your old design looked fine to me. I didnt notice "nine separate colors" until it was mentioned in the article. For me it looked like 3 sections showing 'What', 'How' and a 'Quick overview'.
The whole 'snip it' concept was clear from the front page image itself.
Every time I read 'iPhone' I get a reflexive reaction to a closed, evil gatekeeper keeping me from doing what I want to on the plaform, and projected that onto Adobe. My bad.
adobe has opened up a little bit. enough to convince a casual observer that swf is an open format. but it's not.
for example, the open source flex sdk can't be used to create flash apps with gui controls. for that, you need adobe flash cs4. they haven't opened up the fla format, which means that nobody can create a product that competes with adobe flash cs4. so it's not very open at all.
Google gears , Mozilla Prism are all a different genre. If you are planning to build an "occasionally connected app" that lives within the browser, Gears is a good choice. AIR is for building desktop apps.
If you are a web developer and knows Javascript (and/or Flash), you can build great apps that works nicely on desktop with Adobe AIR. AIR doesn't force developers to build custom chrome for apps. By default AIR renders the app in OS's native chrome. But if a developer chooses to, he can go for custom chrome .Thats it.
AIR is a runtime (more like Java ) for running AIR apps. You needn't "open an Adobe Air" at any point. Just install the apps you really want and use it.
Looks like Microsofts's growth strategy for Silverlight is based on forced adoption by delivering exclusive content rather than features offered.
My workflow is as follows:
(1)If javascript cant => Use flash
(2)If flash cant => Use SilverLight.
Rarely(never) does it trickle down to step2. It is good to have a completion for Adobe flash, but unless Silverlight offers somethign really awesome that Flash doesn't, Microsoft shouldn't expect large scale organic adoption . Forced adoption by shelling cash on exclusive content is a different story and thats probably why they have to blame the low adoption rate on recession.
Very impressive work.
But the only thing 'flashy' about this is the zoom and fade in effect. I don't think this is worthy of being promoted as a great example for "jQuery instead of Flash " app.
Hi, I'm the author. I agree it isn't an ideal example, but my primary audience for this was our clients. Not a week goes by that we don't hear 'Can you do flash?' Typically the client is not interested in flash as much as they are in a specific result that could much better be accomplished in jQuery.
IMHO, right now , Flash (while being a resource hog) is the best medium to deliver "engaging-rich" content on the internet.