Some of you might remember (or perhaps want to forget?) that Flash’s early days started as a tool for visual designers –OK animators- (not programmers) and many of us “designers” fell in love with it because it was easy to use and freed us to experiment with graphics, fonts, sound, video (later on) in a way that up to that point was either impossible or too complex to do any other way and it didn’t require us to have to have a programming degree. But then Flash became very popular and Adobe plainly neglected their design-user base and focused on the programming side (hey nothing wrong with catering to programmers, they are needed as much as designers, right?).

But this move on Macromedia/Adobe’s part really alienated many of us visual people (right-sided brain folks). Not only are programming languages a somewhat foreign concept for most visual people, the introduction of AS3 (and OOP as a whole) truly threw a huge wrench on a lot of designer’s minds and their perception of Flash — I can’t tell you how many design colleagues I know that have given up on Flash over the last few years because of how complex they perceive Flash to be now.

I agree with everybody that AS3 is the future of Flash development and that if anybody wants to keep up with technology (and the competition) we will all have to eventually “migrate” to AS3 (and later versions when they are released). Admittedly Flash has become a powerful and versatile tool that has taken the world by storm, but I am afraid that Macromedia/Adobe has in many ways abandoned the users that first put Flash on the map -namely visual designers, specially by abandoning the programming simplicity of AS2. I wish that Adobe would make it easier for non-programmers to still feel encouraged to use this powerful tool and not feel so intimidated by it. They might yet regain some lost loyal users.

I use both a lot, gradually more and more AS3. This seems to be the break down that drives my decision on which to use:

Big budget, big project, big timeline = AS3.

Small budget, tight deadline = AS2.

The truth is AS3 requires much more development time and has the propensity to exhibit major problems for minor programming mistakes so it requires perfectionism, where as AS2 just works most of the time and never breaks dramatically like AS3 does. For basic stuff AS3 just does not pay off.

AS3 also suffers from a number of Player issues. For instance, I wouldn’t dare use AS3 for banner ads simply because most default browser pop up blockers seem to block almost every outgoing link AS3 tries to execute under every imaginable way it can executed, while a simple AS2 button works just fine without pop up blockers capturing the link.

I would be happy to never use AS2 if VM2 had a “non-strict mode” which executed AS3 in the same forgiving manner that AS2 does in VM1.

I have no problems editing someone else’s code in AS3. In AS2, I simply refuse it, telling my boss ‘I can hardly remember a language I used 5 years ago’.

I’m glad all the “real coders” are happy though. They can make all those “Rich Internet Applications” I keep hearing about. I’ve never had a single client ask for a RIA but there must be some out there. My clients want one-off projects: take their new product, make it spin, and play some music. Or maybe just make a simple quiz game.

Sure, I’ll bite the bullet and learn AS3, I’ll suffer through the extra time it will take to do the most basic things. It’s either that or starve right? I wonder though, if the next generation of developers will just skip flash because it’s such a pain to get into now. I feel like flash is being dictated by the small but vocal ‘hardcore’ developers. I think the majority of flash users never frequent these sites or attend flash conferences. Their voice isn’t heard. Perhaps soon it will be, when none of these developers are buying CS4…