Flash Roadmap

 

I’ve just read the Flash Roadmap White paper, and the first thing that comes to mind after reading it was, why didn’t you say this at the beginning when there were all these announcements about the end of Flash.

This roadmap along with the Flex roadmap, have help set out Adobe’s vision for the future of Flash. Here’s the main points as I see them:

Flex will:

• Be open source.
• Rely on the community for future releases.
• Still be supported in future releases of the Flash Player (not sure if this will last).
• Only grow if the community supports it.
• The code for the Flacon compiler, the Mustella testing tool and Blaze DS will eventually be open sourced to the community.

Flash will:

• Continue growing with Adobe’s support.
• Be aimed at games and video.
• New versions of Flash player 11 will be released.
• Updates to the ActionScript language (something I’m really looking forward to).
• The Flash Player and Adobe AIR will be more in sync with releases.

So Flash will now be more aimed at games, video, TV and mobile, through Adobe AIR. This all makes sense, why try to dominate the browser when the new web technologies can do a similar job (even though they are still a little behind in functionality and the support that Flash provides).

What is looks to me is that Flash, the Flash player and ActionScript will still get good support from Adobe. Flex is now for the community to provide this support and development.

Does this mean that if I as a developer am going to be building a AIR will I use Flex or pure ActionScript in the future?