Happy 10th, Flash

Adobe blows out the candles this week, commemorating a decade of Flash. I first got wind of the web's dominant animation development toolkit circa 1998 when a guy joined my web development group at a local ISP, having previously done work in Japan. This was all he talked about. And while I didn't get it at first, it eventually grew on me.

But to this day, I get so sick of sites either over- or underutilizing the platform - using Flash for small things like useless banners, or full-on sites with no unique URLs. I've tried several times to get better at the platform with tweens and shape objects as the versions seemed to fly by, and even took up ActionScript, thinking it would be more familiar to my programmer side. I know enough to be dangerous.

It is a cool and fun suite to work with, and is giving Windows Media Player a run for its money in that lucrative market. Happy birthday!