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Design

Fametta McClain
Fametta McClain
9,910 Points
Posted by Fametta McClain
Fametta McClain
9,910 Points

Flash, Actionscript

Is Flash or actionscript going to be taught at Team Treehouse? Making a Flash website would be cool! It would also be good to add it to the web design track.

3 Answers

John W
John W
21,558 Points
John W
John W
21,558 Points

Ugh... I used to LOVE Flash and in fact learned most of my programming by making games and Prezi-like presentations with Flash 3 up to Flash MX 2004 and lots of Actionscript in high school... It was a great platform to build quasi-WYSIWYG programs with very little effort.

BUT.... time has changed

Flash has became the defacto standard for annoying flashy ad banners, legacy web-based games from the late 90's, buggy web pages, eternal hourglass/spinning beach ball, and worst of all, malicious code activation. Browsers have introduced blocking capabilities for all flash elements so your item won't show up for a good portion of users. Since Flash is compiled, search engines also can't decipher what's in it so your page won't show up on search results.

You can blame Apple for this when they introduced iPhone 1.0 and decided that Flash uses too much power (legitimate reason) and too insecure (also legitimate). There was a lot of critics saying that was a bad move for Apple, but as we all know now, iPhone practically put the lid on Flash's coffin. Though I would say the company that put Flash in its body bag was Macromedia, who neglected the continuous and necessary improvements and security patches of Flash in its final hours before Adobe acquired it to save the Macromedia Studio suite from its demise.

Nowadays, you should learn HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript instead to provide interactivity.

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points
Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

Yep, John I couldn't agree more with you - the good old days of Flash - but so many many years ago ... let it rest in peace :-)

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Flash is a great technology for making apps & games for the web. Flash is also a great technique for making (interactive) banners.

However for building most websites flash is terrible for accessibility, SEO and being mobile-friendly.

Here's tool so you can see how a flash site would look to a search engine.

Here's a great thread on Flash: Learn it or forget it.