None of you seem to know what you are talking about. Flash should be used where one needs to use Flash, and HTML/JS/CSS (+XML+XSLT) likewise.
Flash can play video. That is not possible w/ HTML/CSS/JS. Flash also behaves consistently cross-browser, cross/platform -- and most features cannot be disabled by the user. (compare that to a user being able to turn off JS, or Java -- something often mandated in a corporate environment.) It's either "all on" or "all off." Flash has such a large install base, that it could be argued it is the most widely available platform for delivering media-rich "applications" over the web. (And code does not involve anywhere near the same level of attention to kludges and workarounds that one would have to use to replicate similar feature -- where possible -- in different browsers and browser *versions.*) -- Not to sound like I work for MM/Adobe, but, here's what the Flash Player can do at *run time*: Flash can load and play external MP3 audio. Flash can render text -- w/ custom-defined and packaged fonts. (not possible in a browser!) It can apply a limited set of CSS to the rendered text, BTW. Flash can load/parse/serialize/send XML. Flash can POST and GET a variety of data (true, it may access browser controls to manage this.) Flash can access you webcam, allowing you to create your own video chat/IM app. Flash can programatically-build vector shapes, gradients, and fills. Flash can load and render jpegs, gifs(v8), and pngs(v8) -- and in version 8, composite all that w/ vector graphics (+video?) -- *and,* sample the resulting display pixel by pixel. (passing that data back to a server would allow dynamic creation of a jpeg or gif.) Flash 8 has a new "file upload" ability that goes beyond what a browser is capable of: You can *multi-select* files, filter files by type or size, and have programatic access to the state of the upload. It accesses an Operating System GUI control to do this -- and I have tested that these features work in MSIE, Moz FF, and Safari on OSX. *** Flash can #animate# stuff!!! Flash is like a 2 MB download that works in almost *every* browser out there. ...it's pretty phenomenal that all those features could have been crammed into it. (like: a built-in interpreter for a late-version-EcmaScript-compliant scripting language -- that, in many ways, is far more capable than what is available w/ JavaScript in most browsers!) *** This feature can be used for a web-based CMS! It would blow-away anything (non-Java) now available for managing and uploading assets. - Show quoted text - -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
