WOW.
First you go on to state that Flash 4 is the best version, only to end your post with the crappy and bloated comment. You do realize that Flash 4 is pretty much responsible for most of the crappy bloated content. And why is this...
Do you see the connection now!
Simple, as in billions of loops, buggy script, vector animations that were so unbelievably complex, that it would bring most CPUs to a crawl -- especially back then. Vector art that was so complex, that it was not only a CPU drain, but larger in file size than if it had just been a bitmap.
For reference, Adobe's latest players are the farthest thing from bloat and crap. Of course this doesn't stop a "designer" from finding components on the web and created more bloated crap.
But at least their animations will be cached via the GPU and not hit the CPU as much -- given they use Flash's bitmap effects, or know to cache their content as a bitmap.. AND more importantly, there are plenty of peeps now days with the know how to program and optimize their content, so instead of bloat, you'll get tiny highly efficient content. That's what happens when a program matures.
<]=)
Kudos to you JackAxe. Finally someone talking about Flash with some reasonable knowledge on the subject.
P.S. I am a "designer" but I also always work very closely with my Flash programmers (as well as doing a fair amount of programming myself) to make sure anything I do gets tested and adjusted so that it can be efficient and lean as much as possible before release, but I do know and understand what you are talking about when it comes to bloat.
And as a Flash developer for the last 9 years, I really don't mind NOT having flash on the iPhone as much as a lot of people out there or in this forum for that matter. IF it can be done efficiently, cleanly, intuitively and without bringing down my device, then sure, I probably will install it. But I am also not craving it either. It's all about moderation. I love bourbon, but I also don't want it all day long.
Most of the Flash sites that I do are promotional sites for movie companies, corporations and multimedia artists that desire a rich experience for their customers or viewers. And I'm sorry, but no matter how much Javascript, AJAX, CSS, HTML or anything else in "standards" you have, some of this can only be done in Flash, even though a lot of my sites actually incorporate all of these methods including Perl as well as Flash. So, while these sites are "specialized" or done for promotion or for multimedia reasons, I also do other parts of their site in "non-Flash." Again, everything in moderation.
A lot of people in these forums tend to put Flash in one camp (bloat, crap, junk, "bane of my existence," etc.) or another ("can't live without it," best thing since sliced bread, the only REAL internet, etc.). But just like many other things, it's really somewhere in between. Just like any other media "container" or device in history, people tend to view the device delivering the product as the culprit or the reason why something sucks, when in fact, it's usually the product itself or the design (or the "designer" for that matter) of that product that is crap. There's that old saying in computers, "garbage in, garbage out."
So while it is true that there is a lot of crap out there made in Flash, there is also just as much crap made in HTML. You don't see people complaining that HTML should be abandoned because of it, do you ("Jeez, I've seen so many crappy sites lately in HTML, I can't STAND HTML!")?
