Flash, Flex, AIR & ActionScript

Flash Flex AIR

Adobe's Flash family of technologies: Flash, Flex, AIR and ActionScript are currently the most popular technologies for web-integrated development of rich-media applications. They are cross-browser, cross-platform and since the development of Adobe AIR, can masquerade as desktop applications too, without losing their web-flavoured origins.

One of the main features of Flash has been that the IDE allows the development of code and of graphical user-interfaces to happen in tandem. Interface designers are restricted only by their expectations.

This has led to coders of other languages sneering somewhat at Flash because often ActionScript is wrtten with a strong dependency upon the UI. (Strong dependancies are very bad things, for lots of reasons). However, it has also been a driver of innovation in UI design, because Flash has embraced designers and developers alike, and found a balance between the two discplines.

Flash has started to mature beyond its more common uses of generationg animated advertising banners or cumbersome, slow Flash websites. Flash has a strong, and increasing, role to play in the increasingly media driven web.