I’m curious who here hates Flash. Do you hate it? Do you love it? Do you just put up with it? I for one love it.
It’s helped me make a living over the past 11 years so I can’t complain. 
Hi Paul,
I think you have a cool website! 
It’s a tool, and like all tools, it’s neither inherently good nor inherently evil. It’s all about how the tool is applied. It’s abused just as much as ajax and jquery and prototype and all the other tools/toys out there.
This being the ‘flash and actionscript’ forum I think if you did hate it, well…erm… you’re in the wrong place! 
Personally I enjoy using it, integrates all the areas of creativity I love - design, programming, multimedia, and animation, into one package, and outputs without fuss onto multiple formats. You only need to look through thefwa.com to be inspired by some of the best design around that wouldn’t be possible without flash.
Yip, looking through those sites and seeing what they can do is humbling and inspiring. HTML, AJAX and jQuery aren’t even close to being able to replicate some of those features.
I liken some of these websites to a restaurant philosophy: some restaurants provide you with an amazing, unique dining experience that lasts serveral hours over several courses and is truely enjoyable - other (fast food) restaurants want you to get in, fill your gut and get out as soon as possible.
Amazing Flash websites are those that inspire and take you on a journey. The fast-food type of sites are those that are heavily optimised for SEO so you can fly straight from Google to the page you want, get your info. and get out in 5 seconds or less, because people lose interest if they don’t get the info. they’re after in less than 1.7 seconds or have to scroll blah blah blah…
Flash websites and HTML websites serve different purposes IMO and both have a place. I think the web would be boring place without Flash. I often get lost in the interactivity and artwork of a good Flash site, which isn’t something I do with an HTML site.
Also, ActionScript is a major part of my daily job, so yeah: love it.