So was it all just a Flash in the pan?...

Idealogy has used Adobe's Flash for almost as long as it has existed…since it was a Macromedia product, not Adobe's! We've used it because for a long time it was the only way to deliver a richer experience in the browser. 

But no, we never advocated the 'click to skip animation' rubbish that was around in the late 90s, early 2000s.

For a few years now, with the popularity of the iPhone, iPad (Flash isn't supported by these Apple devices) and the support of HTML5 and CSS3, Javascript and open standards in modern browsers, Flash has lost its dominance - why have to install a plug-in when the browser can render something itself? - so this route does make sense. But all the time Idealogy has invested in using Flash is not lost.

Geek time! The programming language used to 'do stuff' in Flash is an object-oriented language called Actionscript 3. We can now use this language to do desktop 'applications' that work across every computer platform - called AIR applications (Adobe Integrated Runtimes). We can also write .IPA (iPhone) and .APK (Android) applications from Actionscript; so Idealogy's knowledge of Flash programming hasn't been wasted, it's just being delivered in a different format. So not dead, just re-born.

On top of Actionscript's continuing uses, we now use Adobe's EdgeAnimate, which accomplishes in HTML5 what Flash used to do, using an Event Timeline and Javascript (a very very similar language to Actionscript). And there are plenty of open-source frameworks around too:

jQuery, CreateJS, SequenceJS, & Greensock to name just a few - so, things are still interesting out there.

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