I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Flash as long as I can remember.

On the one hand, the ability to create animated content is a feature that drove me to try to learn Flash; on the other hand, the ability to create animated content is a feature that makes me want to toss Flash in the “Dumpheap of good ideas that have become too darn complicated”.

As Flash has grown, it’s become much more than a mere animation tool, and for me that’s part of the problem. Along the way to becoming (in the marketing-speak of Adobe) “the industry standard for interactive authoring and delivery of immersive experiences” Flash also became incredibly, intimidatingly, and in the end seemingly impossibly complex. Now, I’m not intimidated by complexity. But as the complexity of Flash has grown with every new version, the learning curve has gotten more steep. I’ve owned and upgraded Flash from Macromedia Flash 8 to Adobe Flash CS4, and each iteration seemed to force radical changes to the way content is created. This problem is so acute that I have essentially set aside Flash, and pick it up only on those occasions when I am forced to use it.

In short, I’d love to know Flash, but I hate learning it.

I’m not the only one with a Flash problem. Apple does not (and probably won’t ever) support Flash on the iPhone or (I think) the iPad. As more and more content is delivered via mobile devices like smartphones and iPad-like devices, content creators must deliver content that works for those devices. This essentially eliminates Flash as a tool for creating content that might end up being delivered to Apple mobile devices. Now, we are learning that Adobe’s ability to get Flash working on other smartphones is falling short as well, as reported by Laptopmag:

I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.

It’s not looking good for Flash these days.

I don’t know enough about this issue to offer any authoritative conclusions, but lately I’ve been encountering lots of information and opinions suggesting that the eventual arrival of HTML5 as the new web standard will provide an alternative to many content-delivery aspects that in the past were only possible with Flash. And as HTML5 is an open standard (that is, non-proprietary and free to all) it may well signal the end of the Flash era. If this is true, I will welcome the demise of Flash, and eagerly pick-up HTML5 in the hopes of learning a simpler and more stable means of delivering Flash-like content.