Macromedia Pushes Flash For All Things Web

nakhla writes: "This article at News.com details how Macromedia is expanding its Flash product to be more of an all-in-one web solution. Rather than relying on HTML codes to design web pages and embedding Flash as one component, Macromedia wants Flash to be used to design the entirety of a site. Pre-built components, such as scrollbars and buttons, are included to allow designers to write everything using the new Flash product. With websites becoming more and more complex, and the trend to move towards providing web services rather than application software, could something like this be the answer? The article also mentions how Macromedia is on a campaign to have its Flash plugin included in all Internet-compatible devices. How long before we see a Qt based plugin for the Qtopia handheld project?"

Comments

Custom webpages

[whovian]

I have seen the flash "applications" where you play with puzzles, write refrigerator poetry, and even clothe models. But these don't *do* anything. I think it could be interesting to develop web pages that allow their layouts to be overridden by user-configurable preferences. (Maybe XML will allow this? -- I'm ignorant.) For example, you could interactively move all your slashboxes to the bottom of the page instead of leaving them on the default right-hand side. then you change your mind and put them all aligned on the left. Hmmm...this pretty much amounts to turning each web page into a sort of desktop. However the numerous web sites that strategically place advertisements within the page wouldn't go for this.

One thing off the top of my head

[crisco]

Dynamic Tree widget for comments. Little + and - boxes to open up those comments below my threshold for the times I'd like to see what an AC wrote. While I tend to agree with you overall, there are features that a dynamic page app could implement that would improve the way I use /. JavaScript, Java, NNTP and others could do it as well.