As Flash turns 10, Adobe looks ahead

Can ’90s-era technology for cute Web animations lead a new generation of cutting-edge Web applications?

Adobe Systems, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of Flash on Tuesday, hopes the answer is yes.

Still a popular way to add interactivity to Web sites, Flash has outlasted a number of competing plug-ins that emerged in the early days of the Web.

Now, according to company executives, Adobe is trying to make Flash more of a general-purpose application development platform, one that focuses on video delivery, applications for mobile devices, and Web applications that run outside the browser.

“Today the shift is from animations to applications,” said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect and senior vice president of Adobe’s platform business unit. “The community around Flash has been pushing us–and technically we’ve been working–to enable” Web applications.

On Tuesday, the company intends to launch a microsite showing the evolution of Flash over the past 10 years, including video interviews with developers.

Those videos will no doubt be played with the Flash Video Player, something many high-profile Web sites, including YouTube, have chosen to use as well.

The success of Flash in the next 10 years rides largely on whether leading-edge customers like YouTube will design their Web sites with Flash, Lynch said. Adobe, which gained the Flash technology when it bought Macromedia, is trying to build an “ecosystem” of developers and partners, he said.

Full article: CNET News.com

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