Adobe Flash May Be Flawed, But It's Still Critical to the Web

"In the last couple of years, it has become trendy to bash the Adobe Flash Player. I need to say a few things on that subject. First, let's be very clear: I'm not on the Flash team. I don't speak for them. (I don't speak for anyone but myself.) This post is just my personal take on things. Caveat lector. I came to Adobe ten years ago to build an open standards (SVG)-based Web animation tool. I like standards, and I have some experience here. Both authoring for & competing with the Flash Player gave me some good perspective."

Flash is a flawed product - what software isn't though - yet is has managed to advance the Web in a variety of ways, not the least of which is making online streaming video an easy to use reality. This is a really interesting article written by an Adobe employee that takes a critical look at the state of Flash and the technologies that are vying to replace it. Flash might be sometimes obnoxious - especially when it's used to create advertising banners that crash every browser out there - but it's also tremendously powerful, giving rise to world-changing sites like YouTube.