With the web now verging on its double decade since its public inception, it is important to note where we have come from, and - maybe more pertinent - where we're headed. The web has had many face-lifts in the past, many revisions, many tiresome periods of expansion and dormancy, but the web is - at present - going through some extreme phases of growth.

In my short web-development career, i have come across technologies that are - for want of a better word - incredible. The functionality that is now being made available to the end user is both fascinating and exciting, to web developers and users alike. Much of this staggering ingenuity is happening on the Flash Platform, and it seems as though its only going to get more and more ridiculous.

To clearly define the scope of the term The Flash Platform: The Flash Platform is the blanket term for all technologies that work on top of the Flash Player.This includes:

• Flash - ostensibly a designer's tool, with great support for interactivity, animation and integration with dynamic content. Flash - in my opinion - should not be used for systems that require more focus on the data, and less on the design.
• Flex - a platform for building Rich Internet Applications with a heavily data-centric architecture. Flex can be used to build anything from simple widgets, to basic "click-thru" sites, to full-scale enterprise applications (SARS eFiling was built with Flex!)
• AIR - a desktop platform that can be developed with either Flex/Flash/ActionScript or HTML/JavaScript. AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is similar to Java in that it requires a "runtime" to be installed before it can be used, and - like Java - is cross-platform.

All of these technologies run on top of the Flash Player, which is - according to Adobe - on 99% of all internet-enabled computers worldwide (click here for a reference).

Now, why should we choose The Flash Platform? What's so amazing about it?
I get asked this question quite often, and i can answer it in two words:

User experience

User experience should be - in my opinion - the foremost thought in a developer's mind when developing anything, whether it be software, websites, etc. The Flash Platform allows you a vast array of tools for enriching your user's experience of your development.

Let's face it -- we're a vain race. What we see is what we get. If we go to a website and it looks plain, or feels slow, or for some reason worked fine in Firefox at work but now breaks in IE at home, we leave. Simple as that. There are no obligations when surfing the web. Now, with Flash, Flex and AIR, you can develop applications that not only look stunning, not only seem to run must faster than HTML sites (and they usually do), but they actually provide better functionality then you'll find on most HTML sites.

Benefits (a greatly abbreviated list)

• Cross-platform
• No differentiation in rendering according to different HTML engines
• Rich, visually appealing interfaces
• Wide sets of user-interface components
• Asynchronous data input and output
• A thriving, active, helpful community
• Built-in support for many popular proprietary media formats

And it doesn't even end there. Adobe has a fantastic development team (all of whom i suspect are hybrids between computers, mad scientists and visionaries) that is constantly producing mindblowing systems and software that will further thrust the web forward. To view Adobe's latest and greatest developments, go to http://labs.adobe.com/.

The web is constantly ebbing and flowing with new and innovative ideas. The Flash Platform is the future. It is the bleeding edge; the tried and trusted; the ideal platform.