Flash® Professional CS5 Bible

Chapter 2. Exploring Web Technologies

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using Flash for Web deployment

• Understanding the limitations of Flash

• Looking at competing technologies

• Preparing to develop Flash content

Over the years, many technologies have been developed to work in conjunction with Adobe Flash. Understanding the process of integrating these technologies will no doubt enable you to create more interactive and complex productions. If you're new to Flash, or you're looking for new ways to enhance or broaden the vision or scope of your Flash productions, you'll benefit from reading this chapter. It explores the placement of Flash within an ever-growing toolset for universal and "standards-based" Web development in use today.

Contextualizing Flash in the Internet Evolution

If you follow the development of "bleeding-edge" technology, you may have noticed how often software is created, updated, and made obsolete. At times, this cycle seems to happen almost on a daily basis. But exactly how many practical — and affordable — options exist for Web development? How can production teams develop consistent frameworks with a variety of server technologies to efficiently build Flash presentations and applications? In this section, I discuss how Flash CS5 continues to push the direction and limits of the Internet.

High expectations for Web experiences

Despite the devastation to Web production brought about by the "dotbomb" era (that is, the economic recession that occurred after many dotcom companies went out of ...