Hey all,

I began my interactive web career using Director then later migrated to Flash, and have to say that not once have I regretted the change. To point out some of the differences: Price is definately a concern. Director is a more robust program, but you pay for what you get. It is also geared towards interactive CD production and that sort of task, whereas, as many people on these boards have pointed out, Flash was designed from the ground up as a web app. This can clearly be seen in the installed base of browser plugins by the typical user.

While the two programs share many similarites, both are uniquely suited to specific tasks and styles of design, I believe. Director has the power of Lingo, an object-oriented scripting language similar to Java, which is greatly beneficial to someone who has had programming experience (whereas actionscript can seem clumsy until one gets used to the method of inputting commands). Flash is still the best at what it does in terms of vector graphics (personal bias, perhaps, but I try to avoid using bitmapped images at all costs in Flash), and is the natural choice for clean, scaleable design, and, IMHO, anything which will be presented on the web.

To try to reel this post back on topic, I think it is clear that with over 3/4 of browsers today having some form of the Flash plugin installed, it is not a flash-in-the-pan technology (pardon the bad pun). And every day we are seeing the community which embraces Flash push this program to amazing new limits, greatly benefitted by Flash being open source, as well as its ability to interact with other web standards (ASP, Javascript, VBscript), crucial to its expandability and future.

There seems to be somewhat of a backlash against Flash as of late, probably bandwagon jumpers taking a "me-too" attitude to the first person brave enough to write an article critical of the unimaginative Flash interfaces now flooding sites because corporations are demanding the newest bleeding-edge technology, whether it is appropriate or not. There's lots of Javascript or DHTML mothods of achieving effects done in Flash, and they don't require a plugin. Still, so long as the community stays strong as it has been, and Macromedia remains committed to creating a program to fill their needs, Flash is going to be around for a long time to come, and the Web will only be a better place for it.

*phew!*
Thanks for letting me rant,
--Chris