You can use FlashDevelop and the Flex SDK for free.

Another case to use Flash is when presenting dynamic/complex charts and graphs. There are JS libs for this, but I’ve had better luck with Flash when the charts get more complicated.

I’m surprised SVG had no mention. It has some serious advantages over Flash – extensible, interoperable, XML, DHTML, CSS…

Neither suffer from typical Adobe design limitations and whims: promiscuously accepting cookies by default, installing an updater, vendor-specificity, requiring users to visit Adobe.com to change their settings(?!), insisting on sending meaningless headers with every HTTP_PUT that confuses servers, etc.). And we need hardly mention accessibility….

Still, I guess the real world’s saddled with constraints that make Flash considerable until standards are more widely supported. Thankfully the web’s getting dragged faster into the 21st century.

“Not compatible with all browsers including iPhone, iPad and cell phones”

This one is the only one that’s totally true, but to be honest I replace all animation (flash or JS) with static images for mobile versions of sites, they’re just small devices that don’t have huge processors. Not to mention flash can degrade gracefully to anything you need.

“Moderate learning curve to use”

This is a weird point in general. It was said as compared with the ease of using pre-built JS components, but there’s actually just as many if not more pre-built flash components, so that’s hardly a fair comparison to compare the ease of using pre-built JS vs coding your own flash. As far as just coding alone many would argue flash’s OOP nature makes it easier to learn and use.

“Cost of purchasing Flash software”

There are multiple flash solutions that are free, most notably FlashDevelop. It uses adobe’s free and regularly updated flex sdk to always be up to date, and it has full AS3 capabilities. And likewise, there’s many coding suite’s for JS that cost many. Of course if you compare flash’s paid options with JS’s free ones JS will be cheaper! But JS and Flash each have paid and free development environments.

“Possible problems with users that have older versions of the Flash Player”

JS rich media has it’s browser dependencies too, and new flash versions are adopted many times quicker than new browser versions. I would actually consider flash as having the advantage when it comes to it’s upgrade cycles vs any browser based technology.

“Potentially large file size”

Flash scripts are reduced to bytecode in a swf, while JS is plain text. Flash and JS scripts that do similar function have JS as much as 10x the size of the flash. The myth of flash being huge is caused from the fact that flash is typically used for sites with lots of imagery, video, etc, making most flash sites large…but it’s the media being show, not the flash. An HTML/JS site with the same amount of imagery/video and interactivity actually ends up significantly larger than a well built flash one.

“Possible security issues with Flash Player”

Flash has had just as many security updates as browsers, I really don’t see the validity with this.

“Tracking stats for Flash elements is limited”

Not true at all, flash can do the same tracking as anything else. In fact flash can communicate directly with javascript, so it’s hard to say anything built in flash has less statistics capabilities as javascript when all flash would have to do to overcome that is call some javascript!

Though that said I actually agree with much of your “when to use flash vs js” section except for slide shows. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been frustrated by watching a JS slideshow tick through its first 2 cycles showing the top half of each image. Any good flash slideshow loads the images 1 at a time, starts when the 1st is done loading and then starts loading the second, etc… starting quicker and moving through more smoothly as each image loads. Even just for that reason alone flash should be used for slideshows!

iOS: how much percent of the world use iOS ?
Android: more than iOS

Why do we need to make multimedia sites compatible with restricted mobiles ?
Just create a mobile version and a Desktop version where you can use a BIG screen with fast Connection.
Its a breeze doing this with Flash Builder which is FREE for unemployed and students:
https://freeriatools.adobe.com/

Regarding Flex is slow:
http://www.jamesward.com/census/

Just keep it going and create unique, innovative, interesting RIAs rather than default scrolling grey mass stuff.

just our opinion
SM

This article is not intended to compare the underlying technologies behind Flash vs jQuery/Javascript. It’s simply to provide alternatives to some things that were traditionally only done with Flash.

For many people not having content viewable on IOS devices is big concern and for them jQuery is a valuable alternative. Some websites have switched away from Flash entirely because of this.

Now that Android is rapidly gaining on IOS Apple may rethink their position on supporting Flash.

“Not compatible with all browsers including iPhone, iPad and cell phones”

This point is biased. If there’s something HTML developers complain about, that it’s compatibility. And if you don’t know anything about it i will introduce you to some friends you might know: -webkit-border-radius, -moz-border-radius (just to say a couple). While Flash developers never had any problem related with browsers incompatibility until now (if you consider a problem not being able to reach apple’s mobile devices). Anyway I stick with Android, totally knowing that the only reason Flash has been banned on the IPhone it’s to protect the appstore (Seemed like many free online games wasn’t good for business). And I recommend you to read about the Open Screen Proyect.

Bye