Flash 2004 in 2005 - What to Expect ?

As everyyear passed by, there is a sense of curiousity in all new media developer's mind, where will Flash move next ?

Mattew David @ Informit, has done a few crystal glazing for us.

His predictions // copy+ paste here without permission :-) //

Here goes:

10: Maelstrom, the new Flash Player, will come out this year. No surprise there. I am expecting a lot of nifty new features in this version of Flash.

9: Video will get better in Flash. Much better. If you did not catch the news when it was posted to one of Yahoo!’s finance sites, then you may have missed that on2.com is providing the new video CODEC. I hope it is the whole CODEC as the one at on2.com rocks.

8: A new version of Flash Communication Server should be out. I am hoping for BIG improvements over performance. Let’s try and get more than a handful of people video conferencing for each server.

7: More Flash. Much more Flash and it should be everywhere. Now that Flash 7 has hit the 80% saturation mark, expect to see some cool stuff.

6: More wireless support for Flash Lite. Macromedia is making great strides in this area. Make sure your next cell phone supports Flash Lite.

5: Flash Applications on your desktop. More Flash out of the Web Browser. I think 2005 will be the year you start to see applications being built with Flash. And, they will not be hosted inside of your Web Browser – they will be just on desk top.

4: iPod support for Flash. OK, this one is just a nice dream, but as you may know, I love my iPod and a match of Flash and the iPod would be marvelous.

3: More specialized Flash products. We have seen Flash Paper from Macromedia and a host of other Flash products from third party vendors. This year the products are going to mature from cute to cool. How about a photo album tool build in Flash? Or an office system?

2: Better server products. Flash is only as good as the data fed to it. Products such as Flash Remoting, FLEX, Lazlo and other products are bringing the data. Expect more from Breeze and other products to help bind finesse and information.

1: A new version of Flash? Oooh, that would be cool. I really want to see Macromedia give Microsoft and Longhorn a run for it’s money.