Top Flash Trends for 2010

Another fresh new year is here. Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start. But if to look more closely into this, Year’s end is, per se, neither an end nor a beginning but a going on. The tendencies that were outlined in the past 2009 year will definitely be developing in 2010.

And today we would like to talk about the latest trends in Flash technology that will enter the Flash fight arena and have all chances to be popular this year.

So, what will be trendy in 2010?

General info about Adobe Flash use at the end of 2009

Flash, along with other Internet technologies, have a long road left to travel. And we see new horizons for Flash works. Since Adobe Flash first release, the program has developed into a world-class authoring tool getting more popular among web professionals. The technologies Flash developers like using most are the video capabilities and the ability to load multiple types of external data, in particular images, XML and video.

From now Flash-built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. Flashers offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization.

Flash provides much more possibilities for developers: the ability to create a gaming experience with a truly cinematic quality, build the original navigation structure, display photos in an innovative manner and etc.  So, nowadays Flash does help to produce functional Web sites that serve their purpose, instead of sluggish interfaces cluttered by unnecessary elements. And here we can also point out another tendency: as soon as websites increase in their importance as a company’s storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending interfaces also increases.

The leading Flash trends for 2010

1. Flash Player 10.1 with NVIDIA Support
Adobe and NVIDIA deliver Rich Web experiences on netbooks and mobile devices built with NVIDIA® GPUs. Both companies have been working together to improve performance of Flash Player 10.1 by taking advantage of GPU video and graphics acceleration on a wide range of mobile Internet devices. And by the end of 2009 users could already download a beta of Flash Player 10.1.

Summing everything up, we may say that due to the new version of Flash Player, NVIDIA ION-based netbooks and nettops now can deliver the kind of smooth Flash technology based video previously found only on higher-end PCs.

2. Augmented Reality in Flash
Augmented Reality (AR) is a relatively new technology that blends a live video stream and computer-generated graphics in real time combining real world with virtual one and thus, creating a mixed reality. Augmented reality is registered in 3D. To make merging more consistent, virtual 3D images should be attached to real-world locations in visually realistic way. A real world coordinate system, independent from the camera, should be restored from camera images. With FLARToolKit, an AS3 port of the Open Source library ARToolKit, you can detect a marker from an input image and calculate the camera position in 3D space. Another words, an ARToolKit maker helps you make the shapes that are required for FLAR to create visualizations.

3. Adobe AIR 2.0
Flash users are waiting eagerly for Adobe Air 2.0 arrival. And by the end of the year 2009 the beta has been released. The final version of AIR 2 is expected in the first half of 2010. Built on the success of AIR 1, AIR 2 enlarges the range of its capabilities. As Adobe Labs says, the new version includes the following features:
* support for the detection of mass storage devices.
* Advanced networking capabilities like secure sockets, UDP support, and the ability to listen on sockets.
* Support for native code integration.
* The ability to open a file with its default application.
* Multi-touch and gesture support.
* New APIs for access to raw microphone data.
* Webkit update with HTML5/CSS3 support.
* Global error handling.
* Improved cross-platform printing.
* Improved security and support for enterprise and government standards.

4. Flash 10 Multi-Touch Support
With a rapid development of multi-touch enabled hardware, some software makers “rushed” into building applications that take full advantage of the multi-touch functionality. So did Adobe Flash. Their Flash Player 10.1 will offer support for multi-touch feature bringing creative control and expressiveness to the browsing experience. As we want everything to be communicated in a ‘touchy feely’ way, Flash gives us more freedom in designing for the senses.

5. Flash Player 10 on Mobile Devices
There is no secret for everybody that a new version of Flash Player 10.1 supports and delivers full Flash player experience to mobile devices, smartphones, Pocket PCs, and etc. The main difference with previous version of Flash is that full Flash Player, instead of Flash Lite will now be supported across mobile platform. The mobile devices with implemented and built-in Flash 10.1 will likely be available for mass market purchase in the first half of 2010.

6. The Mass Creation of Flash Content Management Systems.
Flash websites are mainly used as promo sites and have appeared in great demand among advertising agencies, design studios, photographers and etc. Such websites are not about delivering lots of information, so Flash fits the project perfectly. Alongside with this, an urgent need to create an advanced Flash content management system has aroused. Such Flash CMS first of all is aimed at the end users to simplify the publication of web content.

Although the site is 100 per cent Flash, the client has in-house control of updating text and images, thanks to Flash CMS. Even with such a high level of interactivity, the site is easy to maintain.

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Flash design is a profession that requires you to learn new things. If you stop learning, you’ll be obsolete. At the same time, as Flash has become a much more complex program, there’s still room for creativity. So, we wish you many fresh creative ideas, persistence in learning new things and of course, many excellent prospects in 2010!