In honor of the tenth anniversary of Flash, we asked 10 Flash developers from around the world to tell us how Flash has made an impact on their personal and professional lives. Answering 10 questions each, they relate how they learned what they know today about the technology, how they've used it in the past and how they use it today, which features they love most, how Flash has enhanced their creativity, what lessons Flash has taught them—and which tip they'd like to pass on to other developers—and, finally, what the future holds for Flash in the coming decade.

We know that complications arise when labeling people (or asking them to label themselves) as "designers" or "developers." The people profiled here identify as developers but may also have an interest in design. To read what self-identified designers have to say about their history with Flash, check out the Design Center's companion piece for even more interesting perspectives on this most amazing software.

Andreas Heim

Years of Flash experience: 8

How did you get started in Flash?

The year was 1998 and I was learning Macromedia Director for a school project, an edutainment CD-ROM. At the time, I was looking for an internship related to animation. I ended up finding Smashing Ideas, which was using Flash for their website and had used it to create cartoons. They asked me to check out the public beta of Flash 3 to prepare myself for the internship. When I arrived in Seattle, they showed me the ropes. Glenn Thomas, in particular, became my mentor in the use of Flash's interactive capabilities. That consisted mainly of gotoAndStop but it was enough to build simple games.

I have never looked back. I've made a living using Flash ever since. What I know about Flash today is from years of experience, some very helpful insights from the Flash engineers, and the Flash community through blogs, articles, and books.

How have you used Flash in the past and how do you use it today?

Things certainly have changed a lot since I started using Flash. Back then, in Flash 3 and even Flash 4, you had to click scripts together using a pop-up menu. There was no text editor. I learned to use a Wacom tablet—first to draw, which really wasn't my strength, and then also to program. As I have improved my scripting capabilities, I have found myself spending less and less time directly in the Flash authoring environment and more time working in an external code editor after setting up a file initially and passing it off to a designer. Yet Flash Player is still what makes all of our work possible.

What does Flash mean to you personally?

Flash has played a rather significant role in my personal life ever since I first got in touch with it. For starters, I moved across the globe for it—from Stuttgart, Germany, to Seattle, Washington, where I also found my wife. Over the years I have met a number of great people through Flash who became dear friends. I also got to travel to areas of the world most people only dream about. My favorite memory is traveling to Australia in 2000 for the Paralympic Games in Sydney.

What does Flash mean to you professionally?

My entire career so far is basically based on Flash. I started as an intern in 1998 when Flash started to walk. I'm still with the same company, Smashing Ideas. Back then they had just moved out of a basement into an office. Now we have over 50 employees, and I'm overseeing a team of 10 Flash developers. Flash has enabled me to express my creativity and work with the most talented people in a place that's like a family. What more could you ask for?

What has Flash taught you about software development and the web?

Personally, the most important thing that Flash has taught me is that it can actually be fun to be a developer. I had picked up some programming skills early on, but I really wasn't looking forward to the prospect and daily life of being a "corporate developer." With Flash, I can enjoy the creative output and work with great artists, not against them.

A great user experience starts when people who visit a website are easily able to complete the task for which they came—and then want to come back for more. In my eyes, Flash is by far the best tool to create these experiences. Yes, Flash has been abused (remember "skip intro"?) but it was also the first, to my knowledge, to take advantage of one of the core behaviors of the web—the progressive (then called "streaming") download.

It is important to give users quick visual feedback that something is happening once they click on something. Even as broadband becomes more predominant than before, the ability to see things happening very quickly and be able to interact with them is one of those things that Flash "got" from the beginning—and enabled it to transform the web into what it is today.

Which feature(s) of Flash amazed you the most, and why?

It's hard to pick a favorite feature because there are so many! In the beginning it was certainly the ability to show rich content quickly. When basic scripting capabilities were introduced in Flash 4, I was incredibly amazed by the new opportunities.

Looking back now and comparing those features available just the blink of an eye ago to what we have now may seem silly, but in "Internet years" and my personal years, that was quite an amazing milestone. Since then, the most outstanding feature has been the addition of video. There was video online before, but it was never fully integrated with the experience. Especially now that we can have transparent video, there are so many more creative options to choose from.

How has Flash enhanced your creativity?

Flash has always challenged me to work within constraints and to beat them to create things that were thought impossible. Constraints such as limited file sizes and low processing performance forced us to stay focused and become ingenious. With the mobile frontier and Flash Lite now upon us, I see history repeating itself: How can I create something compelling with something so little?

Being able to visualize a creative vision quickly has helped us tremendously over the years. It helps both developers and designers to see and check their progress, and make changes as necessary. This gives us the freedom to try different things, and pick the best one, rather than settling on one idea and not knowing what it will look like until it's complete.

What's your favorite Flash tip or lesson?

"When in doubt, wait a frame." I'm not sure who coined that phrase but for as long as I've been programming in Flash, it still often proves to be the solution to an inexplicable problem.

Or "_root is the source of all evil." I'm also not sure who first said that. Basically, _root looks convenient when you first start programming in Flash but it can quickly turn into a nightmare because _root can change.

What cautionary tale can you relate to other developers?

Today Flash has so many features, it is much faster, and a lot of people have broadband. It's easy to forget that there are still constraints when you start out a project. You run into them as soon as you're almost done. We just had that happen to us. We were ready to deliver a project, but it had ballooned to 3 MB and everything had to be loaded upfront. It couldn't go live like that, so we had to re-engineer it to modularize the content and load it piece by piece. Load management, as painful as it can be, is still very essential for developing engaging content that users will actually see.

Where will Flash be 10 years?

Ten years from now I believe that Flash will truly be ubiquitous, not just on the web but in many aspects of daily life. Chances are high that for any device and screen you interact with, you'll be dealing with Flash. As Flash runs on more and more devices and platforms, including Linux, it won't really matter any more to the end user what powers their favorite content because it will run essentially everywhere. As content creators, we have truly become cross-platform developers.

One thing will not change, though: We'll still be out there working to create better experiences using Flash.

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