Animation is big, no doubt about that and it will probably continue to gain momentum as internet speeds and more platforms that support animated content continue to be developed. That being said, it can rightly be expected that flash web designers will be with us for a long time to come. In addition, you may just need to use some of their services in the near future. New applications that target animated content providers are also being launched that make the whole business of animations both lucrative and quite user-friendly. Flash CS3, Flash CS4 and Flex have revolutionized the flashing experience and flash web designers just got additional tools as part of their toolkit in the web design endeavors. What though is so exciting about these tools?
Looking at Flash CS3 and CS4, the coding part where designers use ActionScript has been upgraded. New ways of animating objects and using few lines of code have been developed. Flex allows for the entire development phase to be done in a more professional way. In the design phase, flash web designers write code that can be reused, determine how the application will interact with the web page, how the flash application will access application resources and other design phase development issues. The configure phase involves configuring the run-time to determine how the application will access remote data servers. The build phase involves the process of compiling, debugging and testing of the application. The Deploy phase involves ensuring all the assets like the XML data files as well as the video and image files to be used by the application are in place and finally the secure phase defines the security issues to be taken. As you can see, professionalism just got upgraded when it comes to flash web designing.
With flash, it is also possible to integrate any server environment like J2EE. This Java environment allows for the designing of complex rich web applications that almost rival their desktop counterparts. In fact, Flex is able to develop applications that can run on the desktop, making it a very likely competitor for designing platform-free applications that can be run anywhere. Flash web designers however need only rely on flash to create websites. The integration of other programming languages like JavaScript allows flash applications and websites to be more dynamic. Thus most flash web designers are experts in other programming languages as well.