One by one our trusted Office apps are going web based. The latest I’ve seen is Gliffy - a nice little replacement for MS-Visio. (Read review)

So we have the word processor Writely; a spreadsheet app from Google Spreadsheets - which leaves much to be desired, the aforementioned Gliffy, and I’m sure many others that I’ve not heard of.

Personally I find Gmail to be the greatest competitor to MS. With the added feature that you can now use your own domain name through Gmail and of course Gmail has a built in calendar and chat client with voice capabilities.

What we are missing is a suite of apps all in one nice location where all the files are stored on a server somewhere. I want to keep my Photoshop files on the local hard drive just because they are typically very large but most everything else could be plopped into a server where I can access them from anywhere. I’ve already started using Adobe’s JamJar to store my Flash (FLA/AS) files so that I can work on them at home and work.

The question isn’t if but when someone will produce a serious suite of browser based Office apps. What I’m interested in is wheather it will be AJAX or Flex/Flash that takes control of the UI.

FLASH vs html

Lets talk about the things that Flash can do that HTML can’t: (in no particular order)

• Video. There is no way to put video into an HTML page without a plugin. Flash is by far the best option for web based video.You want proof that Flash is the best video option. How’s this: Google video uses Flash. Do you think they really wanted to use Flash? I have no doubt that they talked at length about their options and I’m sure that they seriously considered writing their own plugin and codec. But in the end the realized that Flash was just too good and too easy to use.
• Testing. If you’re producing a DHTML/AJAX site then you will have to factor in a good chunk of time for testing and the subsequent debugging. This process alone can take up 50% of your dev time if things go badly. Testing with Flash is much easier to do during development. This is where the plugin really pays off because if it works with one browser then it works with all. (Okay, I have had a few weird things happen between different browsers but that’s the exception rather than the rule with HTML.) Case in point: my FireFox browser crashes about once a week while using Gmail and they tested the hell out of that site. These things happen in the DHTML/AJAX world but not so much with Flash.
• Fonts. With html you can use styles of fonts but you’re limited to what the user has on their machine. With Flash, you can use any font you like.
• Accessibility. Flash has actually been ill considered as being handicap accessible. If done correctly it can be way more handicap friendly than any html based page ever could. All it takes is a little planning and a little extra work.
• PNGs. You want full PNG support with transparency? Yeah, put that PNG into an <image> tag and see what you get.
• Datagrid. Last time I checked there was no datagrid tag in HTML. Sure, you can put dynamic data into a table but you want the user to be able to sort that data on the client side then you’ll be using Flash.
• Forms. HTML/Javascript and forms go hand in hand but Flash can do it better. You have more options and can do much more on the client side.
• Usability. Flash gets railed on for poor usability. That’s like the hole “Gun’s don’t kill people. People kill people argument.” If you’re building a complex website and usability is paramount to you then don’t look any further than Flash. Anything that can be done in HTML can be done in Flash but Flash can offer so many other degrees of freedom in the design process that can aid in usability.
• Aesthetics. The coolest, most dynamic websites all use Flash. When was the last time you saw a blockbuster movie’s website that was done in anything other that Flash? That would be the late 90s.
• Site updates. I’d say this is really pretty much a tie with HTML/server side code. All it takes is planning. Bottom line is that you can make a site in Flash that can be easily updated if you know what you’re doing.
• Web Applications. Have you seen any of the new Web App sites that are as cool as Goowy.com? Have you seen any browser based games built with DHTML? I didn’t think so. Flash has become the leading platform for web based projects that are highly complex.

HTML is a plugin
You have no idea how many times I’ve suggested using Flash for a website or part of a website to a manager or client and had them use the dreaded, “Flash? No, it requires a plugin so I don’t want to use it.” Here’s what wrong with that logic.

1. HTML is a browser plugin as well. Yeah, it is. It just happens to be hard coded into the browser which was a horrible idea. You see, a browser is an application whose main job is to communicate with your systems network. It also has added features like storing bookmarks, adding controls to move back and forth through your browsing history, things like that. But a browsers ability to render HTML comes from a parser/rendering engine.Now from the very beginning that parser/rendering engine was built into the browser application. That was a bad decision because it limited how a browser could be updated. HTML isn’t a static language. It’s gets updated from time to time. In the mid 90s when all this was brand new things were changing pretty fast. For instance when CSS came out you had to update your browser to use it. It may take a year or more for the browser to be updated. It would have been much better if you could have just updated your parser/renderer.
2. Okay, HTML was built into the browser but Flash was shipped with just about every one of those browsers. In fact if Flash wasn’t built into the download/installation of a browser people might think that it was broken.
3. Flash is more ubiquitous that HTML. It really is. Flash can run on a large number of mobile devices and that number is growing very fast. Can HTML run on your cell phone? Probably not but in 2 years you’ll have a hard time buying a cell phone that won’t run Flash.

AJAX vs Flash, an SEO perspective

There is still a perception out there by some web developers that Flash isn’t a serious tool for creating dynamic websites.

For years the main knock against Flash is that it isn’t search engine friendly. That’s true. It can be overcome to a degree but it is a limitation. That limitation has lead a large crowd of web developers to pass over Flash as a possible option for their websites.

But when Web 2.0/AJAX came along many of these developers jumped all over it. Which is great. Utilizing AJAX is a huge improvement to the functionality of many web sites out there. I’ve seen some incredible work done. What gets me is that AJAX is just as limited in SEO terms as Flash is. But, AJAX isn’t Flash so it’s okay.

So if you’re going to build a site that is going to rest on dynamic data there is no reason to ignore Flash. Not so say that Flash will be the best option for every site. One good reason to use AJAX is that you might have a house full of HTML/CSS/Javascript experts on hand but no one who is solid in Flash. Well, that pretty much makes your decision for you. But if you’re looking to have a site built and you don’t come with any baggage then Flash pretty much stands out. There are a growing number of developers out there who can leverage the power of Flash and the Flash player continues to grow more and more powerful with more features and the adoption rate is so fast that it even astounds the guys at Macro’dobe.

The Flash platform has come a long way. But there is one big hurdle left: better integration with search engines. That’s something that Flash and AJAX both have with.

I created a test site to see how a spider might index a Flash based website. There isn’t much to on the site. Just some reviews of SciFi movies and such. But the site is bookmarkable. So far it hasn’t been crawled or if it has it doesn’t return anything at Google. When I do a site search it doesn’t bring back any results.

If you check it out you can see that it is about as simple as any Flash site could be. Everything is text, including the links. No MovieClips to confuse things. So I’d consider this a best case scenario for indexing - if it would just get crawled.

If you feel like burying a link on your site to the SciFi.VectorSpaceStudios.com site then please do so. Maybe getting a few more links out there to it would help.

Of course anything that I discover I’ll report here. My dream is that it will get indexed by Google and I’ll be able to click a link there that will take me into the site to the content that I searched for. If that happens I’ll make the FLA for the site available so others can follow suit. I’d love to see people out there developing sites in Flash that are indexed and bookmarkable. That would help Flash clear it’s last major hurdle - until we find something else. :-)