With the iPhone and the iPad gaining so much popularity, one has to wonder what the future of the Flash platform will be. We are used to seeing Flash animations all over the web and probably don’t even realize how much Flash content we’re actually consuming. Personally, I really like the touch that Flash adds to a website. But on the other end of the spectrum, I cringe when I see a full website done in Flash and I have to wait for a menu item to unfold before my eyes with a huge animitronic sound as it makes it’s presence on the screen. But that’s not Flash’s fault, that’s simply someone taking it too far. Overall I like the idea of Flash and the benefits it brings to us on the web.

Now, with Steve Jobs saying that the iPhone and iPad will not support the Flash player, one has to wonder what impact this has on the future of the product. Me personally, I’ve put future Flash projects on hold as I wait for the dust to settle on this one. I try to accomplish all I can with jQuery for simple animations and leave it at that.

HTML5 is very promising and it could be the white horse that comes in and levels the playing field, but I’m afraid we’re not going to see that anytime soon. IE8 doesn’t support the ever so important Canvas tag of HTML5 so we’ll have to wait at least for IE9, and then we all know how long it is taking for IE6 to go away… ugh…

Let’s hope something changes at Apple and we have our long beloved Flash player for many more years!