Will Flash Replace Old-Fashioned HTML Web Sites?

I got to thinking about this question after one of the journalists at DEMO remarked that Flash appears to be ever more viable as a powerful foundation for web applications. 

Today, AJAX applications are all the rage.  It's one of those buzzwords that every startup that wants to seem sexy makes sure they throw around.  Heck, a whole programming language and toolset has gained prominence based on it (Ruby on Rails). 

And certainly there's no doubt that AJAX makes web sites leaps and bounds more useful and easy to use.  But when you look at what a company like Wallop did with Flash ... that's simply not possible even with the most savvy AJAX coder at the keyboard.

I suspect a lot of folks don't find Flash all that sexy because it has been around so long (at least in web terms).  But it really does allow for much more powerful web apps to be created.  And I think in the right hands creates a much more appealing front end for the average user. 

For all that you can do with HTML, it really hasn't evolved as fast as the technology around it over the past 15 years.  One could argue that's because it is so simple and elegant it doesn't need to.  But I'm not so sure it isn't time to be giving serious thought to whether the future successful deployment of even more powerful web apps might not rely on Flash instead.

Tags: AJAX, Flash, DEMOfall, DEMO, HTML, web applications, web apps, Ruby on Rails