Why Flash?

This is a personal question, not one to start a holy war about "Rich Internet Application Platforms". (Al Gore, no doubt, will next claim this his own.)

I have a blog about life in Tokyo (and my travels in Asia) that I wanted to spice up with some Flash slide shows of my photographs. I had seen "Audio Slide Shows" on the New York Times Website that I want to imitate. Basically, I want a National Public Radio style narrative over a slide show with some text to explain photographs.

I initially tried something called OpenLaszlo, but there is trouble regarding its drive to be Open Source. I get the feeling after trying for two months to create a stand-alone player that this project is Open Source and receives updates, but only when the group has a commercial contract to complete. Otherwise, a "community" for support is non-existent. Groups exist, but traffic is very low. A bad sign where traffic very defines successful Open Source projects. Imagine committing yourself to a proprietary Open Source technology on to have its primary project (and support base) die a slow death.

Further exploration of "rich Internet application platforms" lead me to realise that many were trying copy Adobe Flex. This is a juiced version of Flash that is built by writing XML files with some ActionScript sprinkled for effects. It smells a lot like AJAX inside Flash. What I need is less complex than these platforms cab support. Technology from three years ago is more than sufficient for my needs.

Also, there is an unspoken obstacle / hesitation in the Open Source community to support ActionScript 3.0, the most recent incarnation. There is wide and excellent support (some might say better than Mother Adobe) for the previous version, ActionScript 2.0. Instead of supporting version 3.0, many are writing their own new, similar languages. There is an Open Source ActionScript compiler called MTASC and GNU has targeted creating an Open Source Flash player as a priority project. (This is a big deal for GNU when Richard Stallman makes these declarations.) The GNU player, called Gnash, is targeting Flash 7+ features. Again, this is more than I need.