During my time as a freelancer, I was involved in quite a few "rich internet applications". I have always been prepared to recommend Flash, if and when it was a suitable solution. Today however, I seem to be recommending Flash based solutions less and less, instead, I lean more and more on the magic of the jQuery library.
While Flash undoubtedly has the upper hand when it comes to handling video, and audio, and "all singing, all dancing" multimedia sites, the recent maturing of JavaScript, and CSS has made me re-examine my toolset.
One of the most obvious reasons for my move to jQuery as my "weapon of choice", is that it is, in some ways, similar to ActionScript 2 coding, and, as a result, I can crack on without having to completely get my head around a new language.
I've never really been a bona-fide programmer, and my background is very much that of the self taught web designer, who learnt on the job, (including spending 2-3 yrs working exclusively with Flash) .
12 years on, I now work for one of the UK's biggest sites, as a "web designer" (You have no idea how much I hate that label) - although, my role seems to primarily be focussed on client-side "user experience" stuff, working with Flash for web based video delivery, and XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery etc, rather than true design work.
As a result, AJAX and jQuery in particular has made a huge difference to my work, in terms of speed of development and the ability to easily as rich interactivity via progressive enhancement.
If you've ever considered the similarities and differences between the two technologies, including how they stack up in terms of compatibility, SEO, mobile support, development tools and more, then you could do worse than check out this article on the Webdesigner magazine site.
Once you've read the article, have a look at the source code of the Webdesigner site. Surely a magazine that professes the be "The Ultimate Design Mag for the Web Professional" should have moved away from a site built with Dreamweaver, using the classic "MM_" JavaScript behaviours and tables based layout?
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