In this post I want to share some of my observations and ideas regarding the development of flash templates industry. More and more I meet articles stating that Adobe Flash technology has no future and it will be totally substituted by HTML5. I think that the word that describes this statement the best is “bullshit”. We have already heard same about Ajax, jQuerey , now it’s HTML5 turn.

I was always wondering why people use Macs instead of PCs. It’s more expensive, less functional, more proprietary. The trick is in white plastic and the fact people just feel happy sitting in front of nice box with smooth lines thinking they are possessing a piece of art. They think it’s beautiful. Same thing with Adobe Flash technology. Who cares that Adobe Flash in passed 3 years turned into programming monster which it was never supposed to be. Nobody cares it is not SEO friendly, it’s damn expensive and extremely difficult to update for average user. No one cares until it’s beautiful. That’s the main reason why Flash will survive and beat all sorts of new coming HTML6, 7, 10….

Now lets take a look at major industry players. I would say that in passed 2-3 years they divided into 2 “teams “competing with each other and every member of the team. So these teams are large template providers like TemplateMonster, FlashMint, CBMCard on one hand and flash stock websites like FlashComponents, ActiveDen, iStockPhoto and some other less popular website on other hand.  Flash Stock websites provide relatively high quality and extremely inexpensive flash products appealing to many customers. These products are provided by freelance designers(like me) and as a rule cost in the range of $20-35 which is twice less than the most inexpensive product at templatemonster for example. In their turn flash template providers can give the customer much better technical support, wider range of services and complex flash product that will never be developed by single designer or flash developer. Good examples of such products are:

FlashMint CMS, MintEditor(desktop application for flash xml site editing)

TemplateMonster FlashMotor CMS, some intros with content management system.

CBMCard Admin templates for photo and video portals.

Thus it’s pretty difficult to judge who’s gonna be the winner, but one thing is for sure – fair competition gives premium quality, monopoly brings lack of quality and support.

Another fact which is getting more and more obvious is that the future of the industry is in Flash content management systems. The customers don’t want to buy expensive software and edit tons of ActionScript code. Every one wants simple and intuitive admin interface allowing to make all necessary changes to the templates. FlashMint was the 1st to introduce CMS for flash templates, after that templatemonster created flex based dynamic galleries(pretty awkward solution) and now they are promoting their next generation of flash CMS - FlashMoto CMS Templates. FancyCMS boasts to launch brand new advanced flash CMS with full e-commerce support, flash SEO support and extended site management features. Let’s hold on and see, but I am sure it’s only the beginning of long and exciting fight.