I recently spoke to a friend of mine about the usage of Flash in the South African market. Being in London I kinda felt I needed some inside info before I can even attempt to write anything about the industry. Regardless of the fact that I used to work as an Actionscripter in SA for a few years. Spending my time on little intro's and banner ads, hoping some car manufacturer will ask us to do a campaign microsite, wasn't exaclty keeping me on the edge of my seat. So you may ask why I would want to write anything about a country's industry that I am not living in. That is a perfectly good question with a very simple answer. South Africa is scared of Flash.

Let's face it. Mention Flash to any South African Corporate and they break out in a sweat. Mention it to any computer programmer and they tell you they switch off their images, javascript and plugins all together cause it "makes things faster". Flash annoys them cause it's flashy. I'm over exaggerating but only to an extent. A recent post in one of the ghost town digital forums of the southern tip talks of waiting for stuff to download is just plain annoying. I love the fact that this person rambles on about how Flash should be banned and all that Nielsen jazz. The rest of the world should all stop using flash, cause it hurts my eyes. I digress.

Dial-up, ADSL, ISDN, I don't care. I did business in SA on a dial-up for over 2 years. And even then I still loved looking at flash sites. Heck I even built a few. Ok they were intro's but I still loved looking at my little percentage animation preloader. Maybe it's more than just the speed of the internet, maybe it's do with the absolute fear that maybe, just maybe some creative could be building a site. In the world of development this is just wrong. Where do all these people get their ideas from? - Flash it is bad. I know they exist all over the world but for some reason I always find them on forums in SA talking exactly the kind nonsense that the above person was. If you switch of images and Javascript to view your web content, that is your choice. And a mighty brave on too. But as a visual person, I like to flip through the pages looking at the pictures most of the time. Is that so wrong? Now you might be saying, hang on, if I switch off my flash I won't be able to see the content? Is this really the technology's fault? The same way that all sites should be developed for or have an accessible version, if it doesn't, is that not the content provider's responsibility?

I stopped reading bizcommunity.com among other sites. I made this decision as I got tired of reading articles in the Digital section that might as well be posted on ITWeb. In fact some of them probably are. As many other SA flash developers might tell you, there aren't many sites (SA) out there that offer online news about development, standards, best practices, new trends, and this all for South African flash developers. And it's not like there isn't anything happening. So we turn elsewhere, the interweb is world wide you know, and if I don't get my kicks for free I will go find them some place else right?

I get the feeling that Flash is not so big in SA. Use sparingly as voted for by most people visiting SA Web Awards website recently. Sparingly how, like your mother's Christmas fruit cake or like you are currently? You may or may not spot this rant coming from a mile away, if you did good on you, if you didn't try to keep up. I'm not saying that SA doesn't have any talent. On the contrary, SA has loads of talent. Some people make an international impact like Andries Odendaal and local companies are starting to produce really good work like Stonewall and Prezence to name but a few. I'm sure of the fact that there are loads of SA Actionscripters out there who absolutely feel exactly the same as I do.

Creatively I think SA is tip-top, we produce amazing advertisements, below the line through the line and above the line. Unfortunately there is just little appreciation for Flash designers turn pro and vice versa, as Flash has always required some amount of creativity. More so than other programming languages, dare I call Actionscript that. And another thing, Flash detection has improved quite a bit since that time of nothing displaying. More and more machines are released with the plugin already installed anyways. The penetration stats for the Flash Player argues quite a lot of cases in it's own right.

Flash websites are hard work, they require if not more planning than normal HTML sites. Information Architecture is a must and so is design. It should be treated with the same amount of respect. There is a new wave of Flash websites coming to your browser real soon. Websites with pixel perfect designs, .NET/PHP back-ends, front-ends built with trusted design patterns and micro-architectures like Cairngorm. All of this is in full swing and has possibly already penetrated (giggles) your browser, provided you have Flash turned on ofcourse.

C'mon where are all the Flash peoples at? It's time SA's corps wake up and smell the Flex framework that awaits them. Lets climb that proverbial ladder against the wall of silence. Ignorance is bliss, we know this.

The point is, Flash is here to stay. Deal with it.