I've just wrapped up my part of tonight's presentation, "The TRUTH About Flash & Devices", and, as promised, I wanted to post my slides.

As usual with my talks, there's not many words on the slides — you really need to hear me give the talk to get the full effect. So, while I've posted the entire presentation deck, I did want to highlight a few key points.

First off, big thanks to Renaun Erickson (one of the nicest people in the world — much less in the cesspool of Las Vegas that he calls home), and his talk, Digital Fun in the Digital Home. I saw his talk at FITC Toronto last week — and his slides really helped me make my talk much more useful.

Now, what devices does Flash run on? Well, when you include AIR (the thing that allows you to convert Flash into an "app") and Adobe eBooks, it's an impressive set of support. True, Flash Player doesn't run on iPhone — but AIR does, as do Adobe eBooks (which you can create from Flash and/or InDesign).

Pictured another way, we see that we can use the Flash authoring tools (Flash Pro, Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder) to distribute content, apps and experiences TO ALMOST EVERY DIGITAL DEVICE IN THE WORLD.

To me, this is the incredibly compelling argument. The question isn't "Flash vs. XCode" or "Flash vs. Java" or "Flash vs. HTML5". With Flash, you can target all of these devices. So the question really is "Flash or Java and XCode and HTML5…"

With Flash, you can use the same tools, same assets, same code, same talent and same workflows to hit all of these devices. Without Flash, you need a separate technology, separate dev team, separate design assets — an entirely separate production workflow to hit each of your target devices.

In short, Flash remains the closest thing to a write-once-publish-everywhere technology in the world. Period. Hands down.

Now, the final key point I want to hit in this summary is this: performance. The performance of Flash and AIR apps on these devices isn't up to the same level as native code (apps that are written in the native language of the target device). That said, the performance of Flash continues to improve at a remarkable pace. Indeed, over the last 5 major releases of the Flash Player, we've seen a consistent track record of noticeable performance improvements. And, AIR 2.7 (supposedly due out sometime this summer) promises to improve the performance of AIR on mobile devices even further.

The simple truth is that Flash today is hundreds of times more powerful than the Flash of just a few years ago.

So, Flash is really powerful, and continues to see performance improvements with each release. You can get your Flash content and apps to most any device in the world. And you can do it with minimal cost and impact to your team and workflows.

There are no other alternatives or options that get you these benefits. Period. End of story. Everything else that you've heard is a lie.

This is why the talk refers to Flash as the Universal Language of Digital Experience.

Share and enjoy!

-r