Since I started writing the Flash^R section in 2004, it has occurred to me that I haven't written any tutorials about Flash "basics" for some time. Flash has changed quite a bit over the years, especially in the last few years with the explosion of publishing for mobile devices. With the release of Flash CS6, I have decided to start a new series of articles for the Flash beginner.

Flash, in its infancy, was a simple drawing and animation software. Its popularity soared due to the accompanying Flash Player software, a simple download which allow developers to design projects that would play consistently over many computer platforms and web browsers. At that time, Flash was the only way developers could be assured of this consistency.

Over the last decade, Flash has developed in to a robust authoring tool for web, mobile and desktop applications, games, motion graphics, interactivity and video. The types of animation that one can create with Flash has matured along with the software and with the addition of interactivity, Flash has moved into many areas of publishing.

Most of you know that the Flash Player has had some problems in web browsers on mobile devices, which has influenced the future of Flash and the direction Adobe^R has decided to take the software going forward.

Adobe has recently announced that it will be concentrating the future development of Flash on both the creation of non-mobile applications and stand-alone mobile applications, which do not require a mobile web browser. Flash developers can create stand-alone mobile applications with new AIR for Android and iOS publishing features.

Because Flash is still the leading software for the creation of animations and interactivity, many developers want to use the animations and other assets created in Flash for other types of projects. Besides continuing to be an authoring and publishing tool for applications, Flash will also concentrate on the newest web standards and the popularity of HTML5 and CSS3 for web and mobile devices. Going forward, Adobe will develop new features that will allow Flash developers to create assets in Flash to be exported for use in HTML and JavaScript based projects. With the release of Flash CS6, Flash has several new improvements for exporting your Flash assets in a format ready for these projects, such as exporting sprite sheets, png sequences and the CreateJS Toolkit.

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