Progressive Enhancement - Graceful Degradation on steriods

Following on from my last post, I was looking round today for a solution to a FlashObject issue we have on the LondonJobs website and found this article...

As a designer/developer moving away from Flash to more standards compliant methods and technologies, I was interested to read about how it's possible to meet the needs of all scenarios, including text based browsers, screen readers, non-javascript users, and Flash enabled users. If you have any interest in contemporary web design and reaching the maximum number of users, this is a top-notch article.

Developing Flash websites using progressive enhancement

Potential clouds for Flash and Silverlight

As a long time Flash enthusiast, I could be accused of being "anti-standards" in my past attitudes to the use of Flash content. 2 or 3 years ago, if you wanted to be certain your content/design/functionality would work regardless of platform, Flash would have been a good, solid option.

Today however, I am not so sure. As open source and standards complaince have gained momentum, so too has the ability to build rich interactivity into a web site or web application without the use of third-party add-ons or plug-ins.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been "out of circulation" from all things web for some time, and since my return to the fray, I have noticed just how far the web has come.

With technologies such as AJAX, JavaScript and CSS increasingly maturing, so the need for third-party technologies decrease. As a simple example, Flash used to be the only way to ensure your website could load external content on-the-fly and be sure it would work. Now, with AJAX, XML, JavaScript, and a little careful thought and planning you can combine content from any number of sources, natively, in the browser.

With this all in mind, I read an interesting article this evening on ZDnet about the possibility that Adobe (the company behind Flash, for those of you non-techie readers), and Microsoft (Silverlight) could potentially "have an agenda" (after all, as global companies, they ARE in it for the money) and that as developers we should not rely on theiier technology.

Maybe it's time to seriously consider the viability of using proprietory tools...click here to read the article and decide for yourself. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts...