Flash: a designer's tool?

[simisker]

Just a quick question for all you designers and developers out there before I head off to the pub:

Do you think that Flash is still a viable tool for designers... or, like me, do you feel that over the years it's become the domain of the developer?

Some points to fuel the debate:

- The 'artistic' tools haven't expanded much upon original Flash incarnations; it's not that far removed from MS Paint in terms of graphics.

- Actionscript has evolved aggressively through the years and is now a phenomenally powerful scripting tool... with all the complexity that an object-oriented language brings.

- creating a simple button involves delving into said actionscript. Should a designer even have to see code to accomplish such menial and essential tasks?

I look forward to your answers after an evening of proper ales. Have fun

 

[reflux]

My thoughts:

There are a lot of great designers who can use Flash very, very well, but it's massively complicated to use beyond basic animations and site design. I've tried to learn it several times, and I just can't get my head around it. It's so different from any other creative apps I've used and it's not nearly intuitive enough for me.

As far as the drawing tools go, they're stuck because Illustrator does all the same stuff but totally differently. However, if they copied the Illustrator toolkit into Flash, it would just be like Illustrator's slightly strange uncle.

So basically I wouldn't be surprised if Illustrator CS5 is a merge of the two. The two programs already have a lot of overlap and integration.