Although Flash's heyday is long gone, let's not forget how much Flash brought to the table back in the late 90's and early 2000's: animation, sound, games, and

Although Flash's heyday is long gone, let's not forget how much Flash brought to the table back in the late 90's and early 2000's: animation, sound, games, and scaleable vector graphics and more. Macromedia's purchase of FutureSplash and subsequent release of the ubiquitous Flash player was a game changer for the web. Being able to download and play real games and experience interactive websites over slow dial-up connections was amazing and changed people's perspectives of the web. The FLV format also finally made streaming video a seamless experience for the end user; leading to the creation of Youtube and other streaming video services. Like all technologies, Flash was overused in places (pre-loaders, rotating 3d logos, banner ads) and Adobe's push towards Flex and RIA's took Flash away from of it's roots in animation for quite a few years. However, it will be interesting to see if the equivalent HTML5 stack follows a similar timeline-- minus the website pre-loaders...of course.