My Desperate Plea

Ok. A bit of a rant this morning.

Why is there no out-of-the-box solution for generating dynamic SWFs on a web server. People, there is a huge need out there! In the past month I've had two potential clients ask me about this capability. People are dying to get customizable audio, images, and video onto the web, and Flash is clearly the killer app for doing this -- if for no other reason than because it's so pervasive. I hope I'm missing something, because it feels like at the moment we're stuck with a bunch of confusing, sloppy-looking solutions.

In the old days, we had Macromedia Generator. I never used it at the time, but it seemed pretty promising. Why was it discontinued without a suitable replacement?

Now Adobe makes Flex. But should I even bother with it when Flex 2 might be coming out any day now, and is sure to be the greatest thing since sliced bread? At least that's what all the hype says. Unfortunately, I find the whole thing somewhat perplexing. Yes, I've spent some time looking at the docs, and yes AS 3.0 sounds cool. But why can't anyone clearly explain what Flex is in one sentence, without lots of buzzwords and diagrams? I just want to build a SWF from XML. Is that too much to ask? Most disheartening at all, I read in Macromedia's Flex book that SWFs generated from Flex won't work unless they're running on a Flex server.

Then we have SWF Scout, which has a really nice feature set (if you're running .Net). But... what's up with their site? Why are there no Testimonials, Discussion Boards or even an About the Company page? Why does their site give me the impression that no one is actually using their product??? I can't convince a client may know next to nothing about Flash to invest in an unproven technology like this.

The same goes for the Open Souce solutions floating around. They don't seem ready for Prime Time. I don't mean to be too hard on people who've accomplished a lot with limited resources. But we need a rallying cry. So here goes...

Come on people! There's serious money to be made by whoever can solve this need in a clean, affordable way. I see no reason why we don't have custom, re-distributable SWFs all over the place. Sent in emails. Viewed on cell phones. Posted on social networking sites. There are millions of potential Flash authors out there. (Not developers. Just regular people.) We just need to give them the right tools to make it happen.

If someone has found a solution that's working for them, please let me know. I'd be thrilled to hear about it.