Good question.<p>Personally, I used to love flash, but they kept adding crap to it and the IDE environment kept getting crappier and crappier (in my experience), that it became more of a PITA than a benefit, and that was even before iOS.<p>For sure, in the right hands, and for the right things, it's a powerful multimedia tool, especially for desktop interactive presentations. I've built many such things in Flash (and Director!) myself.<p>Some advice: Go ahead and use Flash, but treat it like the component it is. Don't do your entire UI in Flash, just use it for media playback, and even then as a fallback for when HTML5 standards don't work on a given user's platform of choice. That way when things really get going, you don't have an entire application to re-write. For sure the main platform that will still be around in 10 years will be the web.<p>JavaScript isn't that much different from ActionScript, DOM elements aren't that much different from MovieClips.<p>I expect we are about to see really good interactive multimedia in the browser. As a fellow tool-builder, I've got something cooking myself. Curious about your project, any details you can share about why you feel Flash is essential?