Keith Peters was given the difficult task of having to follow Miha’s riveting presentation, yet Keith managed to deliver a heartwarming retrospective on the evolution of the Flash Platform. He compiled an awesome reel of standout Flash sites from 1999 (ancient times in the Flash world) which invoked nostalgia within myself and I presume within the hearts and minds of the other creative thinkers who were fortunate enough to have lived through those times.

Keith also did a glorious job of ripping Jakob Nielson a new one, for lack of a better description. Yet somehow he managed to do so in a professional, and courteous manner… never directly insulting him. In order to illustrate Jakob’s obvious lack of artistic perspective, all Keith had to do was pull up Jakob’s notorious “Flash: 99% Bad” article alongside Jakob’s current site, useit.com; both of which were decidedly boring and virtually nondescript. Hardly the type of website that impresses even the most novice rich media artisan.

Keith’s talk wasn’t just a Nielson bashing session, he followed up by sharing his perspective on Flex, which can be summarized by his statement that, “Flex is very good for Flash”. Although he was quick to point out that he personally is more of a Flash nerd than a Flex nerd.

Lastly, he delved into some of the latest and greatest features available in Flash 10, including bones, which basically enable kinetic motion from within the IDE. Some other noteworthy features include: tweening enhancements, drawing API improvements, lightweight 3D (not a replacement for PaperVision3D, but a suitable approach for projects where PV3D is overkill), a new text engine, pixel bender, and sound API enhancements (create/manipulate sound in Flash, one could create audio synthesizers in Flash).