I got together with Rob (another Rob, not my roommate [1]), a graphic designer to help him design an interface [2] in Flash-5. [3] One of the things we worked on was sending information from the server back to the Flash … animation? Interface? Thing-a-ma-bob? I'm not entirely sure what to call it … applet maybe but that's usually reserved for Java.
While Flash is an interesting application (even Mark is doing Flash) it really isn't suited (in my opinion) for major user interfaces like what Rob is trying to do; there are still too many bugs in the Flash-5 player (for instance, variable text can't be rescaled on the fly) and the Flash-5 development environment.
And Mark's assesment that the Flash-5 development environment as being annoying is true—I had a hard time figuring out how to navigate my way through the system (“Okay, where was that code we just wrote? No, it's not that button … @@%##$@$@# select the text box you #@#$@#$@ … okay where's the list of objects again? Okay, there's the list now where is the text box? Aaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!”).
[1] http://www.tragic-smurfs.com/