Amazon Window Shop
Flash. Few technologies inspire such extreme reactions.
First the bad. 40kb Flash banner ads riddle the web, clogging up everyone's bandwidth. Let's not forget the sheer horrors that were site pre-loaders (any sites still using these should be instantly banned to the way-back machine).
But Flash is also an ideal solution for quite a few things. For all the hype of HTML 5, Flash won't be supplanted any time soon from it's perch of video dominance. Any animation or graphic effects are still smoother and easier to achieve in Flash then Javascript, regardless of which new library you may be using. And Flash can still be a great choice for powering Rich Interface Applications.
The danger, of course, is picking an extreme in the first place. Flash is just like every other tool available to a web designer- if done well and meant to fulfill a larger purpose, it can be a strong option.
The Amazon Window Shopper is a very good example of Flash done properly. The site fills your entire monitor and seems much more like software than a traditional website. The interface is intuitive and simple to learn. Multiple media options integrate seamlessly with the navigation.
Most importantly, it's a blast to use. You can easily browse through way more options than what the traditional amazon.com browsing experience offers. This is brilliant from Amazon's perspective- users are being exposed to countless more purchasing opportunities.
So let's not consign Flash to merely video or banner ads. Flash has the ability to open up new ideas and interfaces that can pierce through our traditional notions of how a website should work.
All you need is the right idea.