For creating a highly animated banner, Flash is probably still the best solution. However, it is not completely supported anymore; some users prefer not to install it and the popular iOS doesn't have it at all.

So, creating fallbacks for Flash banners is a very good idea to make sure you display a visual for everyone and, LazyFallback -a free Adobe AIR application- handles this process well.

By simply drag 'n' dropping any number of SWF files to the application, it generates JPG alternatives for each of them quickly.

LazyFallback is a simple application which doesn't have many setting and only 2: defining the moment of the Flash animation for fallback generation and quality of JPGs.

P.S. What would possibly be better is the ability to get animated GIFs besides the JPGs.

Using a Flash file inside web pages normally requires several options to be mentioned from width-height to "the Flash version required" or its quality.

And, the popular JavaScript library SWFObject eases Flash usage by offering a standards-friendly method.

Embed-SWF is a project which provides an informative and easy-to-use interface for generating the required SWFObject code.

It allows us to set all required parameters, even the less-used ones like seamlesstabbing or swfliveconnect and outputs the code to be copy-pasted for a quick integration.

Few days ago, Adobe has launched the Flash Player 11 which is a milestone for the product as the new Stage3D API that allows up to 1,000 times faster rendering compared to Flash Player 10.

It focuses on the 3D content and the widely-used 2D content won't be getting the advantages of this new feature.

Starling Framework, a pure ActionScript 3 library, aims to fill this gap by rendering all content through GPU.

The framework has a familiar API which makes it very easy to use for Flash developers. Even the live-Flash-websites can be improved with it just by exchanging the native Flash classes with their Starling equivalents.

Flashmo, a well-known website sharing free Flash files, has recently released new open source Flash resources.

They are all built with AS3, the galleries have touch support on mobile phones and, besides using them, their sources are a good way of improving skills.

One of them is an mp3 player which can display a playlist and play the items one-by-one or it has a "mini" version which can still play multiple songs but doesn't show the playlist.

The list is fed with an XML file that has the info about the song + artist names and the location of the mp3 file (so, files can be located in different folders).

Another resource is a coverflow-like image slider where you can drag (with touch support) and browse through the items.

Every image can point to different URLs and the database is again an XML file.

And, a 3D spiral gallery which is built with Papervision3D and Tweener.

You can drag up/down or left/right to move around thumbnails, use mouse wheel to zoom in/out, double-click on stage to toggle fullscreen.

For a complete customization, settings can be edited from an XML file.

There are also other new resources like 3D curve gallery or 3D touch ring.

Google has recently announced the launch of Google Swiffy which is a free to use web application for converting SWF files into HTML5.

It supports many common SWF features such as vector graphics, embedded fonts, images, timeline animation and basic ActionScript 2.0.

The output works only in WebKit browsers as it includes some SVG features that are not supported by other browsers.

The usage is very simple: just upload the SWF file and Swiffy will display the HTML5 result where you can "save as" the page and insert into any website with an <iframe> tag.

P.S. The code generated by Swiffy is pretty complex and hard to edit. You'll still need the .FLA file for editing the source.

WordPress is, without a doubt, a very powerful CMS application which makes creating and managing any type of website pretty easy.

Press2Flash is an open source AS3 framework that helps Flash developers to integrate their Flash-powered websites with the backend of this awesome CMS.

It uses XML for communicating with the WordPress API and there are no hacks or workarounds (so the system stays secure).

Besides creating, editing and deleting the contents, there is also support for other functions like featured images, tag cloud and more.

Flash is losing blood, that's for sure and there is a chance that you may have already quit using it. However, it is still the most powerful platform on creating animations for the web and there can be cases that we need it.

Giotto is a free tool (Windows-only), focused on designers rather than developers, for creating Flash animations easily.

It has a Flash-like but a little simplified user interface that helps you feel comfortable using it  with ready-to-use effects, ability to draw or import shapes and built-in animations (all without coding).

If you prefer to dive into ActionScript code, there is support for that too (but sadly, only AS1 and AS2)

For many web designers and developers, Firebug is probably one of most vital tools while building and debugging web apps.

FlashFirebug is an extension to Firebug which aims to fill this gap for AS3 Flash files by easing Flash debugging as easy as HTML and JavaScript.

Besides Firebug, it requires Flash Player content debugger 10 or higher and enables us to inspect display list, change properties and see the warnings, errors + traces for any Flash file.

It can also work with multiple Flash files on a web page and display the elements inside the file as a directory tree.

The extension is designed to perform fast and, optionally, it can be disabled to be used only when it is needed.

After Flash being blocked by iOS and the increasing popularity of HTML5-JavaScript with the new features offered, it was expected that Adobe will come up with something new to help Flash survive.

Here it is: Wallaby; it is a new tool/technology by Adobe for converting FLA files into HTML5.

Using this new tool, designers/developers will still be able to keep creating with Flash and their HTML-converted artwork will be compatible with any device including iOS.

Wallaby is still experimental, doesn't support 100% of Flash features but it seems to be a "very good news" for Flash fans.

Jaris is an open source and JavaScript controllable FLV player that comes with many features.

It has the most standard controls like play/pause, volume, full-screen and users can switch between multiple aspect ratios.

The player supports both HTTP pseudostreaming + RTMP streaming and can communicate with the Youtube API.

For further customization, a poster image can be shown on initial load, any logo can be permanently attached and control colors can be changed.

Also, Jaris can be managed with the help of keyboard shortcuts.