You can create iOS/Android/BlackBerry native apps using the Adobe authoring tool Flash Builder, in addition to desktop apps and browser apps. http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html

Right now, you can create a cross-platform app that runs on Windows, Mac, browser, iOS, Android, and the Blackberry Playbook using the Flex 4.5 sdk. They recently added the ability to use native extensions for Android and IOS. http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html

I just learned Flash a few weeks ago Apparently, not so much.

No, you are incorrect. AS3 is similar to JavaScript, but has many included classes and object oriented programming features that JS lacks

I agree that the web should be based on standards, but when it comes to applications, I think flash has a valid role to play.

You can develop flash using open source tools.

No, it's possible that video games increase violence in kids, but there are other factors which decrease violence in kids to a greater extent.

Yes, especially when it comes to smartphones, where the US generally lags about two years behind.

I am a php developer that does a lot of small to medium sized apps using zend framework. I don't plan on doing anything enterprise scale, my niche is what it is. Do you see any advantage to zend framework over ROR?

I would be more emotional about it if it caused a real life problem for me. In real life, when I make a site, I usually will define about a half dozen or so text styles, 20-30 html element styles, and about the same number of layout styles. The rest I leave up to Blueprint CSS. If I need to change things, I just do a search/replace in eclipse and everything seems to work out ok. Now if you want to see me get pissed off, we can talk about how the browsers implement the standards.

Because CSS is not a programming language. If you want, you can easily have the programming language of your choice generate CSS. You can also use multiple classes on any html element. You can use Javascript libraries to avoid those problems as well.

I'm not saying that CSS is perfect, or even great, because it isn't. But it is not intended to be a programming language, and you are basically complaining that it doesn't have the features of a programming language.

The reason is that it's better to favor composition over inheritance. In any relatively complex website, the scheme you describe would become unwieldy. It is better to assign general characteristics to outer elements, and then get more specific and you get deeper into the DOM (as a general rule). At least that's how I do it. I am really one of that hated breed, the PHP "developer" (although I do real languages as well), and 90% of what I do uses Zend framework, but I make it a point to have my css cascade intelligently instead of defining a bunch of classes with redundancies. Also, blueprint css helps a lot.

I personally don't use them that way either, I was speaking to his specific point of having "variables" to store color values. You wouldn't want to use specific attributes like colors in your class names.

Use Blueprint CSS http://www.blueprintcss.org/ It will make your life much easier. Every website I make has columns. They really aren't that hard.

That doesn't make any sense. You still have to assign the value to the variable. The value is going to be a hex number. You don't have to use hex colors, if you want to limit yourself to the color names that css recognizes, but the point of creating a class like .redHeader is so you can set the color values once and then forget them, using the people friendly class names instead. You can create as many classes as you want and name them things like .redHeader, .darkRedHeader, .reddishOrangeHeader, etc. In the end, you are communicating with a computer. It's not the fault of css that browsers use hex to render colors. But if it helps, just remember that the first two digits are red, the next two are green, and the last two are blue. So #5444BB is mostly blue with some red and slightly less green mixed in.