Agree with everything said here. I did wonder if it's just sour grapes because "back in my day" (jesus, I'm only 25) you had to learn HTML, but it seems others agree.

In all fairness, out of my entire skill set, HTML has proven one of the most useful.

We compile all of our documentation here using "HTML Help" so I'm using it all the time.

One further point:

Quote Originally Posted by danielmarshall
Concentrate on learn Dreamweaver first, then Flash, then HTML.
In my very humble opinion, Flash is the contents of Satan's bedpan.

1. It totally breaks the "open" nature of the internet.

2. It's the main culprit in the majority of the world's utterly unusable websites.

3. It's the weapon of choice for today's style-over-content amateur hour web designers.

If you're just trying to be "flash" and aren't really putting any useful information across, then Macromedia's shit-on-a-stick might be for you. Indeed, your website may rely on looking good in lieu of anything else.

If, on the other hand, you want to make useful websites then you're much better getting on and working with HTML, probably with some kind of server side scripting (PHP, JSP, ASP, whatever) to make things work.

You can do stuff that's just as impressive as Flash using Java applets or DHTML. You just have to think a bit more.