Wow, I have struck gold, flash gold!!! I have never been a big Flash fan for several reason, the largest being it is often miss used and because a distraction on websites rather than a tool for helping people navigate the site. The other reason is that Flash has always been a Designer tool and not so much a developer’s tool. The one thing I have always likes about Flash is that it is cross browser (either it is or is not installed) and it holds state, allows drag and drop, etc.
How do you bridge the gap between Flash the useful tool and Flash for developers? Flex 2 and the Adobe Flex 2 Builder. It is Visual Studio for Flash. With nice project driven development, drag and drop controls, and more, this is the solution for people who need the features of Flash but need a IDE to build large scale applications.
I have been working with Flex now for a few months and it is Awesome. I not only use if to application development where Flash is the best option, but I use it for modeling any application I need to create mock-ups for etc. It is easier that Visio and interactive too (oh yeah, it looks great to boot).
It is easy to interact with .Net using web services and either Objects, DataTable’s, or Arrays. If you have a situation where a nice flash interface would be a benefit, but you want .Net integration and need a intuitive builder, Flex 2 is the way to go: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
Also, if you are looking for a lightweight alternative that is open source and free, take a look at the up and coming FLEXible project, it is very note worthy: http://www.rockonflash.com/blog/?p=4