If Adobe wanted to advance the Flash 'standard', they should put the specs and standard in the public space. They do not have to open source their implementation, but the bytecodes and file formats should be submitted to a standards body.
Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#42The author makes a compelling case for Flash as a vector of innovation, but he really misses the case against Flash. I haven't seen any critiques of Flash based around the idea that it's "conformist". Rather, the critiques focus on one or more of the following issues: * It breaks web standards like persistent URLs and the back button (granted, there are some workarounds) and eschews native UI elements. * It is inacce…
* A Flash app is trying to be an app so sometimes persistent URLs are useless. That said there are time you want one and Flash can do that, it's up to the programmer, don't blame the technology, the feature is there.
* Adobe have a whole section on how to make your application accessible http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/
* Flash the format is an open standard, In June 2009, Adobe launched the Open Screen Project, which made the SWF specification available without restrictions. What is closed is their player. That said they have released open source actionscript libraries.
* As for emphasizing visuals, that is due to the designer driving the project. Flash and Flex offer a rich programming environment so it's really up to each project to choose what they want.
* Yes there are sucky flash apps, but there are also sucky webpages. There is sucky everything. There are also good flash apps and good websites.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure - but it's a constantly running cycle, people seem to forget that. HTML 5 will get adopted given enough time - but by that point Flash will have moved on and will do more and do it better. Then HTML will catch up again... etc. You can push HTML 5 and canvas all you'd like - but from a pure business standpoint if I can reach 98% of my audience with Flash, but only 40% with HTML5/Canvas I'd be an idiot to not choo…
people also seem to forget that flash is only "better" for some small definitions of better, there is a reason people hate it and most of them arent political. your "from a pure business standpoint" is exactly what I was referring to, people are far too quickly jumping to quick and ugly fixes like flash that do nothing to help fix the core problems of why web standards are limiting. It takes a lot of "idiots" to push…
What do you mean by "small definitions of better"? Can you do a cartoon with synchronized sound with HTML5? Better is a matter of "does it work for enough of your audience that it makes sense to build it".
If you know your audience and can push the technology, by all means go for it! GitHub has exactly that audience. They aren't idiots for going with canvas - for them it's a savvy move. But the Flash option is still there for a reason too.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#44Does anyone else think once 75% of what flash does is supported by canvas, HTML5, etc, Adobe will just make it a compilation target for the Flash toolchain? I mean: Wouldn't that be great?
But realistically how long will it take for canvas and HTML 5 to catch up with similar market penetration? 10 years? Certainly not less than 5.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#45To put that in perspective, right now, somewhere around 60% of the browsers in the hands of users aren’t capable of rendering the canvas tag. That's unfortunate choice of words. A lot of browsers that users actually have in hands —those on iPads, iPhones, iPods Touch are indeed better off with canvas, not Flash. I know there is a promise to have Flash on mobiles anytime soon, but not on Apple's devices, and those mak…
Even 100% of a small number is still ..a small number.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#46It's not about "wanting Flash to die". It's about improving web browsers so Flash is not necessary.
I would argue it's about the market prodding Adobe to change their flagship Creative Suite tools to fully support HTML5 output. A major reason designers use Flash is because of the development environment. There is a slight possibility that a startup could take on Adobe, but the fact is there are hundreds of books on Adobe CS4/CS3 because they own the industry mindshare.
No, people use Flash because of what it can do as a platform. As "development environment" goes, Adobe's own tools are subpar and easily surpassed by third-party environments, many of them free.
Wanting Adobe to create tools that output to HTML5 is like asking Porsche to put their engines in bicycles; it doesn't make any sense. Even if you include all the tentative, beta, untested, -webkit-*, or otherwise suggested features for the spec, HTML5 isn't even close to Flash in terms of complete features.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#47The author makes a compelling case for Flash as a vector of innovation, but he really misses the case against Flash. I haven't seen any critiques of Flash based around the idea that it's "conformist". Rather, the critiques focus on one or more of the following issues: * It breaks web standards like persistent URLs and the back button (granted, there are some workarounds) and eschews native UI elements. * It is inacce…
Very succinct. Concur completely. Flash has its place (video, games; both of which HTML5 are catching quickly up to). Its place isn't in making an entire, un-navigable, un-deep-linkable, animation-heavy site that takes me ten minutes to figure out how to use. One of the comments on there said, "but check out thewfa! You can't make THOSE websites in html5!" And my immediate, lizard brain response was: "Why would I wan…
Maybe YOUR lizard brain, but we ALL have to remember - we're geeks. One of my son's favorite sites is http://www.pigeonpresents.com/ (don't bother looking at the source if you prefer your sanity). It's a simple site for kids, but doing many of the things the site does with HTML5,etc would be quite painful if they were possible at all.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rumors are that Google is going to release VP8 as fully free codec to resolve -tag codec wars. It supposedly should be comparable to h264 in image quality. But Flash is much more than just video.
> But Flash is much more than just video. But video is what makes Flash considered 'necessary' for most consumers. The two are almost synonymous so if Google goes through with it, it will be the beginning of the end for Flash.
Ah, but why then was Flash at the same kind of penetration #s prior to Flash supporting video (Flash 6)? Also, as I mentioned in my post not all video is meant to be in a little rectangle on the page.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#49Does anyone else think once 75% of what flash does is supported by canvas, HTML5, etc, Adobe will just make it a compilation target for the Flash toolchain? I mean: Wouldn't that be great?
But realistically how long will it take for canvas and HTML 5 to catch up with similar market penetration? 10 years? Certainly not less than 5.
It took them what, 10 years to start proposing what Flash has done in 5.
And considering... * The plans for the standard to be completed will still take around 10 years * Flash can move at a much faster pace in development * Flash penetration gets to 90% in less than one year * Browser penetration moves very slowly - 8 years after release, MSIE 6 is still at 22%
...do you really think things will improve that much in 5 years?
I can't wait for 5 years to pass by. When Flash (and Silverlight) are even more improved, when they're still evolving, when Flash is widely used in mobile devices (other than the ones built by one rotten Apple), when HTML5 is still a mess for development, when cross-browser HTML support is still wild west, and when HTML5 is still unrealistic for Real-World development due to lack of penetration... that's when reality will start hitting people in the face.
But hey, maybe another 5 years later? Who knows.
Re: Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh, or just program the modern browser to work the way you like. I don't whine about jpeg or gif or png ads, even though my browser supports them just fine. I simply have my browser not show them to me.
Thanks, I know how to do that too. Actually I do a lot of reading on a browser with javascript and images off (Konqueror has a convenient 'load images' button, but CSS still sneaks in an occasional annoyance). Firefox without Flash does OK for me now, for the rest of the stuff that needs javascript and images. I doubt it will be possible to tune it properly (short of hosts file munging) if all Flash migrates to HTML5…
This is going to be a very interesting debate moving forward. Flash has shown what happens if you let all elements of a page have the same rights to resources - and Adobe is working on ways of dealing with the issue.
Now HTML5 is going to have to deal with the problem and they we'll have to wait until browsers make their own implementation of a solution that will probably be similar to Adobe's eventual solution.