Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5 • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#101

Post by gcp » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

watty wrote: post #90

soonisnow wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure the fact that Apple/Steve passed (violently so) on Flash made it mobile DOA, but is it possible the actual frame/second rendering on Flash 10.1 was actually better-performing than HTML5? These tests are from 2010 but suggest so.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s (April) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE (September). Not so sure Steve was proved right so much as it was self-fulfilling p…

Flash definitely outperforms HTML5 on mobile and desktop: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/

The native Android browser isn't very good in JavaScript (not JIT? old JIT?). Firefox Mobile and Opera Mobile outperform it greatly. That's the advantage of a real open standard: you can choose your implementation.

No such luck with Flash.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#102

Post by joelhooks » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:25 PM UTC

cowpewter wrote: post #80

rsynnott wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For all that people complain about Flash, and any problems the Flash Player runtime has, it's really a fun environment to code for. I like AS3, I like the Flash API, and I greatly enjoyed writing Flex back when that was most of my job. Really? I used to do a lot of AS3 work; it is hands-down the worst development ecosystem I've ever been involved in.

Well to be fair, I do dislike Flash Pro. And Flash Builder is dreadful, but that's because Eclipse is dreadful and it's just Eclipse. All my AS3 work is done in a standard text editor (I prefer TextMate), and compiled from the command line with mxmlc.

I've used IntelliJ IDEA exclusively for 2 years for all of my Flash/Flex. It is awesome. Not Eclipse.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#103

Post by bad_user » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:29 PM UTC

joeyespo wrote: post #98

bad_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're complaining about the development environment, which is considered to be better than JS/HTML5 by many people. However, the Flash runtime is the reason people complain about Flash. It is slow, it leaks memory, it crashes like crazy and has been a second-class citizen on every platform other than Windows since forever. JS/HTML5 on the other hand is a mess in terms of development tools. But it is getting more and…

While these things are true, developing in the Flash environment was a lot of fun and very gratifying. I believe if the Flash development environment was available for JS/HTML5 today, Flash hackers would be much more excited about it. It's not the fact that Flash is going away that causes sadness. Rather, it's the gap between that and having an equally powerful environment for JS/HTML5.

Well that was partly my point.

Another thing I forgot to mention ... Adobe already has an AS3 to Javascript compiler that produces Google Closure compliant code (or this is the plan anyway) and they are using it internally for their own projects.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#104

Post by bgarbiak » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

watty wrote: post #93

dylangs1030 wrote: post #50

Disappointing as it may be, it's realistic. I could never see mobile devices being capable of loading and running flash based games or web environments consistently or seamlessly. It just requires too much power the device doesn't have. Even the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dual core technology aren't up to the task, and I believe that's the closest mobile ever came to supporting flash. But even mini laptops can just barely…

That's a developer issue, not a platform issue. A glitzy HTML5 application/website will perform worse than HTML5. Benchmarks: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/

That's why almost no one makes 'glitzy' apps in HTML5 - and this is, actually, a good thing. However, I expect it to change once Adobe tools for HTML5 will mature and gain traction. As was the case with Flash, these will be more popular among designers than among developers and - with all due respect to our fellow artists - we all know how it ends. Hopefully better hardware, GPU acceleration and WebGL support will be widely adopted by then, making performance issues less significant.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#105

Post by kinofcain » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:34 PM UTC

This is the end of flash. Mobile is the future of computing and if Adobe is giving up on flash for the mobile web, then they're giving up on flash for the entire web. The statement that they're shifting focus to air apps is to save face. The only reason people want to build AIR apps is because they already know flash from working with it on the web.

And you know what? That's awesome. What the interactive web needs, flash, canvas or HTML5, is creative tools that people like adobe used to be really good at producing.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#106

Post by ender7 » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #56

cowpewter wrote: post #16

This makes me a little sad. For all that people complain about Flash, and any problems the Flash Player runtime has, it's really a fun environment to code for. I like AS3, I like the Flash API, and I greatly enjoyed writing Flex back when that was most of my job. I don't have nearly as much fun writing HTML/JS as I did writing AS3. I liked the (optional) strict typing. I liked writing for a single target and knowing…

You're complaining about the development environment, which is considered to be better than JS/HTML5 by many people. However, the Flash runtime is the reason people complain about Flash. It is slow, it leaks memory, it crashes like crazy and has been a second-class citizen on every platform other than Windows since forever. JS/HTML5 on the other hand is a mess in terms of development tools. But it is getting more and…

Sadly, the development environment matters quite a bit.

- I will miss being able to declare classes using a sane syntax (Coffeescript helps in this regard)

- I will miss the optional type annotations, which caught many a bug for me (you can use JSDoc annotations + closure compiler, but only if you like placing a verbose comment in front of every single variable declaration)

- I will miss having an IDE that can actually do code completion (this not possible without type annotations, so it's not coming to Javascript any time soon)

- I will miss interfaces

- I will miss namespaces (there are various ways to hack namespaces into Javascript. They are all letdowns.)

- I will miss color transform filters, drop shadow filters, and blur filters (might become part of CSS if Adobe's proposal gets approval)

- I will miss the (mostly excellent) API documentation (MDN tries its best, but is not even close)

- I will miss masks (of any arbitrary shape)

- I will miss being able to create and dispatch my own events without having to use someone else's event framework

- I will miss having all my resources compiled into one blob and loaded together, rather than having to worry about preloading all of my UI images

- But most of all, I will miss performance. Yeah, Flash is buggy/slow/memory hog blahblahblahblah. But have you tried doing anything graphically complex in HTML5? Holy shit, your processor will scream. Things that Flash used to laugh at will bring Chrome to its knees. Don't get me started with IE.

So no, Flash is not great. It has a ton of warts. But HTML5 is not ready. Not even close. So we're going to have to spend the next ~2-3 years in techno limbo while it catches up. And that makes me sad.

HTML5 is particularly not ready on mobile. For example...don't use gradients, since they kill performance. Oh, and don't use opacity either, since that also kills performance. Seriously? I need to build a UI that doesn't use opacity animations? FFFfffuuuu--

Apologies for sounding like a grumpy old man, but promises of "someone will come and fix it with a standard...at some point" don't really get me excited. I worry that in vilifying all the things that Flash did wrong, the web world is going to ignore all the things it did right, and refuse to integrate those things into HTML.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#107

Post by dave_sullivan » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 4:00 PM UTC

kinofcain wrote: post #105

This is the end of flash. Mobile is the future of computing and if Adobe is giving up on flash for the mobile web, then they're giving up on flash for the entire web. The statement that they're shifting focus to air apps is to save face. The only reason people want to build AIR apps is because they already know flash from working with it on the web. And you know what? That's awesome. What the interactive web needs, f…

I think you're talking about 2 different things when you say "the end of flash".

If you mean the end of the flash runtime for mobile browsers, then that's accurate.

If you mean the end of flash as a dev platform (that is as3, flex, etc.), I didn't get that at all from the article. As it stands, I can write one app that will work on any desktop browser as well as across a growing range of mobile devices, including iOS. The performance really seems to be near native on iOS (for an example, see Defenders HD--I have no relation whatsoever with the devs but I do know it was done in flex).

Speaking for myself, I really like as3 and flex for certain tasks and hope Adobe doesn't abandon it as a dev platform.

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#108

Post by Macsenour » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 4:03 PM UTC

As a game producer, my understanding and limited experience is that HTML5 for games isn't robust enough to handle Flash-like gaming. In particular I'm thinking of sound issues.

Am I correct?

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#109

Post by bsimpson » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 4:12 PM UTC

cft wrote: post #29

jay_kyburz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree, I'm really enjoying working in flash every day at the moment. Web development has a long way to go before it's this much fun.

The fact that Adobe acquired Macromedia was quite unfortunate for the web. Had Google acquired it, they would have probably opensourced the player code, and maybe contributed the AS3 rendering engine into WebKit as an alternative to javaScript, making Flash native for WebKit browsers. Maybe it's not too late for this step even now.

Was Macromedia openly on the market? Did Google ever seriously consider buying them?

Re: Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

#110

Post by kamcknig » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 4:19 PM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #106

bad_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're complaining about the development environment, which is considered to be better than JS/HTML5 by many people. However, the Flash runtime is the reason people complain about Flash. It is slow, it leaks memory, it crashes like crazy and has been a second-class citizen on every platform other than Windows since forever. JS/HTML5 on the other hand is a mess in terms of development tools. But it is getting more and…

Sadly, the development environment matters quite a bit. - I will miss being able to declare classes using a sane syntax (Coffeescript helps in this regard) - I will miss the optional type annotations, which caught many a bug for me (you can use JSDoc annotations + closure compiler, but only if you like placing a verbose comment in front of every single variable declaration ) - I will miss having an IDE that can actua…

By the time a standard comes along anyway, we'll already be on HTML8 without a standard for it. HTML will never have a standard, and it will never be at a point where all browser implement all the same features.