Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

blogs.adobe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#41

Post by cjbos »

jrockway wrote: post #32

If I were Adobe, I would start working on an IDE (and library set) for JavaScript + HTML5. Everything Flash does could easily be JavaScript and a library; their language is already JavaScript anyway. It's time to let their proprietary VM die, because modern browsers already have all those features working better. Adobe's advantage is in making animation a point-and-click operation that doesn't involve programming. Th…

I would love to see this, already you can use the Flash IDE to compile to the iPhone, so also being able to compile to canvas or HTML would be great, unifying the IDE to the current Flash IDE would be the way to go.

I would love to be able to share my vector assets across flash apps and canvas apps, also write tweens that can be used in both flash and canvas as well.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#42

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jodrellblank wrote: post #24
kylec wrote: post #16

If Adobe wants Apple (and me) to care about the future of Flash, they have to make it not suck on Mac OS X. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple omitting Flash from the iPhone and iPad isn't a ploy to light a fire under the Mac Flash development team.

Agreed. How can he say " For example, the recent Nexus One from Google will rock with a great experience in the browser with Flash Player 10.1. " with a straight face? Aren't there a few more Mac users who would like "a great experience in the browser" than Nexus One owners?

More tellingly they claim to have had an adequate Flash just sitting waiting for Apple to give them the okay for the last year or so, but for the platforms that actually want Flash we're still waiting after multiple delays.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#43

Post by tomlin »

jrockway wrote: post #40
tomlin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? So if an ad agency told you you needed to port mycanvas.landsend.com or similar venture to HTML5+JS using the "future browser" you speak of, you couldn't see any problems with that? My favorite line: "and if they don't, the ability can be added". Yeah, we've seen web standards move at incredible speeds. YouTube, Hulu and the ilk would be glad to hear they wouldn't have a hope in hell in your world for years.…

Having worked for ad agencies, I would never do that again. But anyway, Flash doesn't work on the iPad at all. So if you want your site to show up there, you have HTML 5 and JavaScript at your disposal; a Flash site is not even an option . Adobe isn't going to convince Apple to change their mind, but they can release a tool allowing Flash developers to migrate to HTML + JavaScript. With this in place, they don't need…

> So hostile. I'm not the one releasing devices that don't support Flash but do support HTML and JavaScript.

If Apple wants to give Adobe the finger, they have every right to and I can't/won't argue it because it is their business logic. Are they billionaires? Yes?

I support HTML5 and it's apparent "crushing" effect on Flash, but call it like it is.

Your entire original comment is so far into the future that Marty McFly and the Doc would possibly need to go to 78mp/h in the Delorean just to see it in the horizon.

HTML5 is great, but it's not going to change the world and dethrone Flash anytime soon. Saying that or anything of that nature is dishonest and completely without evidence.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#44

Post by dangrossman »

mrduncan wrote: post #7
bad_user wrote: post #5

Jeez, just let the market sort it out ... if the demand is really that high, Apple will just suck it and add Flash to the iPad. Otherwise stop your bitching, you can't win them all. The iPhone story is irrelevant in this context ... I don't think there are too many people wanting to play flash-games or to watch porn on that little screen ... especially since you need both hands to navigate its tiny browser ;) Their s…

I completely agree with you, but in the interest of lively discussion I'll play devils advocate for a second here and point out Gordon [1] which is an open-source flash implementation written in Javascript and Gnash which is an open-source flash movie player [2]. [1] http://github.com/tobeytailor/gordon [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

Gordon is not a Flash implementation. It is a Flash-to-SVG converter for basic vector graphics. That's about 5% of the Flash runtime, the parts that date back to the earliest versions of Flash. To call yourself a Flash implementation, you have to at least take a stab at multimedia, ActionScript, external resources, ...

Gordon will never do anything fancier than play a Newgrounds animated cartoon... without the audio track.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#45

Post by jrockway »

tomlin wrote: post #43
jrockway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked for ad agencies, I would never do that again. But anyway, Flash doesn't work on the iPad at all. So if you want your site to show up there, you have HTML 5 and JavaScript at your disposal; a Flash site is not even an option . Adobe isn't going to convince Apple to change their mind, but they can release a tool allowing Flash developers to migrate to HTML + JavaScript. With this in place, they don't need…

> So hostile. I'm not the one releasing devices that don't support Flash but do support HTML and JavaScript. If Apple wants to give Adobe the finger, they have every right to and I can't/won't argue it because it is their business logic. Are they billionaires? Yes? I support HTML5 and it's apparent "crushing" effect on Flash, but call it like it is. Your entire original comment is so far into the future that Marty Mc…

HTML5 is great, but it's not going to change the world and dethrone Flash anytime soon. Saying that or anything of that nature is dishonest and completely without evidence.

Isn't that what everyone said about Firefox and Safari? I think Apple has enough fanbois in the design industry to say, "Apple's not supporting Flash very well anymore; maybe I will try a plain HTML design for this site."

There may be a lot of money in flashy Flash sites, but I can't recall ever visiting one intentionally. Most of the Web's needs are met by plain HTML these days, and the few sites that have a good technical reason for using Flash (YouTube) are very close to being able to move away.

Going back to my original point, an IDE that let people construct the usual flashy Flash with HTML5 and JavaScript would be a good product for Adobe to have. It future-proofs them. Every user with a web browser has a web browser, but only 98.whatever percent have Flash. Why artificially limit yourself to 98% of the Internet?

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#46

Post by cjbos »

marbletiles wrote: post #18

Much more interesting to me than Apple vs Adobe is Macromedia vs Adobe. Adobe was once a seriously great company (Jobs apparently talked wistfully about those days in his Q&A), which together with Apple pretty much created desktop publishing and everything that goes with it (like Photoshop, Illustrator, PostScript, PDF, PageMaker, InDesign). The world would be a much worse place without it. It started going off the r…

Weird, I always looked at Adobe destroying the Macromedia culture, not the other way round?

Look at the Flash Player Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Player the advances through versions 5 to 8 are spaced 18 months apart and are quite major.

Once Adobe took over they shortly upgraded the VM, but the next major release (10) took over 2 years. This was almost 18 months ago, and the only advancements we see really are 10.1 changes to support mobile devices... things have slowed down considerably since Macromedia became Adobe.

Oddly enough though I was a big user of JRun (Allaire version) before it was brought out by Macromedia. Saw this product die a horrible death once Adobe brought out Macromedia as well.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#47

Post by nagrom »

_delirium wrote: post #30
boucher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't ads be relevant? Turns out it's how the majority of the web is making money.

They're relevant for site owners, sure, but flash ads aren't a very good argument for, "without flash, users won't get the full web user experience". Presumably nobody will refrain from buying an iPad because of flash ads not working on it.

Hm. Without rich-media advertisements, maybe web content producers would not make as much money from their sites and have less motivation (and capital!) to create great content?

If there were no such thing as Flash, then the web would be different. Whether it would be better or worse is open to personal interpretation, but I don't think that your selected quote is the most egregious thing in the article.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#48

Post by wmf »

jrockway wrote: post #32

If I were Adobe, I would start working on an IDE (and library set) for JavaScript + HTML5. Everything Flash does could easily be JavaScript and a library; their language is already JavaScript anyway. It's time to let their proprietary VM die, because modern browsers already have all those features working better. Adobe's advantage is in making animation a point-and-click operation that doesn't involve programming. Th…

Adobe CS5 will output to JS+HTML5: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/10/sneak_peek_ai_fl_dw_can...

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#49

Post by cjbos »

tomlin wrote: post #36
briggsrs wrote: post #20

I wonder if anyone has done a feature by feature comparison between HTML 5 and Flash? That is what can I do with Flash, that I cannot with HTML 5 and vice versa? As of right now, I am forced to assume that Flash has an advantage over HTML 5 solely because most people are not aware of the potential benefits of HTML 5 over Flash.

Flash 5 == JS+HTML5.

As a flash developer I can say that version 5 of flash is not comparable to HTML 5, the video tag equivalent wasn't really implemented until version 7 (HTTP progressive download of video assets).

Some missing things from HTML5 I'm watching to see how they progress:

1) Microphone & Camera support, and supported publishing encoders (Flash only encodes video as very basic Spark which is poor quality)

2) Web Sockets = Flex Remoting. But Flex Remoting sends AMF objects so you don't need to serialize/deserialize is this the same for Web Sockets or do you send data as JSON?

3) Live Video Streaming (Or just regular streaming video)

4) Peer 2 Peer connections (And soon to be Multicast support)

5) I saw webkit has fullscreen support, do you have limited keyboard input when this happens like in Flash?

If those were in place I don't see why I couldn't build my app in HTML5 instead of Flash, its a corporate application so we can control the supported browser version

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#50

Post by glhaynes »

kqr2 wrote: post #6
flogic wrote: post #4

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! I say we arrange for wrestling matches between the executives of Apple and Adobe.

I know you are just kidding but this reminds me of the story of how the CEO of Southwest Airlines (Kelleher) challenged the CEO of Stevens Aviation to an arm wrestling match in 1992 to settle a dispute over the use of a tagline. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/hkelleher.h...

Interesting how that ended - "Kelleher lost the match, but the event generated so much good will and publicity that Stevens let Southwest continue use of the tagline." I wonder if that was the plan from the beginning. Everybody wins.
Post reply on HN