"If there weren't real fundamental problems with the security, stability and performance of Flash I don't think we'd be having this conversation at all."
But that always seems to be the way one technology gives way to another, because it improves on various aspects that were lacking in its predecessor.
I think an apt comparison is RealMedia versus RTSP audio streaming. RealMedia had a significant market share (for the time), but the mishandling of the product led to people finding/building/demanding better tech.
It's arguable whether Adobe is mishandling Flash at the same level, but Flash could easily go away in favor of HTML5 and Javascript.
The only thing lacking right now is the tools, and the Flash IDE would not be difficult to improve upon. On top of that, there's already precedent in the Palm Web OS IDE. Make a similar kind of interface for building easily deployable standards-based web applications, and Flash could end up as a bad dream faster than you think.
But that always seems to be the way one technology gives way to another, because it improves on various aspects that were lacking in its predecessor.
I think an apt comparison is RealMedia versus RTSP audio streaming. RealMedia had a significant market share (for the time), but the mishandling of the product led to people finding/building/demanding better tech.
It's arguable whether Adobe is mishandling Flash at the same level, but Flash could easily go away in favor of HTML5 and Javascript.
The only thing lacking right now is the tools, and the Flash IDE would not be difficult to improve upon. On top of that, there's already precedent in the Palm Web OS IDE. Make a similar kind of interface for building easily deployable standards-based web applications, and Flash could end up as a bad dream faster than you think.