The 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 inaccessible to visually impaired users.
* It is built on closed, proprietary technology, which raises both principled and pragmatic concerns (one pragmatic concern is the poor security framework, which might be ameliorated by more eyeballs on the source code).
* It tends to emphasize superfluous visuals over meaningful content (this isn't a requirement of Flash but it's a common result arising from Flash's dominant motifs).
* 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.
* 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.
People who say that Flash is accessible aren't visually impaired. I am. I have not once seen a Flash application that works well enough to be useful in any screenreader I've used. I have been following Adobe's accessibility efforts for years.
HTML5 + JS + ARIA works better now than Flash ever has.
It's fine to make Flash games that don't work with screenreaders. But not websites.
And it's not fine to claim that something is accessible just because the vendor says it is.
* You can't easily save an object for personal use, such as a photo or video.
* No mute button, it's up to the content creator to do that. Is anything on the web more annoying?
* Overuse. Purely a matter of taste, but every time I see a flash site animating content than really should be static I flash back to the days of <blink> and <marquee>. As a web developer I've encountered clients who consider flash the apex of website technology. They don't care how the site works or how it responds as long as it's "on flash".
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 want to? I bet their bounce rates are through the roof, and their return traffic approaches nil."
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.
Why would I want to? I bet their bounce rates are through the roof, and their return traffic approaches nil.
And because you wouldn't want to, nobody should?
There's a reason why Flash, and Flash websites, exist. Think about it pretty hard. You'll eventually figure it out.
And no, their bounce rates are not through the roof. I've monitored plenty of Flash websites, including FWA ones. Unless 3% is "through the roof" (and this is for a website we've published just a couple of weeks ago, running on the latest Flash Player version), you've just lost your bet.
Persistant URLs are possible. What Native UI elements are you talking about? Form elements? The same form elements that so many websites change anyways?
My understanding is it has features for people with handicaps. Granted, what accessibility features do recent HTML5 games offer to someone visually impaired? Probably nothing.
Closed, proprietary technology; something neither Windows or Mac users can really complain about. =)
As for superfluous visuals, that's debatable. Blame the designer, not the tool.
As for Flash applications sucking: Trust me, there are probably more sucky HTML/JS/CSS websites out there. =)
Ah, but necessary is the key word there. Very little that Flash is used for is necessary, it's almost always about entertainment. HTML 5 is well suited to overtake some of the reasons developers have to use Flash - inline video players and many Flex apps.
The HTML 5 technology stack is not well positioned to do everything Flash can do though - and I pointed out three key places where that's absolutely the case.
The biggest point though is that HTML creeps slowly forward through a standards process that is laborious at best. Flash, being a de-facto standard controlled by one company doesn't have to wait - it can push and prod forward and let developers explore new ideas and create new experiences. Even if you don't care for Flash, you should appreciate what it does for pushing the web forward. Sure there are missteps - I think Flash ads are awful too, but the work and because of that HTML5 and canvas will be used to build just as annoying ads in the future.
html creeps forward exactly because of people using sub standard workarounds like flash, and those times are changing, anyone following what is happening on the web can see that real web development is starting to move at an extraordinary pace.
the standards committee dont "design" the internet, by definition to become a specification someone needs to have implemented it, browser vendors are free to implement cool new features as fast as they want, w3c is just a forum for agreement on those new features.
if we were waiting on rubber stamping from the w3c, we wouldnt even be using ajax right now.
Right - but when did XmlHTTPRequest first rear it's head? 1999. When did AJAX actually take off? 2005.
Six years.
During the same time Flash went from a no scripting (well it was essentially programming via madlibs with Flash 4) to ActionScript 3 (Flex 2, the first place AS3 was used, was in early beta at the time I believe).
New versions of the Flash Player only take a few months to hit 90%+ penetration rates.
yes but "noone supports new web standards" is a self fulfilling prophecy, we all know users dont know or care about what is happening under the hood, they arent going to push for ie to support canvas.
as web developers we need to be pushing canvas and font-face and webgl etc and stop running back to propietary plugins every time a font kinda looks not exactly the same on every other machine as mine.
Its pretty unarguable that open standards are fundamentally better than proprietary formats, a single company owning the format the web runs on would be disastrous, instead of opening this gap to push flash into, I think energy is better spent pressuring those involved to help push web standards to a point where flash is not needed, if every website didnt support ie6 tomorrow, next week ie6 would not exist, obviously that is a contrived situation but the fact is its us web developers that need to make sacrifices to make things work better on the users behalf, they cant and shouldnt be expected to do it themselves.
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 choose Flash.
It will be WONDERFUL when I can use canvas to draw realtime graphs and know it will reach 98% of my users. That day is not today and it won't be for some time to come. Now, that being said I and doing exactly that task with canvas for a project - but it's as a backup of the Flash version since the client expects a sizable iPad/iPhone audience.
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 canvas and friends into widespread adoption, I am glad to see people like github taking the initiative.
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.
my point was similiar to you last one, while html is catching up with video / audio / animation, flash is still miles behind html in terms of a lot of basic features, accessibility, adoption, easy of introspection, reliability, performance, I am wary of "html is catching up with flash" arguments because as you said its all situational.
Ah certainly. They are all tools - you use the correct tool for the situation. For entertainment purposes I would want to make sure Flash was in my tool belt.
You're forgetting that that was a Flash being developed by a hungry Macromedia. Progress in Flash development today has to bear the weight of Adobe's lethargy.
In the bad old days of 1998, HTML was flashing forward along several haphazardly chosen paths, as Netscape and Microsoft were busy creating their own incompatible extensions like document.layers vs. document.all.
I prefer the present situation, where the experimental envelope-pushing happens in the controlled sandbox of Flash, and only the most vital innovations will eventually trickle down into the HTML standard.
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.
Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm not a designer, but my wife is, and loves Adobe. Adobe this, Adobe that.
She's tried other free tools, and always ends up finding things that simply can't be done. And then there is the packaging, all together. Everything works together.
And I can appreciate that. A single suite of applications makes it easier to learn, makes it easier to manage, and makes it easier to train others.
To 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 make up for a huge part of mobile browsing.
This whole Flash murder/death/kill attitude is boring me to tears - I don't think any Flash developer would disagree that HTML 5 will (eventually) replace the more basic things that Flash does. Advanced multimedia will still use Flash. Ads will use whatever is most intrusive until the end of time so use whatever tools you have at your disposal to block them.
Also in the areas where HTML5 is not a good replacement, I would still like to see an open alternative over Flash. A closed alternative is just no solution (for me), that's why I also want to see it dying. Once its dead, there will be replacements for it (if there is need for it).
How more open do you want it? You are free to make your own player against the open specification.
Fully open isn't the answer for everything. Flash is the most widely distributed piece of software ever - it got that way by NOT being forked and offering what HTML didn't both in terms of consistency and features.
I think most people feel the same way, when people say they want flash to die I believe they are ok with playing webgames in flash. The most common frustration I have is browsing restaurant websites that use flash for their simple menus.
As a side note, I think there is also a subtle common UI pattern to abuse the hover feature on websites which is common in flash. It makes touch-based browsing more difficult and I wish web developers would avoid it. It isn't fair to blame flash for it though, javascript can do it too.
True. By principle I'd rather see U.S. (SV) tech companies improve and thrive rather then die.
In this particular case - the web was ugly before Flash and it'll be just as ugly after it. And as waxpraxi writes, some good did come out of it (force me and i'll make a list : )
Flash is not a gun, it does not kill, and i don't wish it to die.
flash will eventually go the way of java applets. modern browsers will be able to do 99% of what you need to do and for that remaining 1%, you'll have this clunky web browser plugin that you probably have disabled by default for security reasons, that you'll decide not to turn on to view the particular website and just hit the back button or let the blue square icon sit there.
browsers can now natively play video, play audio, find your location, store offline data, and do direct socket operations. i can't imagine a webcam api being too far off, enabling a flash-free chatroulette (that's all we really care about anyway, amirite?)
Some browsers can do all of those things - but you've still only scratched the surface of what Flash can do TODAY with 98% penetration. As for webcam support, some people feel that HTML 5 as a spec will be fully out there and usable by 2022. I wonder when enough browser makers will start on their PROPRIETARY webcam interfaces?
Do you think Flash will stand still in that time? Suddenly jump from 98% to 0%?
it will "stand" just as java applets "stand" today. it will still be supported, but it will be seen as a clunky alternative to open technologies that are supported on a wider variety of devices, many of which won't have flash support for any number of reasons.
i say this as a user with three major devices (computer, phone, and tablet) that have no flash support, and am happy to see the proliferation of more open technologies and the doing away with of proprietary, insecure, buggy crutches like flash.
Which Linux tablet do you have? I was tempted by the iPad, but if there is a good Linux one, you got me. Also, does it sync with, what I assume is, your Android?
I think what the biggest problem is with HTML5 nowadays, is that even with HTML5/CSS3/JS every browser supports other parts of the standards and even if there are common elements they can behave differently. Everyone ever written a complex webpage for IE/FF/Safari on Windows and Mac will know what i mean: It's a nightmare. Flash offers a common API for all browsers and operating Systems and even more features then HTML5/CSS3 deliver with a feature rich platform for development.
Don't understand me wrong, i actually wish Flash to die. But i'd rather like it dead when programming for different browsers becomes less of a pain. Internet standards need to evolve faster (how long did it take for HTML5?) and browsers need to be more standard compliant/support a common feature set.
Also, as a sidenote, i wouldn't write websites in Flash, but i can see some actual benefits for the developer.
I've said it before; there needs to be an flash-like IDE for html canvas (and whatever Microsoft uses) that outputs html, css, and javascript (maybe its own library or it would use something like mootools or yui).
This IDE could start off as a clone of earlier flash versions where you just manipulate shapes over time(http://dev.w3.org/html5/canvas-api/canvas-2d-api.html#images) and of course you could do more useful stuff using common html elements and incorporating audio/video. Once more features are added to the html spec, the application's functionality could grow.
I thought about attempting to start this up as a web-based app, but I have to familiarize myself a bit more with canvas, canvas shapes, and animation.
The author of this hits on a really important topic in my opinion: that for all of the talk about adhering to the standards, in every other field of engineering adhering to the standards it the absolute bare minimum to have a product.
Imagine if you made cars and you didn't conform to the safety standard? Obviously that wouldn't work and you'd be shut down. However, a lot of web standards zealots seem to imply that meeting the standard is a great goal to achieve. There needs to be a bunch more innovation in all browsers, even just as tech demos or features for the vendor's home page so that other browsers can adopt the ideas.
Basically I think the author is spot on, but I wish it didn't have to be done through Flash.
Does 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?
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.
What ever happened with that company with the proprietary video codecs that Google bought? There were rumors that Google was going to adapt it and release it as a better open standard than HTML5
Rumors are that Google is going to release VP8 as fully free codec to resolve <video>-tag codec wars. It supposedly should be comparable to h264 in image quality. 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.
> but why then was Flash at the same kind of penetration #s prior to Flash supporting video (Flash 6)?
Back then, it was animation / interaction. Flash took advantage of a lack of standards across browsers as people were afraid to use javascript extensively. That time has passed.
Right now, Flash lives because of video. The animation necessity has mostly been replaced.
Assuming Google releases VP8, then your only argument left is that either:
1) Flash does video better (by a little)
2) Flash will find the next big thing to keep it alive.
I do not find (1) a compelling argument to use Flash for video on most sites. In fact, the irony is that Flash may be kept alive for backwards browser compatibility.
Until I know what (2) is - concrete examples please - I'm not willing to put any confidence just b/c Flash prevailed in the past. It is too small a sample size to put so much confidence in.
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.
What would submitting to a standards body give them? If they are to continue moving Flash forward with new versions every 18-20mo they can't wait for a standards body.
That is the degree of freedom that I appreciate. Not so much Flash that bank/shop/gov. sites expect anyone to have it.
And not so little that all the, er, uninteresting-to-me stuff now in Flash is rendered in unavoidable HTML5 standards. (Note to self: save a copy of an ancient browser.)
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.
And of course it's a bit unwieldy to keep multiple browsers around - Konqueror 3.x also shows me a convenient 'open link in Firefox' option, but that's it. And I don't think this kind of fiddly options will be exactly first priority.
I just tested, and it does the same with image loading turned off. Must also turn off javascript to make it stop (duh, must be a js busy-wait doing it).
(I seem to recall a line about 'depending on the kindness of strangers', not really an enviable situation.)
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.
Yes, good point. Probably by this time next year the top story here will be talking about the problem. Ah, well. I'm getting off lightly - as someone put it, Cassandra didn't get half the kicks she deserved ...
* It breaks web standards like persistent URLs and the back button (granted, there are some workarounds) and eschews native UI elements.
* It is inaccessible to visually impaired users.
* It is built on closed, proprietary technology, which raises both principled and pragmatic concerns (one pragmatic concern is the poor security framework, which might be ameliorated by more eyeballs on the source code).
* It tends to emphasize superfluous visuals over meaningful content (this isn't a requirement of Flash but it's a common result arising from Flash's dominant motifs).
And finally, a posterior observation:
* An awful lot of Flash applications just suck.