"The World is Moving to HTML 5" and Other Flights of Fancy

http://richardleggett.co.uk/blog/index.php/2010/02/01/the-world-is-moving-to-html5

by rayboyd • 16 years ago

24 27 16 years ago

richardleggett.co.uk

robotron3• 16 years ago

"Disclaimer: This post is not about defending Flash."

No, it really is. This is just as annoying as anyone claiming that HTML5+extras means the immediate (or even near-term) death of Flash.

rayboyd2• 16 years ago

Indeed. However when you get past the overused rhetoric of the first paragraph the author makes some good points and it is quite a balanced viewpoint.

Imo it is a lot better than the Gruber and Brimelow led style of drivel that is doing the rounds at the moment.

robotron3• 16 years ago

It does have interesting points but just comes across as a defense of Flash, even with heavy mention of not necessarily wanting to see it survive.

cjbos4• 16 years ago

Not sure why your comment is being voted down. I also thought this was a balanced viewpoint of what the current situation is from a flash developer.

I pretty much agree with the summary that we are stuck supporting solutions for both platforms in the interim, also that the developers who will start ramping up on HTML5 will likely be the flash developers currently in the workforce as they slowly migrate their skillsets across. We've done it before recently from AS2 to AS3 and also Flash to Flex so its not like we don't have recent experience.

What will make this transition quicker though is if Adobe include HTML5 authoring tools in the next version of the suite. I think they are best suited to give us the tools we need. They are not married to the Flash platform, look at the recent iPhone support added to the Flash IDE, if Flash was to disappear tomorrow they will still have a market to retool the IDE and sell it. Also Adobe has to protect After Effect's market share, so a straight from After Effects to HTML5 player via Dreamweaver pipeline is likely going to happen.

This animosity towards Adobe, and the thinking they are killing the web with flash has to stop if we want to help Adobe to provide us with the tools we need to create the new HTML5 experience, and also leverage our existing RIA developer base to build it. Adobe is not killing the web we love, the marketing departments of giant corporations is killing the web we love, and will do so regardless of flash or no flash.

The interaction in one of the example links the author posted is amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zuOdJQiljw&feature=youtu... seriously awesome stuff, I would never had though this would be such a closed minded group of people than to vote against anyone who argues a point and provides evidence to back it up

jeff183• 16 years ago

This basically reads, "If HTML 5 is so great, why aren't Flash developers, like myself, using it?!"

That would be a much more interesting article, and the reason is basically because the market share is not there yet, although it is increasing quite a lot. However, to use this as a reason for the continued dominance of Flash is obviously extremely short sighted.

The author himself predicts that the iPad and iPhone like devices will be the future of computing, which lends even more credence to HTML 5, given that all modern mobile devices support WebKit or the equivalent HTML 5 browser.

However, instead of arguing "HTML 5 is no more powerful than Flash", the author needs to argue why an open standard, which is rapidly developing and seeing continuous growth, will not take off.

The author cites a few examples of super powerful Flash web apps and seems to imply that these are the future of desktop applications, however, these are dwarfed by the quantity of new web applications created every day.

The author basically needs to argue why Google and the countless other creators of popular web apps out there would switch to Flash, when the trend seems to be pointing in the opposite direction.

HTML 5 is not so much a "Flash killer" as it is simply "one less reason to have to use Flash".

robotron3• 16 years ago

The tools are also not there yet. In order for HTML5 to really gain momentum there needs to be a set of tools that are as easy to create with as Flash.

jeff183• 16 years ago

You should check out 280north's Atlas. http://280atlas.com/ It's still in beta, but you can get access to it by preordering it (highly recommended).

WebKit's Web Inspector is quite awesome -- Apple actually has bankrolled a few full time employees to work on it, and many more contributors have been hacking away at it for quite some time. In my opinion, it is the best example to learn HTML 5 best practices from (it is written in HTML 5 itself).

FireBug is also great (I prefer the WebKit Web Inspector myself, since about 1 year ago, due to its rapid updates) but FireBug is quite excellent.

Apple also provides some a rudimentary IDE called Dashcode, which I don't really like, but might be helpful for others. The OS X dashboard has been 100% WebKit / HTML 5 powered for quite some time.

Not to say that these are necessarily better than Adobe's dev tools, but the writing is on the wall. The awesome thing is that all of these I have mentioned, with the exception of Dashcode, are open source and rapidly developed both by full time employees of various interested companies and the community.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

This is very much true, and I've made this point myself several times. However, even so the advantages of Flash's superior tooling are relatively shallow. Once you get to a certain degree of application complexity the native advantages of HTML/CSS/JS and the disadvantages of the convoluted Flash programming model start to show.

tumult4• 16 years ago

We should allow the Flash developers to secede from the web. It's what they seem to want, anyway.

amadiver2• 16 years ago

I'm a person who thinks that the web is the most important invention in the history of humanity, first, and a Flash developer second. We absolutely do not want to secede from the web. We love the web so much that we want to use the most powerful tool we can to express ourselves (even if it has its own problems). If that means developing for a closed-source(1) plugin that makes us pariahs in the development community and subject to some vitriolic Flash-bashing every time we open up HN or Proggit, so be it.

I love HTML5, too. And ES4. And CSS3. I like reading their specs, and articles about them, and flame wars on their mailing lists. I can't wait for them all to catch on. I don't care if any open web technology impinges on Flash's turf - with Video, Canvas, WebGL, Transitions, and fundamental changes to ES/JS - or even overtakes Flash. The author of the post said as much, and I know plenty of other Flash devs that agree.

I don't know what Flash developer gave you the impression that they don't want to be part of the web. I don't know why you seem to think that's "what they seem to want". I have a feeling you're scoring some easy karma. All I'm asking for is: Can we have a little less "They took our jobs!(2)" in this discourse?

(1)I have complex feelings about Flash being closed source. On one hand, I believe the web should be open. On the other, I believe open-sourcing it means Microsoft builds its own version, forks it enough to cause a fractured development space, gains a near monopoly and then lets it stagnate for seven years (sound familiar?).

(2)Just to clarify: I'm quoting from South Park here; using it as an illustration of the simple-minded populism I see a lot of. I don't believe Flash devs take HTML devs' jobs -- other way around, in fact.

tumult4• 16 years ago

Yeah I'm just dying for karma.

I'm generalizing a lot here, I know there are people who work on Flash stuff and aren't huge dicks about it. When I read most comments in support of Flash, they're usually something like, "Flash gives me the tools to deliver the experience we want to deliver, nothing else that exists right now allows us to do this, etc." Which is probably true. And I don't want your experience. When something is Flash, I can't do shit about it. It runs in an opaque box in my browser, controlled by some other company that makes shitty products. It devours cpu, trashes browsers that don't isolate the plugin into its own process, and can do shady things with cookies.

Flash has two uses now: ads and video playback.

A "rich media experience" site is almost always just a big ad for something. And you use Flash in the ad because there's not much content there. If there was content, you could just put it up as HTML. Instead you need to dress it up in glitz and parade it around with sound effects and junk.

"It's what consumers want! This is the real world. This is what sells products. People love dazzling moving sparkly things!"

Yeah? http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/

It's an HTML page. With images. And text. It scrolls vertically. It's a pure distillation of the web.

jdietrich2• 16 years ago

By putting content inside a Flash applet you isolate it from the web. It cannot be crawled. It cannot be deep linked to. It cannot be styled as the user prefers, rendering it inaccessible to disabled users.

Flash is not a web technology. It is anti-web. It may as well be a zipped .exe, served up over Gopher. The simple act of placing content within an SWF file is tantamount to secession in itself.

VBprogrammer• 16 years ago

> nearly all applications will be web-based in the next 5 years

I sincerely hope the author is wrong. I think the almost all the applications which function well on the internet have communication as their core function. I sick fed up of having to use 5 languages (Java/PHP/Ruby/Clojure/Python, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS) just to create a moderately usable UI. Even worse, I'm fed up having to work with crappy unresponsive Enterprise Web based UIs.

jeff183• 16 years ago

This is exactly what HTML 5 changes though. You don't even need an internet connection (other than to download the web app originally, obviously).

jsz0• 16 years ago

Why doesn't Adobe just open source the Flash plugin? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems here.

protomyth• 16 years ago

They could have some code inside flash that requires a license / legal agreements. Also, I don't think they are at the edge yet.

jdowdell2• 16 years ago

Short phrase becomes more complex when examined... some history here: http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/07/opening_the_flash_file_for...

jdietrich2• 16 years ago

The key error this author makes is in the title, with the word "moving". The title suggests that the general velocity of web technologies isn't towards open standards, particularly HTML5. The content of the post seems to be a mere apologetic for Flash as the status quo, arguing that at the moment HTML5 cannot do what Flash can. That is evidently true, just as it is also evidently true that the internet is moving towards HTML5.

All of the major players but Adobe are making big steps towards HTML5 as the standard for rich internet media. Even Microsoft are being forced to tag along. We simply have to answer one question - which technology is improving at a greater rate, Flash or HTML5? Basic arithmetic will tell us the rest.

Flash is a dead technology walking. The forces that want it dead are faster, smarter and better resourced than Adobe.

A previous poster said 'HTML 5 is not so much a "Flash killer" as it is simply "one less reason to have to use Flash".'. Like any open technology, HTML5 is one reason after another, with more reasons presenting themselves at a near-exponential rate.

"The World is Moving to HTML 5" and Other Flights of Fancy

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