Flash is not the saviour of the universe

I'm a web developer & Designer. Been so for over 15 years since the web was text only.

I remember the first time I saw a flash animated website (I think it was flash 2 at the time). I hailed it as being the future of the internet.

The problem is, the next iterations of flash became buggy and bloated as Macromedia (the original developer) crammed more functionality into an overly simplified scripting platform.
And just as quickly as I fell in love with Flash, I starting hating it. Non consistent scripting standards, weird unexpected behavior when running the final application, and using a simple srcipting language that wasn't designed to support all this functionality (Actionscript) made it buggy and bloated, not to mention a memory hog.

Then came Actionscript 3.0, an almost fully Object Oriented Programming Language, and all of a sudden things changed.

Proper coding conventions and standards, C++ syntax, and efficient memory management made this comparable to Java in sophistication.

No more bugs, no more crashes, and it gives you much more multimedia capabilities than Java did, much quicker, and best of all its Animation oriented. You can't animate as fluidly as you can in Flash using anything else. You can't create games that are as engaging in Flash as you can using any other platform, period. I've tried them all, and Actionscript 3.0 (using Flash CS5) kicks them all out of the water.

The problems I see people complaining about are ALL what developers DO with the technology, (annoying flash banners, ads, ..etc) which makes their complaints a non issue because you can't have a powerful platform yet restrict what people do with it. And as for crashes, from my experience all crashes I've seen have always been due to bad coding, designed by bad programmers. (applies for Actionscript 3.0 and newer only, actionscript 2.0 and earlier were actually bad platforms)

All Flash applications on the web are now slowly upgading to Actionscript 3.0, and all these bugs and crashes are slowly dissappearing.

I will never buy an Apple mobile device because of the simple fact that 85% of the web uses Flash, not because they dominate the market, but simple because it is the best at what it does. Period. The web needed something like Flash, and Flash filled the void.

The only thing I would complain about that Flash lacks, is Hardware Acceleration. I'm dissapointed that Adobe hasn't worked on this, it is THE BIGGEST problem with Flash today. We cannot create advanced web applications that run in a browser by relying solely on the CPU, especially since youtube started hosting 1080p video that runs in the flash player, and without hardware acceleration most PCs can't play Full HD Video without it!

HTML5 + CSS3 + JQuery is touted by Steve Jobs as replacing the Flash platform, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
I was very dissapointed. Very limited support accross browsers, very basic functionality, very basic Animation features, plus all the HTML5 video players I've used have been inferior to Flash players. The Fullscreen is not fullscreen at all, it just fills the browser. You can't see how far the video has loaded to know when to start playing, plus many more concerns.

Flash is truly cross platform, HTML5 is not, even though its "supposedly" THE standard (as touted by Steve Jobs).
And when Adobe decides (they are being a little lazy here) to finally support Hardware Acceleration, you will truly see the web take a giant leep forward.

"in fact once jobs realizes the new flash has DRM he'll probably make it a mandatory plugin and will start to refuse to support HTML5."

Not quite. He can already offer DRM on x264 files, so he'll just crow about Adobe finally implementing something Apple have had for years.

The latest (beta-) versions of flash don't just add GPU acceleration(DXVA2) but also sneak in DRM support, so yeah that sort of means they won't be going away any time soon as video standard because all the bastards love DRM as you know, and selling lame stuff that should be free is of course the internet mantra, and in fact once jobs realizes the new flash has DRM he'll probably make it a mandatory plugin and will start to refuse to support HTML5.

I wish there was some open flash standard.

I'm surprised no one seems to have picked up on the fact that with Flash on their devices the App Store would be largely redundant.

Isn't this the real reason behind the Flash boycot?

Flash under Linux is crap. It's slow, needs huge amounts of processing power, and frequently crashes.

Using the same sites with HTML5 allows videos to play, with half the CPU usage. It may be years away, but HTML5 is the future. It can't come soon enough, but in the meantime, it has the added bonus of providing an impetus for Adobe to improve the bag-of-balls they call Flash Player. If they don't, they will not be installed on 'most of the world's PCs' in years to come. And they only have themselves to blame.

HTML5 and SVG address PARTS of what Flash does, but it is certainly not a total replacement, even if the various committees can get their act together on it.

Jobs is being disingenuous in suggesting that the reason flash is not available on the iPhone and iPad is because it's too unstable.

@Kiwi: The closest thing to Flash is not Java... which, being a programming language, is a totally different category... but is probably Silverlight.

@Jim
I find that he who slams those who are "either incapable and/or ignorant" can't even spell properly. Since you have no spell check, you are using IE. You have no clue what you are talking about. Flash is a pain in the butt for everyone - from users like you, who do not know how to turn off selected ads (like 11 on this page as AdBlock reports), to devs who swear at it. AJAX is a much more elegant, nicer-looking, open-source solution, does all that needs be done, be it sound, video, animation, or application, and, furthermore, can actually be useful. Did I mention open-source? Runs everywhere! No blessing required from SJ, BG, or any other corporate asswipe.

All very technical.. Has anybody thought about the millions of users - apparently buying the iPad.. or iFlop.

Most of us are probably accustomed to Apple devices not being Flash compatible, but if Apple is truly wanting to compete with other Netbooks they need to remedy this. With a larger screen comes more responsibilities, i.e. you can’t just leave gigantic holes in the middle of webpages if you claim it to be “the best web experience you’ve ever had“.

I thought I'd learned to ignore the arrogant rantings of Steve Jobs (in the 90's it was easy because Apple booted him out). Is he really serious? Or just that the ipad toy isn't up to it? Every Mac I've owned has crashed at least once an hour, and after 16 years of 24/7 Windows...maybe 3 or 4 times? Flash has never crashed any of the 100's of PC's I've had (and get real people without ads. the net's over). The more I hear about the ipad the more pathetic it sounds. HTML5 is far too far off, the ipad will be dead and buried by then.

nick is clueless as always. do some research and make sure you understand what Jobs said. are you single btw if yes i understand it but don't feel sorry for you

if i recall correctly Jobs was saying that adobe doesn't take opportunity to take flash to next level, doesn't use cocoa and they raised issues regarding flash on apple hw since the release of iphone. nick just fuck off

Flash isn't just about video. It's a very rich development platform.
The problem is although Adobe have published the Flash specification, very few third party Flash development tools exist, and Adobe's own products are expensive. Compare this with PDF which has lots of third party support and has also become a de-facto standard.
Flash started out not really doing video all that well, but as a great vector animation tool which resulted in small, fast, animation. SVG will eventually fill that role, but it's still a long way from widespread support, and Flash is optimised for performance, rather than human 'readability', with SVG and its XML format.
The closest thing to Flash is probably Java, but although Java has good free development tools, the runtime is huge compared to Flash, and the learning curve for development is a lot steeper than Flash for someone who just wants to create something graphical.
The best thing Adobe could do would be to sponsor some free or cheap competition, or even release an older version of Flash development tools at a budget price. That way they could keep their premium product as they've done with Acrobat, but an open development community around Flash, rather than reserving it strictly for those who're prepared to front up for the ever increasing price of their product.

So Flash is supposedly the only solution. WRONG. A little research reveals that Java has about the same install-base as Flash. It comes preinstalled on most OEM-PCs and every Mac. Java also has facilities for hardware acceleration.
And a minute of googling reveals that there are GPLed applets for exactly that. It works, loads fast and the CPU-usage is comparable to Flash.
And there is Java Mobile as well, so handsets could possibly also play any kind of video you like.
The question is: Why Flash, when there is an alternative that works just as well?

If it wasnt for flash, you won't get your youtube, break.com, newsgrounds, pops facebook games. It's funny to see when Jobs/Apple declare they wont support Flash and suddenly flash sucks.

HTML5 is still long way to go and doesn't even fully does flash can do.

The W3C is like the UN: it tries to do good, but has no power of its own. If history is anything to go by, HTML 5 will sit on a shelf until 2015 or so, by which time Flash and other "stop-gaps" will be entrenched.

All these format wars matter nothing to the end user. People want to watch their videos and have their interactive content. If this means Adobe's Flash fills that gap over HTML 5, the end-user won't care. In fact, support for HTML 5 may need to be compromised to reach the end-user. The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6 and webpages: websites that were standards compliant were "broken" in IE6, and therefore broken to the end-user. Even IE8 maintains compatibility modes to support older websites that are not up to standards.

These ivory tower clowns who think that all of a sudden browsers can be switch over, old browser banned, that support for hacks can be terminated need a reality check and realize that the gears of web operate far from the ideal. Good luck with your hopes for the future of HTML 5 Steve Jobs, but the reality is now, and will be for many years to come.

Screw Flash...I agree there is no other alternative since all sites use it mostly.

BUT if we need to come with an alternative for Flash...

We should come up with something which will allow to use proxy's. Flash you can't hide your identity.

Same with Silverlight.

Though I like Silverlight it's pretty snappy but it's still flawed.

Java/HTML give you the option for your privacy on proxy usage.

It's either HTML/Java or Silverlight enables us to use proxy's.

Lots of whoppers in there... this may be the funniest:
em "When the next version of HTML 5 is finalised it will ship with standardised video and audio codecs." /em

Sourcing your info, and being on top of the news, would help the morning news-trawl "smell less of wee".

jd/adobe

You have to understand that Silverlight and Java Server Faces have their place. These frameworks can provide an easy way to house web applications internal to a company with some key features:
1) the application has great responsiveness like a desktop application
2) the application has great manageability like a web application
3) the application can integrate well NATIVELY into the development environment of the company

These frameworks should not die quickly but rather be taken up and used well for internal applications. When a company uses the .NET Framework for its internal applications Silverlight is a natural fit to provide quality custom web applications with the responsiveness of desktop application. All the while the Silverlight app can directly integrate into the object models and services of the company.

That said, I believe frameworks like Silverlight and Java Server Faces should have limited view for users external to a company. HTML and its standards provide methods by which search bots can categorize content for search engines.

So, in closing, I say that Java Server Faces and Microsoft Silverlight both have their place and are useful for internal line-of-business applications. However, HTML should be the standard for external customer facing applications.

I would agree with Dan.

The web is portable- not just in the sense that we can access it from our phones and pocket devices, but rather any platform should, ideally, be able to view the same web page in the same way.

One of the primary purposes of creating a web page is accessibility; ie- it would be counter intuitive to create a site that only PC users can access. Flash and Silverlight require their respective companies to implement a native client for every platform, which simply isn't feasible in a world that runs on WindowsXP, Windows Vista/7, OS X, any Linux distro, Symbian, iPhoneOS, Windows Mobile, BlackberryOS, WebOS, Maemo, any UNIX flavor, or anything else out there or will be out there later.

It's not realistic to expect one company will implement a native Flash or Silverlight plugin for EVERY platform and every web browser. Especially when a certain company has a huge conflict of interest when developing such a client for a competing OS and web browser.

Not to mention the security issues.

Please web devs- don't put us at the mercy of *just* Adobe or Microsoft. Let Mozilla, Google, Apple, MS, Opera, compete against each other with their HTML5 implementations and do what's best for your audience. And for godssakes, please let Flash and Silverlight die quickly!

I find that those who "slam" are typically those who are either incapable and/or ignorant. Flash has a very useful place in web development, just as other development programming does. It all depends on what one wants / needs to do. Just because you don't know how to buld or use it appropriately, does not warrent you to talk trash about it.

I hope Adobe takes this opportunity to upgrade the security and quality of their flash player (especially for all versions of Linux, as this still needs some work).

Other than that, Microsoft's "silverlight" is dead in the water...never got off the ground, and here comes HTML5.

A word of all those hurrying on the demise of Flash - the replacement will not be HTML 5, but Silverlight. Be wary of what you wish for...

I'm a web developer and I hate Flash.

- many websites use Flash just for fancyness
- quite often flash navigational elements don't behave like the user expects
- Flash cookies anyone? Why is there no easy way to disable them?
- and Flash banners, banners, banners
- Flash content is often not printable

Fortunately there is a plugin for Firefox to disable Flash.

Adobe just wants to hold to a monopoly to sell its Flash SDKs. Thats all.

What is standing in the way of HTML 5 as a web standard is MS, Adobe, and Sun.
Silverlight, Flash, and Java would become extinct, and they don't want that to happen, not profitable, they would loose their hold on the masses.

Go Apple, go Firefox, go Google, go Opera, full steam ahead into the future, free us from our shackles.

But you can't see your porn...

You say the top 85% of websites use Flash. That might be so, but they use it to annoy everyone with animated advertisements.

Life is bliss without Flash. When you turn it off, you get piece and quiet, advertising free existence.