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Adobe Not Worried About the Future of Flash
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe company man John Dowdell isn't worried about the future of Flash. He writes in his company blog, 'There's really no "HTML vs Flash" war. There are sure people inciting to create such a war, and individual developers may have strong practical reasons to choose one technology over another, but at corporate levels that drive strategy, all delivery channels are important Adobe territory, whether SWF or HTML or video or documents or paper or ebook or e-mag or film or packaging or whatever. Adobe profits by making it easier for creatives to reach their audiences. We're on the verge of a disruptive change that, I think, will dwarf that of the World Wide Web fifteen years ago. It was great back then when any wealthy person with a workstation in a wired environment could easily reach any creative's webpage. With these cheaper devices we'll be reaching far more people, and with pocket devices we'll be reaching them throughout the day instead of just when "logged-on." The WWW was merely a pale precursor of the excitement we're going to see, I think.' It's interesting to note that he talks about the World Wide Web in the past tense. I find it instructive as to Adobe's perspective. Personally, I'm not worried about the future of Flash either. I don't think it has one."
Personally, I'm not worried about the future of Flash either. I don't think it has one.
Except that it's pain in the ass to create Flash-like games with HTML5. You have to use all kinds of hacks to accomplish that, while designers and Flash game creators are familiar and love Flash authoring tools.
Flash isn't just about video, even if it's the most talked part of it here on slashdot.
Flash is out of luck with Steve Jobs.
It'll take a while, because IE 9 doesn't support XP, but it'll happen. Flash dies once XP dies.
Microsoft would like to fully control the interfaces, but when they fail at that they'd at least like to stop any other company from controlling the interfaces. Microsoft will settle for open standards as required to kill things like flash.
We can thank Adobe for IE 9 getting SVG and HTML 5 video support.
then release Flash for the G1 already.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Once someone ports Badgers to HTML5 Canvas, then it'll be safe to put Flash to sleep.
Who cares if your browser games are in flash or HTML5? Or if video is flash or HTML5?
I only how fast the video loads, and how responsive the games are. And from my testing of YouTube's HTML5, HTML5 loads faster and smoother than flash.
Corporate spokesmen are the Baghdad Bobs of capitalism: there to tell you everything is going great, there is no enemy in sight for hundreds of miles, if there is an enemy he was routed by our glorious products. Up until the moment the spokesman himself is laid off.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Says it all...
Smivs on the intertubes!
When you have to explain that you're not scared about a trend that could hurt your product, it means you ARE scared of the trend. :-)
Like there is to block flash.
I do not want any video type stream to load when i am going to a web page until I have made the decision to watch it.
That is not an anti flash statement because I do make the choice to watch a lot of flash. But it is at my discretion and not the web page designers.
If it wasn't for flash block, I would spend all day waiting for news sites to load instead of actually reading the news. I hardly ever watch the flash on those types of sites, and they are probably the worse offenders of loading up the crap flash. Now other sites, which by the nature of the site presents its content via flash. yes, I do watch it. But, only after I have clicked the specific flash object I want.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
When you really look at it, there's no reason that Adobe shouldn't embrace HTML 5. Fundamentally, maintaining a cross-platform plug-in is not a profit center for them, it's a cost. They don't make money on the plug-ins, they make money on the Creative Suite product which allows designers to create animations, games, and the like easily. All this work of maintaining their own actionscript standards and standard library just serves to make their pay products more useful.
Imagine for a moment that at some time in the near future, Adobe has a new option on the menu "Export to HTML5". Would this make their product less useful? Of course not. Widespread adoption of HTML 5 means that their product can now be used to create content for even more devices, including several, like the iPhone, from which they have previously been locked out. And it wouldn't even be surprising if over time they transitioned entirely to HTML 5, giving up the work involved in maintaining Flash. They probably won't do this in the short run, but in the long run, it's entirely plausible.
I'm sure some people will point out that the move to HTML 5 opens them up to more competitors, and it does. But they've already got competitors even with the Flash ecosystem. There are a variety of ways to make swfs, including swftools, FlashDevelop, and the free Actionscript compiler which Adobe itself released as part of the Flex SDK. There are even a few other pay products out there. So, essentially, they already are in a market where there are a bunch of other tools which are cheaper but either can't produce complex content or require a bunch of coding to produce similar content. If they switch over to HTML5, they will likely be in the same boat, just in a bigger lake. Sure they'll be competing with DreamWeaver or whoever, but they'll have a clear and immediate advantage when it comes to "Flash-like" stuff such as animations and games.
So in summary, if they manage the transition properly, moving towards HTML5 means less costs and a bigger market. That sounds to me like a pretty clear win.
Here's how it will go down: "Flash CS4 - Now with HTML5!"
They will fall back on their design environment to create HTML 5 compliant applications and continue to sell to the more design-oriented customer. So of course they aren't worried. They'll just use HTML 5 output and sell to their already established base.
What is this guy smoking?
and with pocket devices we'll be reaching them throughout the day instead of just when "logged-on
Oh, you will, huh? And they aren't the least bit worried about establishing themselves in an entire market and hardware paradigm in which they have no influence or foothold in whatsoever? (And no, using Actionscript as a compiler language to build native iPhone apps doesn't count.)
Better known as 318230.
Whenever I'm handed mod-points, the FAQ is quick to point out that I should not mod posts based on my opinion, in fact, I should be as impartial as possible. Considering the submitter's opinion is blatant to see, I'll just go and brazenly smash my point of view into his open-source skull. His, and everyone else's who think that Flash has everything to do with you-tube, and nothing to do with artistic license:
The submitter is a cretin. An arrogant fool. He or she probably thinks that HTML5 is the be-all and end-all of browser programming, and has wet dreams about Javascript one day pulling off something more complicated than a fade in/fade out effect. Flash exists because there is a gap between making disgusting prefabbed square forms, and fluid, interesting and deeply creative content; Something that tells your customers and competitors "hey, we have style!". Yes, it is possible to commit atrocities with Flash, but don't blame Adobe for that, the next time you see someone using AS1/2, tell them to use Flex instead.
Flash makes the web interesting, it's what powers the little widgets you find on the sides of blogs, it's what makes the Most Interesting Man in the World interesting, it's what lets me tell the designers "yes! I can render our company's portfolio in 3D". It lets people do stupid little games and animations that make things interesting. So, until one of your open source tree humping hippy tossers makes something as extensible, easy to use and creativity empowering as Flash, well, I'm sorry but Flash is going to be here to stay. Because let's face it, not everyone browses the web through Steve Job's little slab of crap.
I couldn't care less what new gizmos and glitz the web has ... what I care about is that if I create apps, just like documents and databases, I want to still be able to access and use them 20 or 40 years from now without recoding and reformatting them. The gold rush is over. What I want now is bulletproof base of archival-quality standards, not ones that reinvent themselves every product cycle.
I'm fairly certain that refering to 'reaching creatives' qualifies you for immediate douchehood.
It surprises me that in all of the discussions about how HTML5 is going to murder Flash, the one thing that everyone overlooks is the exact reason why Flash continues to be popular - Cross-browser consistency.
I mean, right now, you cannot expect any of the five browsers to display CSS2 consistently, and that spec has been around since 1998. Why is it that everyone expects HTML5 to be perfect out of the box on every platform?
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
I don't know, when all kinds of geeks are crying "Flash is dead", and an Adobe rep comes out and says "We've faced worse, we aren't worried" I don't think you can automatically assume they are worried.
Basically, it tells you nothing, because you can't just sit there and be silent - that will be more of a condemnation than anything. If you're scared shitless, you say "We aren't worried", and if you're not worried you also say "We aren't worried".
Basically you can't read much of anything into it, and I have to point out that Adobe is extremely good at making their products the de facto standard. Probably the biggest knock against HTML5 is it is not going to be nearly as consistent as Flash across browser versions, the next biggest would be the fact that Flash will always be in a better position to adjust to the market - H264 video is a perfect example, Flash has had it for two years now, IE has it for HTML5 but Firefox apparently won't have it for HTML5 (it's a licensing issue). So if you want to be sure everyone can see your H264 encoded video, you use Flash, not HTML5 at all.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I find it instructive as to Adobe's perspective.
That would be a bad idea.
John Dowdell is a "user relations" guy at Adobe. He answers to users on support forums, writes a blog on Adobe topics and reads customer feedback at Adobe.
He doesn't speak for Adobe's strategy, nor is his opinion to be considered that of Adobe. In fact it says so on his blog: "Views are my own".
Plus, Adobe's been saying for the past few years "there's no HTML vs Flash" war namely since they don't want to position Flash as an HTML alternative (which is stupid in 2010) but as necessary extension to HTML.
You see? It's subtle. HTML won't replace Flash, but you still need Flash together with HTML in your browser and your mobile device (by the way: Flash 10.1 coming to a cellphones pretty soon). It's just another step in a survival strategy that will keep Flash from becoming irrelevant.
All their latest features focus on the unique strengths of a proprietary binary plugin that a public standard like HTML can't deliver quickly, or at all, which is: fully consistent performance across platforms, quick innovation, highly specialized features (such as pixel shaders, is this coming in HTML5? No. I thought so). We need that ingredient too, next to HTML5, to form a healthy ecosystem on the web, as much as some people hate to admit it.
But John Dowdell still doesn't speak for Adobe's strategy, so accept his blog for what it is.
classes, inheritence, abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and decoupling.
It's possible the parent was (correctly) trying to say that a lot of the ActionScript features the GP mentioned actually weren't necessary to make JavaScript an OO language -- all of these things were (and are) quite possible in JS before ActionScript introduced various keyword-based mechanisms.
Yes, but this compilation is JIT as you point out. JIT is not the same thing as a compiled language.
While that's certainly a distinction, I don't think it takes much away from the larger point is that JavaScript as a language is pretty much running "fast enough" for most of the things Flash does, and in some cases competitively w/regards to speed.
Anyone who has worked in a particularly large codebase (1000+kloc) would not agree.
I am a counterexample. So is Steve Yegge, who seems about as familiar with large codebases and a certain popular statically typed language as anybody, and has made a great observation about how statically typed languages (particularly the common manifestly typed variety) might actually drive code size as much as help you work with it.
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