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."

Comments

What about Flash games and other stuff?

[sopssa]

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.

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash isn't just about video, even if it's the most talked part of it here on slashdot.

Really, though, that is what Flash is about. If you were to go around and uninstall Flash Player from all the PCs in the world, almost all of the complaints would be "I can't watch YouTube, I can't watch Hulu, I can't watch CNN.com."

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[nahdude812]

Definitely, there's a whole realm of rich applications for which HTML5 can only just barely begin to dream.

But beyond this, even in the arena of video (which as you point out, seems to be the only corner of the Flash world the doomsayers want to talk about), HTML5 lacks ubiquity and consistency. There isn't even one single codec which is supported by every browser that implements HTML5 (Mozilla won't support H.264 for patent reasons), and even if there were, it still lacks functions which have existed in Flash for what seems like eons, such as dynamic bitrates (connection quality goes down, the amount of data sent to you goes down to compensate), and real-time seeking (ever want to skip around in a long video before the whole thing has loaded?).

Plus it's still missing camera and microphone controls.

Let's not forget that ActionScript is a much stronger language than JavaScript, and that things you write in Flash work in all browsers on all OS's if they work on your desktop, while JavaScript and interacting with the browser's DOM to this day is widely different in each browser, and sometimes even different in the same browser on different OS's. So the testing surface area in Flash is n (where n is the complexity of the application), while it's n*bv*o for HTML5 (where bv is the set of browsers and browser versions you want to support, and o is the set of OS's you want to support).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. HTML5 is moving in the right direction. But it's a long, long distance from seriously competing with Flash except ideologically. It will be five years before it's a serious competitor, and only if the backers of HTML5 all start pulling in the same direction (today they're pulling in different directions on things as simple as what codec video should use).

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[LWATCDR]

I have no problem with Flash living on in games.
I can take or leave most "all" Flash games.
Flash games don't work will on mobile devices "if at all"
Once you drop Flash for video Flash becomes as necessary as say Java. Very nice to have but a lot of people will never miss it.

Flash will be pushed more and more to the margins if HTML 5 takes off. Frankly there are lot of benefits to dropping Flash once you don't need it for Video.
Security is probably the biggest. Getting rid of Flash drops an attack vector you must worry about and keep updated.

What Adobe is saying and I think is very telling.
We do not make money off of Flash. We make money from authoring tools. If Flash dies tomorrow we will just make great HTML 5 authoring tools instead.
Heck Adobe may make a tool that makes writing games in HTML 5 as easy as it is in Flash.

So IMHO Adobe is saying that "Flash could be dead but we will still make boatloads of money with our authoring tools."

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"Flash got nearly 100% browser penetration long before YouTube existed"

Which is a polite form of saying "they've been f*cking with my browser for too long now".

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Flash will be pushed more and more to the margins if HTML 5 takes off. Frankly there are lot of benefits to dropping Flash once you don't need it for Video.
Security is probably the biggest. Getting rid of Flash drops an attack vector you must worry about and keep updated.

How does dropping flash for HTML5 remove an attack vector? It just replace one attack vector with another.

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[mrsurb]

It doesn't remove an attack vector. But it does replace an attack vector that is practically universal and can only be updated by one proprietary vendor (Adobe) with one that has a series of different implementations and (at least with open-source implementations) can be updated by anyone.

As genetic diversity increases a species' resistance to disease, digital diversity increases our resistance to malware.

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[LWATCDR]

Because odds are you will have both a browser and Flash.
So dropping Flash from you system will leave you with just the browser.
Nobody that I know of just uses Flash without a browser. So by dropping flash you get rid of an attack vector. Now you only need to worry about your Browser and not your Browser and Flash.

Re:What about Flash games and other stuff?

[psbrogna]

Things you write in Flash do not work on all browsers. They only work on browsers that have the Flash plug-in.

Let's not gloss over that: HTML5 may support a subset of Flash today, but it could eventually encompass all of it (or, gasp- exceed Flash functionality) and will do so in all HTML5 browsers without relying on a proprietary plug-in and closed eco-system of authoring tools. I think many people prefer this approach because Adobe is neglecting their platform and also because existing authoring tools from the vendor don't provide the functionality needed at the price desired.

I emphasize the above obvious point because your post seemed to gloss over the whole point of the HTML5 vs. Flash debate.

Adobe should be worried...

[__aaclcg7560]

Flash is out of luck with Steve Jobs.

SVG+video in IE 9 is the death blow

[r00t]

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.

Stinking badgers

[tepples]

Once someone ports Badgers to HTML5 Canvas, then it'll be safe to put Flash to sleep.

Re:Massive chutzpa from Adobe drone

[Trepidity]

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.

The fact that they're talking about it says a lot

[DavidinAla]

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. :-)

Hopefully there will be a FireFox plugin for html5

[pgmrdlm]

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.

Makes Sense, Actually

[KeithIrwin]

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.

Re:Makes Sense, Actually

[VGPowerlord]

When you really look at it, there's no reason that Adobe shouldn't embrace HTML 5.

Yes there is. Right now, Adobe has locks on both the production and consumption sides of Flash. Notably, they periodically add features to Flash that anyone else who makes a flash editor or player doesn't support. Heck, the GNU Flash player, Gnash, is still back on Flash 7 with some features of 8 and 9; the current version of Flash is Flash 11.

Adobe controls neither production or consumption sides of HTML5. They would just be a single developer making a product in this market segment.

As a side point, Flash was originally created as a vector animation tool. Strangely, it became hugely popular, largely supplanting its parent, Macromedia (now Adobe) Shockwave.

Of course they aren't worried.

[e2d2]

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.

archival quality Internet, please

[Fractal Dice]

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.

Consistency

[sehryan]

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?

Re:Oi, hippy, shut it.

[Arkham]

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!"

The problem is, we don't care if you have "style" or not. When I go to your site, and I can't read the text because of all the pseudo-scroll widgets and fake tabs, you failed to reach your target audience. Style is simple elegance. The perfect web site doesn't need drop shadows and background music -- the content speaks for itself.

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"

Oh my God! You're everything that's wrong with the internet! People HATE those stupid widgets on the sides of blogs -- in fact most of us use Flash blockers specifically for things like that. Anyone who's not a marketing weenie avoids that sort of thing as much as their technical prowess (or lack thereof) allows them to.

We don't care about stupid online beer commercials. We don't want to see your company's portfolio in 3D. I'm quite sure it's no more compelling that way -- only slower, uglier, and looks like crap on my mobile device, if it renders at all. Content is king, not the stupid fluff you're promoting. Flash is the realm of porn browsers and morons, and the content created using it clearly caters to this subsection of online society. I for one will be more than happy when it is banished to the realm of popularity where Java applets live these days.