Adobe Flash CS5 Exports Animations To HTML5 Canvas

An anonymous reader writes "Adobe's Flash CS5 will seek to make the Flash runtime less relevant with support for exporting animations to HTML5 canvas. Seth Weintraub from 9to5mac writes, 'In a previous post, I'd wondered why Adobe didn't spend its time building HTML5 authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into its Flash -> iPhone Apps exporter tool for Flash CS5. As it turns out, Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools, as demonstrated in the video above.'"

Comments

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

first first post attempt

Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Cyberax]

Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas except for animations approved personally by Steve Jobs.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

Well actually, Safari was the first browser to implement a canvas, so "technically" it's Apple's invention.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Spacezilla]

This is a serious question: Why does Apple appear to be OK with HTML5, but not with Flash? There are lots of posts claiming Apple is "afraid" of Flash, because the app store is their cash cow and Flash is a threat to that.

Now, I realize there is a lot more Flash content than HTML5 content, but isn't the basic principle the same? Couldn't I go make just about any game in HTML5 right now and have it work on the iPhone and iPad?

Is it because the source for any HTML5 game is viewable that Apple think "serious" game developers will avoid it?

Or another reason I'm missing?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[ukdmbfan]

In which case, you could take Steve Jobs' comments at face value, and it is just about the fact that Flash is crap, buggy, memory-hogging and inadequate to be run on a low-power, low-spec'd mobile device.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[auLucifer]

My bet would be, like most engineer posts I have seen, is flash sucks on the mac. It is apparently by far the most reported issue by the mac crash report, it is slow and very resource intensive so not likely to give a very good experience on the iphone. I don't have a link but that's what the engineers inside apple say. With the stamping out the flash compiler though perhaps it's grown to be something more ...

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Cyberax]

Canvas in HTML5 is dog slow. It's unusable for anything more than simple animations or board games. So Apple doesn't fear losing their control of the platform much.

Flash, on the other hand, is pretty powerful. Especially for low-power devices.

Oh, and I doubt that WebGL will be implemented on iPhone, because it has potential to make HTML5 just as powerful as Flash.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

Dog slow? Obviously you haven't seen Google's Quake 2 port running in Canvas.
http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[FyRE666]

Actually that's mostly using WebGL. If it was rendered using an HTML5 canvas alone I'm guessing you'd see maybe 0.1fps on a fast machine.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[AresTheImpaler]

Flash, on the other hand, is pretty powerful. Especially for low-power devices.

umm, I'm not going to argue how powerful flash is, but the "especially for low-powered devices" is completely the opposite.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Spacezilla]

Admittedly this is far from Quake 2, but it's still an HTML5 game for the iPhone:

http://purplefloyd.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/html5-platform-game-for-iphone/

With proper optimization, don't you think most 2D games could run pretty well in HTML5?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[AresTheImpaler]

Damn it. I hate replying to myself, but I forgot the facts :'( I guess I need more coffee.
According to the Nexus One specs, it has up to 7 hours of video playback. Let's assume it does 6 hours. Hell, let's assume it's 5 hours. Now, according to this flash mobil evangelist: "Our own tests show that video can be played for well over 3Hours over WIFI from youtube in H.264 (Baseline 1.2)." Then it gives an update on the blog and says: "My colleague Michael Chaize has also completed his own tests shown below. In addition to my own basic test he demonstrates the ability to play videos and gaming for over 4 hours and five hours respectively."
No thank you... I prefer no flash!

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 Canvas is only as slow as the JavaScript engine in the browser in question...

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[aussie_a]

You can already get Flash on your iPhone. Remote Desktop to any OS capable of running flash, and there you go. As long as you're within you're own personal network lag should be almost non-existent.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[jo_ham]

It's not just "resource intensive", it's outrageously dog slow for seemingly no reason. It seems almost incredulous that it could be as bad as it is, but a simple H.264 stream inside a flash container (ie, no fancy extra stuff, just video in a box) is a painful hog in OS X. A 2Ghz Core 2 Duo should not be pushing 30% usage per core to play back 480i content.

Interactive flash content like games, or just heavy pages (like Blizzard's Diablo 3 site) do work, but they don't half push the CPU hard - considerably harder than the same site on the same machine booted into XP. (and we'll assume no H.264 hardware decoding on either platform - we're talking the animations and other stuff that flash does as well, it's not just video playback).

On2's flash player that was part of the program for testing your flash builds (it had a feature to create little ready made flash players from your movies) was better, and XBMC (running on top of OS X) is excellent at playing video streams that the browser plugin makes such a meal of.

It really is atrocious on OS X. (despite the considerable developer documentation about OS X's innards, although you will hear some people claiming it was somehow Apple "denying Adobe access" to the core of OS X to make flash better.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[abigsmurf]

I'm not sure HTML5 is much better. A lot of the (non video) demos I've tried use insane amounts of CPU. What's it going to be like when there's heavy HTML5 integrated into site functionality and banner ads?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[TheRaven64]

Technically, WebGL is canvas - it uses a canvas tag, but with a 3D context - although most people refer to the 2D rendering context when they talk about the canvas tag.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Shin-LaC]

Heh. But it's not too far-fetched to think that Apple's infamous new rules for the iPhone have something to do with Adobe suddenly annoucing that they're working on Flash->HTML5 conversion. It looks like something good might come out of that decision after all.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

To my knowledge, Apple controls the entire source code to the iPhone OS. That's not to say they wrote the whole thing from scratch. Many low-level OS components are open source. But they have the source. If there's a bug, they can fix it. If something is slow, they can optimize or re-write it. That is not true for Mac OS X, and Flash is a prime example. The single leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X is a component that Apple can't fix.

As it stands today, Apple is dependent on no one other than itself for the software on the iPhone. Apple controls the source code to the whole thing, from top to bottom. Why cede any of that control to Adobe?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Vectormatic]

implementing != inventing

I don't know who actually invented it, but your logic isnt really flawless

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Tei]

It will take years to optimize HTML5 to something comparable to Flash. And maybe it will still be a bit slower than Flash. The point is not speed. The point is not scripting. Scripting is as bad if not worst, than a binary stream vectorial format. The points is a document model, that is easier to examine by bots and archivers, that can be modified by external tools, that can be linked, and all the good and cool features we have learn a Hyper Text have.

A binary stream of bits that render vectorial stuff is not fun, because you can't do much with these bits. A greasemonkey script is fun, google page rank search engine is fun.

Even if Flash is fast, a what price?, you have to support a separate things, with his own memory management and probably bugs. And is not that good either, Linux users have bad experience with Flash banners that take the 100% of the CPU.

Having everything following the document model (dom), any optimization made will touch all. Any optimization on the memory handling will affect all. Any safety mechanism. Updating the browser will update the rendering of such canvas thing, or svg thing.

I don't think Flash game dev's will move to HTML5 in 5 or 8 years. Flash will still be more interesting. But there will be a "leak" of the good features of Flash into the web, so the web will get whatever good we have learn from Flash. So Flash will not be required for some things. At a point, you will not *need* Flash. Needing Flash is *mucho* wrong, and we DO NOT WANT.

Some people will argue that "Flash-like" features in the web are bad news. These people are right. Animated banners in HTML5 are not better than in Flash. But with a better model, these will be more easy to control, limit, optimize.
And people want these Flash features. I serve no one to ignore that Flash add value to the web. We will steal (with HTML5 and SVG and Canvas) part of these value, to make the web AWESOME.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[smash]

Because flash relies on adobe's shitty flash interpreter, which has more holes than swiss cheese.

Javascript/html is run by apple interpreters, which apple have QA control over.

If Flash gets exploited on the iphone and Adobe lag the typical x months before patching it, and people's iphones get owned - iphone, and thus apple, look bad.

I don't think jobs, or any sane person wants to put their company/product in that situation.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

on the basis of the linked game i would say you haven't had anything to do with either playing or making flash games. in the last few years, the growth in the sophistication of (and the demand for) casual games has grown massively (and this seems set to continue.)

if you can honestly believe that this demo bodes well for html5 and its feasibility, then people should be able to make their minds up on that alone.

to anyone who knows anything about this it should be clear that apple have everything to fear from flash and nothing at all to worry about from html5, and that's why they can allow it.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[PenguSven]

Yes, people are abusing Canvas just like they abuse Flash, but at least with Canvas, Apple, Google, Mozilla, etc can DO something about the poor performance, rather than just listening to Adobe piss and moan and blame others, because Apple doesn't give a fucking browser plugin direct access to hardware.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true for Mac OS X, and Flash is a prime example. The single leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X is a component that Apple can't fix.

The accelerator pedal in a car is the single leading source of car crashes, do we ban the accelerator pedal or just teach drivers how to use it properly (and accept that some of them will abuse the privilege and suffer the crashes).

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Poorcku]

Flash runs *perfectly* on my Nokia E71 (low power mobile device). If I were the CEO of Adobe, I would bring out my next Photoshop versions to Windows only. Just in spite. :)

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[greggman]

Except of course it's been running on low-power, low-spec'd mobile devices in Japan since like 2003.

A large percentage of Japanese cell phones since around 2003 use flash for their UIs. This is great for the cell phone providers because they can contract out their UIs to graphic designers and UI/UX people can differentiate their UIs every 6 months.

I loved the selectable Flash based UIs on my both my 2003 and 2005 Japanese Casio phone

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Spacezilla]

on the basis of the linked game i would say you haven't had anything to do with either playing or making flash games. in the last few years

How did you guess? :)

if you can honestly believe that this demo bodes well for html5 and its feasibility, then people should be able to make their minds up on that alone.

The Flash games I have seen people play lately have certainly had better graphics, but I'm not sure they're more advanced. Usually it's something about hitting a ball or throwing a penguin or something like that. I don't see many people playing huge, deep games, it's usually something very simplistic.

to anyone who knows anything about this it should be clear that apple have everything to fear from flash and nothing at all to worry about from html5, and that's why they can allow it.

Alright, thank you for your time. :)

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

If those browser developers can do something about the poor performance of canvas, then why haven't they? Their browsers have supported it for years now, but it's horribly fucking slow for even simple graphics. If you try to render more than three or four frames per second, you'll lock up those browsers! It's pretty unbelievable, actually. It's like they're going out of their way to make canvas perform horribly.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I would suspect that Apple considers HTML5 to be "better", regardless of what benchmarks say today; because they have the power to improve it, subject only to the limitations of their engineering resources and any fundamental defects in the spec(which, because the process is at least moderately open and consensus based, and one where Apple has a fair seat at the table, they have some hope of ironing out). Flash, by contrast, is however Adobe wants it to be.

Further, I suspect that Apple doesn't really need Flash-level performance out of HTML5. By virtue of their market share(and their customers' willingness to buy widgets), the "If you want performance, make an App and shut yer trap." argument has worked pretty well for them. I suspect that their intentions for HTML5 basically boil down to "Achieve broad enough adoption for video purposes that, for any random video website our customers go to, they'll get a lump of h.246 for our hardware decoder and a couple of vector widgets, rather than a 'you don't have flash, so sad' embed box." and "Achieve performance decent enough that, if web designers and their idiot customers simply have to have their fancy flash-based menu effects, they can implement them in HTML5 and not break the experience for iPod users."(and, presumably, in the not so distant future, Mac users).

Long term, there isn't any particular reason why HTML5, which offers vector objects and bitmap canvases with javascript control, should be markedly slower than Flash, which offers vector objects and bitmap canvases with Actionscript control. In the short term, I suspect that Apple just doesn't care all that much.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Verunks]

Heh. But it's not too far-fetched to think that Apple's infamous new rules for the iPhone have something to do with Adobe suddenly annoucing that they're working on Flash->HTML5 conversion. It looks like something good might come out of that decision after all.

I doubt that, the video is from october 2009

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Spacezilla]

That makes sense, thank you, and that goes for everyone else who has posted insightful answers as well. :)

I really wasn't trolling, some people have just been arguing that Apple really doesn't want other ways to access applications than through the app store. (There was something about a C64 emulator being removed as well.)

So I just didn't understand why HTML5 was OK then, when it gives at least some of the same possibilities.

So again, thank you for your time everyone. :)

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[mgbastard]

It will take years to optimize HTML5 to something comparable to Flash.

Why? The Flash Player has over a decade of poor design decisions in SWF, bug-for-bug reproduction, etc, that it has to keep backward compatibility with. HTML5 canvas gets a nice fresh start having (hopefully) learned those lessons. IMHO, you'll see a lot of work with phenomenal improvements optimizing the runtimes, just like we saw with Javascript, in a quick surge. A lot of the same engineers who did did the magic on javascript are working on the HTML5 canvas implementations.

I don't think Flash game dev's will move to HTML5 in 5 or 8 years. Flash will still be more interesting.

I think that depends on whether Adobe makes the judgment call as to whether its more important to keep their Flash tools on top or not. If they conclude that the future is HTML5, they will bring their Flash/Flex/Air dev tools to be first class development environments for targeting HTML5 canvas; rather than being marginalized and losing their market share to a competitor in web animation authoring. Or perhaps they'll choose to compete on the platform itself, so they can own it. Time will tell.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

If you did that, you wouldn't be CEO for too much longer after flipping off the majority of your Photoshop customer base for no reason other than to spite the company who makes their computers. All that would do is hurt your customers and your own business much more than Apple.

I know you were trying to be funny, but come on... that was pretty stupid.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Malc]

I can attest to this. Watching Channel 4's video on demand (TV catch-up service) is impossible on my 2008 MBP running OS X 10.6 due to dropped frames, etc. Fire up a Windows Vista virtual machine in VM Fusion and try there instead, and it is perfectly watchable.

The BBC iPlayer also became unwatchable about September or October last year on OS X 10.5. I don't know if that's still the case as I switched to watching on my PS3 instead. Now I just have to put up with sound of a jet engine in the background :P

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Midnight Thunder]

Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas except for animations approved personally by Steve Jobs.

Why leave it there: Steve bans Javascript and HTML from Adobe, except for those personally approved by Steve Jobs ;)

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[hedwards]

Years? How long would it take to optimize it into something good?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[dskzero]

That's a rather long shot of thinking the web world will revolve over apple products. Despite all the good times, I *really* doubt that, unless their pricings and policies open up, they will be able to keep up with the race. I get the impression that Apple keeps up selling hardware, but how long will it carry them?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Wizard Drongo]

What the Anon. who also replied to said, basically.

Photoshop, for all it has a large windows base, is used by an awful lot of mac users. Like, a large percentage of large-volume sales of CS4 were Mac.
Then you have illustrator, which I personally detest/use on a daily basis. Add on InDesign and you're talking a LOT of sales here. Sure, web-devs etc. aren't usually mac users, and most flash programmers etc. are windows based.
But a large percentage, if not a majority of graphics designers and photographers are Mac only. And any CEO which tells a substantial part of his company's cash-cow-customers to go fuck themselves, they don't stay CEO for very long.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Jezza]

Apple don't create the implementation of Flash (and can't). So if Apple allow Flash onto the iPhone OS then they cannot influence the quality of that implementation over time. Apple created their own implementation of HTML5, and they can improve it and maintain it over time. Apple want to be able to maintain the user experience - not because they love their customers, but because they want to keep selling iPhone OS devices: they have to remain competitive over time. Essentially Apple are alone in this "longterm thinking" other manufactures leave the software to other players, given what's happened with other players in the market we can see that Apple's approach does have advantages.

Many people think Apple are primarily interested in "App" sales - Apple see this as a side issue, and actually the AppStore is seen primarily as adding value to the iPhone OS devices (or to put it another way, the AppStore helps sell iPhone OS devices, rather than the other way around). What Apple want is that anything created in HTML5 works well on the iPhone - so buyers see the iPhone as a good choice for consuming that content.

Why does Apple really hate Flash? Well if you look at the implementations of Flash on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows it is obvious that the Windows one gets far more love from Adobe than the other two - Apple hate that.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[PenguSven]

Because those same developers have been optimising the fuck out of their JavaScript implementations, which people actually use right now.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[DrXym]

Steve Job's comments can't be taken at face value. If I use/buy an Apple iPhone app, I am stuck on Apple's platform forever (assuming I wish to keep my possessions). If I use/buy an Adobe Flash app, it doesn't matter what the OS is because my app runs through something that sits on top. So Apple sees Flash as a threat because it prevents lockin.

That's the only reason Jobs has banned it. Every thing else is just some bullshit excuse. It should be quite within the means of Apple to support Flash on a handheld device. A simple way would be to put placeholders where each flash app resides in the page and require the user to touch the placeholder for the app to start. Touching one open app would stop any existing Flash app. Then the device isn't overwhelmed by too many open instances. Besides, if it were just the Flash runtime, why ban Flash apps which have been converted into native executables? There is no excuse. All the excuses emanating from Apple and its apologists are incredibly weak.

I would not be surprised if Safari browser acquired some mysterious new limitations on its timing precision, or throughput when using the canvas element to counter Adobe there too. I wonder what lame excuse will be trotted out if/when that happens.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Nerdposeur]

Animated banners in HTML5 are not better than in Flash. But with a better model, these will be more easy to control, limit, optimize.

This is a great point. Flash is obtuse - you can tell what domain it comes from and that's about it. It's hard to write smart blocking for it. HTML is much easier to figure out and deal with, from a user/browser point of view.

This is why HTML is preferable to Flash fonts and image fonts, and why HTML animation is preferable to Flash animation: it's more webby. The web has a philosophy that the user can control their own experience and see the source for what they're viewing. This is a Good Thing for developers and users alike.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[pitdingo]

what browser has supported canvas for years?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Dog-Cow]

Does the Nexus One's 7 (or 5) hours of video playback include streaming it over a radio? I doubt it.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

I don't think its nearly as simple as you claim. Having read this piece. It made me re-evaluate the point of it. To basically sum up, yes, this locks developers on the iPhone OS. On the other hand, these meta-platforms hurt Apple's ability to improve their devices. It makes them depend on a 3rd party runtime too to actually provide support for the new features. As we've all see with flash, Adobe has no desire to provide runtimes on time that actually work. So yeah, its platform lock-in. But it's also more than that. Apple hates being beholden to anyone else and this move could be seen as ensuring their independence.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[abigsmurf]

I've a sneaking suspicion they like HTML5 over flash, not only because they have the power to improve it but they have to power to limit it too, either by artificially poor performance of actions/functions troublesome for them or by outright disabling parts for 'security' reasons.

Will they always be perfectly happy to let you play HTML5 based games in the browser that you can also play on Android phones with no limitations of any kind? They've been saying this is their intention but it's largely at odds with their behaviour so far.

There's also the issue of stuff like JQuery. Will they be happy with you using that (and other non-Apple approved libraries) as a framework for a HTML5 app in the appstore?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Joce640k]

Yes ... but we won't be dependent on Adobe to do the optimization for us.

If they can be bothered.

Which they don't seem to be.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't think that Apple really has a strong hope of making the web revolve around them; but I strongly suspect that they have enough pull to achieve at least the "Achieve broad enough adoption for video purposes that, for any random video website our customers go to, they'll get a lump of h.246 for our hardware decoder and a couple of vector widgets, rather than a 'you don't have flash, so sad' embed box." side of things.

Across a substantial percentage of the various flash-video streaming sites of the world, the setup basically consists of an embedded .swf object(often a minimally modified/reskinned version of one of a fairly small number of commercial or OSS flash players) that provides Actionscripted vector widgets for controlling the playback of a .flv or .mp4 video pulled from some URL(often some degree of obfuscation is used, to make just snarfing the video more of a nuisance; but good old "view source" is often pretty informative).

That being so, the only real obstacle to the streaming sites going HTML5 is the provider of the Flash player widget they are using updating to provide a "check user agent string, if iPhone, serve an HTML video object, else, serve the flash object, in either case, point to the same h.264 file. There will be holdouts, sure; but that isn't a terribly high bar to pass.

If getting what they wanted meant wholesale re-encoding of all the video on the internet, or huge architectural changes, Apple wouldn't get it. Their audience is well placed(wealthy consumers, hip technophiles, college students who will grow into one or the other); but it isn't large. It doesn't, though. Web designers are already familiar with user-agent based conditional tricks, so another one won't kill them, and most "flash based" video sites are basically just using flash(often in the form provided pre-canned by a different vendor) as a player for h.264 pulled from some URL.

The second objective, however, I suspect that Apple will have to work much harder for. Getting "good enough" performance for website menus and other useless chrome won't be too hard; but the sort of web designers currently churning that crap out are not going to stop unless they get tools for producing it that match their existing skills and Adobe-based workflow.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Lars T.]

I really wasn't trolling, some people have just been arguing that Apple really doesn't want other ways to access applications than through the app store.

I guess those were the same people who blasted Apple for not having a way to bring any apps onto the iPhone when it came out, and instead asked people to provide web-apps instead. Which makes one question the motives of these people - no, really.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/16/2340207:

"AppleInsider is running an article about Apple's new SproutCore Web application development framework, utilizing Javascript and some nifty HTML 5 to offer a 'Cocoa-inspired' way to create powerful Web applications.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Tumbleweed]

In which case, you could take Steve Jobs' comments at face value, and it is just about the fact that Flash is crap, buggy, memory-hogging and inadequate to be run on a low-power, low-spec'd mobile device.

I guess the rest of us aren't actually able to use Flash on our smartphones. Huh. I guess we've been imagining things. I sure picked the wrong day to quit LSD!

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[pubwvj]

HTML5 is a standard.
Flash is a proprietary play box and not a standard.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[dskzero]

Wow, very well written reply. I honestly have nothing else to add. Bravo. Thanks for taking the time.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Lars T.]

Except of course it's been running on low-power, low-spec'd mobile devices in Japan since like 2003.

I guess you disagree with all the posters to this claiming Flash-less web-pages certainly do not exist because of the iPhone/iPad, but because there are so many low-power, low-spec'd mobile devices without Flash, then.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[DrXym]

I don't see how it hurts Apple at all. Apple can pump out a new OS and it's up to 3rd parties to play catchup. Apple doesn't have to make any concessions any more than the Linux kernel does to binary drivers.

Neither do I accept that Flash sucks purely because of Adobe. NPAPI plugins can be windowed or windowless. Windowed plugins are far more efficient both for plugins and browsers because there is minimal interaction except for setup & tear down. The plugin owns its own native window that sits over the top of content but otherwise handles its own painting which can even be on a different thread if it wants. Except the Mac doesn't support windowed plugins.

Windowless plugins are much slower. They rely on the browser to call them to render (they might even be sandwiched in the Z-order between DOM elements) and incur a far higher overhead because they paint on the one thread. Throw in software video decoding and it's not hard to see why performance on the Mac suffers.

It's completely simplistic to blame Adobe when there are fundamental design issues that mean Apple deserves their own share of the blame. Of course Apple could help resolve this issue but instead they're pretending they have nothing to do with the problem when they clearly do.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[bennomatic]

I think you're totally right. And considering that a group used Google's GWT to build a Javascript/HTML5 implementation of Doom (can't find the link now, but it's out there, including a video on youtube), there's no reason to think that there won't be a *lot* more gaming activity based on this burgeoning technology in the near future.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Actually, It was Quake. And it worked beautifully. I compiled it and tested. On my laptop, it didn't work (since Chrome's WebGL doesn't support Intel). On an NVIDIA Desktop, it worked smoothly. Remember this is a very complex application, with physics and many other complex calculations done in software. That was pretty amazing, and it shows that HTML5 is a promising platform for game development.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

People need to understand this: an SWF embed is a binary application running on a different process than your browser that just happens to position that black box at a given x:y position over the browser window. That's all. Canvas is just another HTML element. It's rendered by your browser's rendering engine, and is part of your page. You can use z-index, you can style it, and do anything you would do with an tag.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Legitimate points. However, I'm more inclined to put the blame on Flash, since Silverlight somehow doesn't seem to have any of these problems on Mac.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 performance still lags far behind Flash Player, so you're not going to be able to implement the types of complex games that would be competitive against games in the app store.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[bennomatic]

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I thought that WebGL was essentially an implementation of some of the core elements of OpenGL in Javascript, meaning--if I understand correctly--that anything that works with WebGL could run in an HTML5-compliant browser such as Mobile Safari.

Is this not correct? Is WebGL an actual plug-in like Flash?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Simetrical]

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I thought that WebGL was essentially an implementation of some of the core elements of OpenGL in Javascript, meaning--if I understand correctly--that anything that works with WebGL could run in an HTML5-compliant browser such as Mobile Safari. Is this not correct? Is WebGL an actual plug-in like Flash?

No, it's not. WebGL is a standard that's being built into some browsers. It defines an alternate backend (context) to the canvas element, which lets you do 3D rendering instead of 2D. The 2D context is much older and more widely implemented, and for a long time was the only one specced, so when people say "canvas" they usually mean "canvas with 2D rendering context", but WebGL is canvas too.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[TrancePhreak]

As an N1 owner I can tell you the wifi streaming does take a big chunk of your battery time.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Simetrical]

implementing != inventing

I don't know who actually invented it, but your logic isnt really flawless

The HTML canvas element was copied from Safari. Originally, Apple devised and implemented it themselves entirely for internal use. When the WHATWG was looking to extend standard HTML with more application-centric markup, and decided it wanted a 2D graphics API, basing it on an existing well-tested and featureful API that already had a browser implementation apparently seemed like a good idea.

This was a few years before I started following the WHATWG and web standards, so I don't know the details offhand, but Apple definitely invented the canvas element, as much as anyone can be said to have invented an HTML element.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Kitkoan]

This is a serious question: Why does Apple appear to be OK with HTML5, but not with Flash? There are lots of posts claiming Apple is "afraid" of Flash, because the app store is their cash cow and Flash is a threat to that.

Now, I realize there is a lot more Flash content than HTML5 content, but isn't the basic principle the same? Couldn't I go make just about any game in HTML5 right now and have it work on the iPhone and iPad?

Is it because the source for any HTML5 game is viewable that Apple think "serious" game developers will avoid it?

Or another reason I'm missing?

I think Apple is OK with HTML5 and not Flash because Apple really is afraid of Flash and it's threat to it's market place. HTML5 at the moment is more of a novelty that might mature into something way in the future, but at the moment its not anywhere as useful as Flash. HTML5 can play video but it can't do much else like play games without extra's involved which I doubt Apple would allow. These extra's are plugins like Web3D which to my knowledge aren't on products like the iPad. And even if you could get plugins like Web3d on the iPad, it might not function well (as shown here on what looks to be on a full Mac computer). As you can see in the video, it's slow, and it's Quake 2, and it's running on HTML5, a far cry from the smoother Quake 3 running through Flash/. Flash would give access to free web games, which Apple won't want since by the looks of it as of 2 months ago the top 3 money making apps are games and no company wants to kill its money-maker.

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 is open, Flash is not. HTML5 has many people working to optimise it, Adobe wants to re-write as little of Flash as possible. Which would you choose?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that old excuse really is rubbish.

Quicktime is a browser plug-in too. So is the Flip4Mac player (which tries to mimic the Windows Media Player plug-in, as far as I can tell). They both get the same level of hardware access that the Flash plugin gets, they interact with the browser in exactly the same way, using the exact same API. They present video on-screen using the same code path.

QuickTime can play SD videos in a browser, using only software rendering, with minimal CPU usage, on even the oldest Intel Mac. It was able to do this on OS X 10.4, so it's been able to do this for years. I'm not at my Macbook right now, but it's something like 5% - 10%. Flip4Mac can do likewise. Safari's built-in HTML5 video player uses slightly more CPU than QuickTime, which is probably because of the way the video is composited onto the web page. QuickTime and Flip4Mac essentially display in a window on top of everything else, with no compositing, which is faster. Flash has the option of doing either.

Flash? On my Macbook, it pegs one core at 100%. That's for a simple 480p video stream. On the rare occasion it doesn't hit 100%, it's still somewhere in the region of 80% (of one core).

An even better comparison is Silverlight. The Mac version of Silverlight actually works, doesn't use all your CPU, and won't drain your batteries in 30 minutes while burning a hole in the casing of your laptop. So how come Microsoft can do it, on a competitor's platform, from the first release, but Flash still sucks after so many years?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[Phoghat]

The answer to the question:

WWSJD?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[bennomatic]

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. Do you happen to know if WebKit/Chrome/Mozilla/IE8/IE9 are supporting or planning to implement WebGL?

Re:Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas

[H3g3m0n]

HTML5 already runs at Flash level speeds for me on Chrome. Firefox isn't too shabby either. It's often faster and has less resource usage (my netbook barely plays Flash videos but has no problems with HTML5 ones).

As for the annoying usage of Flash vs the annoying usage of HTML5, HTML5 might be a bit harder to block since it integrates directly into the page. You can currently block all Flash with Flash block, of course there might be a HTML5 canvas block, but canvas might end up being used to just about everything.

But with that said, it should be eaiser to block things like ads (currently adblock can't block those annoying 30 second ad clips that play before those 45 second videos), however a grease monkey script should be fairly easy to throw together to skip them and normal adblock rules can be used to block domain specific ads. There is also the potential for a grease monkey/adblock hybrid model.

Great idea! And finally a webstandard from Adobe!

[thijsh]

... but I wanna bet Gordon will be pissed. ;-)

yabut

[djupedal]

I'm not making the connection between "...wondered why Adobe didn't spend their time building HTML5 Authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into their Flash->iPhone Apps ", and "rather rudimentary".

Either we're being fed an admission that the ar was wrong about how Adobe spent their time, or the ar is giving 'rather rudimentary' a rather generous pass. If the ar was wrong, then maybe when the other shoe drops we'll find that the generous pass was a mistake as well and this is nothing but more blood on the saddle. In other words, nothing to see, please move along.

Re:yabut

[Anonymous Coward]

Words coherent not is much, grammar good not is very, understandable.

Flashblock and cookies

[Meneth]

What does this mean for Flashblock and Flash cookies?

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[dangitman]

What does this mean for Flashblock and Flash cookies?

What a strange question. It seems about as relevant as asking what this means for Flashdance.

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[A Friendly Troll]

Nothing. Flash will never be replaced, and by the time you start seeing Canvas ads, you'll have Canvasblock :)

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[tokul]

What does this mean for Flashblock and Flash cookies?

html canvas element does not use Flash. It uses scripting.

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[TheRaven64]

The nice thing about Flash, from the perspective of someone who wants to turn it off, is that a Flash movie is self-contained. Each Flash thing in the UI is a separate blob of code. With canvas, this separation is not present. A browser can refuse to generate a drawing context from a canvas tag, but it can't isolate separate components of the page's script. JavaScript has a single global namespace and everything in a page is squished into this. You can't easily turn off JavaScript and canvas and then turn it back on selectively, just allowing the canvas tag that you want.

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be able to turn off a single canvas element (by id or class), and then have all events generated from it go to /dev/null and all drawing requests for it also go to /dev/null. Sure, it wouldn't block all CPU usage associated with it (just some), but at least, it'd kill the ad in it...

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[ColdWetDog]

Uh oh. That's potentially very bad. Coming from the concept that some of us dinosaurs prefer information that doesn't twizzle, bark, rotate, blink or run around the page but instead just sits there ready to be consumed this is an unpleasant fact. As you point out, one of the great things about Flash is you can make flash go away very easily. For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that the idiots that design most Flash content will continue to be the idiots that design most HTML 5 graphics content and will continue along the path of making things more obnoxious^Hvisible as time marches on.

Maybe we should just keep the devil that we know....

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

It means it's time for the sequel, Canvasdance.

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[DJRumpy]

Doesn't NoScript allow element specific blocking?

http://noscript.net/

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[Simetrical]

Nothing. Flash will never be replaced, and by the time you start seeing Canvas ads, you'll have Canvasblock :)

No you won't, because canvas will be implemented by browsers that actually compete with each other, and so won't be a buggy/crashy piece of trash. Of course, your standard ad blockers will block canvas ads just fine.

Re:Flashblock and cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Parent was aware of the Flash to Canvas implications. I think the appropriate question should have been: "How do we black ads using javascript/canvas?" And my response to that is that one already fairly acceptable ad blocking method is by IP address source. Also the location of ads on web pages will be noted in some form like div tags with ids/labels that say "ad." But I think one of the reason people use Flashblock to begin with is not to block ads, but to block unwanted flash content that slows down or otherwise hinders browsing performance. And if the status quo switches to using canvas/JS for ads it will probably improve our browsing experience. But who knows, really?

Smart move and good news

[mcvos]

Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms. If everybody starts dropping flash support, why would they cling desperately to the flash plugin? Having their tools export to HTML5 is a smart move. Keeps them relevant, and they won't have to support their own runtime platform anymore. Instead, they'll have to compete, which is good news for everybody else.

Re:Smart move and good news

[dangitman]

Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms.

Yeah, maybe when Photoshop and Illustrator were their main products. Since then (and particularly since the acquisition of Macromedia) they have been all about "owning the platform" and trying to tie their products into the web. It's not just Flash, they took PDF from being a nice WYSYWIG print document format, and then started embedding all kinds of interactive bullshit into it. Or Adobe AIR.

Since around the turn of the Century, they stopped being about creative tools and started marketing to executives as being "business tools." The rapid decline of their applications was very evident, as they lost focus and tried to shoehorn their "platform" thinking into every product, even if it didn't really belong there.

Re:Smart move and good news

[jlebrech]

This was the logical step to go from the start.

Adobe has kept that quiet whilst pretending to be worried about flash going down the pan.

Flash is just an export file format, and they can now export to a slightly less bloated/featured format. this type of technology will cement Adobe more into the web development industry.

If Adobe are smart they will be the number 1 HTML5 authoring tools around.

Very impressive.

Re:Smart move and good news

[stimpleton]

"Adobe has always been more about good editing tools."

I really must disagree. While Macromedia made Dreamweaver, it has been under Adobe control for a while and very little has changed. My brief list of why Dreamweaver might be seriously hampered in the next evolution of web(HTML5):

- Data IDE to a database virtually unchanged since Dreamweaver 4.
- Broken layer support such as nested layers. Try positioning a layer mid vertical and horizontal and then try editing that in Dreamweaver.
- No virtualization for modern javascript techniques such as httpRequest, let alone HTML 5.
- GUI implementation of CSS is poor. Old Skool technique of writing the style sheet first is fastest.

In summary, Dreamweaver has not got these technologies right. I feel it is in real danger of dropping the ball. Adobe's attitude confuses me. But correct re Flash. It will be an IDE for HTML5 development or die. Within several years with a combo of increased processor specs and browser optimisations, the Canvas control will be the new VGA mode. With casual games being the biggest growth market, ignore this at your peril.

Re:Smart move and good news

[neumayr]

Not to mention the DRM infrastructure they build around PDF (and EPUB).
But they do get away with it it seems, maybe because their SDK for those fileformats is without real competition (that I know of). Every E-Reader with support for those formats I've seen uses this SDK...

Re:Smart move and good news

[Trepidity]

That seems true from observation of their actions, but I can't imagine the business case really lines up with it. From everything I can discern, Photoshop and Illustrator are still by far their cash cows. Their ownership of PDF helps them sell some PDF authoring tools, but it's not the revenue stream that Photoshop is.

Re:Smart move and good news

[FyRE666]

How the hell do you think this will be less bloated? Instead of a binary plugin installed on your machine that just downloads compressed binary data to render an animation, now you'll need to download the entire runtime script, as plain text, plus additional js to run the same animation. If anything, this will INCREASE the download times significantly.

Re:Smart move and good news

[dangitman]

That seems true from observation of their actions, but I can't imagine the business case really lines up with it.

Nobody ever accused most executives that run big businesses today of being particularly competent at business. They mostly exist to enrich themselves by selling the company down the river for short-term gains.

From everything I can discern, Photoshop and Illustrator are still by far their cash cows.

I haven't seen any figures, but I wouldn't be so sure. Flash and Dreamweaver are very popular in web design and production. Anyway, nobody buys Illustrator or Photoshop as standalone products anymore, you buy the Creative Suite, and get the other stuff thrown in with it.

Their ownership of PDF helps them sell some PDF authoring tools, but it's not the revenue stream that Photoshop is.

Again, I'm not so sure about this. People may not buy Photoshop and Illustrator as standalone products, but businesses do buy Acrobat Pro as a standalone product in large quantities. Sure it costs less to buy, but it also costs less to develop, and when you buy Creative Suite it counts as an Acrobat Pro sale as well as a Photoshop sale.

I don't have any hard answers, but to me the weirdest thing is the change of culture. Having worked in design and photo editing, it used to be hell to try and get the boss to fork out for a copy of Photoshop. They would say "why can't we use something cheaper, like Corel, or [shudder] Microsoft Paint, or perhaps pirate it?" This was at a time when Photoshop had few serious competitors. Today, Photoshop has mounting competition, and the bosses have the opposite attitude - "If it's not Adobe, there must be something wrong with it. It can't be very good if it's that much cheaper." It's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft" syndrome all over again. And just like that syndrome, it is highly entrenched. There are courses all over the world in web design that basically teach Flash and Dreamweaver as the holy grail, and teach people to do web mock-ups in Photoshop, and those courses will address issues like HTML5 when hell freezes over.

It's a bit sad, as someone who has used Adobe stuff from almost the beginning, to see that people now miss the point. Rather than seeing the potential of the tools, it's become entrenched rote-learning and slavishness to the product, rather than the vision.

Re:Smart move and good news

[agrif]

How the hell do you think that this data is not already transmitted with Flash, and how do you know that it is well compressed? Even given that, I think you should read up on "Content-Encoding: gzip" and friends.

Re:Smart move and good news

[AvitarX]

I Think what happened is that adobe courted schools and quark was an asshole.

When indesign came out creative suite was a very affordable easy way for schools to get a tool for all their needs (vector, raster, layout, cross platform archive). And while there was no educational discount on quark, the suite was deeply discounted (creative suite was cheaper than quark alone).

After a couple of versions indesign was even a usable product.

You can see the effect in the precipitous drop of quark upgrade prices. They are struggling to keep loyal customers even.

Re:Smart move and good news

[TheRaven64]

they took PDF from being a nice WYSYWIG print document format, and then started embedding all kinds of interactive bullshit into it

Most of which is not used. The submitted PDF to ISO, and ISO also defines a few useful subsets of PDF that don't have any of the 'interactive bullshit'.

Re:Smart move and good news

[gaspyy]

This was at a time when Photoshop had few serious competitors. Today, Photoshop has mounting competition

Name one.

There is no serious competition for Photoshop. I wish it were. Corel stopped innovating years ago. Gimp is still a toy for professional work and I really don't know any other professional program that can do what Photoshop can.

I'm saying this as a former Corel user. It wasn't easy for me to fork money for PS, but I had to because I realized that no other tool comes close. Sure, there's Fireworks (also by Adobe) and Corel Painter but they are specialized tools.

Re:Smart move and good news

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 interesting eh, and yet there probably isn't one comment on this page that is more clueless - it is laughable to think that html5 can compete with flash for casual games, even if flash were to stand still and stop innovating at its currently very rapid rate.

Re:Smart move and good news

[snsr]

it is laughable to think that html5 can compete with flash for casual games

Far from laughable - it's already happening: http://www.canvasdemos.com/type/games/

Re:Smart move and good news

[snsr]

In summary, Dreamweaver has not got these technologies right

Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG rendering engine is a joke, and it always has been. The app is a text editor with code highlighting, plain and simple.

Re:Smart move and good news

[mjbkinx]

He probably read the specs. SWF really is pretty compact to begin with, then everything after the first eight bytes is zipped.

Re:Smart move and good news

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

I have to agree with the GP 100%. Labeling the GP as flamebait is just unfounded and dumb. Flash has it's entire class hierarchy/toolset/API that is used internally in building the flash animations. If you look at the documentation for AS3 and AS2 and look at all the functionality that is currently available to Flash developers, you'll see the extra bloat that will need to make it into the export. Now I wouldn't necessarily call it bloat, but it is above what a normal person would expect for something done by hand. And as the GP also said, every SWF is a compressed archive. Gzip is great, but unless you have 100% control of your hosting (big companies will), it's not always feasible. It really is a trade off for the hosting company of CPU and load vs. bandwidth, and I'm assuming bandwidth is cheaper for them on normal hosting package.

Re:Smart move and good news

[ArundelCastle]

Quite so. Adding bullshit to Acrobat is the only feasible way to:
1. Make users upgrade to the newest version with an arbitrary interface change
2. Make ACEs upgrade to the newest version with threat of blacklisting (grumbles about impending re-test fee)

PDF as a format has not moved beyond the usefulness of the ISO specs, and why should it? It's pretty good. But commerce loves a better mousetrap. Almost all of the changes to Acrobat.exe since version 6 have involved collab tools and form functionality that can typically be done better on the web. And in the case of Acrobat, much like their half-hearted attempt at FlashPaper (best name evar), the functionality is limited on non-Windows machines. Exporting Word docs to PDF in Word 2007 is an entirely different affair than Word 2008.

Re:Smart move and good news

[nine-times]

WYSIWYG web editors have always been criticized by serious web developers, and for good reason: HTML isn't quite a WYSIWYG type of format. It's not only important that a set of pixels be positioned in a certain place, but that they be positioned there the right way. That requires someone to understand HTML, CSS, and other web languages and to make intelligent decisions on how to use them.

It might not be completely impossible for a WYSIWYG editor to be built with some really smart logic that allows it to make pretty smart decisions, based on context and everything, but I haven't seen it yet. Even in the best cases of relatively simple static pages, Dreamweaver doesn't necessarily come up with HTML that I'd be happy with.

On the other hand, Dreamweaver has a couple of things going for it. First, it allows people who don't know very much about what they're doing to make web pages anyway. Second, it allows those people to learn how to make web pages by comparing the preview version with the HTML code very quickly. Third, it does have some decent tools for keeping track of all your files for a given site, cleaning up code, validating code, etc. Finally, you can always deal with it as a text-only thing if you don't need the WYSIWYG editor.

But mostly, ultimately, I've never thought of Dreamweaver as a great tool for real, professional web developers to make their lives easier. It ends of being a fancy but bloated text editor. Maybe the new version is better (I haven't tried it yet), but I thought its main target audience was non-web-developers who want to make some web pages anyway.

Re:Smart move and good news

[agrif]

I should not have set the tone I did at the beginning of the comment... I meant to poke fun at the language used, but no more.

When I mentioned gzip, I meant literally making a .js.gz file out of the source, and hosting that directly with the correct headers. No CPU overhead, less bandwidth, eveyone wins.

Including a standard library will probably make the files bigger, true. If Adobe is smart about it it will only include those bits you actually need, and if browsers and standards organizations were smart there would be a generic Javascript standard library for canvas and the other newfangled HTML5 elements, though I doubt such a thing would ever be the same between browsers.

Re:Smart move and good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ever accused most executives that run big businesses today of being particularly competent at business. They mostly exist to enrich themselves by selling the company down the river for short-term gains.

That's a pretty sour view on the business world as a whole. From creative-to-creative, you can point to all the Wall Street crooks you like; that doesn't make all, or even most, bad apples. A global-condemnation of any kind comes off as bitter rather than an objective observer.

Sorry, just had to throw in those 2-cents.

Cheers.

Re:Smart move and good news

[Simetrical]

It really is a trade off for the hosting company of CPU and load vs. bandwidth, and I'm assuming bandwidth is cheaper for them on normal hosting package.

CPU overhead of gzip is negligible, and can be avoided anyway if you just cache the gzipped files (which also saves memory). Bandwidth is far more expensive. gzip is disabled on some hosts probably because it's disabled by default in some web servers, which is probably (at least in JS's case) because some ancient versions of IE used to have trouble with gzipped JS. (What web servers do enable JS gzip by default, any of them?)

Re:Smart move and good news

[Acaeris]

I doubt Dreamweaver sells anywhere near as many copies of CS as Photoshop or Illustrator do. Both PS and Illustrator are unmatched for features and quality whereas Dreamweaver was designed by Macromedia primarily to code HTML and Codefusion. Only recently has Dreamweaver's PHP support reached a decent level and it's rivals (Netbeans, Eclipse, etc.) are by far much better tools for server side development. I don't know if it is similar for ASP but both Netbeans and Eclipse also support JSP so that's 2 out of the 3 major server languages. Flash might sell quite a few copies, but people are moving away from using Flash except for a few pre-written apps (such as a media player, fancy news screen or canvas replacement).

Back to the Future

[wombatmobile]

Adobe was pro web standards until it bought Macromedia. It was the leading supporter of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for the first half of last decade, publishing and distributing an SVG plugin for Internet Explorer and supporting SVG in Illustrator and GoLive. Adobe lost its moral compass when it bought Macromedia, After failing to halt the popularity of web standards and standing at the edge of a precipice, Adobe is now seeking forgiveness from developers.

Re:Back to the Future

[virgilp]

Or another way to say it is:

"Adobe tried to compete with Macromedia by supporting web standards instead of Flash; after Macromedia kicked their ass due to the much faster development cycle (they were not constrained by any standards comitee), they learned the lesson, acquired Macromedia and did the development no their own".
Take a look at Apple... the only HTML5 standard they are supporting is the one already implemented in Webkit (coincidentally, it's their own platform). Sure, they've put up a "standards group" to make it seem like they care about others think, but the WHATWG standard is really "what Apple thinks best suits their interest".

I'm curious though how long it will take until browsers start becoming "CPU hogs", and "flash crashed my browser window" turns into "javascript/canvas/svg/whatever crashed my browser window" (or the full browser, depending on how good the browser implementation is.

(oh, btw, about multi-platform and "Mac users being second-hand citizens because Adobe is evil".... I hear that Safari implementation on Windows is pretty crappy compared to Mac. And how's Safari doing on Linux, does anybody care to tell me? :) )

Re:Back to the Future

[PenguSven]

Sure, they've put up a "standards group" to make it seem like they care about others think, but the WHATWG standard is really "what Apple thinks best suits their interest".

Not quite, old chap.

WHATWG was formed by people from Apple, Mozilla and Opera. They invited a Microsoft guy but he declined.

The current editor of WHATWG specs is Ian Hickson, who works for Google.

Re:Back to the Future

[ahankinson]

And how's Safari doing on Linux, does anybody care to tell me?

Could be better, but there are some interesting developments happening.

Re:Back to the Future

[molnarcs]

And what do those have to do with Safari? 2 of them are webkit based browsers, while the third, konqueror, is the origin of webkit (no, webkit is not an Apple invention).

Re:Back to the Future

[Simetrical]

Take a look at Apple... the only HTML5 standard they are supporting is the one already implemented in Webkit (coincidentally, it's their own platform). Sure, they've put up a "standards group" to make it seem like they care about others think, but the WHATWG standard is really "what Apple thinks best suits their interest".

Um, what? The WHATWG standard is written by Ian Hickson, who works for Google. There's theoretically a short list of members who can overrule him, but a) that includes people from Apple, Opera, Google, and Mozilla, as well as one freelancer; and b) it does nothing in practice, just lets Ian call the shots.

The spec also currently has a W3C version that mirrors the WHATWG version. Changes to the W3C version can be made by a procedure that ultimately boils down to approval by the three co-chairs, who are employed by Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. The W3C itself, including the TAG headed by Tim Berners-Lee, also has a say in how the standard develops there. In principle, substantive differences could arise between the WHATWG and W3C versions, but so far Ian has implemented all the non-editorial approved change proposals in both specs (AFAIK).

I'm all for saying Apple is basically evil, but saying Apple controls HTML5 is ridiculous.

Re:Back to the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Macromedia kicked their ass due to the much faster development cycle (they were not constrained by any standards comitee)

SVG has been a W3C recommendation since September 2001. The bottleneck is implementors, not standards committees.

Lock in Culture

[AHuxley]

Imagine an industry which everyone won
Permanent profit in endless black
Indulge yourself, your every mood
Consider for a minute who code for
What you'd like to change, never mind the profit
Bury the past, empty the shell
Decide it's time to reinvent yourself
Like Adobe before TrueType, Flash after HTML5
Suddenly your missing, then you're reborn
Living in an Adobe fantasy

Re:Lock in Culture

[dangitman]

Uhh, was that post supposed to be read to the tune of "Fantasy" by Black Box? Don't do that.

Re:Lock in Culture

[AHuxley]

The 1991 track DJ Culture by British electronic music group Pet Shop Boys.

Re:Lock in Culture

[dangitman]

The 1991 track DJ Culture by British electronic music group Pet Shop Boys.

Well, that cleanses the aural stain. A little.

Re:Lock in Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

BURMA SHAVE!

Very telling post

[Khyber]

"Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools"

Tells me they only had this as a backup plan for when shit hit the fan, which they never expected to have happen so soon.

Apple got Adobe with their pants down and now Adobe is scrambling.

Re:Very telling post

[Yvanhoe]

Well, I don't know if I agree with this analysis, all I want to say right now is : Thanks Adobe ! Welcome to the open web ! Finally ! Stop being an enemy and let's be friends ! Let's make the web fantastic again !

Re:Very telling post

[Anonymous Coward]

Please refresh my memory: when was it "fantastic" before?

Re:Very telling post

[DarkXale]

Perhaps, but it does also buy them a bit more time. HTML5 is currently not ready to be used mainstream. Far too many browsers still do not have HTML5 support. That said, once IE9 is released - we can probably expect a massive adaption of it on the Internet "market". It'll take time; i don't think too many people and sites will be quick to replace existing flash content. Likely all NEW content and adds will be HTML 5 however. Eventually as site upgrades/renovations become relevant though, the remaining flash objects will be replaced by HTML5 components where possible. Competitive sites will likely adapt it sooner however, in order to gain the edge over competition in regards to usability.

Re:Very telling post

[Anonymous Coward]

"/b/ was never good", huh?

Re:Very telling post

[Yvanhoe]

When every text content was crawlable and accessible via links.

When you didn't have to go through a slow (but shiny) flash animation to get twenty bytes of content. When the only annoyances were the animated gifs and the <blink> tag

Re:Very telling post

[thijsh]

I would like to sign your petition to make the web fantastic *again*... We all love animated GIFs with text and background with blindness inducing color scheme... Oh and lets not forget the mandatory Java applets with water ripple effects and ActiveX object just for some 3D little animation. The web really was fantastic then, websites even tasted better... kinda like strawberry and kittens. So please Adobe, sprinkle some of your corporate magic unicorn dust over the interwebs.

Re:Very telling post

[AvitarX]

Just now ate sites starting to drop ie 6 support. We have years yet.

Re:Very telling post

[TheRaven64]

Some time around 1993, when animated GIFs were the most irritating thing you could do, there were no search engines so you had to get people to recommend your page for it to be seen, most pages contained useful information, and any browser worked on any site. Of course, it was a lot less useful back then; less signal, but a much higher signal to noise ratio.

Re:Very telling post

[Philip_the_physicist]

Between the launch of Mosaic and the start of the Eternal September.

Re:Very telling post

[Anonymous Coward]

Those things didn't go away because the technology didn't allow it, they went away because web design matured into a proper thing. The people making those crappy websites have all moved onto social networking, and the people who would make websites like that are also already into social networking.

Re:Very telling post

[Peter Bortas]

Animated GIFs where introduced in Netscape 2.0, which didn't appear until late 1995. So '93 and '94 was animation free. I believe <blink> was available from '94 though.

Re:Very telling post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Flash is like those 2 sentence memos you get in e-mail -- in Microsoft Word format as an attachment.

Re:Very telling post

[MadKeithV]

See attachment.

Re:Very telling post

[Matthew Fabb]

Only the video is from October from Adobe's conference MAX09. It has nothing to do with Apple's recent decision. However, for some reason few tech blogs were covering this news back in October, as all the attention was on the Flash iPhone exporter that Adobe had just announced. Now that the Flash to iPhone exporter has been banned by Apple, many people have been asking why Adobe hasn't been working on HTML5 tools. Only to realize Adobe has been working on supporting HTML5 and this half a year old video suddenly becomes popular.

Re:Very telling post

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Flash.

Re:Very telling post

[thijsh]

No, the people who once made those terrible sites later made the entire site in Flash, and even uglier, and not able to index or view with styles disabled... But you are right that most moved to social networks, i'm glad that we can avoid the part of the internet west from the Noob sea (http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png).

Re:Very telling post

[pete_norm]

Don't forget the "Under construction" GIF in every web site with orange cones pictures.

I can't read TFA!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Or rather, can't view TF video - FlashBlock prevented it.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Just to clarify, I like it that way. I don't look forward to the day when any old site can peg my CPU and I can't prevent it. God knows, some people's JavaScript is bad enough.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confident the advances in technology in the last 20 years means your CPU will be perfectly fine playing that video or running that badly written javascript.

You do not need 100% total control over your CPU, unless you have absolutely nothing else going on in your life.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[neumayr]

.o(Tsk. Humor-impaired mods.)

Re:I can't read TFA!

[oji-sama]

I'm confident the advances in technology in the last 20 years means your CPU will be perfectly fine playing that video or running that badly written javascript.

You do not need 100% total control over your CPU, unless you have absolutely nothing else going on in your life.

I'm confident that advances in technology will mean that there will be something else clogging the CPU in 20 years.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Disagreed. One badly written javascript my CPU handles fine, yeah, but when I reach a page with fifteen advertisement scripts and another twenty ajax libraries, all from different domains, things are not so smooth. And you would not believe how, even in reputed sites, many of those scripts are completely unnecessary even when want to go through the complete Web 2.0 ajax buzzword leveraging experience or whatever the designer intended.

I believe that one of the reasons I was less impressed by Chrome than a lot of other Firefox users was because I have a nice NoScript whitelist that prevents those atrocities from slowing down my rendering, so I didn't really have a need for insanely fast javascript engines.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[beakerMeep]

Thank you for being one of only of the only people that gets it. All this Flash/Adobe hate is going to come back and bite the geek community in the ass 1000 times worse when sites start not rendering unless you allow the canvas tag.

Re:I can't read TFA!

[Simetrical]

Just to clarify, I like it that way. I don't look forward to the day when any old site can peg my CPU and I can't prevent it. God knows, some people's JavaScript is bad enough.

Adobe doesn't care so much if they peg your CPU, because you're forced to use their product anyway. If an actual browser renders sites very slowly, on the other hand, people will leave it for a different browser. Performance is paramount to browser implementers.

Holy Shit Are You A Fucking Piece Of Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is owns 95 percent of the media web content.

Flash is getting standardized with auto updates in webbrowsers like Chrome.

Yeah, Apple and their 3 percent desktop marketshare, falling cellphone OS marketshare, and marketplace flop turd of tablet iPad are making Adobe 'scramble'.

Gonna be running your mouth off dipshit when Adobe drops Photoshop/Creative Suite for the Mac? Hug faggot?

The only outcome of Jobs little tantrum over Flash is developers are flocking like mad to Android.

 

Re:Holy Shit Are You A Fucking Piece Of Garbage

[neumayr]

Bashing Apple for the sake of bashing Apple doesn't bring your point across very well. That even stopped working for Microsoft, finally.
Face it, Apple's hugely popular, you don't have to like it or agree with it, but denying it brings you nowhere. And they're using their influence to further their own agenda. Who wouldn't?

Re:Holy Shit Are You A Fucking Piece Of Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to understand that Apple's strength is creating relatively shitty and very restricted gadgets (under the guise of "usability"), and then marketing those gadgets so much that people come to think of them as being good.

Everything the GP said is absolutely true. Even though we hear about them all the time, they do only have a 3% to 4% share of desktop systems. The don't sell nearly as many phones as companies like Nokia, Sony, Motorola or Samsung.

The iPad is nothing more than hype. It has been released now, people have used it, and we've heard the hype die off because it's pretty much a useless device.

After the latest shenanigans with Apple telling developers the languages they can use to develop iPhone apps, most sensible developers have said, "Fuck it!" and have moved to targeting Android.

Re:Holy Shit Are You A Fucking Piece Of Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem here is that apple are highly dependent on people that buy things with money that has been made and given to them by their parents. this means that when the economic circumstances change, as they have, this type of customer doesn't have as much money to spend. and because this typical customer tends to be 'less than the full shilling' if i can put it that way, they won't be able to find other sources of income. to get the same amount of cash out of them jobs and co will have to squeeze them even harder eg the ipad. now even though these apple lifestylers are used to taking it right up the bum from jobs, even they can tell when the petroleum jelly is being skimped on, especially when the delivery is aggressive, as it has been lately.

really, you can hardly blame jobs for lashing out at other companies. the thing about this latest outrage and the whole joke that is the ipad is that it won't just fade away like the cube, air etc, it will really blow up in his gaunt face - and instead of being happy as the king of itunes he will go down as a greedy and malevolent fool.

i truly hope he can shuffle off before things get too ridiculous, the other day i was reading from one apple diehard about how the iphone isn't really a phone, and it shouldn't be judged harshly for dropping and missing calls. priceless but unseemly.

Re:Holy Shit Are You A Fucking Piece Of Garbage

[DJRumpy]

Marketing sells a product. It's rather meaningless after the product is sold since the user doesn't have to rely on marketing to form an opinion. They form them from using the product directly. Claiming Apple is 'shitty' and then admitting that people think they are good is a bit contradictory. The simple fact is, that they have some of the best satisfaction rates in the industry, and THAT is money you can bank on.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/survey_apples_app_store_customer_satisfaction_android_close_second.php
http://internet2go.net/news/hardware/apple-retains-customer-satisfaction-crown

There were over a million apps downloaded to iPads the first day of it's release and over half a million sold in a week. Exactly what sort of distortion reality are YOU standing in?

Apple also controls a huge share of the mobile browser market by huge margins. It doesn't matter how much hardware is out there in the mobile market, but who's actually using it to browse the web. When it comes to mobile devices, Apple DOES have a say in future mobile browsing trends:

http://www.tipb.com/2009/03/02/iphone-mobile-browser-share-67/

Try harder...

Keeping software from being a commodity

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, they'll have to compete, which is good news for everybody else.

I think you've answered your own question.

With more and more software becoming a commodity, any company that bases its revenue model on software development will be hanging on with dear life and will do anything to keep people coming back to them.

Patented by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 canvas is patented by Apple. I presume the double standards for patents don't apply here (ie. video)?

Re:Patented by Apple

[TheRaven64]

Apple has licensed those patents for free to anyone implementing the canvas tag as defined in the HTML5 standard. Does the MPEG-LA want to do the same with H.264? If so, I'd love to see it become part of the spec.

Re:Patented by Apple

[JasterBobaMereel]

Apple disclosed the patents under the W3C's royalty-free patent licensing terms. This means means that Apple is required to provide royalty-free licensing for the patent whenever the Canvas element becomes part of a future W3C recommendation created by the HTML working group ....So Apple are not being "Evil" and so no double standards needed ....

Re:Patented by Apple

[Simetrical]

Apple has licensed those patents for free to anyone implementing the canvas tag as defined in the HTML5 standard.

Not quite. They've disclosed them, that's all. They only have to make a legally binding decision on whether to license them once HTML5 reaches Recommendation status. Ian Hickson, the editor, predicts that will be in 2022 or so. You can read the W3C Patent Policy yourself, and the list of disclosed patents. (Note "disclosed", not "licensed".)

Great now Apple will block HTML5

[Bruha]

If this were to take off with Adobe, I would seriously love to see what Jobs would do. No un-signed web pages allowed to load in mobile safari??

So, Linux?

[Trelane]

Is their authoring suite going to be ported to Linux then? Between Apple banning them and Microsoft trying to kill them (PDF, flash) it seems that Linux is their last refuge.

Flash - iPhone vs Flash - HTML5

[lloy0076]

Realistically, Flash to iPhone would be easier excepting for Apple's licensing and such. One thing Apple DOES do well is standardise its interface and APIs. HTML5 isn't well supported and won't be implemented for years and YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS from now by which time real people will have gotten fed up and the various implementations WILL have diverged. And then we'll have everyone bleating about HTML6 to solve all our problems...Flash -> iPhone seemed to be a proof of concept against a non-moving target. It's just that said target went and made it illegal to do so.

Re:Flash - iPhone vs Flash - HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear this kind of talk all the time, but who's lagging behind or has an out of spec implementation? webkit, presto, and gecko are pretty consistent as far as I've seen, and support a large share of the spec. Even MS is putting some weight behind it, and their IE9 demos work well on other browsers. They've been picky for using demos that play to IE's strength's (namely, hardware acceleration), but they work on modern iterations of all browsers.

Market Opportunity

[enryonaku]

AFAIK, there are no mature products for making sophisticated use of HTML5's new features. So, this is a natural market for Adobe to go after.

Cross Compiler

[Zarf]

IMHO the best destiny for Adobe's tools now is to work as a meta-language for HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript ... in other words all that Flash/ActionScript business needs to compile down to HTML5 related tech. So you *can* write HTML5 in the raw if you want but developers will still want to use their tool kit for the productivity boost it ostensibly gives them.

Well... in the opinion of people who like those tools anyhow.

Reason...

[g4b]

Maybe it is because of Flashs superior internal design or because of Flash's superior Garbage collection...

IPICWBDLSL

[g4b]

I pic Wbdlsl...

HTML animations

[Anonymous Coward]

What an innovation, animated graphics without Flash. "Son of animated GIF"? Now we've come full circle. That's a bit sad.

Yay Microsoft

[theolein]

...... To basically sum up, yes, this locks developers on the iPhone OS. On the other hand, these meta-platforms hurt Apple's ability to improve their devices. ......

You know, Microsoft used to make claims like that all the time during the anti-trust proceedings, that the trials were hurting their ability ot "innovate" and "improve" their products. Everyone used to deride Microsoft about their pathetic excuses. Now it's Apple doing the same thing.....

adobe's best action could be to...

[evil_marty]

open source flash, and I don't mean just parts of it but the whole shebang. This would stop Apple from using the excuse that it's too buggy/slow/Adobe and force them to take action on it's implementation on the iPhone/iPad. I don't know the actual feasibility of Adobe doing such a move, especially because it uses a lot of licensed technologies such as MP3, H.264, etc but they could just leave the licensing to be the responsibility of those who are distributing the runtimes and Adobe could still be main distributor of the official runtime.