Is HTML5 Ready To Take Over From Flash?

The Flash platform has been taking body blows lately. First Apple, then Scribd, publicly abandon it; now ARM's marketing VP is blaming a delay in ARM smartbooks on the continuing unsuitability of Flash for the subnotebook market. But how ready is HTML5 to take over from Flash? Tim Bray offers a cautionary appraisal of the not-yet-a-standard's state of grace. While Flash may be on the way out (or so legions of its detractors hope), it is still important in many corners of the Web. Here a branding expert demonstrates that the sites of 10 out of 10 leading worldwide brands don't display on the iPad — because they're coded in Flash, of course.

Comments

See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Pojut]

I understand that Flash is on its way out, but it is still widely used. Why doesn't the iPad support future AND current technologies (HTML5 and Flash).

Don't give me mouseover as an answer, either. There are ways around that.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't the iPad support future AND current technologies (HTML5 and Flash).

Because Apple knows damn well that HTML5 - something virtually nobody is using right now and won't be in the near future - is not something that will ever be used on the iPad so, in the meantime, they can keep a huge number of existing apps off of their products and force their customers even further into the app store.

I'd love to sell a p-p-p-powerbook to anybody who believes that Apple's Flash shunning is anything more than an attempt to further lock their customers into the app store. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is betting that HTML5 is the next VRML as far as the web goes.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[beelsebob]

Because when you do that, the current never stops being current. Apple have a habit of forcing old, useless techs out the door... They did it with floppies, they did it with parallel ports, they did it with PS/2 connectors, and now they're doing it with flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Pojut]

Really? That's funny, I seem to recall CRT televisions and flatscreen televisions being sold simultaneously. Good luck finding a CRT at a major or even semi-major retailer.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I understand that Flash is on its way out, but it is still widely used. Why doesn't the iPad support future AND current technologies (HTML5 and Flash).

There are many reasons, but one of the big ones is Apple is one of the driving forces making Flash on the way out. Without their refusal to support it, most all of the prominent sites in question would still be suing it.

As to why Apple wants it to go away, there are lots of reasons but the most important is probably, it is just good business. Apple doesn't want any one company to be able to roadblock their ability to move their platform forward with regard to performance, security, or features. Allowing Flash on their products allows Adobe to do just that for a large subset of Web applications Apple is counting on. Apple isn't supporting Flash for the same reason smart governments are moving away from .doc, they want control and choices and not to have one vendor with the ability to dictate terms to them.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macbuzz01]

I think one of the biggest problems with Flash and touchbased devices is the lack of mouseover functionality.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly useless - they also chucked stuff like PCMCIA, replaceable batteries, and full size connectors that don't require dongles and messy adapters to connect to everything.

Apple is just a fashionista. No real artists even bother with their crap anymore. Their screens aren't even calibrated properly.

(spoken as an *ex* Mac user)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ArsonSmith]

Flatscreens and CRTs aren't the best example because a flatscreen is a clear and easy to see upgrade from CRTs in almost every respect (don't bother pointing out your personal gripe against flatscreens)

A better example would be HD broadcast TV, do you really think everyone would have just aggreed to change over if the guberment didn't force it?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[kjart]

Because when you do that, the current never stops being current. Apple have a habit of forcing old, useless techs out the door... They did it with floppies, they did it with parallel ports, they did it with PS/2 connectors, and now they're doing it with flash.

My motherboard still has a PS/2 connector, but it's not like you can buy PS/2 keyboards anymore. You can push future technology and still not be a douche to everyone using the old stuff.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[loutr]

The difference between a CRT and flatscreen TV is obvious. People see LCDs in stores, or at a friend's house, and that makes them want to switch. And then there's marketing of course.

The general public doesn't know, and doesn't care whether a site is made in Flash or HTML5. You can't wait on the users to switch to HTML5 sites.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Pojut]

Flatscreens and CRTs aren't the best example because a flatscreen is a clear and easy to see upgrade from CRTs in almost every respect (don't bother pointing out your personal gripe against flatscreens)

Fair enough. For the record, my only personal gripe against flatscreens is that my legacy consoles look like crusted ass on them. Other than that, I love my flatscreen :-)

A better example would be HD broadcast TV, do you really think everyone would have just aggreed to change over if the guberment didn't force it?

I think people slowly would have, yes. It wouldn't happen as quickly as it did of course, but it would have happend.

As another poster further down pointed out, you can still readily buy motherboards that have PS/2 ports on them, but you can't really buy PS/2 keyboards or mice anymore. Nearly every modern motherboard also still has at least one IDE connector on it, despite the fact that a completely SATA-based system has been possible for a couple years now.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, none of those things are useless, or really old.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Ephemeriis]

I understand that Flash is on its way out, but it is still widely used. Why doesn't the iPad support future AND current technologies (HTML5 and Flash).

Don't give me mouseover as an answer, either. There are ways around that.

If you support both the old and new technologies, folks have less of an incentive to switch to the new stuff. This can dramatically prolong the life of the old stuff.

Apple, in the past, has been willing to kill backwards compatibility in favor of new stuff.

This is just more of the same.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[geekoid]

That analogy is so bad it's not even wrong.

In the software environment, if something does wedge then old out, it becomes a night mare.
The greatest example of that is IE6.

Yeah, TV's will go bad and get replaced, software just gets moved form system to system.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[saboola]

Yeah, but your bundled PS/2 port was not causing any grief to your system stability as a whole, so it's not really a good comparison. Flash has performed incredibly poor on both Mac OS and Linux, and many sites still require it.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Bigbutt]

I still have a 9pin Din on my keyboard (old IBM Model M) with a 9pin to PS/2 conversion plug. That plugs into my kvm and the extension cable has a PS/2 connector on the end for the keyboard and mouse.

[John]

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Floppy Disks, Parallel Ports, PS/2 Connectors, Flash. One of these things is not like the other, can you guess which it is? If you said 3 of them are hardware and one of them is software, you win a prize bingo.

When Jobs previewed the iphone, he harked on and on about how buttons (hardware) were bad because they were static, you wanted to be able to adapt to new software. The ipad fails at accomodating EXISTING software. That is a failure of the device...it has a static failure to run existing widespread software.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ClosedSource]

It's interesting to me that you mention PS/2 connectors. As part of a development project my client gave me a Mac Mini.

Now the mini has been pushed as the easiest way for a PC user to switch to a Mac. But guess what - I couldn't plug my existing keyboard into it, I couldn't plug my existing mouse into it and I couldn't plug my existing headset into it. Fortunately, Apple did provide an adapter so you could connect it to a monitor with a VGA connector.

So rather than being a device to convince users to switch to the Mac platform, it's really an introduction to Apple's limited vision.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

My motherboard still has a PS/2 connector, but it's not like you can buy PS/2 keyboards anymore. You can push future technology and still not be a douche to everyone using the old stuff.

I still own slaves, but it's not like you can BUY slaves anymore. You can stop the selling of slaves and still not be a douche to everyone using them.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dskzero]

*Why* do people think apple dictates what's going out of style? Don't you think that the fact that anything relevant would have require dozens of floppy disks to carry around?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[beelsebob]

PCMCIA

In it's latest incarnation (express card), you can still get it on apple laptops

replaceable batteries

Great example of apple dumping useless crap like batteries you can replace every day. If your battery lasts 10 hours, you have no need to replace it in a day, in the same way as you have no need to replace hard disks every day... Or do you complain that you can't remove your hard disk without undoing a few screws?

full size connectors

You mean like MiniDisplay Port, that has now pretty much become the standard display port connector?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ClosedSource]

Why do you assume that it's all because of Apple? Next thing we'll be hearing about how Apple invented HTML5.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[MotherErich]

You are aware that you're comparing Hardware to Software right? How many programming languages has Apple killed to date? HTML5 doesn't make Flash obsolete, and neither with will Steve Jobs. If any informed reader took the time to examine Steve's six reasons for abandoning Flash, they'd find that Jobs has clearly fallen off the deep end. His logic is filled with holes that only the Apple cool-aide drinkers will overlook. All of this goes on top of the fact that if Apple's mobile technology determines the future of the web, we're all screwed.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[!coward]

Requiring a plugin to browse what would otherwise be "normal" content on the web seems a bit counter-productive to say the least. That said, I've worked with web designers whose attitude towards flash was much like Heston's towards gun ownership: "from my cold dead hands". But working with them, especially the better breed, I can't say I don't understand the appeal. The productivity suite, for starters, is very good and comes from the same company on whose products most of them trained on for years, so there's continuity too.

That some uses of flash will inevitably die can only be considered a Good Thing(TM). And this will happen with or without the iPad (or any other iProduct) -- most likely *in spite* of them, because the shift right now, as some posters have correctly pointed out in the myriad of similar threads we've been having on the matter as of late, is that the iEcoSystem is simply being sent to a special iSubSet of the web where things "Just Work" so iCustomers aren't left out -- or worse, having to download and use a plugin for certain content (and I'd imagine this is one plugin *per* site that employs such strategy). And while Apple certainly has a lot of pull, especially in some circles, I can't help but think of how well that worked out for the WAP protocol -- having separate "webs" or requiring installation of plugins just so you can browse certain content on sites is bad for everyone (and the latter, plugins, is a really boneheaded solution to a problem that stems from not wanting plugins for content in the first place).

In an ideal world, one where the W3C and other authoritative bodies were impervious to commercial interests, we'd have web standards that every browser interpreted and used correctly (such that navigating the same page with any one of them would produce the exact same result), that included all the constructs necessary for creators to freely express themselves without feeling the need to resort to closed-source/proprietary plugins/technology, and nobody would even *think* of proposing any technological solution that was encumbered by patents or royalty schemes. Sadly, this is not the world we live in and I fully expect these issues to increase as the web and the internet at large expands further.

One thing, though: "ARM's marketing VP is blaming a delay in ARM smartbooks on the continuing unsuitability of Flash for the subnotebook market" .. The article mentions "flash optimization" as being the issue, which gets me wondering: isn't Adobe on board with this? I mean, it would seem in their best-interest, especially with this latest spat with Apple, that they work with ARM to create super sleek plugins.. ARM is by far the world's leader in the cellphone market, which is arguably where a lot of the web is "moving" towards. If they cooperate with ARM to optimize plugin code (and even flash code itself) for their processors, wouldn't that help make flash's future a whole lot brighter?

The other thing where that statement bothers me is that I've been browsing the web on my N900 for 5 months now -- no "special mobile" sites either, the "full" web, flash content and all (I merely use a flashblock plugin that when enabled makes me click on a flash block to "play" it -- coupled with ABP, it really cuts down on bandwidth usage when I'm surfing through a cellular connection) and I haven't had any issues yet. I highly doubt Nokia devoted that many resources to this, or that Adobe or ARM bent over backwards to enable such a smooth browsing experience, so if my 600MHz A7 Cortex-powered N900 can do this, what's holding back the rest of ARM-powered devices? (especially since the snapdragon came out)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, how do you think flatscreens are better than CRTs ?

The only clear and easy to see advantage over CRTs is the size/weight difference. There's a power usage advantage as well, but that's not obvious to the average person. CRTs had better image quality - you need a fairly recent flatscreen to get close to CRT levels.

The government didn't force HD broadcast, everyone did do that on their own. I think you mean digital broadcasting.

I think you've got all your technologies blurred together. You can get an HD CRT TV, and it'll look better than a cheap LCD or a high end one from several years ago. Digital broadcasting has nothing to do with HD. There's plenty of SD being broadcast in digital now.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[MBGMorden]

You can get adapters to convert PS/2 keyboard and mice to USB. You can find them for ~$10 or so easily. I use one on my PC at work where it didn't come with PS/2 ports. That's about the best you're going to get anyways, as Apple never used PS/2. Prior to the adoption of USB input devices, they used ADB ports.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[knarf]

As to why Apple wants it to go away, there are lots of reasons but the most important is probably, it is just good business.

Apple wants Flash - and any other platform which can be used to create something resembling an application - to go away because those platforms allow others to target their precious without paying the ferryman. If someone were to find a way to create installable apps using only the stuff installed on their platform they'd find a way to disable it come the next firmware release and/or write some clause into the EULA that explicitly forbids some essential part of the process. Apple goods are to be used as Apple says they should.

After all, quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi...

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Altus]

Better comparison for TVs. Digital vs Analog tuners. Analog tuners were forced out we would still be on Analog without a hard break. There is no regulatory body that can set a date by which flash must die so its up to the industry to do it.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[risinganger]

and pray tell, where would they put two PS/2 connectors on a mac mini?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The 80s called, they want their crappy NeXTStep APIs and IDE back.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dskzero]

ooops "Don't you think that *it might be* the fact..."

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[jedidiah]

> If you support both the old and new technologies, folks have less of an incentive to switch to the new stuff. This can dramatically prolong the life of the old stuff.

No. The new stuff not being up to snuff is what dramatically prolongs the life of the old stuff.

Connectors and media linger because they haven't been properly and naturally displaced.

Merely declaring something dead just doesn't cut it. You have to actually replace it with something.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[TyFoN]

Don't give me mouseover as an answer, either. There are ways around that.

Its funny because a lot of the android phones like the htc desire have a mouse implemented, and it actually works on those :)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Qwavel]

Apple has a habit of forcing any connector or standard (formal or de-facto) that they don't control out the door.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/ipads-lack-of-flashusbbluetooth-is-all-about-lock-in-updated/5922

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[sznupi]

Actually one can still find PS/2 keyboards, very cheaply and...some are surprisingly good, as far as keyboards built around rubber suppositories go (for example A4Tech (yes!) Stilo...for some reason built like a tankette and with very nice feel, again as far using rubber suppositories in keyboard constructions goes; not quite in the league of Model M of course...but I might still stash a few - for less than 9 bucks...)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Andy Dodd]

You'd have the same problem with nearly any new PC. PS/2 connectors have been on their way out for a long time.

I haven't used a PS/2 mouse in over six years. Keyboard - maybe only four. This wasn't driven by Apple at all, since I don't own any of their hardware (except for a 4th or 5th gen 60GB iPod).

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Why do you assume that it's all because of Apple?

It's not just because of Apple, but they are the primary driver as stated by several of the companies making the switch. Last I looked YouTube defaulted to HTML5 video only if you're using an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Virgin America ditched it because they said they wanted to reach iPhone users.

Next thing we'll be hearing about how Apple invented HTML5.

This is called a strawman argument. No one but you said Apple invented HTML5. They certainly were one of the creators of the spec and Dave Hyatt of Apple has been quite influential, but it was created jointly by many companies and organizations.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Andy Dodd]

Um, that's definately a false comment. Intel controlled (and still does) effectively control USB, but Apple was probably the biggest manufacturer to "push" USB when they released the iMac - long BEFORE they had switched from PowerPC to Intel processors.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[peragrin]

Last ichecked the n900 uses flash lite which only gives you a percentage of flash features. You probably can't play games like farmville well.

adobe refuses to support full flash on arm processors. ARM chips aren't with the work and thereforeonly get a half assed attempt. Wat h flash for android on arm chips will really be flash lite and not full flash.

ARM chips don't have the powerto decode flash apps and games. On windows adobe uses directX to offload some of the CPU tasks to thegpu. However arm netbooks don't have enough to do that.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[stevenvi]

If the general public sees no difference and doesn't care, why is one superior to the other?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Apple wants Flash - and any other platform which can be used to create something resembling an application - to go away...

This argument would hold some weight if Apple were not pushing HTML5 applications as a viable and free way to host Web applications and if developers weren't using it. It would hold some weight if Apple was making significant money on application sales compared to how much they make on selling the hardware those apps run on. Neither is true. Your hypothesis holds no water.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anomalyst]

quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi

Four lice love no cows?
Probably true someplace on a farm, but kinda offtopic.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. We will have you, but there are limits!

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[drinkypoo]

You'd have the same problem with nearly any new PC.

No you wouldn't, not unless it's a laptop.

PS/2 connectors have been on their way out for a long time.

So have RS232 and IEEE1284 ports but I have headers for both on my Phenom II motherboard and I can add 'em with a simple frame (the same ones that have worked since the XT) with some ports and ribbon cables attached to it (you know the one) if I need to. And it also has PS/2 kb and mouse connectors on the ATX back panel.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[larry bagina]

Apple didn't use ps/2 connectors. They used ADB for mice, keyboards, modems, joysticks, etc.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[sznupi]

...plus one has to keep CRT for those great (basically per-pixel accuracy with G-Con) lightgun games to work ;/

(and it's not only about resolution really, see my other response nearby)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[bakawolf]

Express card is only available on the 17" MacBook Pro. an overlarge monstrosity, for an apple product. Minidisplay port, yes, a standard. With about 5 supporting devices outside of apple.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Now the mini has been pushed as the easiest way for a PC user to switch to a Mac.

Really? Who has pushed it as that? I've never heard such a thing. It's the cheapest way, but certainly not the easiest. an iMac or a laptop is the easiest because they don't require you to know as much or supply your own monitor and peripherals.

So rather than being a device to convince users to switch to the Mac platform, it's really an introduction to Apple's limited vision.

Yes just as Dell computers have a limited vision because they don't work with my XLR connector microphone. Clearly every computer should come with thousands of connectors for outdated technology.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Apple one vendor?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[CastrTroy]

Maybe you should try running an emulator with an anti-aliasing filter. Does anybody have experience with this increasing the visual quality of the games? I remember using it on old CRTs with Super Nintendo games, and recalling that it looked a lot smoother. Perhaps it would help with LCD displays.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

*Why* do people think apple dictates what's going out of style? Don't you think that the fact that anything relevant would have require dozens of floppy disks to carry around?

Because Apple is the ONLY manufacturer who is bold enough to draw a line in the sand and say "No more", to legacy tech.

The prime example is USB ports. Wintel motherboards had USB ports on them for YEARS, but there were almost ZERO USB PERIPHERALS UNTIL THE iMac debuted with ONLY USB ports.

Within a YEAR of the iMac's introduction there were USB printers, USB scanners, USB hubs, USB speakers, and USB EVERYTHING.

I submit that, if the original iMac had had serial and SCSI ports (like ALL Macs had sported for the 14 years prior to 1999) instead of USB, we would STILL be rockin' 115200-N-8-1 to our printers, and LUN 5 (did you remember to set the terminator switch?) to our scanners.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[naz404]

People fail to see one very very big factor in the silly HTML5 vs Flash debate:
The web is ruled by web DESIGNERS and not developers/coders.

Unless someone comes up with a tool that does the same dynamic websites, animations, vector image drawing etc in HTML5 with the ease that non-coder designers can do in Flash, you won't be seeing Flash dying anytime soon.

Moreover, Adobe is in the business of selling creative authoring tools and not directly with Flash itself.

As such, with HTML5 as an emerging standard, Adobe is now going try to make the best darn-tootin' tools for creating HTML5 content according to Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Deosyne]

So your argument is that Flash would still be preferable to developers so they would keep developing with it, and Flash would work well enough to users that they would still be good with using it, but it needs to be forced out because it is older than HTML5 which contains the potential to replicate most of the functionality of Flash eventually. Gotcha.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

. If any informed reader took the time to examine Steve's six reasons for abandoning Flash, they'd find that Jobs has clearly fallen off the deep end. His logic is filled with holes that only the Apple cool-aide drinkers will overlook.

And yet, you fail to mention even one "hole" in Jobs' logic.

Telling.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Short Circuit]

Apple wants Flash - and any other platform which can be used to create something resembling an application - to go away because those platforms allow others to target their precious without paying the ferryman.

So Apple is a Gollum/Hades geekship construct, their realm the world of the iPad/iPhone, and The One True Ring is on the other side of the river Styx?

Thanks! That makes it all so much clearer!

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Mister Whirly]

They did it with floppies, they did it with parallel ports, they did it with PS/2 connectors

Funny enough the 2 brand new Dells I bought for one of the labs where I work both have floppies, parallel ports (and even a serial port!), and PS/2 connectors. And I am using every single one of these "useless" ports to hook devices up to. You see, just becasue Apple doesn't want everyone to use them does not automatically make my older printers, keyboards, mice, and floppies instantly obsolete and "useless" to me. Some of us (with very limited budgets at work) need to make do with what we have and keep using things until they actually no longer work, not until Apple deems them no good any longer. (But then again people on a tight budget are usually not buying Apple.)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dskzero]

That'd be because apple users aren't exactly the kind of users to keep legacy tech around.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Sloppy]

Maybe they don't view Flash as a current technology. :-)

I wouldn't buy an iDevice, and I think it's an atrocity that a company is selling a personal computer where developers have to get on their knees and beg permission for each project like a videogame console developer. That kind of shit should be dead now, and is obviously a major social step backwards. Don't worry: some day we're going to take those fuckers out.

But there's an enemy-of-my-enemy thing going on here. [godwin]I'm glad Hitler and Stalin are at each other's throats.[/godwin] We are all a lot better off by Apple doing this, and that includes you, as long as you don't make the mistake of buying an iDevice.

Historically, there have been a lot of platforms that couldn't run Flash, but they were ignored, both by Adobe and by people who ignorantly said, "just install Flash." iDevice users are not going to be ignored; these are people with a low hype-resistance-to-money ratio, just what any advertiser wants. Apple has finally done, through evil acts, what a lot of good sensible people have wanted to do for a long time: fuck Adobe hard. Let's all sit back and revel in the constructive destruction, and do what we can to have a non-proprietary web ready and available for Apple customers to use -- no wait -- for everyone to use, after Apple kills Adobe.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[loutr]

Well for starters HTML5 is superior for us (non-flash) web developers. It's also superior for geeks who use exotic OSes. And from a normal user's perspective, I said there was no obvious difference (i.e. most users can't tell whether they are on a flash site), but Flash seriously lacks in accessibility :

• you can't select/copy/paste text if the developer didn't bother to implement it
• you can't zoom
• you can't middle-click to open a link in a new tab
• if you've focused the Flash content you have to click elsewhere in the window to give the focus back to the browser and be able to use keyboard shortcuts (to create a new tab for example)

I could go on. And as an added bonus, Flash is CPU-hungry and crash-prone.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[naz404]

re: Mouseover not working with touchscreen devices: HTML5 won't solve that problem. Both HTML5 and Flash apps need to be written with the tap=click no hover paradigm.

Steve & HTML5 pundits are presenting a false problem that their solution (HTML5) does not fix by itself. The solution to the mouseover problem is simply the same for both HTML5 and Flash.

What's more, HTML5 has no native support for multi-touch which newer touch-screen devices have (well, there's Sproutcore but it doesn't work everywhere). Flash 10.1 has support for both tmulti-touch and mouse gestures.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[rtfa-troll]

And what designers often fail to realise is that the "web" is a creation. It's a "new" technological niche; soon it will be a very old one and then in some sense it will be dead. Of course, it will still be called the "web" but it will be a new niche with new tools and new situations. These technological niches are created by commercial interests and chosen by consumers influenced by marketing, sales people and the feelings of other people using them. Those other people include coders who are choosing where to target the next set of design tools.

The fundamental reason that Apple isn't using Flash is not whether it does things exactly according to their standard or not. The reason is that from the very start they have to start negotiating with another company who may or may not see things their way. Flash doesn't work on most mobile phones; it doesn't have a 64bit version for windows Windows. It doesn't have a version for Debian ARM. If you are developing a new technology; you can't rely on Flash to support it unless it's important to Adobe. Whether it's important to your company or not is more or less irrelevant unless you are willing to pay Adobe big bucks.

For end users, it's worse than that; what happens if you do get flash for your platform? They go and upgrade it. Do you trust Adobe to release the new version of Flash for your two year old mobile phone? Basically, if they choose not to, there's going to be nothing you, your friends or fellow phone users can do about it. For a company like Apple which likes to keep it's customers in upgrades, that's not the best situation.

In other words; Apple won't put up with the trouble of using proprietary software. Now, given what they deliver their customers, that's a bit hypocritical, but still it makes sense. It's the same reason that everybody who can should also be opting out of Flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Just Some Guy]

If the general public sees no difference and doesn't care, why is one superior to the other?

The general public knows that their computers can barely display certain websites without their browser bogging down crashing, and that they can't use certain sites or functions at all on their cell phones or iPads or other non-PC system. That's what makes native HTML superior to anything involving a plugin.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Just Some Guy]

Now the mini has been pushed as the easiest way for a PC user to switch to a Mac. But guess what - I couldn't plug my existing keyboard into it, I couldn't plug my existing mouse into it and I couldn't plug my existing headset into it.

There's also no place to install your ISA winmodem or Hercules CGA card or other obsolete peripherals. Look, I'm not a brand-new-technology fetishist, but I don't whine to Dell that I had to buy a PS/2-to-USB connector to connect my Model M keyboard to the PC my company bought for me (five years ago).

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[DeadboltX]

I'm not sure if this is so much Apple helping old tech out the door, as much as it is Apple putting what they want on their devices and damn the rest.

For example, why don't the Macbook Pros have esata?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

iPad not support flash will do more harm to Apple than simply have that feature check box checked.
But if everybody keeps supporting flash, people will continue to think flash is just fine.
What Apple did is make developer think, and hopefully stimulate more development on HTML5 front.
Companies like scribd is just the beginning.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[naz404]

Let me guess: [sarcasm]you must be a developer or coder[/sarcasm].

You just answered how things should be ideally, but you still didn't get what I said. Read it again and get it through your head. (pardon the typos, it's an unGodly hour right now where I live)

The web is RULED BY DESIGNERS.

Designers easily realize those things you said if you explain it to them, but the fact remains: not all of them can learn/are equipped to be coders and they just don't have the tools to bang out HTML5 websites/Interactive CD/DVD-ROMs in the same amount of time they can do it in Flash.

You should try interactive web design some time and have some big clients (for example, Nike, Motorola) who want whiz-bang shiny websites that have sound-enabled buttons + video (cue linux crowd/minimalist developer groans) delivered on ridiculously short timelines. No way can some of those be done in a timely manner in HTML5 right now with the tools available (text editor.)

The short answer on whether HTML5 will kill flash is summarized here:
IsFlashDead.com.

Cheerios and have a nice weekend!

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[rtfa-troll]

It's the difference between a reputable used car and a cut and shut job. One will keep going for years. The other may just break in half and kill you. Trust your local nerd. Don't by Flashed computers.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

Four lice love no cows?

No, it is much more beautiful in the original Klingon...

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[beelsebob]

No, my argument is that many developers would continue to use antiquated technology for no reason other than it's what they're used to.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[mini me]

Some enterprising developers have already implemented the basic features of Flash in HTML5. If Adobe really cared about Flash, they would bring the project up to support the full Flash spec and ensure all future versions of Flash generate HTML5 code natively. Instead, they have decided to go home crying.

I do not deny that Apple has not be playing nice on this front, but Adobe really has not put much effort into bringing Flash to the device. As I have noted here and in previous posts, the new SDK rules do not prevent Adobe from putting Flash on the device.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

People called romans they go the house?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

Apple has finally done, through evil acts, what a lot of good sensible people have wanted to do for a long time: fuck Adobe hard.

What "evil acts"? Making it impossible to run sucky Flash apps on "iDevices" (as you immaturely call them) is not "evil". No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy an "iDevice".

Don't like the feature set? Don't buy the "iDevice".

See? "Evil" averted. Now wasn't that simple?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they support HTML5 because it isn't used yet, and otherwise it would be too obvious that they want you only to use paid apps.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does everything in its power to limit 3rd party problems. My guess is that they deem the expected problems arising from flash or the hardware tweeks that need to run flash properly will out weigh the market value as is. If they can increase the use of HTML5 in the process then even better.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ThrowAwaySociety]

My motherboard still has a PS/2 connector, but it's not like you can buy PS/2 keyboards anymore. You can push future technology and still not be a douche to everyone using the old stuff.

You're missing the point. Someone did have to be that douche, otherwise all the keyboards would still be PS/2 today.

That someone was Apple, which shipped a USB-only (no serial, no parallel, no SCSI, not even Apple's own proprietary Mac keyboard ports) back in 1998. In 1998, there were no USB keyboards, except for the shitty one that came with the iMac.

And yes, it sucked for the people who bought them initially, since there was nothing at all available.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[aztracker1]

No, but they did invent the HTML Canvas. And were one of the driving implementers behind HTML5 Video.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macbuzz01]

Oh boy, look like I forgot the *sarcasm* tag. The OP specifically said not to do, which gave me the permission to do. I think my kids' logic is starting to influence mine.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you don't create apps with HTML. It's not possible. Get your facts straight. All HTML5 does is display a web page. You have to supplement it with a script of some type to make it behave like an app. Flash is highly useful for this because it can do a lot more than most web friendly languages. HTML, JavaScript and PHP can do a lot to, but there are many things flash is better suited for. Like interactivity, animation, transitions, eye-candy, platform games, etc. Plus with the IDE that does programming, drawing, animation, image manipulation, and video, there is nothing that compares.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No, they support HTML5 because it isn't used yet, and otherwise it would be too obvious that they want you only to use paid apps.

Umm, they have free apps they provide hosting for in the App store. Also, HTML5 is in use as per the article earlier today, YouTube, and dozens of other companies. Your argument that they will somehow stop support for HTML5 once it gains more market share is simply speculation supported by nothing at all. You provide no coherent motivation for Apple nor evidence that it will happen.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

LIAR, not a syllable of klingon.

What Gods do, man can not

  nuq Qunpu' ta' loD laH ghobe'

Closest I can come, No translation for "may"/allowed/permitted

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Uh, you don't create apps with HTML. It's not possible.

Quick cll the press!!! all those HTML and javascript Web apps don't exist! it's all a scam!

Flash is highly useful for this because it can do a lot more than most web friendly languages.

Flash is useful because it has better supported creation tools and more install base right now, not because it is inherently better. Any technology that relies upon a single developer to provide a closed source component is flawed and needs to be worked around so we can have competitive development going forward without one company holding up progress.

sh is better suited for. Like interactivity, animation, transitions, eye-candy, platform games, etc.

I don't see how Flash is better suited for any of those than HTML5, only how the tools available to developers are better for a subset of those applications of it.

Plus with the IDE that does programming, drawing, animation, image manipulation, and video, there is nothing that compares.

I agree with this, but that is the only point on which I agree. When and if better tools for creating HTML5 compliant applications are created, Flash will be inferior in every way and we need to work to make sure we don't get stuck with that inferior solution.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[unix1]

This argument would hold some weight if Apple were not pushing HTML5 applications as a viable and free way to host Web applications

With HTML5 Apple ultimately controls the browser and how it works.

With Flash Adobe controls the application. Adobe could very easily make their own "app store" where they can sell cross-platform apps that work on iPhone, Nokia Symbian and MeeGo/Maemo, Android and Blackberry phones, as well as netbooks, tablets, computers, etc.. If that were to happen, Apple would lose control, and potentially their competitive advantage.

However, Apple likes control. They want to make sure that doesn't happen. Apple is NOT just a hardware company - it never was, and there are no indications it aims to be in the future. They are "pushing" HTML5 in part so they can ditch Adobe.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ArsonSmith]

size, both bigger screen and smaller package
weight, as you pointed out.
glare, although there did start to get some flatscreen CRTs towards the end there that helped with this a lot.
wide screen, gives it more of a movie theater look in the store
placement options, no more need for a large entertainment center
power, also as you pointed out

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[jo_ham]

+4 insightful? Jesus the mods are stupid today.

Apple do not control USB, Firewire, SP/DIF, 3.5mm jack, DVI, Ethernet - all ports on their current hardware.

In terms of standard formats: TCP/IP, NFS, Bluetooth (limited on iPhone OS, fully standard on OS X), HFS, AAC, H.264, HTML5, CSS, GCC, OpenGL, PDF are just a few of the things that they support but do not control.

They do "control" Minidisplayport, which they licence for no fee. Perhaps that was what you meant.

I think you misspelled "one port" - there's no "any" in "one" .

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[element-o.p.]

It's slightly more complicated than that, I'd say.

Let me offer an analogy (hey, this is /. after all, even though I won't be making this a car analogy). If my PHB* decides that we need to implement a technology that I'm not familiar with, I learn the technology. I may not like the tech, but if the decision has been made above my pay grade, I have the choice of learning and implementing the tech or getting a new job.

Now, to bring it home. Why do businesses create web sites? To create revenue, of course. Typically, this means a commercial web site exists to advertise the company's products. If the tech (for example, Flash) used to implement the web site excessively limits the number of users that can view said web site, then the web site is not meeting its design goals.

Case in point: last year, I was looking for a new motorcycle. I visited Honda's web site, Suzuki's web site, Yamaha's web site and Triumph's web site. All of those web sites except for Honda's rendered just fine in my browser. While I won't claim that the web site is the only reason for the purchase decision I made, I will state that the fact that I couldn't look on-line to see what Honda offered certainly affected my choice. In the end, I purchased a Suzuki. Honda may have had a better bike that met my specs, but if they did, the local dealer didn't have one, and I couldn't view Honda's web site to search for a bike that the local dealer could have special ordered.

Unfortunately, in the real world, PHB's often don't know what tech is available, and therefore rely upon their designers to offer them choices. In that case, the designer does, in fact, rule the web. The designer codes up a spiffy web site with whatever (crappy) tools they know, show it to the PHB, who has no clue that the whiz-bang web site *only* renders correctly on the exact version of IE that (s)he and the designer are using, and therefore gives a thumbs up to a web site that will only look good to two thirds of the web site's visitors, and the remaining third shop somewhere else.

*Just in case my PHB does end up reading this post, he actually is more technically savvy than the rest of us in the office, and all of his tech choices are really, really good. Can I have my raise now?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Ascagnel]

• It breaks the back button
• It breaks the native UI of the system
• Generally, its content I don't want (i.e.: I don't want websites making sound unless I explicitly enable it; Flash doesn't support such a preference)

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[rtfa-troll]

And let me guess; you're a designer, but you've never really got design. Probably the type of person who thinks using a bit of computer generated text to make a photo is new and "edgy".

The web is RULED BY DESIGNERS.

No; the web is ruled by Google. With a little input from Microsoft and a beginning of a Facebook Military Junta in some of the less developed countries. It's key to understand that it is not an accident that none of these "big brands" mentioned have any important web presence. They are all brands which use the web as a supplement to their brand away from the internet. To some extent that's a choice; even wise; internet stuff can definitely cheapen a quality brand. To another extent it's a failure and a sign that within a generation these brands will die. Compare with brands like Apple or even Microsoft which existed before the internet but had the technical knowledge to transfer.

The kind of person, like you, who I'm sure designs flash pages without alternate texts is the kind of person who ends up with his clients pages unloved and unused. Hell, you probably worship at google conferences whilst failing to understand that the brilliance of Google's homepage design is it's lack of overdesign.

Designers easily realize those things you said if you explain it to them, but the fact remains: not all of them can learn/are equipped to be coders and they just don't have the tools to bang out HTML5 websites/Interactive CD/DVD-ROMs in the same amount of time they can do it in Flash.

Well duh. That's why they call it a "design house" and you don't go to an individual for your corporate needs. If your designer is too stupid to hire a programmer when he needs one (and for basic HTML we aren't even talking about that) then he isn't a good designer.

You should try interactive web design some time and have some big clients (for example, Nike, Motorola) who want whiz-bang shiny websites that have sound-enabled buttons + video (cue linux crowd/minimalist developer groans) delivered on ridiculously short timelines. No way can some of those be done in a timely manner in HTML5 right now with the tools available (text editor.)

HTML 5 is not even standardised yet. Already it's coming into much more than just text editors. All HTML editors will have support for it in a short time or will die themselves. Furthermore, there's a crucial difference at this stage. A whole load of the "design" you have to do in Flash just doesn't exist in HTML5. The video play stuff is directly part of the browser and you don't have to do it again. Basing your answer on a situation which is beginning to change at a mad rate is crazy.

The short answer on whether HTML5 will kill flash is summarized here:

Oh what originality; what a funny joke. Wow, a shame nobody ever thought of a page with just the word no for the LHC. The irony of a person who's afraid even to use flash to give his message is just superb. Not that I'd have been able to read it if he had. That a person as desperately committed to Flash as you appear to be has that is his best argument is sad. Being more serious though, of course Flash is going to hang on for some time. Cobol is still not dead. N However, within a year or two it's not going to be something you want to have on your CV.

Cheerios and have a nice weekend!

and yourself; and yourself.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[hairyfeet]

Really? You tried HTML 5 on anything other than your multicore? Because I am typing this on a 1.8GHz Sempron that is actually much faster than those Atom based nettops/netbooks and frankly HTML 5 runs like ass, even in a tiny window. Flash, on the other hand, runs quite nicely full screen SD, and for $50 I can add a Radeon AGP card and get hardware accelerated HD which again will run quite nicely. Does anybody even have hardware accelerated HTML 5 yet?

And finally let us not forget that HTML 5 will NOT be Theora, which frankly runs like absolute shit on anything less than a 3Ghz P4 in my experience, but will be H.264 which honestly makes Adobe look like hearts and puppies. MPEG-LA have proven themselves to be major douchebags and when the clock starts winding down on their patents I predict they are gonna drop patent bombs all over the damned place. At least Adobe isn't threatening to sue anyone who doesn't buy a license if you dare to bundle H.264 support in your browser, distro, etc.

And lets be honest here FOSSies, if the web goes HTML 5 it will be MUCH WORSE for Linux than flash. Any distro can bundle flash player and Adobe doesn't make a peep, whereas Canonical had to buy a license for H.264 and unless Canonical payed for the rights to ALL Ubuntu based distros (which I kinda doubt) we are right back to a lawsuit minefield ala Mono, where only Novell has the "we'll not sue" rights. Do we really want to give the web to MPEG-LA?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[naz404]

Hey bro. Good Flash developers know when *NOT* to use Flash. Cheerio!

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the web is ruled by designers, but those designers are paid by CEOs and people like them...

And god knows they want to see the website on their brand new iPhone!!

And the designers will have to learn how to make the website work on boss's new shiny device.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[jaavaaguru]

You got that wrong... it's not about the general public, it's about the developers. Not having to splash out big bucks for Adobe's software, and not worrying if your web app will run on $RANDOM_DEVICE or $RANDOM_OS is definitely a good thing for the developer.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Just Some Guy]

That's all well and good, but I wasn't talking about video.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

...and apple dropped CRTs from their product line a whole heck of a lot earlier than PC distributors did, didn't they?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[loutr]

There's that, but see my other post about why flash websites suck for users too.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[nathan.fulton]

"Unless someone comes up with a tool...you won't be seeing Flash dying anytime soon."
"with HTML5 as an emerging standard, Adobe is now going try to make the best darn-tootin' tools for creating HTML5 content"

Well then, I guess HTML5 has already won...

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[jim_v2000]

I'd hardly call Flash old and useless. Have you watched a video or animation in HTML5? The quality just isn't the same as Flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dfghjk]

Not only is the whole Apple/USB thing a big, fat lie but the post you responded to didn't say that Apple ditches EVERY connector they don't control.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dfghjk]

Prominent sites ARE still using flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

How is Apple pushing HTML5? They have an (open source) browser that supports it, mostly? Just because Steve posts his open letter doesn't mean he gives a flying fsck about something that makes him no money. It's like you're saying the app store doesnt make them enough money to matter but HTML5 with it's 0 revenue is what matters. Yeah, OK.

This argument would hold some weight if you could sell HTML5 apps in the app store. You dont think Apple is making significant money from the app store? How about 30% of every app sold in a several hundred million dollar business. Your argument holds no water.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[nine-times]

Now the mini has been pushed as the easiest way for a PC user to switch to a Mac.

The Mac mini is the cheapest way for a PC user to switch to a mac, but the iMac is definitely easier.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dfghjk]

Mouseover worked with touchscreen devices prior to the iPhone. Apple broke it. Now it's just accepted that touchscreen is incompatible with that type of interface. Apple brainwashing.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

And those that they do too. Let's not forget the Firewire debacle.

So, in truth, what you should've said is "apple has a habit of screwing their client".

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Stormwatch]

Apple have a habit of forcing old, useless techs out the door... They did it with floppies, they did it with parallel ports, they did it with PS/2 connectors, and now they're doing it with flash.

The iMac certainly helped make USB popular. But, mind you, Apple never used PS/2; instead, they had ADB.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Macrat]

I understand that Flash is on its way out, but it is still widely used

You mean still slowing down and crashing browsers. Massive FAIL for those sites.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[thetoadwarrior]

The web is ruled by web DESIGNERS and not developers/coders.

Only the bad bits.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[naz404]

Yup! HTML5 = full of win and very nifty! I look forward to the day all browsers support HTML5 and we no longer have this constant headache making sites compatible with IE6.

Still won't kill Flash though as there's too much stuff Flash can do that HTML5 can't.

Imagine: it took 6 years for W3C to get HTML5 into the semblance of functionality it has now (can recreate stuff that was being done in Flash back in 2000 when Flash 5 + Actionscript 1 came upon the scene). By the time HTML5 is finalized in 2022, Flash will be light years ahead.

I don't really see why people are shoehorning HTML5 as versus Flash when they coexist side by side nicely in your browser. (example, use Flash for the animated parts in your e-learning website or use "less easy for my sourcecode to be seen" SWFs for Flash games).

Honestly, I think all this HTML5 vs Flash crock is just a marketing campaign being done by Apple & iFanboys to sell those gimped iPads.

Apple is the only company I know that promotes lack of features as selling points. (omg! multi-tasking in iPhone OS4! whoop de doo. Nokia 3650s could do that back in 2002)

I guess it's just a bit of a wait and see what happens when the newer Android smartphones & tablets arrive in mid to late 2010. I hope more developers emerge for Android. The sheer content in the iPhone App Store that is a big factor in making iPhones popular right now.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't go with a Honda just because their website didn't render? Oh dude...

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically size & weight are your obvious things. Placement options is just a side effect of that.

Again, you could get an HD CRT, which would be widescreen, so that's got nothing to do with flatscreens.

Older/cheaper LCDs are often hard to see in sunlight. Those TVs also have a limited viewing angle range. You're not fixing getting rid of viewing issues, you're just traded one set of issues for another.

So basically "a flatscreen is a clear and easy to see upgrade from CRTs in almost every respect" because you're comparing low end CRTs to high end flatscreens. There are clear advantages to flatscreens, but when they took over the market, CRTs still had significant advantages.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ClosedSource]

Well, it is a straw man now, but Apple fans have in the past claimed that Apple invented a number of things that they didn't invent.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[marcosdumay]

The author of that page SHOULD have used flash. Not doing so makes it clear that he didn't understand the joke about the LHC.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[ShadowRangerRIT]

BTW, I agree on most points, but I should point out that Sony, the last CRT holdout, released a number of HD CRTs with widescreen display. And glare isn't a guaranteed benefit; too many damn glossy LCD screens out there to make it a clear distinction.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[marcosdumay]

"Generally, its content I don't want"

Except for movies, and splash screens, that I want, but only to get ride of. HTML5 comes on good time.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, it is a straw man now, but Apple fans have in the past claimed that Apple invented a number of things that they didn't invent.

First, who cares what some unnamed person has claimed in the past? Second, how does that make your argument relevant to the conversation we're having any more than if I mention some people associated with closed source software in the past have also turned out to be child molesters?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Prominent sites ARE still using flash.

Absolutely, but every few days another prominent site announces they're moving away from it, or simply does so. That is largely thanks to Apple and while don't own or plan to own an iPhone, I'm very glad they have the power to make that happen and are using it. Their best interests (as was the case for DRM on music) happen to align with the best interests of consumers in the industry and it benefits us all.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[marcosdumay]

Yep, Apple is just closing their grip on their users. That happens to have some very positive externalities, it still isn't good for the people buying Apple products, but they choosed their fate.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How is Apple pushing HTML5?

By being one of the authors of the spec, by implementing it in their browser and contributing to Webkit so it is implemented in other browsers, by refusing to implement Flash or Silverlight so Web developers that want to reach many of Apple's users are forced to use HTML5, and by widely touting HTML5 in the press until many developers and business people are familiar with the term and associate it with the direction of technology.

Just because Steve posts his open letter doesn't mean he gives a flying fsck about something that makes him no money.

Ah, but it does make him money when he builds Web services on top of it. More importantly, it prevents others from being a roadblock to him making money by selling Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. People buy more Apple devices if those devices are secure, and Macs are more secure and less crashy if they don't have to deal with Flash.

It's like you're saying the app store doesnt make them enough money to matter but HTML5 with it's 0 revenue is what matters.

The app store makes them very little money in comparison to selling devices, but it indirectly motivates those sales of devices. It's like saying good television doesn't make Samsung any money, but it motivates people to buy their televisions so they care about it.

This argument would hold some weight if you could sell HTML5 apps in the app store.

Umm, you can and many developers do and Apple has specifically stated dev kits like Phonegap, created for this purpose continue to be acceptable even with the new developer agreement.

You dont think Apple is making significant money from the app store? How about 30% of every app sold in a several hundred million dollar business.

Which, assuming Apple has very, very low costs and hasn't been selling any music or video, still only amounts to about 6% of their revenue (absurdly optimistic ideas), compared to the 40% or so of their revenue coming from sales of iPhones, iPads, and IPod Touch devices. Apple runs the app store at slightly more than break even prices, as Jobs has publicly stated to shareholders, so unless you think he's violating SEC rules and jeopardizing his company over a few percent of revenue, you just don't know what you're talking about.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

With HTML5 Apple ultimately controls the browser and how it works.

To some extent. If they deviate too far from the standards implemented by others, they lose compatibility with things like Google's apps and how other browsers render the same sites. Since Apple doesn't have such a huge portion of the market, sites are unlikely to code specifically for Apple devices unless they can be compatible with other devices as well.

Adobe could very easily make their own "app store" where they can sell cross-platform apps that work on iPhone, Nokia Symbian and MeeGo/Maemo, Android and Blackberry phones, as well as netbooks, tablets, computers, etc.. If that were to happen, Apple would lose control, and potentially their competitive advantage.

That depends upon what you think their competitive advantage is. Companies can code HTML5 apps right now and put together their own store, offering the same app in both Apple's store, their own store, and as a regular Web app. Apple isn't doing anything to stop them.

However, Apple likes control. They want to make sure that doesn't happen.

Do you have an evidence to back up that statement? It sounds like pure speculation.

Apple is NOT just a hardware company - it never was, and there are no indications it aims to be in the future.

Apple is a device company for the most part. They provide hardware, software, and services that work together and sell it as a nice package. They make their money selling the devices though and many of the services are run at near break even rates in order to promote the sales of the devices. Apple makes very little on the iTunes and App stores, compared to what they make selling Macs and iPhones.

They are "pushing" HTML5 in part so they can ditch Adobe.

Well, so they can ditch Flash as being a blocker for their platform. They aren't ditching Adobe as a developer of software for their platforms. I for one am pretty happy they're pushing to get rid of a proprietary platform and replace ti with an open standard. Adobe plays hardball in pushing their closed platforms and it takes someone with leverage to push back effectively.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dangitman]

Not only is the whole Apple/USB thing a big, fat lie

How so? Where was widespread USB adoption before the original iMac?

the post you responded to didn't say that Apple ditches EVERY connector they don't control.

Well, that's a fucking meaningless statement. Especially as there isn't a single external connector on any current Mac that Apple does fully control, with the exception of MagSafe.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Pieroxy]

Don't equate the web with a codec. As for performances, HTML5 is still in its infancy.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[dangitman]

The web is ruled by web DESIGNERS
Web is ruled by BUSINESS
The Web is ruled by USERS

You're all wrong. The web is ruled by the Judean People's Front.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[unix1]

Adobe could very easily make their own "app store" where they can sell cross-platform apps that work on iPhone, Nokia Symbian and MeeGo/Maemo, Android and Blackberry phones, as well as netbooks, tablets, computers, etc.. If that were to happen, Apple would lose control, and potentially their competitive advantage.

That depends upon what you think their competitive advantage is. Companies can code HTML5 apps right now and put together their own store, offering the same app in both Apple's store, their own store, and as a regular Web app. Apple isn't doing anything to stop them.

Competitive advantage is that "iApps" work only on iPhones and iPods and iPads. Flash apps would work on any device with the flash support.

It would create incentives for developers to create Flash apps to cover more devices and avoid Apple's "walled garden" ecosystem.

HTML5 "apps" are not really in the same ballpark. They don't get things like push notifications and cannot take advantage of the SDK APIs Apple provides for their devices. They are basically glorified mobile web pages, nothing else. Adobe's Flash would be able to expose device APIs and act as a runtime layer for Flash apps.

However, Apple likes control. They want to make sure that doesn't happen.

Do you have an evidence to back up that statement?

Sure - can an average iPhone owner install 3rd party apps that have not been pre-approved by Apple on their iPhones/iPods/iPads?

Apple is NOT just a hardware company - it never was, and there are no indications it aims to be in the future.

Apple is a device company for the most part.

You can label it as you like and we can discuss the philosophical meanings of labels all week. But the fact remains that they want to make devices, and have full control of the software on those devices. Adobe Flash would open a possible door of jeopardizing that level of control.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[fullfactorial]

Mod parent up (or mod GP down). Half of that ZDNet article was retracted because the iPad DOES support bluetooth keyboards, and the other half is BS because USB isn't even Apple's standard.

Apple has actually gotten rid of most proprietary connectors in the past 10 years. The ones they still have are either highly device-specific (e.g. iPod connector), or on their way to becoming standards (e.g. mini display port).

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[vijayiyer]

Because sometimes you need to catalyze a change. Apple ditching Flash is causing a lot of people to rewrite web sites. If they kept it, there would be no incentive to change technologies.
It's the same reason Apple ditched the floppy disk, ADB, analog video, etc.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[drfreak]

Agreed. Aside from the form vs. function differences which are so famous when discussing Microsoft and Apple, there is also a huge backwards-compatibility contrast when you look at the two entities. Microsoft will support older technology until it is confirmed dead; Apple on the other hand, will declare a technology as no longer relevant and actively endeavor to kill it.

Apple's technology strategy is the opposite of "embrace and extend", it is more like "screw this, I'm sick of having to use and support it".

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[intheshelter]

How does using or not using Flash lock anyone into the app store? If you don't jailbreak then you are using the App Store. If you do jailbreak then you can put your Flash compiled junk on your iPhone in addition to using the App Store (if you choose). NOTHING has changed.

The whole idea that people are more "locked" in by Apple now is utter BS!

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[gig]

> Why doesn't the iPad support future AND current technologies (HTML5 and Flash).

The funny thing here is I bet you meant Flash is "current" and HTML5 is "future".

On mobiles -- like iPad -- HTML5 is 3 years old and universal, while Flash has not yet shipped and is of course therefore completely non-existent. In other words, on mobiles, HTML5 is "current" and Flash is "future".

Adobe has not yet shipped a FlashPlayer for ARM architecture at all. Here are the system requirements for FlashPlayer according to Adobe, as of today, May, 2010: Intel P4 2GHz or better with 2GB RAM. That's multiple times more power than any mobile will have for years.

If you read Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" at apple.com you will notice he says that Apple has been asking Adobe to demo FlashPlayer for Mobiles for 3 years now, on any mobile they choose, and Adobe has failed to do that.

In February 2009, Adobe announced that FlashPlayer for Mobiles would be on half of all smartphones by 2010. It's mid-2010 now and it has yet to ship. It is on 0 smartphones.

Recently, Adobe announced that FlashPlayer for Mobiles will ship with Android v2.2 "later this year [2010]". Android v2.2 only supports about 25% of existing Android phones. It takes 6 months to upgrade those phones, going by past experience. So we are looking at FlashPlayer for Mobiles being on 25% of Android phones by mid-2011. That's less than 1% of smartphones.

THERE IS NO FLASH ON MOBILES. STOP BLAMING APPLE. END OF STORY.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[blackpig]

It doesn't have a version for Debian ARM.

Are you sure? Maemo, based on debian, has Flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[blackpig]

Last ichecked the n900 uses flash lite which only gives you a percentage of flash features.

Nope, AFAIK it uses the full Adobe Flash Player version 9.4, not Flash lite... and you can play Farmville, only I don't.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky for me that none of those are sites I'd visit let alone buy from. Not one produces or sells a real product. If you support old technology people don't have the motivation to implement new improved technologies. Nobody is missing anything by the lack of Flash.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Whuffo]

Unfortunately, you've linked to a opinion piece that trashes Apple products using false and misleading claims. I see that he's corrected some of them but there's still plenty of blatantly false "facts" in that piece.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

CRT televisions are common in developing countries and "emerging economies".

The major shops in Dubai sells CRTs to those with small budgets.

Many here in Dubai have a salary of around 200 USD a month. It is common with a salary of less than 60 USD a month in China.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[605dave]

No, the web is ruled by The People's Front of Judea. Those idiots at the Judean People's Front don't know what the hell they're doing.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Competitive advantage is that "iApps" work only on iPhones and iPods and iPads. Flash apps would work on any device with the flash support.

You can code an iApp in HTML5 using CSS and javascript and it will work on iPhones and anything else. You can even use a toolkit and put them in the app store. The difference is no company external to Apple controls what apps can do.

HTML5 "apps" are not really in the same ballpark. They don't get things like push notifications and cannot take advantage of the SDK APIs Apple provides for their devices. They are basically glorified mobile web pages, nothing else.

They don't have access to all the same APIs, but they do have access to many. Web apps certainly are up and coming and WebOS based phones run entirely using them.

However, Apple likes control. They want to make sure that doesn't happen (prevent other app stores and cross platform web apps).

Do you have an evidence to back up that statement?

Sure - can an average iPhone owner install 3rd party apps that have not been pre-approved by Apple on their iPhones/iPods/iPads

Claiming that because Apple does not allow native apps to be distributed by other companies, is not an argument that they will prevent third parties from implementing it in the future. It's a non sequitur.

You can label it as you like and we can discuss the philosophical meanings of labels all week. But the fact remains that they want to make devices, and have full control of the software on those devices. Adobe Flash would open a possible door of jeopardizing that level of control.

Apple acts in their best financial interests not in some abstract desire for control when that does not bring them more profit. You seem to be assigning motives that are oversimplified because you don't understand how they profit or why they make the decisions they do.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[rtfa-troll]

Right; but that was done custom for Nokia. It isn't available for general Debian.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Sloppy]

"iDevices" (as you immaturely call them)

Waitaminute. Apple-bitching aside, WTF else is better? "iP*" looks weird and may really confuse people, iPhone/iPod/iPad is long and cumbersome. You got something better? iThing? iNintendo?

On to evil.

Yes, I know I don't have to buy one. I won't. Evil isn't just about capability, though. It's about intent. Apple lockdown on the application market for those .. things (I'll avoid the iDevice name that has gotten your panties wedged so badly for now, giving you a chance to say what word for them you'll find inoffensive) .. is an attempt to transition the software market as we have known it for personal computers -- a ridiculously healthy and diverse market for the last few decades -- into something as bland as the console game market. Or the IBM-mainframe software market, pre-antitrust action.

We see a facet of this evil every time there's a story about how they banned some particular app from their store (the only viable way to distribute applications for these things), but that only scratches the surface of all the work that is not happening on the platform. And before you say, "it's their store, so their right to determine what's for sale" (and yes, it's their right) let's think about why the platform is so fucking braindead that people need to use Apple's store to install applications. If I fire up Safari on my work-issued testing iPod, at no time for any hyperlink do I see any sort of "download and install" option for executables. Nor is there any equivalent of editing /etc/apt/sources.list so that I can apt-get install from some other repository.

Why? Because Apple wanted it that way. They wanted to damage the software market for that device, in a way that would flabbergast any Apple IIe or iMac user. There's the evil, pal.

If someone hands you a gun, saying, "I'd like you to shoot yourself with this, please," you're right: you don't have to take the offer. Nobody's making you accept the gun and blow your own head off. But let's not kid ourselves: that person deserves a great big giant "fuck you."

That's what both Apple and Adobe are offering people, and Apple is making iOhNoIDon'tWantToOffendYouWithAnAbbreviation users not be allowed to shoot themselves with Adobe guns. So maybe Adobe guns won't be around much longer. Good. But if you think there isn't going to be any collateral damage and prevention of good things happening, by giving a centralized authority like Apple or Microsoft or IBM or a government final say in what applications are allowed to exist, then you've drunk the koolaide.

Hell yes, don't buy one. And tell other people not to buy one too, if you want to maximize the chances of the software market staying healthy. I've been making my living at this for decades precisely because I didn't have to ask Daddy (who knows best) for permission for evcery project, and I like it that way. Fuck Nintendo for popularizing this business model, fuck IBM for inventing it (though that's actually long-forgiven) and fuck Apple for expanding it to the PC.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[unix1]

You can code an iApp in HTML5 using CSS and javascript and it will work on iPhones and anything else.

Sure, try "coding" a 3D game in CSS and Javascript and see how that works out for you.

They don't have access to all the same APIs, but they do have access to many. Web apps certainly are up and coming and WebOS based phones run entirely using them.

HTML5 does not specify any device-specific APIs - you have no clue what you are talking about. WebOS? What? Did Apple somehow allow WebOS to be installed in iPhone?

Claiming that because Apple does not allow native apps to be distributed by other companies, is not an argument that they will prevent third parties from implementing it in the future

Uhhh... what? Also, Apple may just open source the iPhone OS at some point in the future - so there's nothing preventing us from calling it open source right now then. I like this logic!

Wow, talk about missing a point on all of the above. There's nothing contradicting or arguing against the actual point I was making.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

That'd be because apple users aren't exactly the kind of users to keep legacy tech around.

Um, broad-brush much?

This Apple user has Apple tech back to an Apple-1, and Wintel tech back to a PC-XT.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

I bow to your superior command of a fake language.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[macs4all]

"iDevices" (as you immaturely call them)

Waitaminute. Apple-bitching aside, WTF else is better? "iP*" looks weird and may really confuse people, iPhone/iPod/iPad is long and cumbersome. You got something better? iThing? iNintendo?

Since there seems to be precedent for calling mobile devices by their OS names (e.g. Android, WinMo 7, Symbian), I would submit that a good, generic, and proper name for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad class of products would be to call them Cocoa Touch devices.

Besides, you and I both know that you meant the term 'iDevice' in a derisive manner, right?

Now, on to evil.

If I fire up Safari on my work-issued testing iPod, at no time for any hyperlink do I see any sort of "download and install" option for executables. Nor is there any equivalent of editing /etc/apt/sources.list so that I can apt-get install from some other repository.

Why? Because Apple wanted it that way. They wanted to damage the software market for that device, in a way that would flabbergast any Apple IIe or iMac user. There's the evil, pal.

Whatchoo smokin' Jackson???

I love a good Conspiracy as much as the next Paranoid-Schizophrenic; but WTF would 99.9997% of the iPod-using population want or need with using apt-get-install on that device???

I'd wager that you can't get to that directory nor use apt-get-install on your damned DVD player neither; but what's the point? Is Samsung evil, too?

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Mr Bubble]

This is the mentality that I don't understand. Apple doesn't support some old lame technology you have laying around and they have "limited vision"? The mac mini is the same volume as 5 jewel cases stacked on one another - and it's a pretty good computer. USB ( thanks to Apple's limited vision of making the iMac use only USB ) was ubiquitous when the Mac Mini was announced. Should they have included SCSI and Parallels ports as well - in case you had some of those peripherals laying around? If Apple didn't have "limited vision" their products would be the bloated, backward crap the rest of the industry spews out.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Sure, try "coding" a 3D game in CSS and Javascript and see how that works out for you.

There's no reason one can't. A lot of the nice tools aren't there yet, but HTML5 has decent support for 3D graphics.

HTML5 does not specify any device-specific APIs - you have no clue what you are talking about.

Umm, you can use HTML5 applications to call on the needed APIs though and Apple does expose a great deal of the hardware to Webkit.

WebOS? What? Did Apple somehow allow WebOS to be installed in iPhone?

Your argument was that HTML5 apps are too limited to be useful. I pointed out WebOS where all apps are that way. This is called a "counter-example". Do you need me to repeat that for you a few times?

Also, Apple may just open source the iPhone OS at some point in the future - so there's nothing preventing us from calling it open source right now then.

Well, significant parts of it are open source right now, but again you can't claim Apple is going to do something in the future as the basis for your argument unless you have some support for that hypothesis. If all you have is speculation, your comments are worthless.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

By being one of the authors of the spec, by implementing it in their browser and contributing to Webkit so it is implemented in other browsers, by refusing to implement Flash or Silverlight so Web developers that want to reach many of Apple's users are forced to use HTML5, and by widely touting HTML5 in the press until many developers and business people are familiar with the term and associate it with the direction of technology.

Right, so why haven't they pushed to donate the H.264 patents? You also realize Webkit is a fork of Konqueror, right? And Apple is one of many companies who contribute code to it. They are also one of many companies on the HTML5 WG. Others include Microsoft, Google and Adobe. I can't imagine you sitting here arguing that Adobe is pushing HTML5 with the evidence they contribute to Webkit and are on the WG.

If you think Apple is somehow leading a charge on HTML5 in any financially significant way, you're blind.

Which, assuming Apple has very, very low costs and hasn't been selling any music or video, still only amounts to about 6% of their revenue (absurdly optimistic ideas), compared to the 40% or so of their revenue coming from sales of iPhones, iPads, and IPod Touch devices. Apple runs the app store at slightly more than break even prices, as Jobs has publicly stated to shareholders, so unless you think he's violating SEC rules and jeopardizing his company over a few percent of revenue, you just don't know what you're talking about.

You're arguing the same stupid point by restating it. Yes, they make more revenue from devices. No, they dont make an "insignificant" amount of revenue from the app store. You basically also said that the profit margin is low on apps but neglected to mention the profit margin from devices. You're comparison is flawed -- you can't compare revenue in one area to profit in another. So unless you have some magic insight into exactly how much Apple makes off of each iphone, you just don't know what you're talking about. Additionally, if apps were written in Flash and Apple saw no money from them, it would STILL remove revenue from that stream. Just because it's operating at a slim margin DOES NOT mean that they are OK with losing more money on the deal. It's like you're saying since they don't make a ton of profit off of it, they wouldn't care if it started losing money.

Ah, but it does make him money when he builds Web services on top of it. More importantly, it prevents others from being a roadblock to him making money by selling Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.

Web services are already in place and were developed pre-HTML5 with javascript. The full HTML5 spec isnt even out yet and none of it will enable much in the way of services that were not available before. Again, you're arguing that HTML5 somehow enables the selling of devices more than the app store, which is just some kind of insane rose-colored tunnel vision. HTML5 will have quite a few benefits, none of which are new technology. It's a spec, a standardization of current technology.

People buy more Apple devices if those devices are secure, and Macs are more secure and less crashy if they don't have to deal with Flash.

Sigh. They haven't added any security by blocking native apps compiled from Flash. How do you come to believe this? Also how much you wanna bet Safari will be equally crashy with canvas and HTML5 video?

Umm, you can and many developers do and Apple has specifically stated dev kits like Phonegap, created for this purpose continue to be acceptable even with the new developer agreement.

OK, so you're arguing now it's OK for HTML5 apps to be compiled down to a non web format, but Flash cant? The funny part here is that in the midst of railing against Flash for non-open standards, you seem to have just accepted allowing HTML5 to be used in Apple's proprietary app format. Yo

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Right, so why haven't they pushed to donate the H.264 patents?

Why would they? How does donating the patents to umm, something, sell more Apple devices?

You also realize Webkit is a fork of Konqueror, right?

Actually it's a fork of KHTML, which is part of Konquerer, but Apple rewrote huge amounts of it. They also wrote and released the javascript engine. Both the javascript and a lot of the recent work on the engine to support HTML5 has been by Apple, with Google doing probably about the same level of work on the HTML engine, but using their own javascript engine.

And Apple is one of many companies who contribute code to it.

True, but they're the ones who took the KHTML code and established all the infrastructure to make it useful for major companies to collaborate on it. Back in the the day the Konquerer folks ran it as an open source project, but had no idea how to handle real contributions from a significant number of commercial organizations. Apple is also as big of a contributor as any other company.

Others include Microsoft, Google and Adobe.

The founders were Apple, Opera, and mozilla. Google joined later. As far as I know Adobe and MS have never joined, although MS was invited.

I can't imagine you sitting here arguing that Adobe is pushing HTML5 with the evidence they contribute to Webkit and are on the WG.

What code has Adobe contributed? How have they helped advance the standard. Can you provide a citation that they are contributing to WHATWG.

If you think Apple is somehow leading a charge on HTML5 in any financially significant way, you're blind.

Really? I'd say with Google, Apple is one of the biggest financial supporters of HTML5, not to mention spending a lot of money convincing companies to move to it instead of just supporting Flash.

Yes, they make more revenue from devices. No, they dont make an "insignificant" amount of revenue from the app store.

Compared to devices, and when considering a business plan that is going to promote one at the expense of the other... yeah it is insignificant. You'd have to be a moron to hinder iPhone sales to try to eke out a bit of cash on apps.

You basically also said that the profit margin is low on apps but neglected to mention the profit margin from devices.

Actually I only talked about revenue, not margins.

Web services are already in place and were developed pre-HTML5 with javascript.

Because Apple isn't building and rebuilding Web services? And they didn't just dump a pile of money into HTML5 dev tools for Web services. I'm sure they're not reworking Lala and iTMS or any other services.

Again, you're arguing that HTML5 somehow enables the selling of devices more than the app store, which is just some kind of insane rose-colored tunnel vision.

No, I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that dependence upon Flash limits Apple's ability to push the device forward, secure the device, and increase the performance of the device because it is entirely reliant upon another company's code. You're the one arguing Apple's motivation for banning Flash was related to selling apps.

Sigh. They haven't added any security by blocking native apps compiled from Flash.

They don't allow native apps compiled from Flash because of performance reasons and because they don't want their platform limited by the tools of other vendors. They improve security greatly by not allowing Flash to run from the Web.

Also how much you wanna bet Safari will be equally crashy with canvas and HTML5 video?

It has it now and is not. And even if it were, then Apple can fix it instead of having to try to convince Adobe to do so, when Adobe has

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[exomondo]

Don't give me mouseover as an answer, either. There are ways around that.

Not only that but HTML5 technologies have mouseover capabilities that are often implemented as well.

Re:See, this is what I've been saying on Slashdot

[Sloppy]

Besides, you and I both know that you meant the term 'iDevice' in a derisive manner, right?

No. I think they're bad things, but if I wanted a derisive name, I could have come up with something more insulting than "device." You can't get more generic, neutral, safe -- and euphemistic if you're talking about something distasteful -- than "device." Watch Goldfinger some time.

I'd wager that you can't get to that directory nor use apt-get-install on your damned DVD player neither; but what's the point?

You'd lose that wager, because my DVD player is MythTV. It was over ten years ago that I bought my first DVD-ROM drive and would never again need a dedicated (and closed) appliance like what you're talking about. Apple fanboys are correct that Apple appliances utterly kick the ass of 1990s appliances, but the 1990s are over. I see an iPhone or iPod and compare it to the new wave of pocket-sized personal computers like the Nokia N900; I see an iPad and compare it to a "net top." In both cases, I expect a machine which answers to its owner, rather than to its manufacturer or their partners.

I always though it was obvious that we're moving toward using personal computers -- isn't that what we all want?! It's ironic that a personal computer maker -- and one that had such a great reputation -- is trying to sweep back the tide. They've made some judicious compromises by almost letting the iDevices work right; the last thing I'd call Apple is stupid. But even that might be their undoing, because my first exposure to these things were that they were so slick and neat, and left an undeniable taste for the Real Thing, much like using a Wang "word processor" 30 years ago must have made people wonder what was coming.

I love a good Conspiracy as much as the next Paranoid-Schizophrenic; but WTF would 99.9997% of the iPod-using population want or need with using apt-get-install on that device???

An alternate repository. I wasn't suggesting people type "apt-get install"; I was suggesting something analogous to editing source.list; that is, replacing Apple's store with something else that technically works just as well, but with completely different criteria of selection for what is included and what isn't. And once you've got that python or ruby interpreter installed, and an editor and a place to save files, your computer can suddenly just about any damn thing you want it to.

No, at least

[pkphilip]

before there are authoring tools for HTML5 which are on par with Adobe's Flash authoring tools.. and not before HTML5 becomes as ubiquitous as the Flash plugin.

Re:No, at least

[Nadaka]

I hate it when people abuse their mod points. Parent is making a quite reasonable assertion.

Re:No, at least

[M. Baranczak]

And there are still some things that Flash can do but HTML5 can't. Access to the camera and mic, for instance. (Last I checked, JavaFX can't do that either.)

Yeah, I'd like to have a non-proprietary alternative to Flash too, but we're not quite there yet.

Re:No, at least

[Nadaka]

You bastards! You think its so funny. You had to go ahead and abuse your mod points by modding parent up...

So, is there any way to mod a moderator as funny for humorous use of mod points?

Re:No, at least

[janeuner]

Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?

Are you serious?? Is this just trollbait???

Re:No, at least

[Anonymous Coward]

To broadcast on a video site like ustream.

Re:No, at least

[blackraven14250]

Someone modded GGP "Troll"; that's what GP is talking about.

Re:No, at least

[david@ecsd.com]

Pornography. Some men apparently like the cam whore to see his dick while he's rubbing one out. Some men like to talk to the cam whore. In the non-porn world, this can translate into video chat applications that can be run in a browser. Don't poo-poo the innovative power of the porn producers. There are conference call phone services--call an 800 # and put in your code to join the conference call--why not be able to scale this up? I'd like to attend a conference call where I can see real people. I wouldn't have to pay for any software licensing, and wouldn't have to worry about people needing compatible clients because it's all handled by the browser or the browser plug-in. You want to conduct a conference call, you pay to host it on said website.

That's just an example, though, of a legitimate, non-porn use for a website to have access to your camera.

Re:No, at least

[Nadaka]

I am the poster of both those posts. The first of those posts is hardly insightful. Hence the humor I found that a post about abusing mod points had mod points abused on it (even if that abuse of mod points is favorable towards me).

Re:No, at least

[Just Some Guy]

Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?

I've never been on Chatroulette, but it seems popular with the kids these days.

Re:No, at least

[Abcd1234]

While that's true, let's face it, that functionality is really only leveraged in a few niches. Most people make use of flash for vector animations, sound playback, and video. If HTML5 can usurp one or more of those roles, then you may very well see Flash marginalized to those few areas where it's functionality makes it irreplaceable.

Re:No, at least

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is the authoring tool. Flash as a platform might disappear, but it has more life as a development tool.

Flash can export elements for use in the tag. In fact, you can copy animation or interactivity from Flash and simply paste it into Dreamweaver CS5 dumps the element right into your page.

Re:No, at least

[david@ecsd.com]

Oblig: chatroulette.

Re:No, at least

[M. Baranczak]

Video chat. Ever heard of it?

And Flash doesn't just give automatic camera access to any website you visit - that would be ridiculous. The user has to explicitly allow access for every site.

Re:No, at least

[M. Baranczak]

No, most applications don't need this functionality. But for the ones that do, there's absolutely no substitute. If Flash was a new, emerging technology, then this wouldn't be enough - but in fact, it's well-established, stable, and ubiquitous. It might become less popular in the near future, but it ain't dying anytime soon.

Re:No, at least

[Abcd1234]

No, most applications don't need this functionality. But for the ones that do, there's absolutely no substitute. If Flash was a new, emerging technology, then this wouldn't be enough - but in fact, it's well-established, stable, and ubiquitous. It might become less popular in the near future, but it ain't dying anytime soon.

Isn't that what I said? :)

Re:No, at least

[NatasRevol]

Unless there's a security issue...

http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20081007/clickjacking-details/

See issue #2a, 2b.

Re:No, at least

[M. Baranczak]

Sort of, but not quite. You said "marginalized", which I think is pretty extreme. The point that I was trying to make is that Flash might lose some of its huge market share, but at that point it would still be a major player.

Re:No, at least

[Blakey Rat]

Well, since the quality of Flash's authoring tools is nosediving in the last 4 versions, this probably won't be as hard as the parent implies.

Re:No, at least

[Timmmm]

True, HTML5 doesn't replace all the uses of flash, but it does replace the vast majority of (ab)uses: playing videos, displaying interactive content (e.g. google analytics graphs, or the BBC quizzes), and vector graphics/custom fonts.

I doubt you could make something like homestarrunner, or a flash game using HTML5, but that is ok.

Re:No, at least

[Blakey Rat]

Why would you want to? Who knows.

But thousands of people use Chat Roulette, showing that there is a demand whether or not you personally care about the feature.

In other news, the world doesn't revolve around you.

Re:No, at least

[Mashdar]

Non-proprietary like H.264?

Re:No, at least

[Sancho]

No substitute? What about a native application?

And most devices which don't run Flash also don't have front-facing cameras, so even if Flash was released tomorrow for Android, iPhone, and iPad, most people still wouldn't be able to use e.g. Chat Roulette.

Re:No, at least

[lawpoop]

Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?

Chat Roulette: Eye Vagina

Apple showed

[FlyingBishop]

That people are quite content to buy a device without Flash support. Now hurry up and build me a Android Netbook for $200. There's no reason for the delay.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

Yes, and those same people are also quite content with spending $500+ on a purposely crippled device.

Re:Apple showed

[alen]

i've seen the Slate promo videos and the performance was choppy. choice is between's Apple's stripped and crippled OS and a full version of Windows 7 where performance isn't as fast and is a space hog. iphone OS is under 1GB. even if the Slate shipped with a version of WIndows 7 that only took 15GB of space, that's still half your storage taken up by the OS and unusable. its a trade off. and the Android tablets aren't very open either

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

Or, you could just be patient and wait for a good one. Or, you could take that $500+ and buy a laptop. People can like the interface, they can like Apple, whatever...it doesn't change the fact they are defending their choice to pay more for less.

Just my opinion, of course.

Re:Apple showed

[mikael_j]

You opinion and your definition of "less", those buying the iPad clearly disagree but then I suspect they don't use the same metric as you do. Most likely they consider the user interface to be a big "more" even though you probably dismiss it as "less tactile feedback than a nomad, lame" (to steal a quote from Cmdrtaco).

Re:Apple showed

[Grizzley9]

"pay more for less"

Less here is actually rather subjective. Sure it doesn't function with the same purpose and may have less in the hardware spec, but the overall experience of being quick, reliable, and very good at the tasks it does shouldn't be understated.

Re:Apple showed

[dskzero]

Those people are very likely not really understanding what they are buying anyway.

Re:Apple showed

[drc003]

Yes they have shown what we already knew; There are many people out there who are willing throw money away on whatever is "in" and "cool" while being clueless to many superior options. Take a look at CD sales and you will see that people have shown they will make dog crap top sellers as well. This is the society we live in now.

Re:Apple showed

[StayFrosty]

nd the Android tablets aren't very open either

How, exactly, are they not very open? Anybody can develop open or closed source applications for them without paying anything for the SDK or the development tools. The developer can include the application in any market they would like, or they can make the application available on their website. They can give the application away free or charge for it. The developer has total freedom.

The user has total freedom to download applications from any market or website they would like. They can choose between paid or free apps. They can choose open or closed source applications.

The operating system itself is open-source. Anyone who is interested can download the source, modify it, make it better, do whatever they want and (usually) flash it to their device. The only thing that is not open is the device itself. Some manufacturers insist on locking the device down--but luckily the user is free to choose one that is not locked down as well.

Re:Apple showed

[diamondsw]

it doesn't change the fact they are defending their choice to pay more for less. Just my opinion, of course.

So which is it, fact or opinion? Oh right, it's both - opinion masquerading as fact.

Re:Apple showed

[rnelsonee]

Oh bullshit. You clearly don't know what's important in consumer devices (hint: it's something Apple products always have).

iPods have always been more locked and proprietary than their competitors, lacked basic features like FM transmitters, and were much more expensive to boot. And yet iPods outsell all of their competition combined 2 to 1.

You can sit there and think everyone else is stupid but you, but that's not the case. Some people, most people, will pay more for a better UI. You think all those soccer moms, grandparents and executives are Apple fanboys? They're not - they're just paying for a product that they see as better than the competition.

Re:Apple showed

[jedidiah]

>> "pay more for less"
>
> Less here is actually rather subjective. Sure it doesn't function with the same purpose and may
> have less in the hardware spec, but the overall experience of being quick, reliable, and very
> good at the tasks it does shouldn't be understated.

I can get the same effect by just turning off Flash.

OTOH, I can turn it back on again if I really want to. So I don't have to deprive myself.

That's the advantage of being able to control my own computing experience.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

Oh bullshit. You clearly don't know what's important in consumer devices (hint: it's something Apple products always have).

I know exactly what's important in consumer devices: above all, it has to look good. Apple does a great job with that.

iPods have always been more locked and proprietary than their competitors, lacked basic features like FM transmitters, and were much more expensive to boot. And yet iPods outsell all of their competition combined 2 to 1.

Yup. And people also vote against their interests each election, sue companies when coffee is too hot, and get mad at you when they drive in your blind spot when you try to move over on the highway.

You can sit there and think everyone else is stupid but you, but that's not the case.

Stupid? No, they're not stupid, just ignorant. There is a difference.

Some people, most people, will pay more for a better UI.

Polish a turd...

You think all those soccer moms, grandparents and executives are Apple fanboys? They're not - they're just paying for a product that they see as better than the competition.

And that is entirely their choice.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

You opinion and your definition of "less", those buying the iPad clearly disagree but then I suspect they don't use the same metric as you do. Most likely they consider the user interface to be a big "more" even though you probably dismiss it as "less tactile feedback than a nomad, lame" (to steal a quote from Cmdrtaco).

My opinion of "less" is being told what I can or can't install on a device that is just as powerful and expensive as a full blown computer, yet is marketed as a "premium Internet appliance" in an attempt to justify the cost.

Re:Apple showed

[mikael_j]

Did you notice the "appliance" part? That's what it is, it's an appliance, it's not meant to be used in the same way as a full-fledged desktop.

Re:Apple showed

[Dog-Cow]

Like he said... you're opinion is different than most. I still don't understand why anyone here makes such a big deal about the fact that Apple creates products that aren't designed for them.

You've basically said that you don't understand that people have different opinions than you. People aren't paying for less. They are paying for what they want. "Less" has nothing to do with anything. Less than what? Less than what you want? Less than what someone else provides?

Re:Apple showed

[Dog-Cow]

People that are incredibly stupid often say that, but they are always wrong.

Above all it has to work well.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

Did you notice the "appliance" part? That's what it is, it's an appliance, it's not meant to be used in the same way as a full-fledged desktop.

Then why is it priced like one?

Re:Apple showed

[aztracker1]

Compared to their other products, it really isn't so closely priced like one. I'm pretty much a PC guy, but just ordered a Macbook Pro (paying pretty much in-line with the Dell laptops I had been considering).

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

Maybe not in line with their products, but certainly in line with other products. Here is the laptop I bought my fiancee. Perfect for browsing the Internet, watching videos/movies, doing work, and can even play Civ IV with all of the settings turned up to max.

Yet is only $30 more than the base iPad price. Now, I recognize that the iPad and this laptop serve entirely different needs...but the difference is still only $30, and that's assuming you go with the base iPad. Why pay $499 for an iPad that is limited in use when you can pay $529 and get that laptop? Is a shiny picture-book esque interface really worth paying full price for a half-function "appliance"?

Re:Apple showed

[mikael_j]

They server different purposes, they are not identical and are not meant to be identical.

As a side note, my experience with Toshiba's Satellite laptops is that they are hardly the best at anything, they are typical "consumer" laptops (slightly heavier than they need to be, slightly bulkier than they need to be, poorly supported hardware (on both Linux and Windows) and so on). There's a reason that laptop is cheap...

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

As a side note, my experience with Toshiba's Satellite laptops is that they are hardly the best at anything, they are typical "consumer" laptops (slightly heavier than they need to be, slightly bulkier than they need to be, poorly supported hardware (on both Linux and Windows) and so on). There's a reason that laptop is cheap...

::shrug:: it fits her needs perfectly. As a teacher, her requirements are fairly simple (full size keyboard, decent size screen, must have a full-size number pad, and be able to play the occasional game), and that particular one matched every one of her needs. Coming from a Thinkpad circa 2003, it was a night and day difference for her.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

That being said, you could get an Alienware M11x for the price of the fully loaded iPad.

Re:Apple showed

[dangitman]

Polish a turd...

I think this essentially sums up your misguided view of these things. You're used to seeing everything as a turd. When you see something nice, you automatically assume that it's just a fancified turd. What you don't understand is that Apple has no tolerance for turds, the turds don't get a security pass to get into the campus in the first place.

Not that you'd understand - you probably think that a riced-up Honda Civic is the equivalent of a fine automobile.

Re:Apple showed

[aztracker1]

It gets quite a bit more expensive when you add the SSD. But, on the low end is a good deal. I spec'd out and even ordered an M11x (wanted the size) but needed a bit more CPU, after the hastles in cancelling the order (took 4 phone calls, first two dropped calls, third took four people to finally get it "cancelled", looked the next day, still there, had to talk to two more people to *finally* get it cancelled. After that, they were supposed to call me the next day in the *evening* to hear my complaint, they couldn't even get that right. I'd planned on ordering a Dell Adamo, which was a better fit for my needs, but after the hassle, I bit my tongue and ordered a macbook, should be here tuesday, almost a full week before the dell/alienware was even going to ship out.

Sometimes there's a need for a more premium laptop, sometimes there isn't, but it's really annoying to get sub-par service when you're about to spend more than $2K on a computer product.

Re:Apple showed

[Pojut]

I think this essentially sums up your misguided view of these things. You're used to seeing everything as a turd. When you see something nice, you automatically assume that it's just a fancified turd. What you don't understand is that Apple has no tolerance for turds, the turds don't get a security pass to get into the campus in the first place.

You sure about that?

Not that you'd understand - you probably think that a riced-up Honda Civic is the equivalent of a fine automobile.

No, my idea of a fine automobile is a Lamborghini Countach or a Corvette Stingray. A riced-up Honda Civic is the bastardization of an otherwise decent, affordable vehicle.

Re:Apple showed

[dangitman]

No, my idea of a fine automobile is a Lamborghini Countach or a Corvette Stingray. A riced-up Honda Civic is the bastardization of an otherwise decent, affordable vehicle.

Exactly. And Apple products belong in the former category.

So basically a bunch of brands...

[revlayle]

...that wealthy shoppers like? BFD (yes... yes... you can say the Apple crowd may dig some of these brands, again, BFD)

Re:So basically a bunch of brands...

[methano]

I really don't understand this post at all. Is it me?

Re:So basically a bunch of brands...

[dskzero]

Well, it is undertandable, but it's like... kinda... worthless. So you're better off not understanding it.

Not for everything.

[Nerdfest]

For video, almost definitely.

Re:Not for everything.

[pkphilip]

I don't expect HTML5 to crush Flash even for video.

Unless a majority of users move over the HTML5 compatible browsers, it isn't going to work.

Considering how long has IE6 been around despite all of the security vulnerabilities and when you consider that these companies haven't thought these security vulnerabilities as important enough reasons to move their users over to a decent browser, what makes you think that these companies would think the ability to see video on the web being a good enough reason to transfer their users to HTML5 compatible browsers?

If anything, it would discourage employees from using up the bandwidth looking at some random video on the web - all the more reason not to encourage the move to HTML5 browsers.

Re:Not for everything.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't expect HTML5 to crush Flash even for video. Unless a majority of users move over the HTML5 compatible browsers, it isn't going to work.

First, all the major browser vendors are making some support for HTML5 in their browsers. Second, for browsers that don't support enough HTML5 for a task, they need a plugin for Flash, or the Google Chrome plugin for HTML5 so they are on par.

...what makes you think that these companies would think the ability to see video on the web being a good enough reason to transfer their users to HTML5 compatible browsers?

I don't think anyone thinks that, but at the same time many of those companies also ban Flash already and those that don't probably won't ban Google Frame.

Re:Not for everything.

[i.r.id10t]

Of course, when porn goes to HTML 5 and its video, everything else will follow.

Re:Not for everything.

[marcosdumay]

Well, companies that won't let their staff look videos at the web don't really make any difference at the video browsing on the web. Also, the majority of users are going to move to HTML5 compatible browsers, if for no other reason, only because the next upgrade of their browser is.

But I still think there is no clear winner. Flash gives the publisher a (false) feeling that he can control how the movie will play, a kind of (still weaker than normal) DRM.

Why should anyone care about scribd?

[eison]

What's the big deal with scribd lately? Weren't they a worthless site that nobody ever used because it was such a pain to try to read anything there? Or am I completely missing something?

Re:Why should anyone care about scribd?

[amentajo]

Yeah - they used Flash to display documents, so I never got to use the site. Since they're moving (moved?) content distribution to HTML5, that sentiment might be reversed now.
Scribd documents show up relatively frequently in my Google searches; I may have to start training my eyes to stop avoiding links to scribd.com.

Re:Why should anyone care about scribd?

[dskzero]

I haven't actually heard about that site until today, and i honestly doubt I will ever heard from it again.

i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[alen]

played with Google Wave late last year and it's javascript heavy. with a few public waves on the screen i've seen my browser memory usage jump to around 500MB. this is on all browsers. IE8, Chrome and Firefox. so it looks like a choice between RAM hungry HTML5 and CPU heavy Flash

Re:i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[pkphilip]

HTML5 will be CPU-intensive at least for a while before the browsers improve. HTML5 vector graphics will have to go through all the iterations of development and improvement that Flash has already gone through - in a few years, HTML vector graphics will be where Flash is now.

Re:i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[amentajo]

Since it's still in "preview" mode, it may be that optimizations are still forthcoming. If I recall correctly, Wave tried to load all the content in the wave at once, instead of as I scrolled down. There was plenty of room for laziness improvements.

One such improvement may be rolling up replies to a message thread so that I don't have to load what code Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum are documenting further up in the wave while I spam the bottom with pictures of LOLcats.

Re:i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[Anonymous Coward]

RAM is much cheaper than CPU nowadays, so even if what you say is true, it's still progress.

Re:i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a choice between dependence on flash and HTML5 that can render nearly anywhere

Re:i've seen javascript slow down my machines

[martin-boundary]

Except RAM is the new disk nowadays, so using too much RAM is like constantly swapping to disk - it negates all the CPU improvements you pay for when you get the latest whizz-bang Intel must-have.

Hardware

[bezpredel6]

How come Flash was fine on hardware 7 years ago, but is not suited for modern low power hardware?

Re:Hardware

[alen]

not a scientific test, but i swear flash performs better on the P4 compared to modern intel CPU's

Re:Hardware

[maxume]

People are trying to do more with it.

Well written flash from 7 years ago would probably run just fine on modern low power hardware.

Re:Hardware

[markhb]

Flash 7 years ago was just beginning to perform data access; most Flash apps back then were static animations like fancy mouseovers.

Back in the here-and-now, I ask this: can you duplicate MLB Gameday with HTML 5?

Re:Hardware

[bezpredel6]

This is not true, flash was doing much more than mouseovers, and doing it very well on my 1Ghz Pentium 3. The only thing that it was not doing back then is decoding video - ppl were actually publishing vector animations back then. Of course youtube has killed it, and now we get to watch them in low quality.

Re:Hardware

[painandgreed]

How come Flash was fine on hardware 7 years ago, but is not suited for modern low power hardware?

My attempt at a Funny/Insightful answer would be: "5 year ago Flash was owned by Macromedia."

My attempt at an Informative/Insightful answer would be: "Because we are not looking at 7 year old Flash sites. Flash and its applications now includes 7 years worth of features and coding in newer versions that have been built with expectations of higher powered machines. If we were to go back and try and code Flash MX 2004 (7) and then view websites built with it, it might work fine. Then again, people were complaining of it being slow on their home and work PCs back then also. Flash, like many software programs, has been built and upgraded to be feature rich, not to be fast and stable."

Re:Hardware

[bezpredel6]

But back when flash was doing it was asked to do pretty well on relatively crappy hardware, JavaScript was not capable of doing these same things even close to as efficiently on the same hardware.

Looking at it the other way

[Sockatume]

I imagine that those brands don't look at it as "the iPad doesn't have us and needs to support our sites", as much as "we're not reaching iPad users and our sites need to support the iPad".

Re:Looking at it the other way

[Have Blue]

You don't even have to imagine- if you RTFA, it presents this situation as a failure of the luxury sites, not of the iPad.

Re:Looking at it the other way

[Sockatume]

You'd think I'd have learned not to assume from context in the summary.

Re:Looking at it the other way

[Aceticon]

if you RTFA

You must be new here.

Re:Looking at it the other way

[methano]

Wow!! 616 That's a low number. Is it yours or did you buy it on eBay?

I'm not worthy.

Re:Looking at it the other way

[makapuf]

id=616, there's a swoosh around, dunno if it's me or you, however. If it was intentional, I'll mod up Funny .. ah crap.

Re:Looking at it the other way

[COMON$]

Which is where the summary is kinda bad, they say 10 out of 10 leading websites, but the article is pointing to LUXURY websites. Even then I used an ipad for about 2 weeks and never even thought about the lack of flash. My wife uses an ipod to surf the web nightly and didnt even know what I was talking about when I used the term "crippled due to lack of flash"

Re:Looking at it the other way

[Anonymous Coward]

Very well said, I work at dowjones and WSJ.com is saying exactly that.

I've got 2 issues with Flash

[obarthelemy]

1- it's proprietary, so it's probably condemned in the long term. Seeing Adobe struggle to port it, make it faster, more resource-efficient, expand it... is a sad experience.

2- it's kinda bad. Even on my desktop PC, I can tell when a site is using flash, because things get jerky. I have it off most of the time.

3- It misused -a lot- for obnoxious ads.

OTOH, it's a nice way to have animations, and I'm very grateful to Adobe for having Flash way back when. Gratefulness only goes so far when confronted with complacency, though.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with all of the above, especially the part about the obnoxious ads.

Also there's point #4 - flash vulnerabilities give hacker types an other way into your system - this is true of any embedded program that launches out of a webpage eh?

Flash was a nice idea, but it shouldn't have become what it is now as far as those so called big internet sites that use it, use it for.

Java applets and flash.. two of my major beefs with the internet.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[geekoid]

2 and 3 will also be coming with HTML 5.

I don't know what people thing HTML 5 won't be used for all kinds of ads,and that everyone writing code in it will be perfect coders.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[American AC in Paris]

3- It misused -a lot- for obnoxious ads.

Fortunately, that won't happen with HTML5.</snark>

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Ephemeriis]

3- It misused -a lot- for obnoxious ads.

This, in my opinion, is a great reason to keep Flash around.

Yes, it is used an awful lot for an awful lot of obnoxious ads... And I can quickly and easily get rid of those ads just by disabling flash.

How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[dave420]

1. Adobe are constantly making it faster. They've been doing that with every release. Whether people actually code it correctly is another thing. They've been constantly updating the GPU acceleration, memory footprint, etc.
2. I can't tell when a site is using flash - it has no visible performance hit on any of my PCs.
3. So is HTML in general...

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[medcalf]

And 7 problems with counting.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

3- It misused -a lot- for obnoxious ads.

I don't expect point 3 to be cured with HTML5. It may even get worse until someone writes 'NoHTML5'.

People that do sloppy and annoying things with Flash, will do sloppy and annoying things with Canvas.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Deosyne]

Simple, just disable HT... ohhhh.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[John Hasler]

> Yes, it is used an awful lot for an awful lot of obnoxious ads... And I can
> quickly and easily get rid of those ads just by disabling flash.

> How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

Privoxy gets rid of allmost all the ads for me, but NoScript does help by blocking any Flash ads that get by Privoxy. Flash also makes it easy to identify useless sites at a glance so that I can take my business elsewhere without wasting time. Without it identifying sites (such as those featured in the article) run by jerks and assholes will be harder.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

"switch off javascript and experience the magical full web" - steve jobs

i've been to the future and that is what he said. here is a picture of him:
http://tinypic.com/r/6fbkhd/5

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

> "I'm very grateful to Adobe for having Flash way back when"

I hope you know that Adobe bought Flash in 2005 when they bought out Macromedia. Furthermore, Macromedia acquired Flash when they bought out FutureWave Software in 1996. The lineage goes FutureWave Splash Animator -> Macromedia Flash -> Adobe Flash.

It drives me up the wall to hear people praising a company for its innovation when all it did is get to be the big fish from eating other fish. Also, Bill Gates did not invent the computer, the Internet, or the web browser.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Abcd1234]

Yes, it is used an awful lot for an awful lot of obnoxious ads... And I can quickly and easily get rid of those ads just by disabling flash.

How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

With the exact same technology, only this time it'll be a click-to-play video element instead of click-to-play flash embed.

Seriously, the video element is no different than an embed tag in this regard. What makes you think it is?

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[knarf]

How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

Simple really. Either those ads will be recognizable on the block level...

<someblock id=annoyingad>...</someblock>

...and they can be filtered out that way or the next generation of ad blockers will work like the current crop of spam blockers by comparing block signatures in pages to known ads. If the block matches the ad is blocked or hidden or delayed or greyed or silenced or... whatever the user wants.

This race has been run and the ad blockers have won. As long as computers remain freely programmable there will be ways to make them filter out crud.

As long as they remain freely programmable... so make sure you don't lose that freedom!

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable the canvas element.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Noscript, adblock, etc.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Ephemeriis]

With the exact same technology, only this time it'll be a click-to-play video element instead of click-to-play flash embed.

Seriously, the video element is no different than an embed tag in this regard. What makes you think it is?

HTML5 and Flash both consist of more than just video.

Right now I get annoying ads that don't necessarily contain video. They might just have obnoxious graphics moving around, or maybe some sound that plays, or whatever.

I don't have to actually install any blocker software to get rid of them, I can just not install Flash. Or disable the Flash plugin.

If I want to block something like one of Google's text ads, however, I can't just turn off Flash. I'd have to make use of some kind of ad blocker. Which I have, and use, and am quite happy with. But it is an additional piece of software that I need to use.

If we see advertisers move to HTML5 for their annoying advertising, simply disabling Flash will no longer save me. I will then need to install some kind of ad blocker in order to surf undisturbed.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Abcd1234]

If we see advertisers move to HTML5 for their annoying advertising, simply disabling Flash will no longer save me. I will then need to install some kind of ad blocker in order to surf undisturbed.

Then install the ad blocker.

Seriously, how is this such an incredible hardship? You paint this issue as if it's some kind of major deal-breaker for you, but it's literally trivial to deal with. Hell, you, yourself, flat out stated you *already* run an ad blocker, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about, unless you're just complaining for the hell of it.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Ephemeriis]

Seriously, how is this such an incredible hardship?

I never said it was.

You paint this issue as if it's some kind of major deal-breaker for you

I most certainly did no such thing.

Hell, you, yourself, flat out stated you *already* run an ad blocker, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about, unless you're just complaining for the hell of it.

Throughout the day, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, I will use several different browsers on many different computers.

For my own personal use I run Firefox with AdBlock Plus installed.

I frequently wind up using computers that are only running IE6. On these machines we can simply not install Flash and it will get rid of a lot of those annoying ads.

There are certainly alternative ways to solve this issue. I never claimed it was a deal breaker. I never claimed that it was impossible. I simply stated that by keeping most of these annoying ads dependent on a plugin, it is very easy to get rid of the ads by getting rid of the plugin.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

The way real men block ads, proxies with intelligent lists and HOSTs managers.
Never had the need for an ad blocking crapware plugin, never resorted to Flash disabling / blocking to block them either.
Proxy gets most of the crapware ads, then the HOSTs file kills the rest of the abusers.
Now i am left with only the nice advertisers who don't nearly, or sometimes actually kill a persons computer by using that horrible Flash.

Whatever happened to making advertisements solely to get a message across to your target market? Instead they are sitting wasting time adding pointlessly high amounts of detail to Flash banners and FLYING POLYGONS EVERYWHERE FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, THEY ARE JUST PURE AWESOME FACTOR! AWWWWWE! I WANT A FREE IPOD, AND A FREE XBOX!

Privoxy, of course.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[xiando]

I see this "We need flash so advertisements will still be flash and blockable" argument a whole lot. I have a browser profile for personal use and a profile for non-personal use (general browsing) which uses privoxy. It will still be possible to use a filtering proxy with HTML5. Perhaps a few more advertisements will get thorugh, but it will still be possible to block ads.*.* and example.com/ads/* and so on with HTML5, just like filtering proxies remove most non-flash junk today.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

1. What's sad is how butt-hurt Apple gets over everything nowadays.

2. Your desktop PC sucks shit.

3. Animated HTML5 ads would be no less strenuous or obnoxious.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[apoc.famine]

I wouldn't have as much of an issue if I was allowed to control it like EVERY OTHER MEDIA PLAYER. If you're going to be doing video and audio, there needs to be a full suite of controls to go with it. Far too many places don't have the ability to stop of pause, or they lack volume controls. If an application is making noise, it damn well better have volume controls and a mute button.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[obarthelemy]

custom HOSTS file ?

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

By routing the adservers to devnull?

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Cl1mh4224rd]

How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

The NoScript extension for Firefox already blocks the HTML5 <audio> and <video> elements by default.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Recent versions of Adblock Plus allow you to block individual elements based on class and id. But once advertisers catch on and start using random names (or omitting them altogether) it'll be trickier.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[maztuhblastah]

How am I going to get rid of the obnoxious ads written in HTML5?

The same way you do now.

Re:I've got 2 issues with Flash

[exomondo]

This race has been run and the ad blockers have won. As long as computers remain freely programmable there will be ways to make them filter out crud.

lol @ iFashionables then.

Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[Animaether]

Stupid question that pivots around every Flash-hating entity's mouth wrapped firmly around Steve Jobs' ... marketing skills.

What's not to like, then? Well, the user experience, which in my experience is fourth-rate for anything but games

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Show me an even remotely decent HTML5-based game on par with a remotely decent Flash-based game. Oh snap - you can't.. because HTML5 doesn't specify anything with regard to styles or interactivity. So let's allow jscript, CSS and SVG, too. See if you can get the same performance as Flash. Ready. Set. Go.

No "Back" button, feaugh.

That's a problem caused by the author, not Flash itself. Perhaps Flash makes it all too easy to break this standard usability model - probably so. Then again, it takes but a few seconds to find solutions: http://www.google.com/search?q=flash+back+button

But even if this is a major stumbling click, where's the hate for all the *box (lightbox, thickbox, etc.) photo viewers, then? I have yet to see even -one- that adjusts the address bar so that I can link to a specific photo. If I'm lucky, I can still right-click the thing to get the image's direct location and point people there. If I'm unlucky, it's "Okay, so go to http://somegallery/, click next page 3 times, then the 2nd row, 3rd image from the left". Mmmm. If the author did their job well, there'll be a link on the image or somewhere within the frame that I can use. But if Flash isn't excused, why is *box?

Hey, as far as VIDEO goes, absolutely.. ditch it.. bring on the HTML5 video tag.
( preferably without any "only h.264" limitations, especially if the host OS is perfectly capable of playing back pretty much every video format under the moon. Let the market decide - and if the market decides that Indeo5 within an AVI container happens to be a much better for a given video than either of h.264 OR Theora, then why restrict that from being played back? )

But until something actually better than Flash comes along for -everything else- (except for ads) that Flash does, Flash isn't about to go away - it will merely be reduced to the market it had -before- video sites boomed.

javascript vs flash

[FuckingNickName]

One is compiled then executed in a VM; the other is already compiled and executed in a VM. In the optimal version of each, Javascript will be slower.

But since everyone and his mother is concentrating on optimising Javascript, we have the wild achievement that, over a decade after its creation, it might in some experimental scenarios be faster than Flash when employed to do what Flash has been able to do for years.

What a low powered sub-notebook (palmtop / netbook / whatever kids call it these days) can't do in Flash because of lack of processing power, it by immediate consequence can't do in HTML5.

Re:javascript vs flash

[icebraining]

Except video, which doesn't require Javascript at all, and already runs better than Flash.

Re:javascript vs flash

[Anonymous Coward]

One is compiled then executed in a VM; the other is already compiled and executed in a VM. In the optimal version of each, Javascript will be slower.

Presumably you have the benchmarks to validate your claims? JavaScript was beating Flash two years ago:

http://fupeg.blogspot.com/2008/09/javascript-faster-than-flash.html

Plenty of people are actively migrating away from Flash. Here's an example:

http://github.com/blog/621-bye-bye-flash-network-graph-is-now-canvas

The problem for Flash is that it's going up against browsers with highly optimised JavaScript engines with soon to be hardware accelerated render engines (see Firefox's progress for example). It's all looking a bit grim for Flash.

Re:javascript vs flash

[tepples]

Presumably you have the benchmarks to validate your claims?

In fact I do. I've linked to a benchmark at the bottom of my own working draft of an HTML5 vs. SWF article, and my result was that Flash draws a scene full of particles 2.5 times as fast as Canvas.

Re:javascript vs flash

[thestudio_bob]

But since everyone and his mother is concentrating on optimising Javascript, we have the wild achievement that, over a decade after its creation, it might in some experimental scenarios be faster than Flash when employed to do what Flash has been able to do for years.

About a year ago, I had a client that wanted to have this animation on his website. It was a simple ball (60 x 60 pixels) that bounced from left to right on a full browser window. I just assumed that Flash would be the perfect tool to create something so simple. I created the code, ran my test and low and behold the ball had a staggering jump to it. It was not a smooth animation. I tested this in every single browser and all of them had the same problem.

At this point, I decided to do a quick test in Javascript that did the exact same thing. Guess what, it didn't have a single problem. It was smooth as can be and it worked on all the browsers.

This is a simple test and if you don't believe me, try it yourself. It was at that point that I realized that Flash was on its way out. You may think that JavaScript is 10 years away from being ready, but your wrong. It's here today. Sure, JavaScript may not be ready for full on Flash games, but for the 90% of things that web designer need it to do, it can do very well.

Re:javascript vs flash

[Anonymous Coward]

ActionScript is JavaScript.

Re:javascript vs flash

[blueg3]

This is so wrong it hurts. You assume running code in a VM imposes the same slowdown regardless of the nature of the VM environment. You conflate two different types of "slow": time to start up and speed once started. Needing to compile only influences one of these. In some scenarios, only one or the other of these is of interest. You also assume either that compilation (or lack thereof) makes up most of the startup overhead or that all VMs can start up equally fast. You correctly identify that JavaScript has received much better optimization than Flash has (although the title, at least, suggests that comparing to HTML5 might be more relevant). But then you incorrectly assume that this is irrelevant and that theoretical efficiency has any relevance to real efficiency and use a scenario based on real efficiency: "What a low powered sub-notebook (palmtop / netbook / whatever kids call it these days) can't do in Flash because of lack of processing power, it by immediate consequence can't do in HTML5."

You might as well be one more step abstracted from reality and claim that since JavaScript and Flash are both Turing-complete languages, in an idealized situation, they'll run at the same speed.

JavaScript receives more optimization because anyone can (try) to write a JavaScript interpreter. Lots of people have a vested interest in fancy Web junk executing quickly, so there's a lot of motivation for people to write good JS interpreters. On the other hand, only Adobe can write a Flash interpreter. While they may be motivated to do so, it's clear that's insufficient to bring fast Flash execution to all the platforms where it might be useful.

While I'm angry, a sibling post brings up a major point. As I mentioned, this is talking about HTML5, not JavaScript. One of the major applications of Flash is video, which HTML5 addresses. While the current HTML5 video situation isn't such that it's poised to replace Flash, Flash video is an abomination. A black-box wrapper that requires its own execution environment for video, when we have so many perfectly-good video standards and players out there? Really? What the hell? It seems the biggest effect Flash video has is to make playing streaming video impossible on low-power systems -- which are more powerful than systems I used to play streaming video ages ago. Good job, Adobe.

Re:javascript vs flash

[jone1941]

OK, I'll bite...

I am in no way a virtual machine expert and I have not done any research surrounding the flash VM implementation. But I do know that things are nowhere near as simple as you are suggesting. The two most important things seem to be startup time, and performance relative to native code. Do not assume that simply because flash is precompiled into byte code that it is somehow faster relative to native code. Each of the top performing JS engines in three of the major browsers (ff, safari, chrome) seem to have their own unique implementations but some of them definitely rely on byte code compilation and hotspot detection (safari) while others are implementing native compilation (chrome and ff).

There is a massive amount of performance competition happening in the JS VM space, this competition drives innovation and performance improvements. As I said before I don't follow the flash VM, but I do know that without competition it is entirely up to Adobe to drive itself to innovate and improve flash performance and I can't say that I've been terribly impressed with Adobe's performance in any of it's products. This really is a general problem when you have a single vendor technology and no competition in the space.

IMO Adobe would be far better of embracing their roots as a tools company and build tools to support HTML5 while working with the browser development teams to detect and improve performance. If they spend the rest of their days fighting the HTML5 trend they will eventually be left behind. I'm not about to suggest when that will happen, but that day will definitely come.

Re:javascript vs flash

[FuckingNickName]

speed once started. Needing to compile only influences one of these.

Wrong. Pre-compilation taking as long as you like is, in the optimised case, going to be better than JIT, which must also take into account compilation time. This isn't even like Java on the server, where you have to worry about time wasted at server startup: this is every time some guy visits your page.

You know the best way to test whether your site sucks? Test it on a 10 year old setup. Current Javascript-based sites make my 900MHz Celeron cry, while Flash was already doing similar business back then.

On the other hand, only Adobe can write a Flash interpreter.

False. The Flash spec is open, and anyone can write a Flash SWF parser and interpreter. You've got the added advantage that the wrangling interests of a few corporations don't get to impose a convoluted mish-mash standard, as is the case with HTML5 (which is why there's never a full conforming implementation of any recent W3C standard). You'd be reasonable to argue that the one-corporation-controlling model of Flash, like .NET or Java or any other number of successful VMs, is not optimal either :-).

It seems the biggest effect Flash video has is to make playing streaming video impossible on low-power systems

Not really. It's not like the decoder which is actually doing the video processing is written in interpreted VM bytecode.

I don't like Flash much, but that's because it lacks decent DOM integration (like Apple's canvas) and because Adobe's implementations suck and they've taken way too long to implicitly admit that their standard needs to have good competing implementations. All the Apple-based arguments are bullshit, however.

Re:javascript vs flash

[Abcd1234]

Which has nothing to do at all with Javascript as a technology. Heck, it probably has a lot more to do with a crappy canvas implementation.

But way to take a benchmark and completely misinterpret it's possible implications.

Re:javascript vs flash

[FuckingNickName]

What? Canvas is the, well, canvas for Apple's attempt to kill Flash using regular browser Javascript and its implementations' performance is significant to answering the article title's question.

Re:javascript vs flash

[Abcd1234]

Canvas is the, well, canvas for Apple's attempt to kill Flash using regular browser Javascript and its implementations' performance is significant to answering the article title's question.

I couldn't agree more. But tepples would have us believe that Flash is somehow a fundamentally more efficient technology:

One is compiled then executed in a VM; the other is already compiled and executed in a VM. In the optimal version of each, Javascript will be slower.

And I'm sorry, but that's absolute fucking bullshit. Yes, the implementations are still improving, but there's nothing about HTML5 or canvas that precludes top-notch performance, and I suspect one of Apple's goals will be to bring just that to Webkit's implementation.

Re:javascript vs flash

[FuckingNickName]

there's nothing about HTML5 or canvas that precludes top-notch performance

But there is nothing about Flash or Adobe to stop you implementing a VM which is at least as good. Indeed, there's going to be the slight bonus of precompilation of Flash.

Moreover, canvas suffers the same problem as Flash (but not SVG) that it's just a blank square detached from the DOM. IOW, Javascript+canvas offers no advantages over Flash.

HTML5 video is a good and long overdue idea, however, but it doesn't /replace/ Flash, just one use of it.

Re:javascript vs flash

[Abcd1234]

But there is nothing about Flash or Adobe to stop you implementing a VM which is at least as good. Indeed, there's going to be the slight bonus of precompilation of Flash.

Moreover, canvas suffers the same problem as Flash (but not SVG) that it's just a blank square detached from the DOM. IOW, Javascript+canvas offers no advantages over Flash.

HTML5 video is a good and long overdue idea, however, but it doesn't /replace/ Flash, just one use of it.

So your assertion is that, from a performance perspective, Flash and HTML5 are likely to be on par.

Great, I don't disagree with that, and you'll be hard pressed to find a place where I stated otherwise.

However, you *do* disagree with tepples, as do I. And that's whose argument I was attempting to rebut.

Re:javascript vs flash

[icebraining]

But there is nothing about Flash or Adobe to stop you implementing a VM which is at least as good.

Except that to read the documentation they provide, you have to accept a license *forbidding* you from doing that. So you have to reverse engineer the bytecode format.

Unlike Javascript, which is an open and free standard that anyone can implement without such hacks.

So yes, Javascript does offer some advantages over Flash.

Re:javascript vs flash

[FuckingNickName]

You're going to have to give me some evidence for that. No pretending it's still 2008.

Re:javascript vs flash

[icebraining]

I have to read about stuff before I talk. I listened to an interview with a Gnash developer a couple of months ago, but it was actually recorded to years ago.

My apologies.

Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

It will basically mean that my chances of blocking out commercials from the sites I like drop to ... well ... to zero, really.

And all because Apple wants MORE lockin, and may actually get it.

This is like paying money to stay in prison.

Re:Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[Anonymous Coward]

This is silly. If you block ad images now, you'll block ad videos next.

Re:Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[ChienAndalu]

canvas { display: none }

Re:Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[janeuner]

mod parent up ^^

Re:Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[theurge14]

How in the world do you come to the conclusion that someone is promoting locking by pushing for a new HTML standard?

Re:Personally I dread HTML5 takeover

[intheshelter]

Can you explain what it is that Apple is "locking" you into? . . . . HTML 5? . . . . . Those open standard using bastards!!!

I could care less...

[rwa2]

Ha, didn't recognize half those "leading" brands and didn't care about the ones I did recognize (Gucci / Rolex / blah).. I don't care for Flash either, but I kind of appreciate Flash (and Flashblock) in that it's a great way to help me filter out all the content on the web I don't care about (the stuff made by design-over-function and advertising types).

I don't care for Apple, but I applaud them for not supporting a proprietary web "standard". *golf clap* Then again, I'll probably be sad when more annoying advertising starts showing up in my web browser :-P

I do like some Flash games, so I don't mind having Flash support, though... just like I don't mind installing a JVM for Java games, etc. So locking those kinds of apps out are pretty much an *sshole move. But that's pretty much Apple for you and a large part why I don't care for any of their straightjacket platforms. The NeXTish interface was nice, though... I still like WindowMaker and try to arrange my current WM similarly.

Played with HTML5 on http://youtube.com/testtubethe other day, and it was decent but had no full screen mode. But Flash doesn't have a decent performing fullscreen mode on Linux anyway, so I still tend to just run "vlc /tmp/Flash*" after visiting a flash site with good quality content I'm actually interested in watching.

Re:I could care less...

[characterZer0]

You couldn't care less.

Re:I could care less...

[rwa2]

hey, I cared enough to bother making a post :P

Re:I could care less...

[Anonymous Coward]

He had it right. If he cares enough to post all that mindless drivel then its pretty obvious that he could indeed care less.

Re:I could care less...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxcouldc.html

Re:I could care less...

[roman_mir]

He'd rather use an Apple than a Flash,
Yes he would, if he could, he surely would

Re:I could care less...

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't care less.

Karen Vick: It goes without saying, Mr. Spencer, that your father is in no way to participate in this investigation. He's no longer on the force, and his meddling could compromise the case in court. Do I make myself clear?
Shawn Spencer: Yes, you do, Chief. What isn't clear is why people always say "goes without saying," yet still feel compelled to say the thing that was supposed to go without saying. Doesn't that bother you?
Karen Vick: No, and frankly, I could care less.
Burton 'Gus' Guster: Now, that's the one that bothers me. Why do people say, 'I could care less' when they really mean, 'I couldn't care less?'
Karen Vick: Well, why don't you tell me how to properly say this? If you share any official information about this case with your father, or let him anywhere near any new evidence, then the two of you will have to find another police department to work for, and I will personally see to it that each of you is charged with obstruction of justice.
Burton 'Gus' Guster: You split an infinitive.
Shawn Spencer: Good catch, Gus!
Karen Vick: You two realize I carry a gun, right?
Burton 'Gus' Guster: That was perfectly elocuted.

Re:I could care less...

[pipingguy]

Your comment is probably ironic.

Re:The web must cater to Apple

[macbeth66]

I could not agree more. But, then again, thank goodness that there is a 500 LB gorilla in the room that can help us to finally get rid of Flash. God, I hate that product.

Mind you, my feelings about Flash are not as a developer, but as a user...

Retarded Fantasy World

[Anonymous Coward]

With only a handful of comments you managed to make the single stupidest post this story will have.

A post with ASCII art depicting Natalie Portman farting rainbows while riding a unicorn anally raping the goatse guy would be more based in reality than the delusional crap you just crapped out of your keyboard.

Here's a quiz Einstein. What year and month did Floppy Disc production end? What year did Apple and its 3 percent worldwide marketshare stop including Floppy Drives in their overpriced hardware?

Re:Retarded Fantasy World

[Anonymous Coward]

You win the Internets, sir.

I've got 2 issues with your post

[kjart]

1. You can't count.

OTOH, it does echo what everyone else is saying on this site, so it's probably pretty insightful.

You forgot to tell: top 10 leading Luxury brand...

[MrJones]

Its not the "top 10 leading brands", its "the top 10 Luxury leading brands". Prada, Channel, ...
Not to much tech in this news :(

HTML5

[dandart]

... is great. JS engines keep getting better and you're not relying on ONE company to make your proprietary closed unreleased technology useful.

Re:HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, you rely on tens' of other companies. And they will all render HTML 5 different. So I don't see why this is a step forward.

One of the primary reasons to use flash, is its ability to render content the same way, on ALL platforms.

Re:HTML5

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Great so Apple will open source Final Cut, Quicktime, iTunes, Garage Band, OSX, Iphone OS, iWork etc...

This is awesome news. Maybe now OSX will run on "regular PC hardware" without hacks! This is fantastic.

I'm so happy that Apple is against proprietary formats now. Its about time they open source their AAC DRM Scheme and unlock everyones music.

This is wonderful!

Adobe makes software that runs on windows and mac... Apple makes software that runs on Mac. Now you tell me whos proprietary and controlling.

Adobe is far more open then Apple.

Apple wants strict control of everything. Thats why La La is gone. Thats why the second Google makes a phone, Apple hates google, who the used to love when the iPhone came out.

Apple is a selfish entity.

Re:HTML5

[Mouldy]

mod parent up.

HTML 5 isn't just going to be the same in every browser. It's taken years to get /nearly/ respectable CSS support in popular browsers. Even bleeding edge browsers render the same CSS differently to rival bleed-edge browsers.

Flash might be a pain/slow/propriety/..., but at least it's consistent.

Not Really But

[UseCase]

Of course HTML5 is not ready to take over for the myriad of niches that flash fills on the web "right now". The big push is to get developer mindset looking and leaning in the HTML5 direction. Tools need to be written, demos need to inspire, and books need to be written. None of will happen really until a real buzz is generated. The buzz is building, but associated more to Flash controversy than HTML 5 technical merit. We need some good solid analogous material to compare and contrast these technologies.

Adobe's is breaking their own License agreement!

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, this says it all. Even Chrome may be breaking this "agreement".

(i) Adobe Runtime Restrictions.

(i) Prohibited Devices. Distributor shall not distribute, download or embed any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, Distributor shall not distribute any Adobe Runtime for use on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet or Tablet PC (other than Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, internet appliance or other internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use or distribution on devices see http://www.adobe.com/licensing.

It may not be, but I sure am ready!

[blahbooboo]

I don't care about any of the flash features, so frankly Flash die die die. Flash games usually suck or don't hold my interest for long. Flash ads are not a big loss. Basically the only thing flash was useful for in my use was video sites. So for my simple needs, HTML 5 sites will more than be sufficient.

Re:It may not be, but I sure am ready!

[evilviper]

Flash games usually suck or don't hold my interest for long. [...] So for my simple needs, HTML 5 sites will more than be sufficient.

Oh good... Because we all came here to find out if YOU prefer Flash or HTML5.

Oh Man..Here Come The Apple Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

You are going to get killed by the Apple Hipster Douchebags with mod points.

Steve Jobs sees Flash as a threat to his toolbooth for his platform lockin and his worshipers are out in full cult like force with their mod points for anyone who dares bring Reality into these attempts at trashing Adobe and Flash.

Look back a few years

[slenver]

I don't see the experience of top 10 luxury brands as particularly relevant in the long term. Large companies spend an awful lot of time and money on websites and are always going to be a little behind the curve, often by several years. Smaller more agile companies are where to look in terms of what people are doing currently. Also, cast your minds back to only a few years ago. How many leading websites, banks in particular, worked flawlessly on 'other' browsers such as Firefox. Virtually none for a long time. This isn't because Firefox and other modern browsers were either inherently bad or, as it transpired, doomed to failure. It was merely because websites were built poorly to the 'standards' that their staff believed were relevant at the time. These were make-believe Microsoft 'standards' at that time and Flash in the present could be exactly analogous. Both after all are/were non-standard paths that led off from agreed open standards of the time. Those standards eventually won over MS' attempt to own a proprietary alternative and maybe Flash will follow the same path. Sure, it's potentially bad for Flash developers - or rather, Flash developers who aren't prepared to budge and adapt - but if HTML 5 comes to maturity and delivers a compelling alternative (and there is an 'if'), then maybe we'll be looking back at Flash in a few years' time and amusing ourselves over the funny little proprietary plugin that was needed just to make fully interactive sites. Just as we look back now at the IE-inspired abortions that graced many a monitor a few years ago and failed to work properly in anything other than 'IE 5 or above'.

internet explorer

[greggman]

Sure. If you don't mind giving up more than 50 percent of your market. IE still makes up the majority of browser use and it doesn't run html5. It does run flash.

Re:internet explorer

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

IE still makes up the majority of browser use and it doesn't run html5. It does run flash.

First, MS is implementing HTML5 in IE to some extent. They want to get away from Flash as much as anyone. Second, Flash runs via plug-in in IE and HTML5 can do the same with Chrome Frame.Not as many users will have it installed right away, mind you, but that will likely change as more and more sites start using HTML5 and as Google pushes Chrome Frame more aggressively as a way to allow their Web apps to be more functional.

Re:internet explorer

[baka_toroi]

IE9 will be launched in a couple of months and it will support HTML5.

Re:You forgot to tell: top 10 leading Luxury brand

[sznupi]

Not a problem, Apple will just supplant them...

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[Gorkamecha]

Games or creating specific styles of user activity. I've seen some amazingly beautiful websites that require flash to execute some of their tricks.

I'm aware this is /. so functionality will trump form, but flash does some things that are pretty much impossible to pull off with just JS.

Plus, given that flash is more or less browser independent, it's easier to create a ubiquitous user experience. That was always the big selling point in my mind for flash....it took me out of the browser wars.

Filling a gap that's no longer there

[lewster32]

I've long been a Flash advocate, but it's clear even to me that Flash has simply been filling a gap that was missing in the world of HTML/CSS/JS. Apple have delivered the final blow and made it so there's not really much choice but to go down the HTML5 route. As a developer who has to turn websites around quickly, this is a major pain in the arse; doing the same thing in HTML as in Flash may be generally possible but it takes a hell of a lot longer, has to run the gauntlet of browser differences and finally be degradable for those on IE.

I'm sad to see Flash go (and at least in its current guise - as a browser plug-in - it will disappear), but I can understand the logic, even if I don't particularly like it.

Re:Filling a gap that's no longer there

[Anonymous Coward]

Well check out the phony - he posted exactly the same thing in http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1644036&cid=32126606&art_pos=2

Way to go cocksucker, I'd lay down good money that you've never used flash in your stupid little faggot life - from the way you express yourself it's pretty clear that you're a dammed thickie.

I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topics

[david.emery]

"Crippled?" because it doesn't run Flash? By this definition, I've crippled my laptop by installing flash blockers, and you know, I think I like this "crippled" Web A LOT better. Sure, occasionally, I decide I want to see some video on CNN.com, and it is nice to be able to override the Flash blocker. But I don't miss all those dumb-assed Flash-based ads one bit.

And when I go to a website that uses only Flash, I think twice about whether this is a company/place I really want to be. As often as not, if there's no "non-Flash" version, I'll just navigate away. Restaurants, in particular, need to understand that all that glitzy Flash stuff is at best annoying to a lot of people, and at worse just does NOT WORK on mobile devices (not just the iPhone!!). You'd think restaurants in particular would want to encourage mobile customers; the onus is on them to make it easier for me to decide where I want to eat.

I think there are -4- different threads going on here:
    1. The 'whose standards/proprietary world do you like better?' debate between Adobe and Apple, Flash & HTML5 (and its own CODEC wars)
    2. The 'what kind of rich content is important?' debate - is this really "all about video" as some have suggested, or is it about arbitrary rich content?
    3. The 'cross-platform' vs 'optimized for this device' debate (I think this is a really important debate for techies.)
    4. The business decisions about how to best reach customers, along with the customer decisions about what technologies are acceptable (i.e. how far would Flash or JavaScript or HTML5 animations go before they become really annoying)?

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[mikael_j]

...and if the market decides that Indeo5 within an AVI container happens to be a much better for a given video than either of h.264 OR Theora, then why restrict that from being played back?

Because knowing "the market" MS or some other major player will come up with some wonderful proprietary "build a youtube clone in ten clicks or less!" "solution" that defaults to Indeo5 in an AVI container and we'll never get rid of it.

Simple Answer: No

[Necroman]

Flash has a lot of nice development tools around it that allows designers to create fancy looking sites without the need to understand the quirks of HTML and browser differences. These tools are much easier to deal with than the HTML authoring tools out there.

For HTML5 to really take over, I think we need a nice suite of authoring tools to create the content that clients want and need.

On the side of Javascript and HTML5 when it comes to speed, it can be just as slow and power-hungry as flash. I've deployed 1 decent size GWT based application on the web that did some really naughty stuff in the browser (hurray for 600MB of memory usage in IE) and it was so slow that we had to add a processing window to let the user name that this may take a while. (trust me, it wasn't an engineering decision to do what we did). It spiked the CPU and used a ton of memory.

If HTML5 and Javascript based applications become more popular on the web, you can bet that there will be crappily coded sites out there that will give HTML/JS just as bad of a rep as Flash gets.

Re:Simple Answer: No

[thestudio_bob]

Flash has a lot of nice development tools around it that allows designers to create fancy looking sites without the need to understand the quirks of HTML and browser differences. These tools are much easier to deal with than the HTML authoring tools out there.

The same can be said for JavaScript: jQuery, MooTools, Scriptaculous, SproutCore, etc. What you say is purely your opinion. I find it easier to program in JavaScript, HTML and CSS than Doing something in Flash. But I understand that other people have the opposite opinion. No big deal. But at least I don't go around stating that my opinion is fact, like you are doing.

And as far as Flash Tools, I'm only aware that Adobe makes these tools. Are you saying that there are other tools out there to allow you to create a Flash project? If so, I would be curious to know what these are. It was my understanding that Adobe as made the Flash scripting language an open-standard, but when it comes to their runtime engine, they have held that close to there chest. Which is sad really, because if they released that then the open-source community could take a shot at trying to help optimize it. Adobe could still make money by selling the tools, but benefit from an entire community optimizing the CPU hogging engine.

Parallel ATA

[tepples]

my only personal gripe against flatscreens is that my legacy consoles look like crusted ass on them.

That's not a difference between flat and CRT; that's a difference between low and high resolution. Classic console emulators look fine on a 256x192 pixel screen of a DS. But classic consoles would also look like behind on a CRT that upscales to 1080p-class resolution, such as a PC with a TV-in card and a 1600x1200 pixel CRT computer monitor.

As another poster further down pointed out, you can still readily buy motherboards that have PS/2 ports on them, but you can't really buy PS/2 keyboards or mice anymore.

The last time I bought a bargain-basement PC keyboard at Office Depot, it was PS/2, probably because a USB keyboard controller is slightly more expensive than a keyboard controller for the (public domain) PS/2 interface.

Nearly every modern motherboard also still has at least one IDE connector on it, despite the fact that a completely SATA-based system has been possible for a couple years now.

Part of that is because 1. people are upgrading from computers with parallel ATA drives and want to connect their old drives to transfer data without having to buy an external USB enclosure, and 2. the first PC SSDs were pin adapters from CompactFlash to parallel ATA. CF hasn't switched to SATA yet.

Re:Parallel ATA

[Pojut]

That's not a difference between flat and CRT; that's a difference between low and high resolution. Classic console emulators look fine on a 256x192 pixel screen of a DS. But classic consoles would also look like behind on a CRT that upscales to 1080p-class resolution, such as a PC with a TV-in card and a 1600x1200 pixel CRT computer monitor.

I'm not a moron, you know. I'm aware of the difference that resolution makes. Unless you can find me a LCD/Plasma TV that has a standard def native resolution, my one criticism of flatscreens still stands.

The last time I bought a bargain-basement PC keyboard at Office Depot, it was PS/2, probably because a USB keyboard controller is slightly more expensive than a keyboard controller for the (public domain) PS/2 interface.

Sorry, should have been more specific...you can't buy quality, mid-to-upper-range keyboards with a PS/2 connector...although many of them still come with a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, strangely enough

Part of that is because 1. people are upgrading from computers with parallel ATA drives and want to connect their old drives to transfer data without having to buy an external USB enclosure

Exactly. And people still want to be able to view sites and play games that are Flash based while the makers of those sites and games switch over to HTML5.

and 2. the first PC SSDs were pin adapters from CompactFlash to parallel ATA. CF hasn't switched to SATA yet.

I think your first point covered the real reason...this second one, valid though it may be, seems like it would be a rather trivial reason for motherboard manufacturers to retain a legacy interface.

Re:Parallel ATA

[sznupi]

Though what CRT TVs (!!!; they had different phosphorus from monitors and were interlaced) were doing with legacy console video output is, in practice, a kind of free hardware antialiasing and a bit of motion blur. Those legacy consoles looked worse, for example, when viewed on a very small CRT monitor, even when that monitor was set close to their native resolution. Those properties were mostly carried to all LCDs...

It's definatelly not only a matter of resolution, because you can make it much better via specific filters in dscaler, when viewed on a CRT or LCD monitor.

Re:Parallel ATA

[drinkypoo]

I'm not a moron, you know. I'm aware of the difference that resolution makes. Unless you can find me a LCD/Plasma TV that has a standard def native resolution, my one criticism of flatscreens still stands.

Use emulators. I admit there's a few titles that don't work so if you want to play one of those games this isn't a complete solution for you. But it lets you use the best possible controller (i.e. the controller of your choice can be made to work) and you can get a decent scaling algorithm (say, 2xSuperSai) which will smooth out graphics to look even better than the original. And if the scaling makes the graphics look funky, you can pick another algorithm.

Sorry, should have been more specific...you can't buy quality, mid-to-upper-range keyboards with a PS/2 connector...although many of them still come with a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, strangely enough

You can buy the very highest quality keyboards with a PS/2 connector. My friends wank about them on facebook occasionally.

Exactly. And people still want to be able to view sites and play games that are Flash based while the makers of those sites and games switch over to HTML5.

Amen to that.

I think your first point covered the real reason...this second one, valid though it may be, seems like it would be a rather trivial reason for motherboard manufacturers to retain a legacy interface.

Virtually all PC motherboards still have PATA, at least one channel for two devices, for backwards compatibility, because that is what the PC is all about. And hell, if you have PCI, you can get ISA for an exorbitant price. So it all goes back to the beginning in a very real way.

Re:Parallel ATA

[Red Flayer]

You can buy the very highest quality keyboards with a PS/2 connector. My friends wank about them on facebook occasionally.

Ah, yes, the very highest quality keyboards -- apparently, they are operable hands-free. For the wanking sessions.

Re:Parallel ATA

[Pojut]

Use emulators. I admit there's a few titles that don't work so if you want to play one of those games this isn't a complete solution for you. But it lets you use the best possible controller (i.e. the controller of your choice can be made to work) and you can get a decent scaling algorithm (say, 2xSuperSai) which will smooth out graphics to look even better than the original. And if the scaling makes the graphics look funky, you can pick another algorithm.

Thank you for the suggestions, but there is no need...we still have our 24" CRT with all of our older consoles hooked up to it:-)

You can buy the very highest quality keyboards with a PS/2 connector. My friends wank about them on facebook occasionally.

Really? ::shrug:: Guess its been a while since I checked, lol

Virtually all PC motherboards still have PATA, at least one channel for two devices, for backwards compatibility, because that is what the PC is all about. And hell, if you have PCI, you can get ISA for an exorbitant price. So it all goes back to the beginning in a very real way.

::gasp:: time to break out my Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold!!!

Re:Parallel ATA

[tepples]

Unless you can find me a LCD/Plasma TV that has a standard def native resolution

The first few handheld TVs were CRTs until they switched to LCDs.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[geekoid]

"Show me an even remotely decent HTML5-based game on par with a remotely decent Flash-based game"

You will. I've seen demo.s, and they where fine.

" Perhaps Flash makes it all too easy to break this standard usability mod
It does. And having to go out of your way to fix it is a clear example of it being broken.

Everything that can be done in flash will be done in HTML5. That includes ads.

Oh no, it won't work on an iPad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue massive Apple and HTML5 circle jerks.

So bloody what if they don't?
Get over it, they're not your websites and it's not your hardware.
Apple won't budge because they're perusing a restrictive agenda. Which if you buy there stuff then you should put up or shut up with.
And come on a flash site? Are they ever that impressive? They mostly feel like bloat and loading screens.
It's not the end of the world if you feel you have to make a website in HTML and ditch 2001.

They're orthogonal

[tepples]

I think one of the biggest problems with Flash and touchbased devices is the lack of mouseover functionality.

Mouseover and Flash are completely orthogonal concepts. How does Safari on your iPhone or iPad handle HTML5 pages that use onmouseover="return handler()" or el.addEventListener("mouseover", handler, false)?

Re:They're orthogonal

[outsider007]

um.. they're shaped like a stop sign?

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[ChienAndalu]

don't forget webcams and microphones

Port badgers and ritalin

[tepples]

Agreed. Someone who wants to replace all the Flash on Newgrounds with HTML5 should first try porting Badgers and We Drink Ritalin to HTML5. Do that and I'll admit that HTML5 is ready to replace Flash.

Re:Port badgers and ritalin

[NatasRevol]

Is this good enough for you?

http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Pacman, Tetris, etc.

Flash Player comes installed before lockdown

[tepples]

many of those companies also ban Flash already and those that don't probably won't ban Google Frame.

I disagree. Flash Player comes preinstalled on a lot of PCs, so it's installed before IT has a chance to lock down further installations of software.

Re:Flash Player comes installed before lockdown

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I disagree. Flash Player comes preinstalled on a lot of PCs, so it's installed before IT has a chance to lock down further installations of software.

What IT departments do you know where they don't re-image all the Windows computers before installing them? I've worked at everything from startups with a dozen people to large corporations and government departments. As soon as IT starts handing out machines, they've always been machines with an image created by IT, configured to work with the network and resources and with the apps IT did not want there removed.

Re:Flash Player comes installed before lockdown

[tepples]

What IT departments do you know where they don't re-image all the Windows computers before installing them?

Small businesses, for one, often have such a diverse mix of PCs that one Windows image won't have all the drivers. Even in bigger businesses, the standard corporate install image has Flash Player on it because the company has to work with suppliers and clients whose web site uses SWF. So Flash Player is in and Chrome Frame is out.

Re:Flash Player comes installed before lockdown

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Small businesses, for one, often have such a diverse mix of PCs that one Windows image won't have all the drivers.

Who is talking about one image? They usually have one for each approved hardware model they buy, usually a variant of one another. It's pretty rare for small businesses even to order just one machine unless it is through a supplier.

Even in bigger businesses, the standard corporate install image has Flash Player on it because the company has to work with suppliers and clients whose web site uses SWF. So Flash Player is in and Chrome Frame is out.

i don't see that at all. How is Chrome Frame out? Those same businesses don't need to work with suppliers and clients that are starting to use HTML5, like major airlines and Google? I don't see that there is a large set of companies that have IT departments that will accept Flash and all the security and slacking risks associated with it, but will reject Chrome Frame. They're pretty comparable from an IT perspective excepting that the latter is less of a security risk and is needed for some real corporate tools such as those supplied by Google.

Re:Flash Player comes installed before lockdown

[tepples]

It's pretty rare for small businesses even to order just one machine unless it is through a supplier.

You'd be surprised, especially in a business that hovers around the 20-employee limit at which certain wage and fringe-benefit guarantees come into force under United States law.

How is Chrome Frame out? Those same businesses don't need to work with suppliers and clients that are starting to use HTML5, like major airlines and Google?

More suppliers and clients use Flash and not features new to HTML5 than use features new to HTML5 and not Flash.

They're pretty comparable from an IT perspective excepting that the latter is less of a security risk

Perhaps IT managers who think Chrome Frame is a security risk are pulling something out of their Ars. The article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson: "Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts."

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[Anonymous Coward]

I assure you mobile Flash DOES WORK, my N900 phone is fine with it. Full Flash player (not lite). On ARM. Preinstalled.
This is a stupid excuse.

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to smack the fuck out losers like you.

The more idiots like you keep posting your garbage the more the rest of the computing world loves Flash.

Go Go Flash! Fuck off and die loser.

Answer:

[jrivar59]

Yes.

Thank you.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[dskzero]

I'm not really trying to start a flamewar, but the iPad is a crippled, underpowered device. It might have its uses, but you can't deny that it is grossly overcosted.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[MBGMorden]

A lot of people consider the iPad crippled because you can only install approved apps on it. The refusal to allow flash is just a side effect of that.

Any general purpose device that only allows programs that meet the approval of the manufacturer to be installed is by my definition crippled, particularly when the reasons for disallowing a common technology are that their corporate dictator just has a grudge against a particular technology.

If Steve Jobs decides next week that audio-only songs are simply not useful and that from now on only songs with videos can be used on the device, then your are forced to bend over and take it, because you've already signed control of your device over to a technological caretaker.

It's the antithesis to the democratic way of life - namely that the people should be free to make their own choices - even if they're the "wrong" ones (because too often "wrong" is merely a personal viewpoint). Benevolent dictatorships rarely maintain their benevolence, particularly as the subjects learn over time that just occasionally, their viewpoints don't align with that of those handing down the law.

Look on the bright side

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Hey folks, let's look on the bright side. At least it is HTML5, not Silverlight, that is being positioned to replace Flash. Non-Windows users rejoice!

Re:Look on the bright side

[loufoque]

If only HTML5 actually worked on Linux...
Firefox has become crap on everything but Windows it seems. It's slow, memory hungry, and crashes all the time; of course it performs way more poorly at HTML5, or anything else for that matter, than the Windows version.

The only decent browser left is a proprietary one, Opera. Just plain sad.

Safari is no less proprietary

[tepples]

1- it's proprietary

Safari is no less proprietary than Flash Player. SWF has had a published spec for two years. Perhaps you complain that Gnash hasn't come far enough in these two years.

Even on my desktop PC, I can tell when a site is using flash, because things get jerky.

I've seen plain HTML + JavaScript slow down PCs. I know this because I use a browser add-on that puts SWF on a whitelist.

It misused -a lot- for obnoxious ads.

So were animated GIF and Java applets before SWF became popular. So is HTML 4, with ads that float on a layer in front of the body text.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[thestudio_bob]

...where's the hate for all the *box (lightbox, thickbox, etc.) photo viewers, then? I have yet to see even -one- that adjusts the address bar so that I can link to a specific photo. If I'm lucky, I can still right-click the thing to get the image's direct location and point people there.

So, one of your gripes is that you can't easily steal a website's photo gallery images? Did you ever think that maybe the website doesn't want you to link to their photos directly? As far as the Flash vs HTML debate, this is a bizarre argument.

Top 10 brand comment very misleading.

[Gribflex]

The comment about the 'Top 10 brands' in the post is very misleading.

"...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading worldwide brands don't display on the iPad..."

What is actually demonstrated is that "...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading [LUXURY] brands don't display on the iPad..."

The top 10 brands (listed here: http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx) are:
Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, McDonalds, Google, Toyota, Intel, Disney

The top 10 luxury brands reviewed in the article are:
Prada, Fendi, Moet, Cartier, Hennessy, Rolex, Channel, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton

Could we get a summary correction to specify that it's actually the Luxury brands that are looked at, not 'normal' brands? I think it's a pretty important distinction, as the luxury brands likely have much less traffic, and have traditionally not been designed for content consumption but are more advertising platforms.

Re:Top 10 brand comment very misleading.

[janeuner]

Without limiting it to an arbitrary number (why does 10 matter?), let me guess that these are the most popular sites on the web:
google.com, yahoo.com, youtube.com, live.com, facebook.com, msn.com, wikipedia.org, myspace.com, microsoft.com, amazon.com, craigslist.org, flickr.com

Of those sites, only youtube loses functionality when Flash is not available. That loss is mitigated by youtube.com/html5

So there is your summary of "brands" - if you want a pair of Gucci sunglasses, buy them off of Amazon, flash-free.

Re:Top 10 brand comment very misleading.

[MrJones]

If slashdot had added that "luxury" word I would just skipped this news. Big typo for /.

HTML5 can't replace Flash in all cases, right?

[akahige]

Obviously, the biggest use of Flash on the web is embedded video, but this is hardly the only use, and those are seldom mentioned in the HTML5 v. Flash discussions. With Scribd converting to HTML5, the field seems to be opening up (though their use of Flash always struck me as being an anti-copying measure more than anything else).

So far as I know, HTML5 isn't suitable for things like graphical configurators or 3D models (allowing the user to rotate them) -- or is it? There's QTVR for 3D stuff, but it's always seemed clunky to me. And I haven't seen anything but Flash used for configurators. Are there actually reasonable alternatives to Flash for this sort of thing?

Re:HTML5 can't replace Flash in all cases, right?

[larry bagina]

canvas can do 3-d models, rotation, etc. check out chrome experiments (not strictly for chrome) for some spectacular demos.

This!

[QuantumSlip]

While the Flash/HTML5 debate has been focused on video, we are forgetting about animation/games/etc. that are coded in flash. Don't say Flash is completely useless. If HTML5 could be done for Super Mario Crossover http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/534416 then I won't complain anymore.

Re:This!

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has done it, and I doubt it's likely, but there's no reason it couldn't be done in HTML5. Remember, Quake 2 has already been ported to pure HTML5+WebGL.

Re:This!

[Sancho]

There's a difference between "could be done" and "could be done easily." HTML5+Javascript could be used to make Super Mario Crossover. Hell, a good chunk of Actionscript is ECMAscript, which is basically just Javascript.

Adobe produces tools to make it easier to create SWFs. No one yet makes tools to do the same for HTML5+JS.

It's not a matter of capability, it's a matter of difficulty.

synced audio and graphics...

[hitmark]

that may be the only real place where flash have anything to offer vs html5, once animated SVG gets included.

but then again, if i dont have to see another effect overloaded promo page for some movie, game or other "lifestyle" product, i will be a happy surfer.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[icebraining]

http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/mariokart/

Flash frame rate is 2.5 times that of Canvas

[tepples]

You will. I've seen demo.s, and they where fine.

On one PC I tried, I get roughly 50 fps on Flash and 20 fps on HTML5 Canvas running this demo.

Re:Flash frame rate is 2.5 times that of Canvas

[Abcd1234]

That's an implementation issue. Both technologies use the same underlying language to actually drive the app. So either the browser you were using had a crappy javascript engine, or the canvas tag was poorly implemented. If it was Firefox (and I say this as a Firefox user), likely both of those is true.

Re:Flash frame rate is 2.5 times that of Canvas

[Simetrical]

On one PC I tried, I get roughly 50 fps on Flash and 20 fps on HTML5 Canvas running this demo.

What versions of the browser and Flash, and OS? Using Flash 10 on Ubuntu 9.10, I get 25-40 FPS in Chrome 5 (dev channel) for Flash, and 50 FPS in the HTML test. (Canvas and SVG are slower than HTML, but as fast as Flash or faster.) Opera 10.50 also performs somewhat faster on canvas than on Flash, although its HTML doesn't work right (the balls are square . . .) and SVG is slower than Flash. Firefox (3.6 and 3.7a5) does seem to do best on Flash, though.

1998: "Are USB Drives ready to take over for

[Anonymous Coward]

Floppies".

Apple has just released its iMac with no floppy drive.

Is USB ready to take over for ADB (Mac's didn't use PS/2)...

etc etc. Apple has a history of this stuff.

Re:Adobe's is breaking their own License agreement

[orkysoft]

For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use or distribution on devices see http://www.adobe.com/licensing.

Adobe is at liberty to license their software however they see fit. It's the same thing that allows the copyright holders of a GPL program to distribute a proprietary version next to the FLOSS version.

Adobe is probably offering Apple a very generous licensing agreement that does allow Apple to distribute it for the iPad "web pad"/tablet.

Re:leading brands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why this was modded troll. It's the phrase used in the linked post.

Prada, Cartier, Hennessy, Rolex, Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vitton...

Who cares if these websites have or don't have flash? They're mostly just a lot of graphics and glamour shots on top of a store locator widget. If they actually had an in-depth web store that was non-functional without flash, this might actually matter.

Citing is not stealing

[tepples]

So, one of your gripes is that you can't easily steal a website's photo gallery images? Did you ever think that maybe the website doesn't want you to link to their photos directly?

Citing is not stealing. I want to cite an image, and the most obvious way to do that is making a URL for an HTML page or section about one image from a gallery, such as the image description pages on any MediaWiki. But a lot of these gallery scripts have no feature to make a permanent link to one image.

Restaurant websites in flash, you say?

[diamondsw]

Obligatory.

Re:Restaurant websites in flash, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Restaurateur (who knows more about food than competing web technologies, hopefully): you're on your /phone/! please dial 411 and /call/ for our hours!?

Apple shame on you for limiting your own customers

[mobilemodding.info]

I cannot understand how come somebody can exchange comfort of developing under flash and nice flashy result of work which looks everywhere exactly the same (whenever it supported) to HTML5 which will be always different on different browser, looks at HTML4, still there is no 100% match in different browser, also everybody has own CSS implementation and javascript total pain in the arss ... c-mon people Flash guarantee it looks and works the same everywhere... About 10 leading brands - it is Not flash fault that stupid IPad and IPhone cannot display it, it solely Apple fault and responcibility that they cutting their own customers from other technologies!! Apple shame on you! :p

The tired Flash ad argument

[ksdd]

So sick of hearing Flash haters point to "annoying" ads as a major reason Flash won't be missed. Because one thing is certain: advertisers sure won't do equally annoying ads using (the loose collection of technologies currently referred to as) HTML5. No sir.

Be careful what you wish for, folks. There may not be a blocker for it.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[dh003i]

This is silly and overly dramatic. The market has tended to favor moves towards open web standards.

Genesis

[flanaganid]

There must be some misunderstanding.

HTML5 == new/future text markup standard
HTML5 HTML 4.01 + new tags + limited local storage - lengthy DOCTYPE - deprecated tags
HTML5 != HTML + CSS3 + JavaScript + H.264 + Ogg + SVG + kitchen sink

The term "HTML5" is the new "Web 2.0". Vomit.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid question that pivots around every Flash-hating entity's mouth wrapped firmly around Steve Jobs' ... marketing skills.

What's not to like, then? Well, the user experience, which in my experience is fourth-rate for anything but games

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Show me an even remotely decent HTML5-based game on par with a remotely decent Flash-based game. Oh snap - you can't.. because HTML5 doesn't specify anything with regard to styles or interactivity. So let's allow jscript, CSS and SVG, too. See if you can get the same performance as Flash. Ready. Set. Go.

I realize these games do include some other tools, but Akihabara is worth mentioning here as an alternative to Flash. Perhaps not "all the way" there yet, but worth a look.

HTML5 Canvas vs Flash 10 Benchmarks

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2/

Note: He hasn't tried testing the new FP10 text rendering engine, I'm interested to see what performance increases it has made. In several cases my own benchmark scores (with FF) are much higher with flash, but I see no improvement on the HTML5 side. Flash is more than a video plug-in, and for most of what it does HTML5's Canvas performance still lags far behind.

Re:HTML5 Canvas vs Flash 10 Benchmarks

[MrJones]

Just watch 1 hour video on youtube in html and flash on a mobile device and your will know what we are all talking about. Flash for video on mobile is not practical

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[Jonny_eh]

How's that any different than a video game console? You can only run "approved" software on the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Does that mean these systems are also crippled? As long as they do what they say they'll do, then I don't have a problem. Sony removing "other OS" from the PS3 is a violation of that, and they should be severely spanked.

Re:Apple shame on you for limiting your own custom

[loufoque]

and javascript total pain in the arss

You do realize JavaScript is the same language that is used in Flash right? It may be called ActionScript, but it's the same language. It's actually also the same JIT implementation as Firefox.

Leave it alone

[tepples]

Let's split the difference and say "I could barely care less".

HD broadcast TV is a bad example

[Anonymous Coward]

HD broadcast TV is a bad example because it wasn't CUSTOMERS wanting or not it was whether content suppliers would let it happen or not. See the contortions for HDCP et al before any HD content was considered.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[dh003i]

It just requires that everyone have a flash plugin or browser capable of using flash. Too bad the iPad doesn't support Flash (well, one good thing about Apple).

steve jobs needs to die

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sooo sick of hearing about apple i-shit. There is nothing that great about apple products other than catering to artistic loosers. Hey big idea, logic loosers like programmers should tell jobs to shove his i-head up his i-ass. While I have no specific love for flash (it is an atistic take on logic, and thus problematic), I have less love for assholes that try to fling power around to isolate themselves. It will increase the costs for companies to try and support his i-crap, and I say veto him, just stop developing to ONE system, standards are there for a reason, and no one company should be allowed to dictate standards. Microshaft and Apple are the exact same in this regard, and it is bs. The only way to change is for others to stand up and say no. I hope these top end stores are willing to say piss on Apple, they could put up an ad when an Ipad browses, "Sorry Apple does not wish to support standard web practices, please buy their competition instead." While flash is not the greatest thing in the world it is an accepted standard for websites still, let it die naturally so the rest of the world does not take a hit.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[MBGMorden]

Actually a lot of people have problems with that too. Personally I have an original Xbox that I have a modchip in (didn't actually pay for it - I won it in a drawing when Microsoft was demoing Visual Studio 2003 on our campus) that I never have ran any pirated games on. I modded that console for the express purpose of installing XBMC, which is use to play video and such on my TV. On the TV it's connected to I also use region free DVD player software on that unit because frankly, I like being able to control it with the controller (there's something nice about the remote being tethered to the unit, so I don't loose it, and I never need to replace the batteries).

Don't mistake the same thing happening in other areas as people not caring about it. People just tend to care more when the device in question is setup to run general purpose applications, with general purpose input methods.

As a simple matter of principle, people should be able to run whatever code they want on their systems. That position didn't gain is much traction (though it still deserved it) on game consoles because being able to run unsigned code typically meant piracy. Homebrew software on those devices just never took off mainstream. In this case though, you truly have a ton of people wanting to run legitimate code that are being blocked from doing so.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[Deosyne]

Unfortunately the browser makers are now finding ways to kill common APIs through legislating access to their customers instead of via technical means. Fortunately it is just Apple that is controlling what their customers can choose for now, but they are a significant enough market segment for many content providers to suck it up and accept the additional development overhead of developing for multiple environments. Pretty much the same thing that the console manufacturers do to the gaming industry.

Re:Apple shame on you for limiting your own custom

[djheru]

No, you are incorrect. AS3 is similar to JavaScript, but has many included classes and object oriented programming features that JS lacks

How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[Brannon]

1. Apple's computers are available for anyone to develop apps on without paying a fee.

2. Apple's phones support HTML5, which anyone can write Flash-equivalent apps for without paying a fee.

Re:How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You can get free Apple computers if you're a developer? Well, sign me up then!

Oh, wait, you're just ignoring the massive $1000 PER DEVELOPER fee that Apple charges if you want to merely DEVELOP iPhone software, let alone DEPLOY it.

Sure, you can download the tools for free, but those tools are worth fuck-all when you have to buy an Apple computer just to target a PHONE that works just fine with Windows. Thankfully, Android doesn't pull that shit.

Re:How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because you don't need a computer to develop on Android, right?

Dickwad.

Re:How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

PCs are a standard business cost. Everyone has a computer.

If you're going to start considering the cost of a computer into the equation, you might as well start counting the cost of furniture, office space, HVAC, etc. into the cost of developing for Android. Which is ludicrous.

As long as you have a computer - any computer - you can develop for Android. Doesn't matter if it's Windows or Linux or Mac.

You want to develop for iPhone, you better be ready to fork out the big bucks to Apple for the hardware which is useful for, if you're to be honest, absolutely nothing else. You simply aren't allowed to use your existing hardware.

Which is NOT the case for Windows or Android. Any hardware you want, you can use, without forking out extra for the glowing logo on the case.

Re:How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[Lodragandraoidh]

That would be $99 per year - partner.

Re:How is this insightful? it's just retarded.

[dfghjk]

When you say retarded, are you speaking of yourself?

Yes they are crippled. Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are crippled. Duh. But they are not touted as a powerful palm computer, but as a game playing device. The nearest you can get with iPhone is "it's a phone" in which case, there are plenty better phones out.

Also, the problem for Jobs with flash is Android: if someone can write an app in flash and install it on Android or iPhone/iPad/i* then it's a lot easier to develop programs across platforms and the lock-in of applications (that is the reason why MS get a stranglehold on PCs). Jobs wants that for himself on the i* platform.

Another problem for flash and cross-compatability is that people would be able to do a genuine cross-platform comparison. A comparison that iPhone could easily lose.

Re:Apple shame on you for limiting your own custom

[mobilemodding.info]

My point is ActionScript in Flash Lite still going to work and looks everywhere EXACTLY THE SAME, but Javascript NOT... and never will be :)

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[mikael_j]

Over what timespan? Sure it's been opening up in recent years but if you compare computing in general from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s the trend becomes slightly different (yes, I'm talking about computing in general instead of just the web, a web example would be from the Mosaic days to the heyday of Active-X when IE had well over 90% of the browser market).

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[blackraven14250]

PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii aren't sold as "General-purpose computing devices"; the iPad and iPhone are sold as such.

Excellent point.

[jamrock]

it presents this situation as a failure of the luxury sites, not of the iPad.

Precisely. Coincidentally, a report today from Yahoo offered some stats on iPad users visiting Yahoo's sites:

The first Yahoo iPad users were 94 percent more likely to be affluent consumers with solid wealth and strong incomes than typical U.S. Yahoo users.

In other words, the very demographic these luxury brands depend on for their survival. What are the odds that they'll refuse to update their sites to attract them?

Regardless of people's opinions of Apple or their products, they are a major driving force behind the rapid adoption of HTML 5, and the deprecation of Flash. Hell, most people never even heard of Flash before Apple announced that the iDevices will not support it, but consumers voted with their dollars anyway, billions of them, and businesses follow the money. They see a platform with tens of millions of affluent potential customers that they simply can't reach because their sites are in a format that doesn't exist on that platform. They'll be falling over themselves to remedy that situation post haste.

unsolvable?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no way, to let the GPU do the heavy
lifting for flash? not just h.264, but the other things flash
can do, which i assume is mostly something graphical?
just assuming that a AMD/ATI-nVidia-adobe rim could go
really fast ...

wrong way around

[l3v1]

I am not along in thinking this whole thing is like riding the horse backwards. Meaning, inability to equip devices with better batteries leads to putting low power and low performance chips in those devices then the makers of those devices start preaching how some software is the devil's creation because their low performing devices are not able to run them.

This is way stupid. I know, creating better perfming software is one way to go, but not the only way to go.

I don't like flash, still, I acknowledge that pretty nice web apps have been built with and around it, and I see the value in that. Those hardware vendors also see those values, they just want to diminish them so their reasons for making and selling under-performing and over-priced devices would seem well grounded.

But they are not. Start creating better chips and better batteries instead of going backwards in performance.

If I know most of my potential buyers are 6 feet tall I won't be making cars - yes the car analogy works here too :) :) - for 4 feet talls.

And finally, wake up, crazy ones! It's the apps and the software that sells a hardware and not the other way around! Yes, with Apple it's a mixed picture since a lot of people buy them for the looks - no comment on that - but that doesn't mean much, given their global market share.

10 out of 10 * luxury * * brands *

[makapuf]

I found luxury brands generally to overuse form over content, or very often usability, because there's generally, uh not much information to give about luxury products beside style.

So those brands generally have fixed layouts or - god forbid - autofullscreen with lots of flash, bizarre UI (or original) because the point of those sites is generally not to provide information, so why be clear when you don't have anything to tell.

I don't know if for a luxury product such as Apple this is a good thing or not strategy and consumer targetting-wise, but those are, for me, completely useless web sites (whether I like their product has no relationship whatsoever - what is exciting about a web site about champaign ? especially on a mobile phone ? ).

Flash can be good and has its niches (games, unified video viewer) ; HTML5 can - or cannot replace some or part of them, but luxury brands is no measure for it.
(And those kind of sites are rarely at the edge of tech).

What's next, usage rate of flash vs html 5 on http://www.zombo.com/ as a measure of html5 acceptability ? (I found it hard to think of a more useless kind of website in fact)

aaah there. it's all good now. I'm calm, I'm calm.

Let me ask an equally meaningless question.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Let me ask an equally meaningless question: Are DVD players finally ready to take over for game consoles? How about, "Does this apple taste as good as that metal trash can?" (Answer: that depends -- are you a rust monster?)

No.

[Qbertino]

- No zero-fuss Font embedding.
- No vector animation.
- No filters.
- No ubiqious logic engine/VM.
- No timelines (yes they can be usefull)
- No zero-fuss sound embedding.

Flash will be around for a long time. It didn't die 10 years ago, it didn't die 5 years ago and it won't die now.

Re:No.

[Pojut]

if in fact you cared about functionality at all, instead of just trying to come up with ideas why you will not use an Apple device.

I do care about functionality...which is why I will not purchase an Apple device.

Flash not blinking out of existance

[ndoak]

Despite all of the negative press flash has received it is still a viable technology, and will remain so for quite some time. This is because we still have to deal with internet explorer 6, 7, and 8. These browsers will still be around for an unbearably long amount of time, taking up a large enough market share to make marketing types weary of loosing customers. Additionally, there are many flash developers out there who are familiar with the tools and language. Turning one's back on their production abilities is unwise when flash is "good enough". Don't get me wrong, the writing is on the wall for flash, just don't expect html 5 to replace it overnight.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[kronosopher]

I have yet to see even -one- that adjusts the address bar so that I can link to a specific photo

Implementation of user-friendly URLs is not standardized much at all among web applications/servers. Building a reliable routing framework requires extensive knowledge of multiple disparate platform implementations. A small photo viewer application is not meant to provide a web platform implementation, but rather a framework for inclusion into your companies generally bigger and pre-existing platform. Simply building applications with rudimentary/standardized technology means some developers opt of the game entirely with the no-framework framework, relying primarily on automation and a thorough understanding of systems design to create elegant solutions for common application tasks. The game being played is sell your shit at any price, which in the industry sometimes translates to 1) intrusive DRM, 2) vendor lock-in, 3) traffic shaping, etc..

Already there

[SuperKendall]

HTML5 will be CPU-intensive at least for a while before the browsers improve.

Actually browsers are pretty good already - especially Webkit based ones (and of course Chrome).

In most benchmarks they are just a few FPS off equivalent Flash sites. Plenty of work has been done in video accelleration of graphics in modern OS's, which browsers leverage heavily for HTML 5. So it's basically around the same level of performance now, with further improvements coming shortly (since you have a legion of browser makers instead of just Adobe slowly improving the Flash runtime.

That's why basing work around open standards in better, because anyone can contribute to implementations.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[frnic]

By this logic is SJ decides next week that text only app's are allow on the iPad then you are screwed and just have to take it.

Yup.

And by your rationale, every company that produces any product should be forced to provided everything that anyone might want no matter what. No company should be allowed to control it's own destiny or produce products it thinks might sell because someone might disagree....

Do people like false pretenses?

[pizzach]

If Steve Jobs decides next week that audio-only songs are simply not useful and that from now on only songs with videos can be used on the device, then your are forced to bend over and take it, because you've already signed control of your device over to a technological caretaker.

A long time ago around the beginning of the Mac OS X era, Steve Jobs said, "Once you add a feature, you can't take it away". You seem to be confusing never allowing a feature in the first place with taking it away once it is there. How does what you said apply to Flash and why are you making up false pretenses?

Unfortunately, I remember reading the quote many years ago but google seems to be getting forgetful, so my reference is horrible.

Re:Do people like false pretenses?

[MBGMorden]

A long time ago around the beginning of the Mac OS X era, Steve Jobs said, "Once you add a feature, you can't take it away". You seem to be confusing never allowing a feature in the first place with taking it away once it is there. How does what you said apply to Flash and why are you making up false pretenses?

It applies because regardless of what he said in the past, you're still betting on what Steve decides. You see, you're in a position where you think Steve probably wouldn't do to you. Be that because of what he's said in the past, lack of business sense, whatever. The problem isn't the action itself, but the fact that you have to think about it in the first place.

It's the fact that he HAS that power over you and you're just guessing/hoping that he won't use it.

If Mark Shuttleworth, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, or anyone else decides next week that they don't like flash, then fuck em. They have no control over my platform. It can be forked and the people can do as they wish. You don't have that luxury.

b..bye

[Anonymous Coward]

then those 10 out of 10 had best start working on their exit strategy... exit from prominence, that is.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[MBGMorden]

And by your rationale, every company that produces any product should be forced to provided everything that anyone might want no matter what.

Why does this tired lined get trotted out time and time again. Nobody is saying Apple should provide a darned thing. Nobody is saying Apple should write a flash plugin. Nobody is saying that Apple should provide a version of strip poker on the iPhone.

What we're saying is that if someone wants to create such a thing themselves, and then put it on their phone/pad, or wants to give it to other people to do the same, then the manufacturer should butt the hell out.

There's a big difference between saying that Ford HAS to make their cars be able to run on 100% ethanol vs saying that Ford shouldn't install sensors that disable the car if it detects it, even if the owner has modified their car to run on it.

Passively not enabling an action is not the same as actively preventing it.

Flash is accessible to artist

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of artist that can use flash and make a "snazzy" website. Good luck with HTML5. Flash takes the programmer out of webdesign and increases the talent pool. Flash has a reason to stick around longer than technology would dictate.

Then it's not crippled

[SuperKendall]

Any general purpose device that only allows programs that meet the approval of the manufacturer to be installed is by my definition crippled

Then the iPhone/iPad do not meet your definition, since you can jailbreak them.

Just as a car would meet your definition as well - but you can re-program that as well.

Just because you do not like the walled garden does not people other people value the space. And it also doesn't mean if you need more you can't scale the wall if you like. It is, after all, just an ornamental feature to those that know more.

Re:Then it's not crippled

[Pojut]

Then the iPhone/iPad do not meet your definition, since you can jailbreak them.

So I have to hack the device I pay for just so I can get it to do what other devices that cost the same can do. Great.

Re:Then it's not crippled

[MBGMorden]

Then the iPhone/iPad do not meet your definition, since you can jailbreak them.

Which Apple has declared to be illegal. Not tested in court yet mind you, but Apple has already made it's stance clear that if you jailbreak those devices, you are breaking the law.

Just as a car would meet your definition as well - but you can re-program that as well.

A car doesn't run "apps", from the manufacturer or otherwise. The fact that they never allowed it a structure to receive additional programs I don't care about. If they did provide an interface to install additional software, but limited to signed/approved binaries, I'd complain just as loudly.

Just because you do not like the walled garden does not people other people value the space. And it also doesn't mean if you need more you can't scale the wall if you like. It is, after all, just an ornamental feature to those that know more.

People tend to rail against things that they feel are wrong. If you go to a movie that you think sucks, most people don't just resolve to silently go home and never speak of it. No, they tell their friends about how much it sucked. They tell people on the internet. They tell random people in the checkout line. It is our nature as social beings to not only notice the things we perceive fault in, but to point them out to others.

This is particularly the case in the technology industry where hardware and software manufactures follow market forces. We ALL will benefit or suffer depending on the way the market shifts. It's in one's best interests not to merely use the platforms and technologies that they like, but to do their best to ensure that as many other people use it as well too. Much like you try to promote a local coffee shop that you like instead of Starbucks to your friends because you know that without the support of more people, your choice venue will falter and will then not be available to anyone.

The "you're not the target market" comments are just short sighted. Of course I'm not, but it's in my best interests to make sure that the "target market" for such a device is as small as possible.

Re:Then it's not crippled

[SuperKendall]

Which Apple has declared to be illegal.

Is Apple the government? No? Then they can't very well do that, can they?

You are thinking it violates warranty, which is totally different - yet also false, since you can easily revert the device at any time for repair.

you are breaking the law.

Again, Apple is not the government and there are several laws protecting consumers in this space.

In fact Apple care so little about jailbreaking they don't even break it release to release, which they could try to do.

People tend to rail against things that they feel are wrong

Nothing wrong with that, just don't lie about what a device can or cannot do to try and make your case. I fully sympathize with the argument that people want to be able to download software from anywhere on the device out of the box, but the fact is it is possible and really the only people who want to do so are quite technically able to jailbreak (since it's not any harder than installing software).

Yes, that was the big deal

[SuperKendall]

What's the big deal with scribd lately? Weren't they a worthless site that nobody ever used because it was such a pain to try to read anything there?

Yes - because of the Flash reader. I avoided it like the plague.

With the HTML reader, it's actually kind of useful.

How old was your system?

[SuperKendall]

But guess what - I couldn't plug my existing keyboard into it, I couldn't plug my existing mouse into it and I couldn't plug my existing headset into it.

How old was THAT stuff? PC's have been using USB mice/keyboards for many years now. If you really, really loved your keyboard you could have got a PS/2 to USB adaptor...

Buying a new keyboard and mouse is hardly a hardship compared to a new monitor - which as you pointed out, worked.

Re:How old was your system?

[SirGeek]

Buying a new keyboard and mouse is hardly a hardship compared to a new monitor - which as you pointed out, worked.

When its a $ 350 Kinesis Advantage Pro keyboard.

Why am i going to buy a new keyboard when it works wonderfully and is ergo (Have you tried finding a GOOD ergo keyboards now) ?

Re:How old was your system?

[SirGeek]

And.. Yes. I know those are USB keyboards. I forgot that they too stopped (but those of us with the PS/2 will NOT change out to the USB keyboard until the current PS/2 version is dead). The PS/2 ones were about the same price as the USB ones.

My current keyboards (one at work and one at home) are both around 10 years old at this point and still working fine (with the occasional cleaning that any keyboard neeeds).

Web is ruled by BUSINESS

[SuperKendall]

The web is ruled by web DESIGNERS and not developers/coders.

Unless someone comes up with a tool that does the same dynamic websites, animations, vector image drawing etc i

That is true right up until the BUSINESS guys (you know, the ones who write the checks for the DESIGNERS) say "Holy shit, our site does not work on my new iPad. Make it work".

Then you either figure out what tools work today for you, or you are replaced by someone younger who has not stuck themselves in an Adobe rut.

Here's a preview of the future - the same Adobe tools you use today, outputting HTML5 (and indeed already some CS5 tools do just that). Because it's what the BUSINESS people demand that matters.

Re:Web is ruled by BUSINESS

[naz404]

True dat, bro: BUSINESS will dictate! Good catch. However, there's the problem of the shortage of hybrid interaction designer/coders right now (and in the forseeable future) so don't expect most Flash sites to translate to HTML5 too soon.

I shudder imagining the future where HTML5 replaces most of Flash's current niche though:
Imagine more of the obnoxious CSS floating banner ads on webpages and Flash ads redone in HTML5.

At least you have Flashblock with Flash. It's easy for browsers to block popup window ads, but how're you going to block obnoxious CPU-hogging javascript/css content?

I really hate the way most webpages now average >100kb (too bad for users with data plans measured by the kb for their smartphones) and the way tons of sites have gone AJAX and you can no longer surf them on low-spec devices like the OLPC XO-1 (first-hand experience) and Cherrypal Africa with JavaScript turned on.

DHTML is just as or more CPU-hungry than Flash if done wrong. Flash is not bloated - it's SWF content creators that don't know how to optimize that's the problem, not the platform itself.

I wish more sites would just go back to plain HTML and make mobile versions that degrade gracefully if Javascript is turned off/unavailable and stop using AJAX where it's really needed.

Kettle, meet pot.

[Animats]

That was amusing, looking at those "leading brands". Chanel now has a line of watches, and even sells bowling bags. (That's appropriate, in a way; Coco Chanel invented "sportswear"). High-fashion brands, and worse, wannabe high-fashion brands, tend to get carried away with web design. So do high-end car sites. Porsche has a Shockwave car configurator, although it doesn't really use the 3D features of Shockwave usefully. Tesla Motors uses flash, but unnecessarily, for animated menus.

Sometimes this reaches the point of utter absurdity. Girbaud, which sells high-end jeans, has a striking Flash-intensive site. This site does far more with Flash than just play videos. There are two long animations to get through before you reach the impressively frustrating 3D animated menu. Each subsection of the site has its own long animated intro. Many of those can't be skipped. And they all have sound. Some of their pages won't close in Firefox 3.6 if you click on the close box; you have to wait until the animation cycle finishes. However, you can't actually buy their products on line from that site. Nor do they link, in any obvious way, to one of the sites where you can.

The page linked in the Slashdot article wwhich is supposed to illustrate this "browser incompatibility" problem produces the message "Warning: A browser setting is preventing you from logging in. Fix this setting to log in." This is because I have third-party cookies disabled, which is reasonably common. The "Fix this setting to log in" doesn't disclose the domain that wants to send third party cookies, either.

Author's opinion a little too obvious

[NoSleepDemon]

I really wish slashdot admins wouldn't approve articles when the author is so obviously batting for one team. Seriously, who had even used Scribd before they dropped Flash support? I've had a few of their articles show up in my search results for programming and their site was an absolute pig! Definitely not a good example of how to use flash at all. And now suddenly everyone and their mum are singing the praises of a site who's design probably would have sucked ass even if it had been in HTML in the first place. Scribd dropping Flash support is possibly a GOOD thing for Adobe and Flash - that site was an abomination.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of crack are you on???

The iPad is sold as a "magical and revolutionary product". Literally. Not a computer. Not a device. Not general-purpose anything.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

A lot of people consider the iPad crippled because you can only install approved apps on it. The refusal to allow flash is just a side effect of that.

True, lot of people think that so they buy a different phone and go on with their lives. A few people, however, seem to think they have some sort of inherent right to use both the phone they want, but should be able to force the manufacturer of the phone to customize the phone to their specifications with regard to software and services.

...particularly when the reasons for disallowing a common technology are that their corporate dictator just has a grudge against a particular technology.

It's called business. I used to make expensive security appliances for installation on people's networks. Our clients had no inherent right to dictate to us that we have to install a given OS or software package on our appliances and if they re-imaged them to have different software, we had no obligation to provide support or services to those machines. We didn't make a Windows version of our appliance because we didn't want to be dependent upon Microsoft who could dictate to us what improvements we could make on our appliances. That's a business decision. Apple doesn't want Adobe to be able to dictate to them how secure their phones are or how Web apps perform on them, or if they can provide given features to Web apps. It makes sense to me. Maybe I won't buy an iPhone because I want more flexibility, but unless Apple has monopoly influence, I don't see why I should be able to force them to do something else.

If Steve Jobs decides next week that audio-only songs are simply not useful and that from now on only songs with videos can be used on the device, then your are forced to bend over and take it, because you've already signed control of your device over to a technological caretaker.

Were you intending this to be a strawman or a slippery slope logical fallacy?

It's the antithesis to the democratic way of life - namely that the people should be free to make their own choices

That Apple should be free to make their own choices or is freedom you being able to tell others what to do? You're free not to buy an iPhone. Apple is free to make the iPhone however they want. That's not the antithesis of freedom. I might mention, democracy and freedom are not the same thing. Democracies do not imply freedom. There are very, very few democratically run companies as it is an unusual business model that takes a lot of cooperation to get started and most investment capital is concentrated.

We'll see.

[jwietelmann]

Do you trust Adobe to release the new version of Flash for your two year old mobile phone?

Do you trust anyone to release HTML5 support for your 2-year-old mobile phone? Do you trust your mobile OS provider to pay licensing fees to MPEG-LA for your 2-year-old mobile phone?

Apple won't put up with the trouble of using proprietary software.

All signs point to h.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice. There's nothing non-proprietary about it. It just so happens that Apple is part-owner.

I hate Flash as much as the next coder, but at least it's widely used already, proven to do particular things very well, not caught in the middle of an uncertain future (h.264 vs. Theora vs. VP8), and not currently threatening a patent war, the consequences of which are not yet known but will likely create their own bag of hurt for both developers and consumers.

HTML5 will only be good if it's final implementation is good. The idea behind it is nice, but right now it has a lot of corporate fingers in it, playing for their own interests over yours. It will be a miracle if we can all come out of this without practically renting the web from MPEG-LA.

Re:We'll see.

[sglewis100]

All signs point to h.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice. There's nothing non-proprietary about it. It just so happens that Apple is part-owner.

Furthermore, one of the reasons so many notable websites were able to adopt HTML5 so quickly as an option, is because most Flash video players were streaming... h.264 encoded video! Rerendering not needed. There are a few Javascripts floating around that will play your h.264 video, using HTML5 if available, Flash if not, and I saw one that would fall over backwards and try Silverlight failing the first two. I'm not sure who that ONE guy was who had no HTML5, no Flash, but a working Silverlight plugin, but I'm guessing he's not Mac fanboy.

Re:We'll see.

[rtfa-troll]

Do you trust anyone to release HTML5 support for your 2-year-old mobile phone? Do you trust your mobile OS provider to pay licensing fees to MPEG-LA for your 2-year-old mobile phone?

Yes. I have Firefox on my phone. Even if they don't pay the license fee, I live in a patent free area and will add my own codec if I wish.

All signs point to h.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice. There's nothing non-proprietary about it. It just so happens that Apple is part-owner.

That's not a "just happens"; that's a perfect example of them doing to you what they'd never let you do to them. Apple isn't worried about what happens after five years when commercial MPEG-LA licenses go up into the sky since even if they were having to pay up, I'm sure their returns will be greater.

I hate Flash as much as the next coder, but at least it's widely used already, proven to do particular things very well, not caught in the middle of an uncertain future (h.264 vs. Theora vs. VP8), and not currently threatening a patent war, the consequences of which are not yet known but will likely create their own bag of hurt for both developers and consumers.

Flash uses H.264 for video also. I don't see why Adobe should be more patent proof than Apple, though, to be honest, I haven't really studied them. Why do you think Flash will be safe? The only format there which has been specifically engineered to be patent free is Theora. It's also the only one for which nobody has identified a specific patent it infringes. That's going to be key when it comes to infringement since it means that you pay only damages (approx == to license fee), not for wilful infringement. Use H.264 commercially, however, and unless you are big media and already involved in the MPEG-LA, you will be breaking your patent license (which will only allow personal and non commercial use).

HTML5 will only be good if it's final implementation is good. The idea behind it is nice, but right now it has a lot of corporate fingers in it, playing for their own interests over yours. It will be a miracle if we can all come out of this without practically renting the web from MPEG-LA.

don't let them tell you the fight is lost. There's still lots to win in this. Many content producers are not stupid and won't want to pay licenses and it doesn't matter if 99% of computers have H264 as long as 90% or more have Theora.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[NatasRevol]

I posted this above, but here's several examples not only of decent games - Pacman, Tetris - but how to build them as well.

http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/

Badly written tests

[SuperKendall]

The stock chart example at least, is badly written.

SImply by changing:

        draw.lineWidth = 2;

to

        draw.lineWidth = 1;

The demo easily beats the Flash version in terms of FPS (on my system, in Safari), so something odd is going on there. It makes you wonder, why did they make the line thicker, is there a better way to do that in HTML5?

In fact you can even draw the lines twice to get the thicker effect and get the same FPS readings as Flash.

Re:Badly written tests

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

Yeah, he mentioned that right underneath the test, but it sounds more like a poorly written implementation by the Browser, than the code itself. A 2 stroke line should not have that kind of impact; and changing it to 1 stroke did not fix the problem on Opera or PC.

1 Pixel Stroke Results Safari – 23.59 fps Firefox – 17.43 fps Chrome – 17.12 fps Opera – 12.12 fps

Flash on the Mac, as well as HTML5 and Flash on PC were largely unaffected by this change though, gaining maybe a single frame rate by changing to 1 pixel strokes. I’m not sure what to make of these findings. What kind of bug causes this and what side effects might be introduced by fixing it? Will a change allow both 1 and 2 pixel strokes to run at higher speeds, or will they both settle somewhere near Operas numbers.

On mine, (XP FF 3.6) I get 19.64fps on the 1 stroke HTML5 test, and 52.56fps on the FP10

Bed Bugs

[Mana Mana]

> While Flash may be on the way out (or so legions of its detractors hope), it is still important in many corners of the Web

Car manufacturer web sites are in for a surprise then, they love Flash for their sites. Among the worst is MINI; that sheisse is all flash---silly flash at that.

BMW
Acura
VW
Mazda

What are they thinking. VW is so bad that it will not load (at'all) its flash if you disable its web bugs! Yes, their web, user action trackers! Try it. It was that it would fail ugly (photos, say), now it wont load, period.

Ghostery, you go boyee.

No.

[SuperKendall]

So I have to hack the device I pay for just so I can get it to do what other devices that cost the same can do. Great.

No, you don't HAVE to do that.

It's only if you want a wider range of functionality in a narrow range that only technical people care about, that you have to jailbreak.

In short, for most people they do not HAVE to jailbreak to do everything they want. You HAVE to, but my point is you CAN. And you on;y do that once, so it's not like it's really an issue- if in fact you cared about functionality at all, instead of just trying to come up with ideas why you will not use an Apple device.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[sootman]

Wow, talk about needing a "-1, factually incorrect" moderation option. Check out http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-guy if you have an iPhone or iPod touch (not sure about iPad, and if you're on a desktop, at least you can watch a video of it). I'm only posting this one example because I see there are already other replies with additional examples.

Also, check this out: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/mobile_demos_fp10.1/popup18.html It's a Flash game being played on a touch device. But look how simple it is! It's just a very basic tower defense game that can be played with just taps. No fast and accurate mousing or keyboarding needed. Even if Flash were working 100% on mobile devices, most current games wouldn't work ANYWAY!

I know this thread is about HTML5 versus Flash, not WIMP versus touch UIs, but it's related because this is where the world is going. Once upon a time there were relatively few computers--mainframes and such--and when they went to desktops, the number of computers in use grew by several orders of magnitude. Now everyone in the world who wants a desktop or laptop has one, and we're moving away from general-purpose computers to more limited computer-based devices and the number of users will again grow greatly. You say "Show me an even remotely decent HTML5-based game on par with a remotely decent Flash-based game" and I'll say "Show me a 'remotely decent Flash-based game' that's playable on a touchscreen device in the first place."

Speaking of mobile devices... Smartbooks have failed to materialise due to delays in Flash optimisation [emphasis mine], a lower-than-expected uptake of Linux on netbooks, and the sudden emergence of tablets, ARM's marketing chief has said.

"I think one reason is to do with software maturity. We've seen things like Adobe slip -- we'd originally scheduled for something like 2009." ARM and Adobe signed a partnership in late 2008 that was intended to see Flash Player 10 and Air -- both rich web platforms -- optimised for ARM-based systems. That work is only likely to come to fruition in the second half of this year, when an optimised version of Flash comes out for Android smartphones.

Kill flash already

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Please let Flash die.

I'm tired of sites using worthless flash windows and objects that don't add anything.

Then there are the flash only websites with broken back buttons, lame usability, impossible bookmark into.

This piece of garbage has been abused long enough, sure not every use is unnecessary or an abuse, but the signal to noise ratio is right up there with spam. So lets get rid of it completely.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

[jwietelmann]

I use an IBM Model M keyboard from the early 90s. A better typing experience does not exist.

Nonsensical

[SuperKendall]

I do care about functionality...which is why I will not purchase an Apple device.

But you care about something besides functionality. Because functionally, an Apple device can do anything you want it to.

The fact that you refuse to use it anyway means there's something else you care about too, and that's understandable. But you should not mislead others into thinking a given device cannot do something just because you don't like Apple.

Re:Nonsensical

[Pojut]

But you care about something besides functionality. Because functionally, an Apple device can do anything you want it to.

Not true. An iPhone, for example, cannot run non-approved apps unless you hack it. I don't want to have to hack my phone just so I can run programs that the manufacturer deems unfit. Hence, I'll go with an Android or even a Windows Mobile 6 phone.

The fact that you refuse to use it anyway means there's something else you care about too, and that's understandable.

As far as devices like Macs and Macbooks, I just think they are overpriced for what you get. They are very well designed, they work great, and they are built with high quality materials...but I feel they are overpriced for what you get. ::shrug:: just my opinion. I never felt the need to spend more money on something shiny. I'd rather spend that extra money on better performance.

Obligatory car analogy:

Rather than spend $200 on some high-quality racing stripes to make my car look flashy, I would prefer to spend that $200 on better brake pads, or better sway bars.

But you should not mislead others into thinking a given device cannot do something just because you don't like Apple.

Telling people they can't run a non-Apple approved program on their iPad or iPhone without hacking the device isn't misleading...it's the truth.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big difference between saying that Ford HAS to make their cars be able to run on 100% ethanol vs saying that Ford shouldn't install sensors that disable the car if it detects it, even if the owner has modified their car to run on it.

Has Apple installed such sensors on their devices? It's my understanding that people are free to jailbreak their iPad/Pod/Phones. They just can't expect Apple to support them if they do. I'm pretty sure that if someone mods their ford as you describe, it'll void their warranty. Jailbreaking is actually reversable so there's no such warranty issue.

Re:Apple shame on you for limiting your own custom

[jaavaaguru]

The customers who bought the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch are customers that chose to buy a device that doesn't support flash. They wanted that device. There should be no shame involved.

Offtopic? My, we have some dodgy mods today

[jo_ham]

Amusing.

Everything's better with HTML5

[SuperKendall]

At least you have Flashblock with Flash. It's easy for browsers to block popup window ads, but how're you going to block obnoxious CPU-hogging javascript/css content?

Actually a simpler task.

For one thing, the things simply will not be a CPU hog the way Flash was. I was forced to install an ad blocker not because I didn't wan to see ads, but because many pages were dragging my system down. HTML5/Canvas is much lighter weight for small things like ads.

But beyond that, if I do want to block particular ads there are many ways I could look for canvas elements in pages, or perhaps even apply some global CSS rules that would fix most things.

DHTML is just as or more CPU-hungry than Flash if done wrong.

DHTML can be, yes, but if people primarily move to doing vector stuff using Canvas it will not be.

Flash is not bloated

Totally disagree. Even the most minuscule presence of Flash was a Big Deal when my laptop encountered it. My wife still uses a laptop five years old or so for browsing and for that, Flash block became a must.

For most of what Flash is currently used for, the Flash runtime is far too bloated for the task at hand.

Re:Everything's better with HTML5

[IntlHarvester]

For one thing, the things simply will not be a CPU hog the way Flash was.

That is the most ridiculous assumption in this whole debate.

First of all, a big reason Flash hogs CPU is mainly because the designers who use it simply are not good coders. Give them some HTML5 design tool and 8 layers of libraries and you'll get the same CPU hogging code.

Second, if you want to see HTML5 hog your CPU, check out the MS HTML5 demos? Most of this stuff would be done trivially in Flash but absolutely kills any current browser.

Re:Everything's better with HTML5

[Baloo Uriza]

I think it's funny that they're bragging that they got a 68% on the Acid3 test. Microsoft seems to be proud that IE is the web's "D" student.

Re:Everything's better with HTML5

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a strange definition of bragging (also a strange belief that Acid3 counts for anything).

Flash is dead

[jocknerd]

Technical arguments aside, Flash is dead technology. Sure, it will linger on for the next 5 years or so. But its dead. Like COBOL was dead.

Apple is doing to Flash what Microsoft did to Real ten years ago.

Adaptor, as I said

[SuperKendall]

When its a $ 350 Kinesis Advantage Pro keyboard.

So that's when you use an adaptor as I said.

Come on, it's $5.39 - and it even ships via Prime!

Sure it's not included by default but then MOST people are also not going to have a $350 keyboard. But the point is you can use it if you really value it.

What are you talking about?

[marcosdumay]

Is that about the movie tag of HTML5? If so, well, the movie is handled by the browser, that probably uses the functionality of the system media player on Windows, or chooses one of the available ones on Linux. Nearly all media players have hardware acceleration, so it is available.

Are having problem with the compile flags of your mplayer? (Did you compile it?) Or maybe the resolution of the flash video isn't the same of your H.264 one.

I disagree.

[LWATCDR]

"People fail to see one very very big factor in the silly HTML5 vs Flash debate: The web is ruled by web DESIGNERS and not developers/coders."
The Web is ruled by users.
Many websites are for communicating between the company and it's customers.
They don't care what the designers want as long as the customer can reach them.
If the customer wants to reach them with an iPhone or iPad they will change to allow it.
Here is a great example what I consider a terrible flash heavy website.
http://www.kawasaki.com/Home/Home.aspx
It takes too long to load and is just too busy for my taste. It uses Flash everywhere and will not work on my Android phone or my iPod Touch.
So guess what they just launched last week.
http://m.kawasaki.com/
There fixed that for you. Works great on mobile devices and is Flash free.
Everybody is going to want mobile sites sooner or later.
Flash is not suited to mobile sites. Do you want to use the limited bandwidth for animations and fluff?
Not to mention the smallish screen.
I use the web from my phone a lot. More places need to get on the mobile bandwagon. My wife and I where driving into work and we wanted to call a local place to pick up breakfast. I went to their site and it is terrible.
I finally got to page with the phone number and clicked on it to order.
How much better would it be if they had had a mobile site?
The mobile web is the new internet.

HTML5 canvas animation authoring

[tepples]

Is this good enough for you?

For one thing, no sound (which the author acknowledges). Can you show me the HTML5 counterpart to, say, Flash Flash Revolution?

For another thing, can you show me HTML5 cartoons? Badgers and We Drink Ritalin are noninteractive animations (another is Homestar Runner series), and I would like to see a timeline-style authoring tool for HTML5 vector animations (e.g. to be played by a script rendering to a 2D <canvas>) that comes anywhere near the capability of Flash 5, let alone Flash CS5.

Dude get over it.

[LWATCDR]

"It's the antithesis to the democratic way of life - namely that the people should be free to make their own choices - even if they're the "wrong" ones (because too often "wrong" is merely a personal viewpoint). "

So don't by a product you don't like. No one is taking away your freedom of choice!
In fact this is giving you more choices.
You can choose to decide that you want Apple's walled garden or you can choose a Palm Pre' or an Android phone. By not letting Apple have their little walled garden you would in fact be taking away peoples right to choose.
As you put it people have the right to make a wrong choice even if it is to buy an iPhone or iPod.

But it is not the antitheses of the democratic way of life! That statment is nothing short of wrapping ones self in the Flag to just ify ones point.

Re:Answer: No. Unless you only mean video.

[marcosdumay]

Ok by me. If sites kept Flash only for software that needs interaction, and used the standards for displaying content, most of the problems would go away. Also if W3C standards supported full interaction they would become a bloated mess. That is what plugins are for.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[Anonymous Coward]

And by your rationale, every company that produces any product should be forced to provided everything that anyone might want no matter what. No company should be allowed to control it's own destiny or produce products it thinks might sell because someone might disagree....

Straw man arguments are lies.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[dangitman]

. Nobody is saying Apple should provide a darned thing. Nobody is saying Apple should write a flash plugin.

Actually, lots of people are saying exactly that. Just on slashdot, the number of people arguing this would be in the hundreds.

You take the implementation you can get

[tepples]

crappy canvas implementation

As a web application developer, I don't get to choose which implementation the end user uses to view my web site. If people are coming in with Firefox, I can't use something that's horribly inefficient in Firefox. So a technology is only as good as its deployed implementation.

The 10 sites article is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

No I didn't really read it, I did skim a bit at the top and they claimed on Gucci had a iPad capable site. You can clearly see in the Rolex screenshot "Click here for the HTML version of the site". Geez!

Symbol-ism over substance

[rubypossum]

Me too man, me too. If a site uses flash then I'm out of there, honestly. I recently was buying car insurance and I actually avoided a provider because of their horrible flash interface that made the site almost unusable. Like most crappy flash sites it: 1. Used non-standard controls that responded poorly, slowly and inconsistently. 2. Was insanely slow on my netbook with unneeded page transitions that annoyed and got in the way of the experience. 3. Looked like a My Space page mated with a stapler manufacturers website. This is a consistent theme with Flash. They take some small amount of easily understood and presentable data and they make it a chore to find. Forgive me but.. Flash is Symbol-ism over substance.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[nine-times]

Any general purpose device that only allows programs that meet the approval of the manufacturer to be installed is by my definition crippled

Fair enough, but of course it raises the question: Is the iPad a "general purpose device"?

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[nine-times]

Also:

It's the antithesis to the democratic way of life - namely that the people should be free to make their own choices

I guess so, but Apple isn't the government, so I'm not sure why you expected them to be "democratic".

I think people overblow Apple's closed nature *just a bit*. I mean, yes, I find it frustrating that you can't publish iPhone/iPad apps except through their store, but it's not entirely unique.

Here's the thing: if you think of the iPad as a computer, it's remarkably walled-off. However, if you think of it instead as a consumer device-- like your TV or cable box, or the in-dash GPS/media center in your car-- then those devices are remarkably open for allowing 3rd party apps at all. Until my iPhone, I never had a cell phone that allowed me to install 3rd party apps, at least not in an easy fashion that was accessible enough for me to even be aware of it, and I think that's worth mentioning.

Before you start thinking I'm a total Apple shill, I just traded in my 1st gen iPhone for an HTC Incredible. I'm not a devoted and unquestioning Apple fanatic, but I think it's worth being fair and keeping some perspective.

HTML5 is a joke

[Cyberax]

HTML5 is a joke. It won't be able to compete with Flash for rich apps.

I dare you to show me how you're going to implement simple BadgerBadger video in HTML5. Go on, try it. And that's only an example of a _simple_ animation.

Flash is right now one the best suites for animated vector graphics. They have a beautiful internal model for vector graphics (lines are represented as diagonals in a polygon, not as edges of triangles).

Oh, and Flash is also open. You can freely download the SWF specification and implement it.

Ready or not, here HTML5 comes

[gig]

The HTML5 Web has been on mobiles for 3 years. There is still no FlashPlayer for Mobiles (aka FlashPlayer Forever.)

According to Adobe's current best-case estimate, by this time next year (mid-2011) FlashPlayer will be on 25% of Android phones (new and existing phones that can run Android v2.2). That's best-case. So features that you develop in Flash are exclusively PC-only right now and will be almost exclusively PC-only for the foreseeable future. There's no growth in PC's. Users are not putting down mobiles to go to a PC and use the Web. It's the other way around. If you're building Web content that doesn't run on a mobile in 2007 forward, what are you thinking?

HTML5 is on 100% of smartphones that are under active development. It's on about 50% of PC's (every Mac plus PC's with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera). It's in IE9, so it's coming soon to all PC's, either because users upgrade their IE to 9 or continue to switch away from IE to Chrome and Firefox and Safari and Opera. This is happening much faster than Flash is coming to mobiles. It's not hard to develop in a backwards-compatible way so that your HTML5 works universally, just losing some fidelity on IE6-IE8, which we can consider to be an end-of-life browser with the IE9 HTML5+H.264 rewrite.

At the same time, Flash blockers are hip. On the Mac, the Click-to-Flash Flash blocker won a design award in 2009. Tim Bray is Google's Android developer evangelist, and even with Android's recent embracing of Flash, Tim Bray runs a Flash blocker. Even though I have the Flash developer tool on my Mac, I run Safari with plug-ins and Java turned off for security and speed and stability. So Flash is losing presence on PC's, not gaining, even as HTML5 gains.

So it comes down to this:

* 2010
- PC: HTML5 50%, Flash v10 75%
- mobiles: HTML5 100%, Flash v10 0%

* 2011
- PC: HTML5 70%, Flash v10 70%
- mobiles: HTML5 100%, Flash v10 1% (at best, using Adobe's own predictions)

So even if HTML5 cannot provide as much flash (small F) as Flash in the near term, the deployment matters much more. The long-term prospects matter much more. The mobile penetration matters most of all.

And using HTML5 does not prevent you from adding a little Flash for PC users. But making these bullshit Flash-only presentations, which should never have been done, it was always supposed to be optional, that is a thing of the past. Even people who aren't Web developers are blaming publishers for blue legos now, which is where the blame always belonged.

I do both HTML5 and Flash development. I haven't made any new Flash stuff since iPhone shipped, because nobody wants it. "Make it work in IE" changed to "make it work on iPhone" overnight, without publishers knowing HTML5 or Flash or what. Now they want it to work on iPad. The bulk of my Flash work now is converting older Flash stuff to HTML5+H.264, though. The existing Flash apps are prototypes, mockups, for new HTML5 apps now. I haven't heard of anybody converting the other way, for example converting something made for mobiles over the past 3 years to Flash so it can run in FlashPlayer for Mobiles, if and when it ships.

So whether HTML5 is ready or not, it's all that we have going forward. Adobe failed to bring Flash to Mobiles in any kind of reasonable time frame. They blamed Apple in 2007 but then did not deliver for Android in 2008, and now it is just way, way too late. The transition is over, we are in the hairy early stages of the new era now. You just have to build using progressive enhancement and let the browsers catch up.

10 out of 10? So what.

[CAIMLAS]

So 10 out of 10 of the biggest corporate sites are written in Flash. Why?

These corps are the top because they live marketing. Flash does marketing material - "flashy" ads, animations, imagery, whatever - well and consistently at an acceptable (to the advertisers) loss in processor cycles.

People don't visit these sites, do they? I'd think most likely no. These sites are marketing/advertising vehicles and nothing much more.

Saying this matters is like saying that 6 out of 10 online ads are in Flash, ergo Flash isn't going away. People don't go to site for product information (unless they're really dumb): they go to to Google (or Bing, whatever) and search "buy " or " review" and go from there. If they even care about such things as reviews, that is: people who buy name brand tend to only buy for the brand these days. It's rare that "brand" and "quality" meet in most markets.

Real world - no

[ignavus]

In the real world of government and corporate SOEs (standard operating environments), Internet Explorer 6 still reigns in many places. They don't have the time or the incentive to test out newer SOEs and upgrade. They think it still works, and no amount of argument will move them.

Cannot even abandon the hacks to work around IE6 let alone adopt HTML5.

Chat and More

[weston]

Why would I ever want a website to have access to my camera or microphone?

Well, for one thing: chat.

Sure, you might not frequently use your computer for that, but lots of people do. Also, your favorite chat client, while cool, is difficult to integrate directly into a web community, and it's always kindof nice if you don't have to worry about installation but can just visit the website.

And as it turns out, there are also some other interesting things where it might occasionally be nice to have mic or camera access. Maybe you've seen some of those apps take ambient music in through a mic and tell you what a song is. Or the apps you show a barcode or even an object to and they'll tell you what it is. Why shouldn't those be available over the web... as long as there's security that ensures the mic and camera only work when you want them to?

Reasons why flash is better than HTML5

[Kagetsuki]

Before I point this out, just let me state I'm not a fan of flash in the least. But there are some points on the HTML5 vs Flash issue most people don't seem to be realizing.
1. Flash supports things like web cam, microphone, and other input. Want a video/audio chat application or want to use video or audio input for your application? Well, you have two choices: Flash or Java(FX)... oh wait the JavaFX audio/video input libraries have been unsupported and not updated for years and now basically don't run on anything. It's Flash or a straight up native application.
2. Flash can handle sophisticated communication with protocols other than HTTP. That's a big deal.
3. There is only one real Flash player. This is a bad thing in many many ways, but it also means that if you are a designer and your application works in your browser it also means it will work in anybody elses browser as long as they have the plugin. Furthermore you don't have to worry about different HTML and JavaScript parsers/engines. Getting complex pages heavy with JavaScript and CSS to display in all browsers can be a nightmare - even Gecko and Webkit render the same "standard" code totally differently in many many cases.
4. Compression and encryption. Flash can do it in-application. With HTML if you want to send a big blob of data compressed and uncompress it on the client there is no way I know of to do it unless you want to somehow try and pull that off in JavaScript. Encryption basically requires HTTPS/SSL which is a feature of the server, but with flash you can do it inter-application.

Please don't get me wrong, I really really dislike using flash. But very recently I have learned it's merits when I had to develop an application that required use of a web cam, needed compression and encryption, and would be deployed on a variety of different servers which our clients usually have little to no control over (basic website hosting plans). In the end there was literally no other way to do it than with flash, it was our only option and in the end it worked out very well. I still wish we could have used Java or something like that, but the reality is Java just didn't cut it - we couldn't get web cam access even on our own boxes working after a few days of trying and in the end the install base is significantly smaller than flash.

Flash on Mobile Devices Currently a Fiction

[Mr Bubble]

Let us not forget that there IS no Flash that can run on the iPad, iPhone or Droid phones for that matter. Am I wrong? Adobe says it is coming in the second half of the year. When Adobe has a product that will run on the phones, then you can say APple doesn't support it. Until then, it is a theoretical discussion.

Flash will still be used...

[DaVince21]

After this, the use of Flash should be going back to just one thing again: animation.

That's right, there should be no reason your entire SITE should be coded in Flash, blocking easy content searching and tracking along the way. After this, if you want your site look pretty with sounds and animation, you can at least do it with HTML. No reason to use Flash anymore.

But even then, there is content that's just easier to make or distribute in Flash than as a website, and that's things like cartoons, and perhaps games (I'd say mostly the already existing Flash games here, though).

Re:Adobe's is breaking their own License agreement

[DaVince21]

Google has an agreement with Adobe about Chrome. I mean, they're even working together to make the Flash plugin inside Chrome as good as possible.

And heck, Flash exists on mobile devices, game consoles, electronic billboards, PDAs... That clause somehow doesn't seem to work out, or it exists because they already have agreements with certain third parties regarding these functionalities.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[exomondo]

But I don't miss all those dumb-assed Flash-based ads one bit.

oh ok so regardless of the oft asserted 'HTML5 is superior to flash', these ads will just go away and not be re-implemented in html5?

And when I go to a website that uses only Flash, I think twice about whether this is a company/place I really want to be. As often as not, if there's no "non-Flash" version, I'll just navigate away.

HTML5 will be a replacement for flash here when is a ratified standard AND there are vector animation tools that come at least close to what adobe offers. At the moment no designer will use HTML5 exclusively because some of those capabilities of Flash are just not accessible to them.

Re:I like the 'crippled' web - and conflated topic

[exomondo]

well when it can actually view everything on the web, in order to actually back it's claims that it's the best way to view the web as it claims, then it will fulfill it's advertised functionality.

iPad available at last in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

28th May 2010 to be extact.
But you can pre order now.
Be the first in your office to sport the must have gadget of the century
UK Edition Apple iPad touch screen computer http://bit.ly/b8N7Lj

Flash means it's easy to turn off ads

[M_Ryo-ohki_C]

The real reason companies are up in arms about flash is that it's too easy to run off ads.