Adobe's New HTML5 Design Tool No Threat To Flash

pbahra writes "It is a reflection of the huge interest in HTML5 as a possible alternative to Flash that Adobe's launch of a very early preview of a toolkit for professional web developers immediately became a trending topic on Twitter. What has excited people is Adobe's statement that Edge will, 'bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript and CSS.' Across the web some headline writers been almost apocalyptic. Beta News, for instance, talks of The Final Days of Flash while SlashGear says, 'Adobe Edge HTML5 app could eat Flash from the inside.' Many analysts, however, are more sanguine. 'People have shown that you can do animation with HTML5, but it's not nearly as well realized as with Flash,' said James Governor, an industry analyst at RedMonk."

Comments

"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[93 Escort Wagon]

Translation: Many of the privacy-robbing features built into Flash at the behest of advertisers have no good HTML5 analog... yet.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[TheViciousOverWind]

The real problem with this, is that soon advertisers will start making canvas ads instead of flash ads, and then what have end users really gained? The reason that Flash is hated is mostly because it's been misused. And now it will be easy to misuse HTML5/canvas too.
We can now use Javascript to do the same stuff that flash could for many years. Don't take me wrong. I love programming in javascript, and I like that I can now do these things. But what do normal, non-programming users get out of this? That they don't need a plugin? I'd bet most normal users doesn't even know what is flash and what is not. And the way I see it, the canvas-renderer isn't somehow more magic than the flash-engine. Except that it's built into the browser, but you could argue that you could just as well do that with Flash.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's built into the browser, you're guaranteed to have multiple implementations. This is bad for browser developers (duplication of effort) but good for users (competitive pressure). Expect less bugs than with the monoculture of flashplayer.

Then there's the benefit that several of those implementations will be open source. Which means where Flash pukes all over a non-typical sound setup (e.g. using microphone input from a different card than the speaker output), and you have to either reconfigure your system around Flash or wait and pray they fix it in the next update, open source means you can fix it.

Plus you can compile it for your own architecture instead of jumping up and down hoping Adobe will eventually take notice of you, toss you an alpha build, discontinue it, and months later finally give you a beta of the next major version.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Tenebrousedge]

You are not an animator. HTML5 Canvas was not designed for animation. Flash is a better animation tool. That said, no one will argue its best purpose is to adorn the dung-heap of history.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[alostpacket]

I thought the privacy robbing stuff was already there in HTML5 with local storage, and the like. It's the vector rendering animation engine, tools, text rendering, DRM, and ubiquitous video platform that are lagging. Isn't that the crux of some of the new "super" undeletable cookies? They make use of HTML5, JS, fIngerprinting, Flash, regular cookies, and more.

There is also a highly subjective argument to be made that ActionScript far outpaces JavaScript in feature and elegance -- being more akin to C#. (Also possibly performance. It certainly had a JIT first, though Adobe contributed some of the JIT to FF for JavaScript IIRC, but I dont think they use that JIT anymore) . But that's subjective so take it as you will. HTML does have some long held advantages with regards to reflowing content though.

There really are legit reasons to dislike Flash, dont get me wrong -- the privacy controls should be more easily discoverable and integrated with the browser. And it does hog CPU to give performance. But this kinda angry spite seems uninformed and unhelpful. IMHO, if people want Flash to go away, build alternatives, dont complain.

With things like FlashBlock and NoScript we've got it (relatively) easy these days when we want to block unwanted content. But if we removed Flash from the equation, you will just end up having privacy invanding HTML local storage with CPU hogging sites that are renderd completely in a canvas tag. Bad sites and ads aren't bad because of Flash, they are bad because of the motivations behind the people that built them. Those motivations wont change just because of HTML5.

Do people forget the GIFs that used to blink and fly accross the pages of bad sites in the pre-Flash days?

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[sourcerror]

"When it's built into the browser, you're guaranteed to have multiple incompatible implementations. "

FTFY

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe that Chrome does this. Dont they build in Flash and sandbox it? Acrobat Read as well? Why in the world would there be less bugs? Currently all the Browsers HTML5 implementations vary considerably, but Flash is the same for all. I guess it depends on what bugs you are talking about? Could you elaborate? Also hasn't Adobe improved Linux suppot? Is it really a big issue? (Asking honestly because I'm not a linux user so am curious).

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[aztracker1]

What I'd really like is to be able to create a .zip file, with an extension htmlz, or .htpkg or something that has an index.html inside of it as a default point... then have browsers support packagename.htpkg#!/somefile.ext where they request packagename.htpkg, and use that archive for the files within it... That way you can have archived sets of files, html, css, javascript, images etc as a single control set that can be used for in/out of browser usage.

When Adobe first bought Macromedia, I was really hoping that Flash would morph into a container of standards based .svg files, mp3 files, and markup/script files that are interpreted from a contained package. I know that AIR html apps does this, and Silverlight apps do this, even .docx and .odt etc do it.

I don't get why there isn't a standard application package format for html/web applications that has wide browser support. A single request/cached file that can be more readily sandboxed than even a typical website, as it should be expected to be contained, and only communicate via websockets (or some other open communication point).

Just would be nice to see... with a flash advert, like them or hate them, it's just one download.. with canvas ads, you have the html file (iframe?), followed in with the scripts, image resources, etc... yes, this can be inlined with base64 encoding, bloating things out a bit, but still not as smooth as a packaged format standard would be.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[rubypossum]

I would say that having similarities with c# is not going to make a language elegant. I left flash development when they came out with as3 and haven't looked back. JavaScript isn't the most elegant language, but it is one of the most understood out there. And things like coffeescript help where it falls short. As to your concerns about FlashBlock (which I love), browser vendors will add similar features. Just like popup blockers. Remember when there were no popup blockers? Now everybody has one. We just have to wait for (or write) a nocanvas plugin. Cheers

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bring Microsoft into this?

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe's support for Linux isn't half bad these days compared to a couple years ago, as long as you're not running on any non-x86 hardware -- even x86_64 is on-again-off-again (what I was referring to above), but ATM they've got a solid build -- if you don't mind betas. But you wanna run it on your ARM handheld? They have working builds of v10 (v9 shipped on my N900), but will not even talk to you about it unless you're the device manufacturer. Fortunately, it's available for some Android systems, so Android users can always gank the files from another manufacturer's device with the same SoC. On Maemo, even though there's even less porting effort (since it uses a very mainstream userland: X11, pulseaudio, all the same stuff as most desktop distros except architecture and window manager), and it's already been ported, we're SOL for v10... Same goes for the OpenPandora guys, BeagleBoards, whatever -- to say nothing of anyone who thought those old UltraSPARCs their employer was throwing out had plenty of horsepower to surf the web. Adobe laughs at your feeble attempt to resist the culture of disposability.

Regarding bugs, we can constrain the discussion to x86 desktops, and like I said, it's gotten better. But it still has a lot of annoying bugs and deficiencies w/r/t platform support, i.e. v4l vs. v4l2, ALSA vs. OSS4 vs. PulseAudio, and miscellaneous bad interactions when you get just the wrong combination of window manager, compositing manager, and Xorg graphics drivers. But it works all the time for most people (including me, on my most recently install system -- 'bout time!), most of the time for a few (so what if I have to restart my browser thrice a day to have working sound?), and the very few people who encounter serious problems will mostly jump through absurd workaround hoops to make it work for them, so Adobe's better off spending their time elsewhere. Which I can't argue with as a business decision; I just think it'd be grand if 10% of the effort spent on workarounds and troubleshooting could go to fixing or extending the plugin to solve each problem once.

And because the binary plugin's "good enough" on x86, there's almost nobody working on gnash or the various other open-source implementations. So they're mostly busy playing feature catchup, and are currently roughly two versions behind (not all of v8 is supported, but some of v9 is, vs. Flash's v10.x released & v11 beta).

Browsers _could_ be the same scenario, of course, as complicated as they are today -- if HTML5 and ECMAscript were what they are, webkit and Firefox didn't exist, and Opera had Ff's Linux marketshare, I'm not at all sure an open-source browser would ever catch up. However, there _are_ multiple competing browsers implementing more-or-less the same HTML5 stuff (they're adding different new stuff at any given time, but >90% of the stuff they both implement can be used in a compatible way). And Adobe Edge will play an important role in establishing a de facto standard for a subset that must be implemented in the way Edge understands it by any serious browser -- the present lack of such big-name authoring tools is largely to blame for the present wild-west situation IMO. It will never be as homogeneous as the Flash monoculture, but it will be healthier, and I think within a few months from Edge's release we'll see an acceptable level of compatibility between Edge, and the big two (i.e. Ff and Chromium).

And as for what Google Chrome does: they bundle Adobe's flashplayer, with the same sandboxing as other plugins, but AFAIK they don't get to rewrite it at all.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[styrotech]

JavaScript isn't the most elegant language, but it is one of the most understood out there.

It's also one of the most misunderstood languages too :)

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[tlhIngan]

The real problem with this, is that soon advertisers will start making canvas ads instead of flash ads, and then what have end users really gained? The reason that Flash is hated is mostly because it's been misused. And now it will be easy to misuse HTML5/canvas too.

The problem is, Flash has way less customizability than my browser.

With NoScript, I can control where Javascript comes from. That HTML ad? Blocked and rejected. But if I was using some Flash app and it ran an ad, I have no way of controlling it because Flash doesn't offer me that level of control. Or even the ability to let me easily figure out where that offensive element came from so I can manually block it at the firewall.

Plus, if Flash decided to create popups (it can), it's a lot harder for the browser to block it. Right now, I'm not sure if there's anything keeping a Flash ad from taking over the screen other than the generic "Press ESC to return" generated by Flash. If it requires a click, good, but then you'll have a flash ad that on the slightest thing interprets it as a "go full screen" command.

The fact that HTML5 requires the browser user to manually go full screen is a good thing.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[ThePromenader]

Mod parent +3 Funny.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[TheRaven64]

I disagree. I don't bother with NoScript or anything like that, but I always install some plugin on any browser I use that stops Flash from running until I click on it. Flash adverts just show up to me as a grey button. It's much harder to filter canvas elements, because JavaScript scripts all run in the same context. If you disable the canvas element, then it's trivial for other scripts to avoid showing you the rest of the content.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[TheRaven64]

HTML5 Canvas was not designed for animation

I'm pretty sure it is. Canvas lets you draw vector art and composite images (sprites) using a PDF-like display model and and animate them by changing the display based on a timer event. Flash, in contrast, is quite different. It lets you draw vector art and composite images (sprites) using a PDF-like display model and animate them by changing the display based on a timer event.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Flash is one of the clunkiest, least intuitive interfaces out there, and Adobe have had years to improve it. At least with HTML5 anyone can build an animation editor for it, so there'll be some incentive to produce better UIs. The fact that this new Adobe thing already looks better than Flash (I.e. More like After Effects) suggests they're aiming at the general user. So even if Canvas is more basic than Flash, more people will be able to do more stuff with it more easily. That alone should save it from being solely associated with annoying web advertising.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

There really are legit reasons to dislike Flash, dont get me wrong -- the privacy controls should be more easily discoverable and integrated with the browser. And it does hog CPU to give performance. But this kinda angry spite seems uninformed and unhelpful. IMHO, if people want Flash to go away, build alternatives, dont complain.

Read the summary? Canvas and HTML5 are the alternatives and there's not much to compain about. They are less invasive in regards to privacy and performance as well as not being owned by Adobe. Local storage is opt-in and AdBlock's still going to block HTML/JS advertisements as it does Flash ads.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[thomas.galvin]

You're basically describing the ePub format.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[DaVince21]

You can use it on your iWhatever. I guess that's one major advantage.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[fusiongyro]

Not so. Canvas doesn't do sprites. You draw your vectors on the image, but as soon as your draw call returns, there's nothing persistent; no data structure is left around, just a bunch of pixels in an image buffer somewhere. This is one reason Raphael is still gaining developers. It's much easier to manipulate embedded SVG through JavaScript than the canvas.

The canvas tag is much more "fire and forget." There's also no decent scene graph library for canvas yet. Lots of web developers like me writing for-play scene graph libraries (Cake, Amino) but the one game developer that was working on a library for this got bought by Disney and forced in-house (RocketPack).

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[nine-times]

There really are legit reasons to dislike Flash, dont get me wrong -- the privacy controls should be more easily discoverable and integrated with the browser. And it does hog CPU to give performance.

Those aren't the only complaints. It's also essentially proprietary. It creates problems in dealing with text (text isn't necessarily searchable or selectable). Deep linking is still a problem. There are other subtle but serious problems that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Flash is a problem, and at this point the only valid uses that I can think of is video playback or games.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[TheRaven64]

You need to check the spec. Canvas permits compositing images. In a typical implementation, these will be stored as textures on the GPU and composited in hardware (unlike Flash, which does it on the CPU, to keep your laptop nice and warm). You're right about the lack of a scene graph API - canvas is lower level than that. If you want a scene graph, use SVG (or implement a scene graph on top of canvas).

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Do people forget the GIFs that used to blink and fly accross the pages of bad sites in the pre-Flash days?

Actually, a lot of people--and even some website and interface designers, weren't actually "around" in those days. Around as in, surfing the web.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well some people hate flash because it is
1. Proprietary
2. Bulky and slow

Its true that misuse by advertisers is annoying, but that's not the reason people want to see it die.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[ingenuus]

MAFF is similar to what you're looking for (zip storage), but it's really only supported by Mozilla's browsers.
http://maf.mozdev.org/maff-file-format.html

And then there's Microsoft's original MHTML (MIME HTML) that uses a mime format like e-mail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML

It looks like Safari on Macs have the Webarchive format, but they mention that most people just use PDFs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webarchive

ePub has some similarity as Thomas mentions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[eigenstates]

The problem is that it does not produce a canvas. It uses divs and CSS. Add to that the lack of a scripting window and I think what you have here is just a cute, memory intensive animation tool.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Anonymous Coward]

javascript: var c = document.getElementsByTagName('canvas');while(c.length > 0) {c[0].parentNode.removeChild(c[0]);}

here you go..

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[Dog-Cow]

The number of people that hate flash because it's proprietary would barely fill a full length school bus.

Re:"not nearly as well realized as with Flash"

[guruevi]

Why don't you just do it all in HTML? I created a 'web app' in a single HTML file (Requirements were interactive, universal (mobile, desktop, linux, mac, windows) offline access to a database and sending people a directory structure was just unacceptable).

Before that it was an Excel file but then the iPhone came along and Mac's were always left out and Office 2010 eventually ate the VBScript.

I created the full structure and intelligence to fetch the repetitive database stuff in PHP. Then to export it, the CSS was included, the JavaScript serialized and included, images were loaded and encoded in base64 and included and eventually excessive white spaces stripped. A 5MB HTML page that could be seen anywhere including images. I think IE(6) has a problem with it but then what doesn't it have a problem with.

wag the dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

Question: How long before HTML5 is as bloated and slow as Flash?

Re:wag the dog...

[rbrausse]

hopefully never. at the moment I can get rid of unwanted shiny bling-bling with flashblock. as soon as everything is html I'll have to use more sophisticated/complicated countermeasures...

Re:wag the dog...

[DanTheStone]

as soon as everything is html I'll have to use more sophisticated/complicated countermeasures...

Like NoScript? Not that much more complicated.

Re:wag the dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

as soon as everything is html I'll have to use more sophisticated/complicated countermeasures...

Like NoScript? Not that much more complicated.

Was that supposed to be a joke?

Re:wag the dog...

[JMJimmy]

Except they already exist and they're pretty simple.

Adblock Plus + Element Hiding Helper.

Re:wag the dog...

[DaVince21]

Right now, in some aspects, it IS as slow as Flash. Thing is, that's a part that's going to be improved since there's a demand for performance, whereas for Flash it's all up to Adobe to improve performance.

Flash will continue to torture us

[instagib]

... because there a thousands of Web "developers" who are too lazy or too dumb to learn correct code.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to say the same about browser "makers" who have been torturing us for years: ...who are too lazy and too dumb to implement (and agree upon), a single web standard.

I dont blam the flash guys for making crap.. when everybody on the web is trying to push their own agenda.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[dingen]

Why did you put quotes there? Are you suggesting browser makers aren't actually making browsers?

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[amicusNYCL]

Are you saying that Flash is never a good idea to put online? For the past 10-plus years there have been several applications for which Flash is perfectly suited and for which there haven't been any decent alternatives. What are all of the lazy and dumb "developers" supposed to use if Flash is so verboten? If you want an example, use online training courses. Explain how I can create an online training course that takes 12 hours to complete and includes narration, video, non-video animation, other audio, interactions (including drag and drop), and third-party tracking either through a Javascript API (SCORM), or calls to a URL (AICC). Once you have your answer to that, explain how we would have done that using the technology that was available 12 years ago.

Face it, there are plenty of good reasons to use Flash. Like everything else online, advertisers have mostly screwed it up for everyone else.

That being said, Macromedia and Adobe are borderline incompetent with their Flash implementations. Some bugs have been around as long as I've been using it.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Tei]

you mispelled flash developers or designers. These that don't want HTML, to begin first, and Flash give other "option".

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[LavouraArcaica]

That kind of thinking is what will kill Internet as we know it. . Web 'developers' (yes, with ' ') are the kind of people that turned the internet something really different from TV, Radio and other kind of media that only a few people could use. . 'correct code' usually means a code that just a professional could write. And that's not the kind of Internet I want.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the confusion they do make them but they only half bake them.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

What is "correct" code? Do you consider the current state (and I don't mean just one particular subset, but the entire ecosystem) of HTML/JavaScript to be 'correct'?

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[instagib]

Are you saying that Flash is never a good idea to put online?

No - and you already gave a good example of a useful application. But Flash is annoying when used for menus or any other way to access static content, or the entire site is just one big Flash file.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to reply with this:

Me too!

but I am afraid you would miss the point entirely, and think I was sincerely agreeing with you, since that's the way your kind comport themselves.

So instead, I shall drop the sarcasm and speak plainly:
Believe it or not, the internet existed before all you proud non-professionals got dial-up ISPs. And most people (who were actually online then) say it was a better place in most ways. Moreover, if you think the internet, or even the web, is in any significant degree composed of amateur-bodged flash scripts, your delusion is astounding.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

too lazy or too dumb to learn correct code.

Please enlighten us as to what the "correct code" would be for a cross-platform interactive web application that utilizes complex animation, rendering techniques, video, audio, and 3d? Resorting to calling people lazy and dumb just results in you yourself sounding lazy and dumb. Provide a real explanation of your position or stop trolling.

Every example of a "Flash-killing" HTML5 demo I've seen is an absolute pathetic joke. Congratulations, HTML5, you've killed Flash 4.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[instagib]

video, audio, and 3d

Yes, that's what flash is for - multimedia content.
But when Flash get's used for menus, opening links, displaying images, scrolling text, and all the other basic functionality you can implement correctly with HTML/CSS, then it is a PITA: text is either too big or too small, browser font settings are ignored, page doesn't adapt to browser window width, it's slow and unresponsive on weaker machines. Thanks, but no thanks.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[PPH]

The 60W bulb went out in the Easy Bake and we can't get incandescents anymore.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[_4rp4n3t]

Congratulations, HTML5, you've killed Flash 4.

This. For all the ranting about how eeeeevil Flash is, there is still nothing that can touch it when it's used appropriately

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[popo]

Give it a break. How on Earth did you not get modded, Troll? Are you saying that the developers who made YouTube (Flash based), Google Analytics (Flash based) and 99% of games which have taken the web by storm (Flash based), just don't know how to write "correct" code?

Every time somebody sends me a link of something supposedly "impressive" in HTML5, it looks weaker than old FutureSplash 1.0 stuff.

.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[StripedCow]

Actually, I'd blame w3c for providing us with their web-standards that are so complicated that no browser-maker can get them right.

Instead, and hear me out, they should provide us with a more simple standard, like a low-level opcode type of programming language, that is jit-compiled into native code behind the scenes. This code should be so low-level that it has no garbage-collection or anything (so we don't get the sluggishness of Java). Then we should have an OpenGL-type of interface for graphics (and similar for audio, etc.)

With such a basic layer, programmers could program their own DOM models, and their own javscript-like languages if they want, in fact they could even make their own webbrowsers, and their code would just be compatible.

In fact, I've got my hopes on google's NaCl project, although I think their interface for rendering stuff is still too fancy.

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[TheRaven64]

I'm not sure what era you're talking about. Was the web better in the Geocities era, when every other web page had a dozen animated GIFs and a MIDI background track? Or was it better before then? Because I still have a map of the Internet from before that era, and it shows all of the web sites in the UK - well under a hundred of them, and one was the Swansea University Surfing Society (some members were physicists and one of the lecturers got back from a trip to CERN just after the Web was launched, with a copy of the httpd code to play with) - hardly a high quality experience. Check the WayBack Machine for a copy of that site if you don't believe me.

Or do you mean back before the web, when the Internet was used for (very slowly) transferring text via NNTP?

Re:Flash will continue to torture us

[Anonymous Coward]

So blame the people creating those sites, not the technology. Adobe did not hold a gun to web-developers' heads and say "make this menu with Flash".

Uh oh

[MimeticLie]

Adobe Edge? I think someone is about to receive a lawsuit from Tim Langdell.

Re:Uh oh

[nerdyalien]

Also from this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge

Re:Uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Edge is the codename, not the final product name (much like Apollo was the codename for AIR

Not with IE still hanging around

[Billly Gates]

Don't get me wrong IE 9 is really great and supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 and IE 10 looks like a full contender with Chrome/Firefox for sure. The problem is most users are still running IE 7 and 8. Add to the corporate users who still browse the net with IE 6 and you have a problem.

Most web developers used flash as a work around with these browsers. The problem is besides a few tech professionals does anyone upgrade IE? Until then most webmasters should stick with flash. Oddly, I do see corporate crappy intranet sites switching from activeX to HTML5 but I do not know how entrenched Sharepoint is to activeX unfortunately. I never used it.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharepoint only has one ActiveX control, the DataGrid view which is so shitty it's almost worthless anyway.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[dingen]

IE7 doesn't have a lot of market share at all, IE9 is already topping it according to NetApplications. Most IE-users are on IE8 right now, so they're not that far away of using a proper browser, really. It's just a matter of a little time and those users will be on IE9, which as you correctly state offers a lot things other browsers have been shipping for a long time, like HTML5, CSS3 and a decent Javascript engine.

IE6 is a problem when you look at the numbers. The thing is however, I haven't shipped a single website in the past 12 months that supports IE6 and I had literally 0 complaints from any client. I develop websites for all sorts of businesses (including schools) and I don't see any of them using IE6 anymore. I don't know who is still using it, but nobody I'm in contact with anyway.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[pavon]

It's just a matter of a little time and those users will be on IE9

No they won't. You can't install IE9 on Windows XP and according to your same source half of all windows users are using XP. They will continue to do so until they get a new computer, and if they haven't moved away from IE yet, they are unlikely to do so in the future. It will be a good 3 years before you can use HTML5 and expect it to work on most computers.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[Lennie]

The biggest problem for IE9 adoption is obvious: Microsoft has no IE9 for Windows XP.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[kevinmenzel]

And as hard drives or power supplies die on consumer computers, that becomes less and less of a problem.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[sgbett]

All of the NHS. It's a nightmare.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[Lanteran]

IE6 has less than 2% usage in most of the western world, and IE7 is lower than 6. Really you only have to worry about IE8 unless you're targeting the far east.

Re:Not with IE still hanging around

[smash]

Given that the average life expectancy for a PC is 3-5 years, and microsoft stopped shipping XP in volume about 3 years ago, XP won't be around much longer.

Why didn't they just...

[Anonymous Coward]

...update Dreamweaver? Isn't that Adobe's web authoring tool already?

Or did it get so bloated they had to drag it behind the bushes and shoot it and then start from scratch?

Re:Why didn't they just...

[dingen]

Adobe Edge isn't done from scratch. It actually looks a lot like After Effects.

Re:Why didn't they just...

[sourcerror]

I expect that soon their Flash authoring tool would be able to generate HTML5 output as well. Also the difference between Javascript and Actionscript is the DOM/libraries. (Both are ECMA script.)

Re:Why didn't they just...

[icebraining]

While they're both ECMAScript dialects, Actionscript has a few features that don't exist in JS, like classes, static typing and modules. Of course, you can compile that down to JS, but then again, you can even compile .NET assemblies to JS.

The Adobe Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

The Adobe Edge? No thank you. I will wait for Adobe Bono.

Try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try it. It consists of squares and text. ... this is not the derpy flash killer you were looking for.

Really though, it lacks documentation.

And HTML5 isn't going to fix the situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

The situation won't improve until JavaScript, and JavaScript-like languages like ActionScript, are no longer used.

There's just something about JavaScript that really attracts fools. Maybe it's the horrible semantics, or the lack of sensible typing, or the half-assed attempt at prototype-based OO, or the poor performance, or the lack of proper namespaces, or one of its many, many other flaws. Hell, maybe it's all of those problems put together. Whatever the cause, something about JavaScript really gets idiots excited.

With JavaScript playing such a core role within HTML5, there's clearly no hope that the situation will ever improve. It's a problem that'll be with us 10 years from now, and likely far longer than that, too.

Re:And HTML5 isn't going to fix the situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's just something about the internet that really attracts fools. Maybe it's the fact that any idiot can throw together a page and get it hosted for a few bucks per month.

There, FTFY.

Re:And HTML5 isn't going to fix the situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the complaints you list for JS aren't applicable to AS. Nothing wrong with JS either, it has its pros and cons like any language.

Re:And HTML5 isn't going to fix the situation.

[amicusNYCL]

Whatever the cause, something about JavaScript really gets idiots excited.

I'm pretty sure it's that whole "change a page on the fly" thing that works in all modern browsers. If you want to write a spec using a better scripting language and submit it to the W3C and browser vendors, no one is stopping you. A lot of good things can be done with browser scripting, it's not the developers' fault that everyone standardized on Javascript instead of whatever language you think about at night while you're touching yourself.

Re:And HTML5 isn't going to fix the situation.

[popo]

ActionScript is no longer ANYTHING like JavaScript. Argument: Fail.

Adobe IS Flash

[PCM2]

OK, so why does anyone think Adobe is busy making an HTML5 tool if it thinks HTML5 is going to kill Flash? Hello? Adobe already makes Dreamweaver. It also already makes Flash. The summary reads as though upstart Adobe is running in to steal Flash's lunch, when Flash's lunchbox has Adobe's name on it.

Re:Adobe IS Flash

[wagnerrp]

The simple fact is that HTML5 does not support DRM. If it wants to remain an open architecture, able to be implemented by anyone, it can never support DRM. That is why Flash has nothing to worry about until something better AND closed source comes along.

Re:Adobe IS Flash

[pavon]

OK, so why does anyone think Adobe is busy making an HTML5 tool if it thinks HTML5 is going to kill Flash?

Because HTML5 is going to take some of Flash's market share (more and more as capabilities improve), and they would rather transition to selling HTML5 tools than to loose all those customers.

Re:Adobe IS Flash

[exomondo]

OK, so why does anyone think Adobe is busy making an HTML5 tool if it thinks HTML5 is going to kill Flash?

Does Adobe make any money from flash outside of the content creation suite?

go figure

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're telling me that an early beta build of a new program used to author files for an incomplete spec isn't as capable as a fully-proprietary system that's been around for 15+ years? I'm shocked!

Flash is here forever

[Anonymous Coward]

it's SWF that's going away.

C programmers will continue to torture us

[alostpacket]

Because there are thousands of new "developers" unwilling to learn correct FORTRAN.

/Silly flamebait is silly

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know what is and what is said are two different things.

Flash, so under-utilized.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a way to simply serve up raster video, Flash is an absolute waste of coding. It's like building up a shopping mall just to sell snow cones out of a stand in front. Talk to me when people start using VECTOR video that is photo realistic, now THAT will be worthy of using Flash.

It's funny how everyone here thinks they are so smart, yet they have no idea what the true capabilities of Flash are for: vector based video.

Re:Flash, so under-utilized.

[smash]

Because just about zero people care about vector based video.

Re:Flash, so under-utilized.

[TheRaven64]

Not sure why you're marked funny - maybe the photorealistic part - but things like StrongBad Email use Flash for exactly that. It's a lot lower bandwidth to distribute cartoons as vector animations than as raster video. Unfortunately, while the Flash authoring tools are good for that, the Flash player is pretty bad.

Re:Flash, so under-utilized.

[naz404]

Vector-based video: you just described Flash animations and that's what Flash excels at.

HTML5 - Flash + PHP?

[Doc Ruby]

I have a Flash/PHP app (with webservices/DB backend) that was written in those frontend languages only because there was no HTML5 yet. But now there is. What's the best way to go about porting it to HTML5? In fact, what's the best way to go about reverse engineering it into a spec for porting to HTML5? The legacy app was written over a few years on demand from a basic PHP app, but there's not a lot of decent specs for the current version. Are there consultancies in NYC that will do this for me?

Re:HTML5 - Flash + PHP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest question is the method that is being used to communicate data between the server and the flash client. Is it xml? AMF? SOAP? JSON? Name-value pairs?

Then you can build JavaScript client that can communicate using that data format, and create the HTML and CSS to display it.

Re:HTML5 - Flash + PHP?

[Doc Ruby]

XML, SOAP and JSON, depending on when the webservice was written over the past few years.

But what's got to happen first is someone's got to extract the architecture from the current Flash+PHP app. And populate that architecture with features and the APIs that will be retained to support them. Which sounds like a consultant's gig. Any real info architects in Flash in NYC to do it?

examples don't work

[__aazsst3756]

I tried to look at their examples, but with noscript running the page was basically static. Does html5 rely on javascript? Or is adobe incompetent at web page design?

Re:examples don't work

[The Dawn Of Time]

Is you a grown retard?

Re:examples don't work

[Matthew Fabb]

Adobe Edge right now is mainly used to make animations, while DreamWeaver is their tool for web page design. With HTML5, unless using CSS3 transitions, Javascript is generally required for animations. Adobe is using jQuery to animate the content, so if JavaScript is turned off you won't see anything.

I love Flash.

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I knew C/C++ quite well and didn't want to learn a new language. But I learned Flash in under 1 week. Flash is actually easier than C/C++ for a lot of things, so you end up writing code faster. With a garbage collection tool, it is harder to get a memory leak. If you know C/C++, it is extremely worth it to buy Flash Builder 4.5

Here is a free to play game I wrote which took me 1 year in Flash. It will remind you of Gauntlet 2.

Re:I love Flash.

[JackAxe]

Very Nice! Same here about Flash. AS3 is my personal favorite language. I also know Java and Objective C, and also scripting languages like JavaScript of course. I studied C and C++ examples to learn code optimization and what a difference it made. :O

Ok, here's reality

[Kagetsuki]

Flash is a very capable platform which enables a lot of things Java set out to do, along with an extremely tight integration to designers tools. It's popular amongst designers because if you've ever seen the work-flow it's amazingly well done - unparalleled. AS3 as a language is much nicer and ore robust than JavaScript and can be developed using the free Flex compiler, which is written (strangely enough?) in Java so it's completely cross platform. Flash can also do a lot of things HTML5/JS can't do like real-time video and audio manipulation, access a web cam/mic, has a full featured 3D API with hardware acceleration and software fallback (including using WebGL as a fallback if available) coming out in version 11 - beta available now.

I'd keep talking because up until now I've found the Flash platform very nice. That was up until the BSA started baseless threatening me (see the news from a few days ago), and with Adobe part of the BSA they've lost my loyalty altogether and shouldn't expect me to support them anymore. They made some great tools, but until they stop being shit heads claiming everyone (including paying customers!) steals their stuff they can go fuck themselves. Attitudes like that and their generally half-assed approach to open source, along with persistent stability issues in their player is the reason why the majority of slashdot users will continue to hate them despite the quality of their tool set.

Why is it so difficult for people to understand...

[Targon]

Flash and HTML 5 both have their place, and HTML 5 does NOT replace Flash for more complex applications. Yes, animations are better left to HTML 5, but guess what, Flash is about more than animated banner advertisements, and it can do many things that HTML 5 just is not able to do. Just accept that, and stop complaining about how Flash is the evil that has caused all of the problems in your life, because it's not.

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[KingMotley]

There really isn't a whole lot that flash can do that HTML5+Javascript can't. Perhaps you need to look at it better.

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[DarwinSurvivor]

Care to give ANY examples...?

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[TheRaven64]

It's about the low-hanging fruit. Flash is a rich multimedia platform, but it's also used to make up for limitations of the browser. The reason that it's installed on over 90% of web browsers is that lots of sites use it for things that lots of people want (e.g. little games, YouTube video). If you can do all of these things without Flash, then there's much less of a point in having the plugin installed - it just increases the browser's attack surface for no benefit. This then makes Flash a much less attractive target for the few things where it is the best tool, because it no longer has the 'deploy anywhere' thing that Java aimed for and Flash actually achieved.

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[Double Drop]

Here's a few off the top of my head:

No touch interface support (full API in Flash, very early stages of development with HTML5)
No alpha channel support on top of video
No dynamic objects (captions / titles etc) or navigational items on top of video
Can't interact (e.g. record from) a webcam
Can't record audio from your microphone
Can't create desktop applications with HTML5
Very limited set of codecs (audio and video) in HTML5
No built in color correction
Can't handle binary data
No peer to peer support
No binary network sockets
No progressive streaming support (i.e. you can't jump into the middle of a video without downloading everything to that point)
No DRM support
No accessibility support
No Full Screen mode

In addition for most Flash games of any level of sophistication, recreating them in JS + HTML5 will be an incredibly painful experience for developers. AS3 has evolved into a robust, full featured language that well supports the needs of developers.

Interesting, but...

[DaVince21]

The examples look pretty cool. However... The ad example alone takes about 60% of both my CPU cores. Both HTML5 technology and EDGE have a fair bit of optimization to do before it becomes actually useful.

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[Anonymous Coward]

There really isn't a whole lot that flash can do that HTML5+Javascript can't. Perhaps you need to look at it better.

Just look at most web games. HTML5+Javascript can't replicate 90% of them and probably never will.

Not really

[Kartu]

No, the reason I hate flash (and PDF) is that on top of Windoze holes, I now have Adobe flash holes, and unlike Windoze holes, they Adobe affects all my browsers.

Re: HTML5 slow and bloated as Flash

[naz404]

It already is. Check out OK GO's new gimmicky HTML5 website experiment slash music video and watch it bring your system to its knees. http://www.allisnotlo.st/

Oh, only runs on Chrome too even though it "claims" to be HTML5 (meaning standards-compliant, meaning can run on Opera and Firefox -> I suspect these browsers can run it, except that the lazy devs hardcoded Chrome checks into it).

Check out Bjork's new funky HTML5 site too:
http://bjork.com/

I pity the foo who tries to run that on a 600MHz machine.

HTML5 is actually slower and more bloated than Flash. The problem with Flash is not the runtime, it's the abusive content creators who don't know how to optimize content and leave you with massive preloaders, etc. (Looking at you, bloated Nike Sites!)

To see what I'm talking about how slow & bloated HTML5 is, check out Iain Lobb's Bunnymark benchmarking experiment and compare:

* the HTML5 version -> http://iainlobb.com/bunnies/bunnies.html
* with the Flash version -> http://blog.iainlobb.com/2010/11/display-list-vs-blitting-results.html

Almost everything you see being done in HTML5 today is something that's been done in Flash from 5-8 years ago. So, "the future" is actually pretty meh, retro. Oh, and am already hating HTML5/JS/CSS3 with the now unblockable obnoxious floating banner ads. At least with Flash, you can Flashblock em easily.

Hey, If Angry Birds runs in HTML5 then....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a clear sign that it is the future.

http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

Re:Why is it so difficult for people to understand

[KingMotley]

Lol, not much of a web programmer are you? Which web game, or are you trying to hide behind an obscure reference to one out of the million web games and I'm supposed to guess which one you are referring to?