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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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

[dingen]

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

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

[PPH]

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

Uh oh

[MimeticLie]

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

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...

[JMJimmy]

Except they already exist and they're pretty simple.

Adblock Plus + Element Hiding Helper.

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.

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:Not with IE still hanging around

[Lennie]

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

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

[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.