
Why Flash is doomed - gnosis
http://ossguy.com/?p=226
======
InclinedPlane
Flash isn't doomed quite yet. Flash supplanted java as the primary form of
interactivity on the web in the early years, and javascript + html has been
making inroads but flash still has a significant advantage. Pure
HTML/CSS/JS/Canvas/SVG designs are nearly as capable as flash, but there are
still serious design defects in the system, major problems with client support
and standardization, and a distinct lack of tooling.

Today it takes a not insignificant amount of effort just to make a simple text
box with a border having 4 rounded corners that displays correctly for >90% of
a site's visitors using pure html/css techniques. Even if every internet user
upgraded to a modern, standards compliant, CSS3 supporting browser tomorrow,
there would still be a substantial hill to climb for designing good looking
pure html/css sites, it would just be a slightly smaller hill.

Almost certainly this will change, standards will get better, browser
marketshare will continue to skew toward newer browsers, tooling will improve,
but all of these things will take time.

This is not a defense of flash, I don't think flash is good for the web even
today, but until the very real problems of pure html/css design are put to
rest (CSS4?) flash will still be seen as a go-to technology for a lot of
things people want to do with the web.

~~~
adriand
I think Flash is going to suffer because a lot of people just don't want to
develop with it any more, for all sorts of reasons, not least the ones that
have been popping up on HN lately (Apple products like the iPhone, non-OSS,
etc.) There are tons of developers who would jump at the chance to switch to
an alternative, and there are probably lots of developers who are reluctant to
learn Flash for these reasons, but still want to be able to program nicely
performing animations, interfaces and games.

I fall into the latter category: Flash programming appeals to me because of
what you can do with it, but I'm not interested in making a substantial
investment of time into a platform that I would rather see replaced by OSS
alternatives. (For similar reasons, I'm not planning on learning Obj-C to
develop for the iPhone - I'd prefer to get good at developing mobile web
applications using web technologies).

The gradual shift in developer attention away from Flash over to alternatives
is going to chip away at Flash over time, but I agree that it's going to take
quite a long time.

Ultimately I still find it hard to believe how far behind web browsers are
when it comes to graphics. The stuff I was running on my 386 back in the day
pretty much destroys anything you can do in a web browser. It's kind of sad
when everybody gets super pumped that you can run a tiny, glitchy version of
Wolfenstein 3D in a web browser. It's great that it runs. But shouldn't we be
at full-screen Quake levels by now?

~~~
InclinedPlane
I agree, as do many other principled web-devs. Flash is not "of the web" even
though today it is very much _in_ the web. One hopes that the innate
advantages of pure html/css/js designs will provide sufficient momentum to
push the tooling and the rest to a state where it's absolutely better than
flash.

But that won't happen tomorrow, and probably not for several years.

------
benologist
What a laughable article. It's doomed because the iPhone doesn't have it and a
tiny subset of Flash's capabilities are matched by HTML/CSS/JS?

The only area that Flash is even remotely threatened is delivering video which
may shift away from Flash over next decade, but that's assuming Adobe doesn't
do anything at all to keep that market.

Many mobile devices are getting full-featured flash players soon/now -
[http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/2009...](http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200910/100509AFPforMobileDevicesandPCs.html)

The 'slow nature of proprietry software' ... in comparison to web
standards???? The current standards for HTML/CSS/JS are a decade old, and
HTML5 is years away from broad adoption.

While web standards lag years - many sometimes - behind our evolving
requirements there will be space for Flash and other plugins that more rapidly
cater to new trends and technologies.

~~~
est
iPhone is the new IE6.

HTML5 is the new <applet> which no one will bother install.

There is a common fallacy among developers, we all assume what we like must be
also liked by end-users and consumers.

~~~
gnosis
No, actually I've come to learn that what I hate will be what's most liked by
end-users and consumers.

~~~
est
Call it time lag :)

------
keefe
"efforts like mine would reduce the number of sites using Flash and eventually
eliminate non-standard technologies like Flash from the web."

This is just totally stupid. No, no a bunch of opinionated tech snobs not
installing flash is never going to impact the market enough to impact the
language. The fact is that the new flash VM is actually very good and delivers
a sophisticated UI framework that is actually very pleasant to work with.
There is a movement to merge AS3 with actionscript as well. The reality is
that we're all just writing distributed applications with increasingly thick
clients.

~~~
Locke1689
_The fact is that the new flash VM is actually very good and delivers a
sophisticated UI framework that is actually very pleasant to work with._

The Flash VM is shit on everything but Windows. Anyone who thinks that it is a
well written piece of software is deluding themselves.

~~~
rabidgnat
In the Flash VM's defense, the new alpha releases work pretty well on Ubuntu
9.10 x64. My laptop still can't handle two Youtube videos at once, but there's
a lot less flickering and I haven't seen the 'flash crashed' gray square in a
while

------
dpcan
I will argue Flash is far from dead.

Just this week I used Flash.

A Client wanted to flip through photos, have words fade in over a period of
time, and at the end, the logo was to fly in, glow, and then blend into the
background.

This was a perfect place to use Flash.

Would I have done this in HTML and Javascript? No. Would I have created it in
some other software and exported it as a video? No. It came to a few Kb in
size when all finished and looked fantastic.

I look at it this way:

Aftereffects is to Video as Flash is to a Web Page.

Your goal is to create something awesome, but if you suck at the program,
you'll end up with crap.

If you think that throwing out Flash will take the annoying ads and bad user
interfaces of the world with it you are dreaming.

Flash is a nice system for creating some great animations and UI's and I don't
see any reason for it to die.

~~~
ams6110
What do you do for people like me who browse with plugins disabled but
Javascript allowed?

~~~
ryanpetrich
Or people like me who just want to get to the content and don't care about the
fancy effects?

~~~
elblanco
If you are anything like me, just substitute "data" for "content" and we're on
the same page.

I think lots of people don't actually want to make their content/data easily
available to others.

------
param
Its interesting to see an article one year after it being published; and see
how things turn out. Flash still seems to be pretty pervasive even today.

------
poppysan
Are there no pro-flash devs? I for one love as3. It made flash so much
lighter, more manageable, and far more developer friendly. As of today there
are no solutions to match flash's breadth of capabilities, and I would be sad
to see it go...

------
Dbug
I'm really surprised that those here don't seem to be placing much importance
on the numerous security holes that Flash has brought to all platforms. The
first serious one I'd heard of wasn't fixed for like a year and a half? How do
people get the notion that a vulnerability that isn't see use in mass-scale
exploits doesn't matter? The holes exploited selectively can certainly be a
serious threat to industry or government.

To the developers that feel no choice but to use Flash, I suggest you make
sure your sites use Javascript from a minimal number of domains because
cautious users aren't going to enable them in NoScript when a dozen show up.
It might also help that any domains needed beyond that of the site have names
which give away their function.

Surfing as securely as possible includes enabling added functionality very
selectively. Make sure that when you test your sites they're usable to people
running Firefox with NoScript, with little or no granting of permissions.

------
danielrhodes
"Free/libre/open-source software advocate and standards proponent"

These people are the vegans of the internet.

~~~
robotron
More like the "this is the year of the Linux desktop" people.

~~~
melling
...the year of the Linux phone. Android arrives in a big way. We're saving the
desktop for last. :-)

~~~
nailer
The desktop wars are over. The web is the platform now. You should put your
energy into making sure that platform stays open.

------
Osmose
I just recently started working with FlashPunk (<http://flashpunk.net/>), a
really cool and simple library for game development using AS3 and Flex.

Game development in Flash isn't going away for a LONG time, methinks.

------
yason
Aside from the online games segment Flash still seems to be the necessary evil
mostly to show video.

Let's see what widespread HTML5 will do to it, codec licensing issues
notwithstanding :)

