

Can flash be saved? - walkandre
http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/30/can-flash-be-saved/
another nail in the coffin
======
benologist
I don't think Flash is at all threatened by the iPhone and iPad not supporting
it. The owners of those devices are a tiny but vocal minority who may never be
able to use Flash on those devices, but that's the choice they make by buying
a device they have artificial control over. Flash itself is absolutely
entrenched in the internet and unlikely to disappear because however many
millions, out of a billion, can't use it.

You only have to browse down as far as the #2 website in the world, Facebook,
to see a site that has extraordinary use for Flash and revenue and businesses
built around it - Zynga is practically _printing_ money.

Go down to #4 and you're at YouTube, who are going to be using Flash for the
next decade while HTML5 trickles down to an audience that doesn't care and
won't even notice when it stops being Flash.

Further down the list you see MySpace at #15, a site which has ties to
musicians (generous use of the word) and many millions of users who embed
their own or others' music on their profiles in .. Flash.

#29 is a live cam streaming porn site, unlikely to be replaced anytime soon by
a non-Flash technology.

Flash isn't "just" video, it's a richer platform than HTML/CSS/JS, both now
and next-generation versions, and it's used prominently by some of the most-
trafficked sites on the net and less prominently by most of them.

HTML/CSS/JS is an _insanely_ slow moving set of standards. Everybody's holding
their breath for HTML5 to "be everything they need" ... and it's going to do a
lot and it will be, for a while.

But it's also going to be a standard for a very, very long time and technology
isn't going to stand still just because the W3C can't keep up.

~~~
glhaynes
As the ratio of Flash-having to non-Flash-having devices decreases, more and
more sites will have to consider how much money they're leaving on the table
by not supporting them.

For some this will be "easy" -- if you're a video site, serve up your vids in
HTML5 <video> in addition to Flash. We've already seen YouTube and Vimeo take
their first steps in this direction; Hulu appears to be going this way too.

If you're Farmville, it's harder. But would it really cost Farmville more to
have a team rewrite their app in HTML than it would to not support all the
people on non-Flash devices that want to play their game and will instead play
something else? Perhaps today... 2 years from now, I strongly doubt it. Keep
in mind, Apple's devices aren't the only devices that don't have Flash: Flash
availability is actually decreasing on the web. And you _know_ Farmville's
CEO's non-techy spouse is gonna get an iPad. If Farmville's CTO hasn't already
priced out what a move to HTML would cost, they're negligent.

~~~
elai
For something as dynamic as farm ville, what is more likely is just porting a
farm ville client to iPhone/iPad vs. painfully recreating it in HTML so it can
work badly on a smartphone screen. Most facebook apps in the beginning were
HTML based. One of zynga's early, successful apps was mafia wars, a purely
html game. The decision to create farmville in flash was completely
intentional.

~~~
mortenjorck
This trend is going to be massively increased by Adobe's addition of an iPhone
compiler to Flash CS5 (barring capricious behavior on Apple's part to exclude
these non-XCode-compiled binaries from the App Store, in which case, _war_ ).

Ironically, this will likely go further to decrease the use of the Flash
player than anything Adobe has ever done.

------
statictype
>Could Nokia help Adobe out? No. The web elite don’t have Nokia phones and
don’t care about Nokia.

I assume by 'web elite', he means 'people that he knows in the United States'.

Nokia is incredibly popular in Asia and Europe.

FWIW, Youtube has a mobile flash version that runs in my Nokia browser and it
works great - better than the default video viewer that ships with the
handset.

------
9oliYQjP
Why should Adobe save Flash? They make money be selling developer tools. They
don't necessarily need to save the Flash format. Their main dilemma is
ensuring that sales of their tools does not drop, and instead continues to
increase. One tactic I think they should pursue, is to make sure their
developer tools can export to formats that consumer devices do support. If I
were Adobe I would aggressively be pursuing a single checkbox build option for
Flash projects to be exported to HTML5/JS/CSS not unlike how Apple implemented
universal binaries. That would leapfrog them so far ahead of the competition
that are stuck with more primitive tools to accomplish the same job that there
would still be value in buying their tools.

~~~
gte910h
I agree wholeheartedly.

The iphone development target is the first step of many. I predict they'll be
investing in OSS developers to support their eventual CSS/HTML 5 target they
make the flash toolkit spit out as well after the iphone thing is working.

------
thrill
hopefully not

~~~
mortenjorck
I don't like Flash being used for ads, I don't like it being used for
informational sites, I'd just as soon see Flash video replaced with HTML5, but
I really hope Flash doesn't die. It's fun to develop for, and when it's
actually used for appropriate situations (accounting for about 5% of actual
usage, I know), it's pretty effective.

