
HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? - 10ren
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Development&articleId=9134422&taxonomyId=11
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anigbrowl
How many more threads on this nebulous question?!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661030>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=679886> ...and several other related
threads.

Here is the answer: Yes, if enough people adopt it sufficiently fast. But they
probably won't. The end.

Here is the meta answer: if sufficient articles are written on the subject,
recession-weary programmers will learn the new thing to gain an edge because
they're worried about developing for a dying platform, and the more innovation
will take place on the new platform than the old. In that regard, the
recession is good for HTML5 because it raises the economic stakes for
developers.

~~~
timdorr
A big, key component is the creation of proper tools for building HTML 5 apps.
If someone could start building an HTML 5 tool that makes simple Flash-style
animations as simple to build as Flash itself, that would dramatically
increase uptake. As it is right now, you really need to be a programmer to use
it.

Microsoft has realized this with Silverlight and has working on these kinds of
tools for the next release. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more
use of it once those tools are out there (which I'm fine with, since it seems
faster than Flash in my experience).

~~~
cjbos
Right now the biggest industry tool for building standard-based websites is
still Dreamweaver from Adobe.

Interesting to see if they will be quick to add HTML5 features to Dreamweaver
to stay ahead of the curve, or try to protect the Flash platform by being slow
to add the features.

~~~
10ren
Adobe really impress me as a company who has been through that territory a few
times, starting with fonts in postscript, way back in the mid 80's I think,
only 2-3 years after the company's formation. With their recent(ish)
acquisition of Flash (Macromedia), they also opened up the Flash fileformat
and protocol (yeah, flash is an open standard), which seems to me to have been
intended to deflate nascent open source alternatives. (If you haven't heard of
them, it's measure of the success of Adobe's strategy.)

I think Adobe is adding support for HTML5 as we speak (or and perhaps a
standalone product); that it will only release it when it is strategically
advantageous to Adobe; that it will protect Flash by improving it beyond the
features available in HTML5. Note how Photoshop has managed to stay ahead of
the Gimp.

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flashstillalive
HTML5 and JS, as-is, don't quite match all the capabilities of Flash(perhaps
Silverlight too, but I have less familiarity there). This is not to belittle
the fact that the feature gap is definitely narrowing, but as long as the
incumbent Adobe can continue adding strong reasons to stay on Flash and Flash
supports "the majority" of client platforms, support isn't going to completely
crumble.

In Flash 10 the features have included optimizations in the form of typed
arrays, some 3D+shader support, and fully client-side file save and load
operations. These things are all missing in our present-to-near-future HTML/JS
platform, so I think Adobe knows the plot here quite well.

~~~
moe
Don't forget Flex/AIR that let you develop hybrids for the browser and
desktop.

Flash has slowly matured out of the "punch the monkey"/videoplayer/games niche
over the last years and the >90% installed userbase is not going anywhere
soon.

I despise adobe and the various problems (linux plugin) like the next guy. But
still I'm using it for a lot of frontend work - simply because creating a RIA
with HTML and Javascript is like peeling your eyes out with a spoon.

HTML5 won't change that fundamentally, at best it's a babystep into a welcome
direction.

~~~
moe
Downvotes without comment are just lovely. I realize this is not a popular
opinion ("OMG, he defends flash!"). But unless you have worked with both
HTML/JS _and_ Flash/Flex it'd be great if you could at least add a comment to
your vote.

~~~
WilliamLP
Agreed. I work with Flash developers, and the way they work is so many light
years different from how web programmers work that I wonder how anyone can
think it's even comparable to HTML/JS at all.

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billybob
I think the only thing that can hold up HTML5 - like other web standards - is
IE. But as others have noted, IE has tiny market share on mobile devices, and,
I suspect, less among young people than old. So here is a winning scenario:
mobile web use continues to grow. Sites that target young demographics use
HTML5, and their core users are fine with it. As they grow in popularity, IE
is forced to support the standard as it becomes obvious that it's "that sucky
browser" if it doesn't.

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GHFigs
What is this obsession with things killing other things? It doesn't even make
sense metaphorically.

~~~
buugs
It does, as death is basically being obsolete in the technical world.

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DannoHung
Why hasn't anyone developed a plugin for Internet Explorer that loads a modern
rendering engine?

That way, getting someone to install an HTML5 compliant browser would be as
simple as downloading the Flash plugin.

~~~
WilliamLP
Then you'd have to get IE6 users to install the plugin. The fact that they
don't bother to upgrade in the first place tells you something.

~~~
DannoHung
But they'll go to the Flash website to install the new plugin when it tells
them to.

I think it's the difference between a little dialog helpfully pointing the way
to the software they need to use (and the icon that they click on still being
the same) and having to actively seek out an upgrade.

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diN0bot
flagged as duplicate and dumb.

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sarvesh
No. This is the fifth story about HTML 5 that has made it to the front page in
the last 24 hours and as much as I want to it to replace Flash and Silverlight
realistically speaking it won't happen anytime soon. If anybody really
believes that IE will implement HTML 5 anytime soon they seem to have a very
short memory. Like it or not unless Microsoft decides to implement HTML 5 it
isn't going to take off.

~~~
megaduck
I'm not so sure that IE is that important for forward-looking development. It
has a rapidly diminishing marketshare on the desktop, and that trend looks
likely to continue. Firefox has a staggering amount of momentum right now, and
Safari is gaining as well.

Moreover, IE has no presence on the iPhone, Palm, Symbian, or Android. That's
tens of millions of new devices that Microsoft has zero leverage over. Unless
they pull a real miracle out of their hat with the upcoming Windows Mobile,
Microsoft is going to be a bit player in the uber-important mobile market for
the foreseeable future.

IE will likely linger for a long time, but at this point it's looking a lot
like Novell NetWare ten years ago: still big, but not driving the market.

~~~
edw519
"IE will likely linger for a long time, but at this point it's looking a lot
like Novell NetWare ten years ago: still big, but not driving the market."

Sounds like you forget to include the 100 million enterprise desktops locked
down to ie by their employers.

~~~
megaduck
Actually, that's what makes them like NetWare. If IE fails to keep up, those
dominos will eventually fall, albeit slowly.

There's still huge NetWare shops (like the California Energy Commission), but
they're ever-so-slowly dropping away. Install base doesn't matter. Growth
rates do.

