

Jump back in time with HTML5 - ThomPete
http://www.flashlab.com/html5/

======
ugh
Yeah, sure, you can do loads of awesome stuff with Flash. I think no one ever
disputed that.

But are websites which use Flash for some of their important features really
“the most awesome and innovative websites”? I, frankly, can only think of one,
and that’s YouTube.

All the websites which make the web the web, seem, to me, not be dependent on
Flash. eBay, amazon, Google, Facebook. And so on. Potential doesn’t matter so
much when you don’t need the features.

Flash might die or it might not – but users (developers not so much, I think
that’s perfectly alright) will have the ability to choose! Adobe should be
super motivated to get mobile Flash right and Android is a viable competitor
against iOS. (It’s really nice that history is not repeating itself. No
utterly lame competitors like in the MP3 player market where a lack of
competition lead Apple to produce the lamest iPods ever – except for the iPod
touch, of course, the best iPod ever).

I will wait and see and not be too upset either way.

~~~
ThomPete
What makes that the web the web is that everything is possible (even if it's
illegal)

~~~
ugh
(Oh no! I didn’t want to cause some discussion about what’s the most important
thing about the web. Really not! Those things tend to get ugly. That was a
really bad phrase I picked there. What I meant was that many of the websites
they linked to were niche websites focused on nice presentation. None of the
websites everyone knows uses Flash for a major feature. I at least don’t know
of any except YouTube.)

~~~
ThomPete
I 100% agree with you.

But I think the point is that the things that you can do with Flash today are
the things that HTML5 might do in the future.

But to be quite honest I find the whole stacking HTML5 up against Flash to be
lame anyway.

If anything Flash is a much lesser worthy competitor to the apps which in
themselves are not well known.

But you are right. Let's not get into a discussion about the web as such :)

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RyanMcGreal
I enjoy Apple-bashing as much as the next guy, but the execution here is
sloppy-joe. For example, the sentence, "Due to the slow processor rich
internet content will not play very smooth" could really have benefited from a
decent editor.

Also, using Flash to achieve a simple mouseover on the side-by-side
comparisons means I can't open the links in new tabs. That pisses me off as a
user.

Having said all that, the original Apple HTML5 page of which this is a parody
doesn't work for me at all - because Apple decided that only Safari is exalted
enough to display Apple's showcase HTML5 content.

Frankly, Apple and Adobe deserve each other. :P

~~~
jasonlotito
To be fair, I don't think the site creator is a native english speaker.

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TomasSedovic
From the site: "Too see the examples you need a normal computer with a normal
browser."

Pitty that Lenovo X200 ThinkPad running Fedora 12 with Chrome or Firefox
doesn't count as normal.

I really tried putting Flash on it, but the experience was so horrible that I
got rid of it. Basically, the only Flash content that worked correctly were
the ads.

------
vaporstun
When viewed on an iPad:

" Apple loves to repeat history and made some supercool amazing examples that
show you how the web was like 8 years ago with any browser equipped with
Macromedia Flash 6. To recreate the full retro experience, Apple also
developed the iPad, a tablet-device with a processor that could have blown
your socks off 12 years ago. It's equipped with a browser that depends on
HTML5. Due to the slow processor rich internet content will not play very
smooth. However, comparable tablet-devices running Android 2.2 and the flash
player 10.1 are able to show all the following Flash examples (marked TODAY)
on this page. Just like the other 97% of all online users are used to. Too see
the examples you need a normal computer with a normal browser. That's all."

~~~
masklinn
When viewed on Camino:

Nothing, I get a great big gray page with the Doom Button (the one to read
flash) on it.

Oh yeah, and if I click on it, I can't copy the titles to my clipboard, my
middle button breaks, I don't know where any link leads me and I don't get
access to text services anymore. The bottom-right bunch of texts might as well
be an image, nothing works on it and the links are completely fucked (instead
of linking the text, you have to click the tiny little arrows on the right,
how's that for discoverability?). Wheee.

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Yaggo
I don't even consider Flash as part of the web. For me, the whole web
ecosystem is about open, human-readable, text-based formats – namely HTML,
CSS, JS – backed by several high quality (open source) runtimes available for
virtually any platform. No authoring tools needed beyond text editor, source
viewable by anyone. You can even access the content with tools like curl and
grep.

Flash is nothing more than arbitrary, proprietary binary thingy, which just
happens to have a runtime implemented for plugin APIs of few selected browsers
on few selected platforms.

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ZeroGravitas
It's funny that the say that's the "wrong way" to do an image gallery, as
image galleries in Flash are something that really annoy me, since it's so
unnecessary.

Luckily you don't really see them anymore.

~~~
ulfurk
I agree. There is no wrong way but Flash galleries for the most part annoy me
to. They're useless for the most part because mostly they can be implemented
without Flash anyway.

But you do still see a lot of flash galleries on professional photography
sites. Having talked to quite a few photographers I think most of them want to
have Flash websites because "that's what everyone else does" ergo it must be
right/cool. Some have claimed they want Flash galleries because of copyright
issues, that images can't be saved directly from Flash sites. I guess they've
never heard of print screen/screen grabbers.

The thing that really got me about this site though was how right down at the
bottom they claimed "This page was made on a Mac using Adobe Flash but you
probably won't notice". And they're right. I didn't really notice until I saw
that text. Which is cool I guess. But it also explains why I couldn't
ctrl+click to open links in new tabs or copy text off the page. You know,
those kind of minor behaviors that have become standard in browsers and people
have come to expect.

------
blahpro
“There are ± 100 million websites out there with Flash content.”

Plus or minus?

Also, I tried to copy and paste that text from the footer but I couldn’t
because it’s all wrapped up in Flash.

~~~
jasonlotito
That's not true. Flash doesn't prevent you from copying text. You can copy
other text on the page, and that's still in flash. It's probably something
they simply didn't do with putting together the page.

~~~
rimantas
That's the point. With HTML you must to try hard to disable copying of text.

~~~
jasonlotito
If that's the point the OP was trying to make, he did it poorly. And it's not
that hard. Heck, you see it all the time. Images as text.

~~~
rimantas
I was replying to this:

    
    
      It's probably something they simply didn't do
      with putting together the page.
    

Flash sites are annoying also because they break a lot of simple, but very
useful things: copying of text, different URLs to different parts of the site
(all-flash sites usually have only one url and now way to share address to
some specific content), opening links in new tabs by middle-clicking them,
scrolling with mouse wheel. I know that _now_ some of these are possible to do
properly in flash, bet you have to put some effort into that, and that's
rarely done. One the other hand text and links in HTML5 will display and work
as expected no matter what browser you use HTML5 capable or not. I can enhance
plain navigation with some nifty CSS animations and transitions. If users
browser does not support that it will have just the same plain navigation. If
I do that in Flash and Flash plugin is not available — too bad. That's the
beauty of progressive enhancement which you don't have in the case of Flash.

------
fserb
"Flash the way it is supposed to be today & tomorrow: fresh & innovative" and
since the whole site is made in Flash, middle click on the demos doesn't open
a new tab. It's just great!

------
nuclear_eclipse
I can't use my scrollwheel to navigate this page. Thanks for reminding me that
I didn't really need that feature!

~~~
jasonlotito
Might just be an issue for you. Works fine for me.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Chrome on Ubuntu 10.04...

~~~
jasonlotito
Sorry, not the developer, can't help you there.

I was just pointing out that scrolling with the mouse wheel isn't necessarily
disabled by Flash.

------
est
I middle clicked the link and it didn't open in a new tab. How can I open
links in a new tab with Flash?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
You don't really need that feature.

------
Terretta
Brought to you by a Flash animation shop[1] in Amsterdam with clearly no dog
in this hunt.

[1] Sorry, "multimedia studio": <http://www.lollibomb.com/>

~~~
raimondious
When I visited that link, Safari crashed and I got this error message
<http://cl.ly/2b1e46a0b769f6a7dd5e>

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nkm
Oops <http://imgur.com/aPtPT.png>

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ErrantX
Great so flash has set the groundwork for this kind of capability.

But I'm confused as to the motivation behind this; certainly it highlights the
fact that HTML5 is only just coming into beginning as a standard. That we are
only just working to replace flash with totally open standards.

Beyond that I don't see a cohesive argument in favor of flash. It's mostly
just mud throwing (note: I was equally derisive of Apples' "HTML5 rocks"
nonsense).

Flash is, as far as I see it, a non-optimal solution to many things we have
been using it for (video, scripting/gaming etc.). So working on alternatives
is a great idea.

~~~
jasonlotito
The argument for HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, etc isn't an argument against Flash.
I don't see this page as suggesting HTML5 is bad, either, and that we
shouldn't work on it.

However, you have to admit there is a LOT of backlash against Flash for HTML5,
and a lot of people suggesting that HTML5 can replace Flash now.

Everything I've seen from the Flash community has been pretty reasoned: they
are fine with HTML5, and want to see it succeed, but they aren't throwing away
Flash now. Let's face it, Flash is still useful now. HTML5 cannot replace
Flash now. Heck, even video isn't solved as a standard yet.

And no, I'm not a flash developer.

~~~
cracell
(I'm a Web Developer) The big issue I have with Flash Developers is that they
use Flash for everything as it's what they know. Which I get, and sometimes
that is the right route to take. Learning a new technology takes a long time
and you often aren't going to get it right the first time.

But a professional website needs to use the right tool for the problem and
very very often Flash is a substandard tool for the problem and is simply used
because that's what the developer knows.

Flash Developers don't want a move away from Flash because they already know
Flash and appreciate a lot of it's capabilities. And Web Developers want
people to stop using something that crashes their non-windows browser and is
often used to create low quality interfaces and break browser features.

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cubtastic71
OK so did anyone go to <http://www.lollibomb.com/> \- the site/person who made
that? Really? The bevel and drop-shadow they use are from the 80's - along
with the crap-tastic logo... And did you actually say 97,00%? really?

~~~
VMG
He uses canvas to render his text links...

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thomasfl
Flash may be fast, but the problem is that my macbook pro get's so hot I can
fry an egg on it after viewing a video on vimeo.com in flash for a few
seconds.

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mambodog
This site is right about one thing... full-Flash sites are sooooo 8 years ago.

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growt
looks like adobe astroturf

