

Flash is fine.  Dont be a Fundamentalist. - sheaninesix
http://occupyhtml.org

======
bosch
I'll give everyone a great example of why I hate Flash:

So I downloaded the new Flash 11 and installed it, the 64 bit version so I can
now use 64 bit IE. I have IE 9 set to not accept third party cookies. In
Flash, I don't want cookies set either so I go to the global settings and make
sure no sites can save anything on my computer. Now Flash doesn't work at all.
No where. It should work on some sites that don't require cookies but it won't
even load. I'm not sure why this is but the only solution I've found is to
completely uninstall Flash, restart my computer and then reinstall it and
allow every site to store Flash cookies on my computer. I've replicated the
issue with Firefox and Chrome.

Strangely enough Youtube worked during these issues - because of HTML 5.

Also, there's a bug in Flash 11 in Windows 7 where for some reason the taskbar
doesn't get hidden when you full screen a flash video.

Flash could've been useful, but Adobe's coders are the worst in the business.
All they had to do was make it small, efficient and easy to use. Essentially
they did the exact opposite and only had a business model because there were
no competitors. In addition, they have security issues and all these random
strange issues which should never happen.

I liken Flash to Blackberry and how RIM is allowing Android apps on it's
service. It has to do that to stay relevant because no one is going to use it
otherwise. Adobe Flash would be dead within 5 years if they didn't switch
their tools to work with HTML 5.

Now the question is, why would developers create two versions of the videos -
one for Flash and one for mobile HTML5? Why wouldn't they just create an HTML5
video that plays on both mobile and standard browsers?

------
xd
If only the site was Flash based .. I might have taken them seriously.

Flash is the only piece of software that has consistently taken down my
computers at home and work (windows and linux). I'm jumping for joy to see it
go.

Edit: I started my web career ~12 years ago using Flash .. it was magic but
the browser has finally caught up .. let it die with dignity.

~~~
talmand
I see, I should uninstall Flash from my computer because you somehow have
managed to have so much trouble with it. Now, I haven't had these issues but
I'll go ahead and take your word for it that Flash is bad for my computer so
I'll uninstall it immediately.

~~~
nohat
That's not what he said.

~~~
talmand
I know he didn't. I just get tired of seeing these statements of "this
technology is obviously bad because 'I' have problems with it".

It's like people who say they'll never buy another Ford truck because they had
transmission problems with one back in 1974.

~~~
xd
I can assure you it's not just 'I' that has problems .. just about every co
worker and friend, family member I know has had issues with Flash .. it's
common knowledge just how bad a piece of software it is. It's not a personal
poke because I couldn't install the browser plugin correctly.

But, this doesn't mean you have to ditch your Flash skills, from all accounts
they are working toward production HTML5 exports .. but I could be wrong .. if
so, check out: <http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/> .. I'm sure they
will be more than happy to fill the void if Adobe can't be a...

~~~
talmand
I understand, I wasn't trying to personally insult your intelligence. I'm
assuming you've put some effort into it. But even with your ample evidence I
still don't think that's enough to qualify it as bad software. How many people
out there have absolutely no problems with it at all?

If that's all it takes to label a piece of software as bad then all software
with a large install base can be labelled as bad.

Just to be clear, I'm not a Flash developer. I deal more with
HTML/CSS/Javascript all day so Flash going away is not a bad thing for me. I
just don't agree with generic statements that Flash is bad overall based on
personal experience.

The point I'm trying to make is that it isn't exactly fair to say that Flash
is bad software just because you, and people you know, have had problems with
it. I also disagree that it is common knowledge. It may be common knowledge
among people who think like you do but again; what about the millions of
people who use it constantly who never have a problem with it and therefore
you never hear about their experience?

------
j_baker
Disliking Flash doesn't make me a fundamentalist. Flash is "fine" in much the
same way IE 6 is "fine". Sure, it gets the job done, but who the hell _enjoys
using it_ , user or developer?

~~~
moskie
I do. Every time I visit YouTube. Or Hulu. Or Pandora. Or Amazon Instant
Video. Or Amazon Cloud Player.

~~~
icefox
I am sorry, but every time I visit those sites on my embedded linux box I
don't get much joy.

Adobe held back everyone from the web to desktops. I created the Arora web
browser and countless times had 3rd party people put it on embedded devices
only to turn around and ask me how to get the flash plugin working. I had no
answer but to send them to Adobe and pray that they were using x86 and Adobe
would be even interested in helping them and that the fee for helping wouldn't
bankrupt the company.

Flash helped keep all of us on x86 more than people realize. The arm port was
always a second class could you even imagine ppc or mips? And the idea of some
other more radical arch? Forget it, Adobe would laugh at you for even asking.
How many Linux users choose 32bit x86 (this for the OS that seems to work on
_everything_!) for years because they knew that flash would work?

When I heard that news about its death I celebrated. I drank a beer. I would
have sung a song if I was any good. While we knew it was coming having it
actually set in stone was nice. The era of the web requiring flash is coming
to an end and we can start to move onto interesting solutions and interesting
hardware knowing that we wont have to grovel to one company hoping they will
pity us and only charge us millions for a product that kills our batteries and
pegs our cpu.

Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion and not of my employer.

~~~
xd
Hear hear!

I long for the days when I can awaken my laptop from it's peaceful sleep not
to have it crash the moment I hit a youtube page in a browser tab I left
paused.

------
tmcb
For those unaware of what motivated that: <http://occupyflash.org>

------
ryanwhitney
Ridiculous. Who upvoted this?

I don't think much more needs to be said. Adobe has thrown in the towel
themselves regarding Flash on mobile devices, as they couldn't manage to
develop a solid experience. How can you argue maturity in this day and age
while ignoring that Flash is dead in a mobile environment? (edit: until RIM
saves it!)

~~~
talmand
For desktop it is a mature technology. The website doesn't say otherwise.

------
kstenerud
I just don't understand all the Flash hate going on.

I can't remember the last time Flash killed my browser or OS. It's been at
least 5 years, probably more.

Flash was designed to compensate for the deficiencies of the web. That's
great. Now that web technologies are finally catching up, Flash is no longer
as necessary as it once was. That's great.

So now we find ourselves in a transitionary period where HTML5 and friends are
able to replace Flash in almost all situations. That's great. And for those
remaining use cases where only Flash will do, well, it's available on all
major desktop platforms. That's great. If you want to do something on mobile
that HTML5 and friends don't support but Flash does, well, you're SOL thanks
mostly to Steve. That's not so great. That's less innovative apps due to
functionality denied.

So where does this leave us? Flash is a mature technology that has served its
purpose well over the years, and has started to gradually fade into the
twilight as open protocols fill the same gaps it was designed to fill. Go
ahead and use HTML5 if it works for you; that's what it's designed for. But
why all the hating on Flash?

~~~
chc
I'm guessing you use Windows. Flash is kind of OK on Windows. It blows
elsewhere. It drains my MacBook Pro's battery, it makes my computer
uncomfortably hot, it still hangs and crashes more than all the other software
on my computer put together, and it has a much higher propensity than HTML5
solutions to break standard things like Services, bookmarking, right-click and
the back button.

~~~
kstenerud
It runs fine on my macbook pro. It drains the battery in some instances, yeah,
but then again so do heavy HTML5 sites like turntable (which is currently
taking 50% cpu, the most power hungry process out of EVERYTHING I'm running,
all for playing music and displaying some 2-dimensional sprites and a chat
room).

What I really notice is that all of these web technologies designed to improve
the user experience chew through multiple orders of magnitude more CPU than a
native app. 2-4x more I could understand. Hell, I'd even settle for 10x, but
when it's going over 100x for poster-child quality HTML5 or Flash sites (which
are not by any means impressive compared to a native app), something's
definitely wrong.

~~~
dubya
On my unibody MacBook, Flash can peg the CPU pretty easily if I'm not running
FlashBlock. It may be more that I leave many tabs open. I used to just use
Chrome when I really needed to see a Flash-heavy site, but recent releases
have much worse performance than before. For example, a video in Flash will
use 200% CPU under Chrome, but < 100% under Safari or Firefox.

------
glhaynes
If your site _needs_ Flash, develop it in Flash. But it sure doesn't seem like
there are that many sites that really need it these days.

------
Father
I'll up vote anything promoting binaries in vm's rather then the organized
mess of interpreted web-languages today.

------
deadcyclo
How ironic. They talk about providing the best user experience on the web, yet
their site offers a sub par experience on my phone. The text doesn't scale
when zooming, so basically it's unreadable on the phone.

~~~
BlueZeniX
Which is _exactly_ why HTML is not by definition better than Flash!

~~~
ranqet
If the site was in Flash, my phone wouldn't be seeing anything. Like whenever
I try to visit a restaurant's site and the WHOLE thing is in Flash.

~~~
BlueZeniX
On my phone Flash works fine. On a WAP phone, I wouldn't be seeing anything.
Like whenever I try to visit hacker news on my nokia 7110.

Which is of course no excuse to make flash only restaurant sites... Nor is it
to make canvas only, webgl only, image only...websites.

------
nefasti
Stop this occupy madness, even worse is upvoting it, let it die.

------
interlagos
A modern website needs to be accessible on PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
While there are arguable reasons for segmenting off the last option as an
outlier (though some devices offer the resolution and capabilities exceeding
some desktops), it is less justifiable making a distinct version for a tablet.

So you end up making a rich "HTML 5" version for tablet and smartphones.

Why, then, would you bother with Flash for the PC? If you have a modern simile
for Tablets, Flash is just completely redundant.

Flash is a sign of a derelict site. It would be hard to justify its use for
greenfield development.

~~~
bad_user

         If you have a modern simile for Tablets, 
         Flash is just completely redundant
    

I'm against Flash but this argument doesn't hold. It's like saying - if you
have a modern website designed for mobile phones, than a native iOS app is
redundant.

Flash is not redundant if it allows you to escape the browser's limits. Here,
I'll give you an example -- try doing chat-roulette without Flash.

~~~
ranqet
If HTML5 doesn't do it now, it soon will.

[http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-
suppor...](http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-support-to-
come-with-HTML5_3834.html)

Pretty soon a 'chatroulette' type app without Flash will be a reality. Plus,
it will work with tablets and phones, something Flash soon won't be doing.

~~~
bad_user
It was just an example -- the browser is by definition limited. This also has
advantages, but experimenting with new capabilities is not one of them.

------
funkah
Actually, it sucks. Don't equivocate.

------
InclinedPlane
(Skip intro)

The best use for these CPU hungry, crash-happy little rectangles that
represent portals into some pocket Universe, disjoint and separate from the
web surrounding and encompassing it, is for audio and video. As that use
becomes redundant Flash will have very little to justify its existence.

------
mbq
Time for occupyoccupysites.com...

