

Flash, Silverlight just Stop-Gaps - Rickasaurus
http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/jake/archive/2009/07/06/flash-silverlight-just-stop-gaps.aspx

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keefe
caveat: I have done no deep research on HTML 5, but I work with AS3 and JS
daily.

The whole web space is just client/server distributed computing environment
with relatively thin clients and high powered, cluster back ends. AS3 or JS is
just as much a programming language as C or Java, particularly AS3. They're
converging to the new JS standard anyway. I looked at the w3 HTML5 page and it
still looks like HTML is the view component. My understanding of UI work is
that it's general best to break it up into the view for displaying stuff, the
model of what is in the view and the controller that mediates user action and
model changes and keeps the view in synch. So that is one problem to address
and if HTML5 is also trying to be a proper programming language, it shouldn't.
Programming is about managing what data is in ram and how to manipulate that
data, coordinate communications with other computers and signal changes to low
level view components. Maybe AS3 and JS will merge, maybe HTML5 will give some
scripting language as well but if it's not one of the EcmaScript varients, why
are they reinventing that wheel? We need a solid view component and we need a
good engine to render it in. The flash VM is a pretty good choice with a solid
API, maybe it will standardize to something else in the future but it's what
we have now. There's only so much that a typical view component can do,
they're usually easy to swap out if your code is designed properly (or easy-
ish typically). I think the flash VM is a stable, well supported environment
and I'm quite skeptical that HTML5 will replace it anytime soon.

~~~
gb
I don't think AS3 and JS will merge anymore, the ES4 proposal was ditched in
favour of continued evolution of ES3.1.

As an aside, I'm not sure what the article was talking about with those
examples that are "not possible" in Flash, as I see nothing that couldn't be
done. If it's just because they were transformed with CSS3, there's nothing
stopping a CSS3 parser being written in AS3.

~~~
keefe
Yeah exactly, AS3 is turing complete? I know the ES4 was ditched cause of the
typical corporate nonsense but I think eventually one language will emerge
that has a lot of AS3's features - dynamic typing, objects for local state,
lambda pointers, nice display list...

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jdowdell
I would have commented there, but comments seem disabled....

<em>"The point here is that we can't allow such a fundamental piece to the
future of the Internet rely on plugins."</em>

He doesn't establish this conclusion. Recent Google examples (Gears, O3D) show
that it's useful to be able to add features to browsers without requiring a
complete browser change. Using common cross-browser functionality seems a
benefit.

(I can't tell what "FUD" he sees in my blogpost, either. I spent time reading,
but wish he had backed up his claims.)

