
Why Flash Doesn’t Suck - nreece
http://pixelborne.com/blog/why-flash-doesnt-suck/
======
glhaynes
"some obnoxious people who dare dub themselves members of the “web elite”
[citation needed]"

Anyway, I clicked the examples the author gave of good all-Flash sites. As
expected, they act weird, they pop up "loading" indicators all the time,
information density seems tiny, I can't copy/paste text that I should be able
to, scrolling doesn't work the way it should (argh that's _so_ frustrating --
that's a fundamental interaction!)... oh and I didn't even try hitting the
Back button.

Sure, all those presumably "could" be fixed with enough work. And an MFC app
_could_ be written that rivals the latest .NET or Cocoa app. But in practice,
the vast majority of apps are going to "feel" like the platform they're on.
And the Flash platform feels super-sucky for information-heavy websites, if
you ask me.

~~~
alayne
I think many of your criticisms apply to current Javascript UIs also. I have
seen so many UI quirks, even in the stuff you'd think would work right like
YUI/JQuery UI. However, its saving grace is its composable nature.

The biggest problem with Flash in my mind, and what will seal its doom, is
that monolithic mentality that you should have a whole site that is only a
flash program. That's wrong and throws away a large part of makes the web
great. If you aren't building stuff out of the dhtml/dom substrate, if you're
not basing architectural decisions on REST, you are doing it wrong.

~~~
est
> The biggest problem with Flash in my mind, and what will seal its doom, is
> that monolithic mentality that you should have a whole site that is only a
> flash program

That what RIA is all about. If you really hates Flash only, write your text in
HTML and transfer it to Flash using javascript. It's best for both search
engines and non-Flash browsers.

------
pierrefar
So many things are wrong with this rant.

1\. "You don’t have to follow convention anymore." Generally, convention makes
it easier for visitors to figure out the website and get how to interact with
it. The prototypical example is having links in blue with an underline. Form
elements that look like other forms' elements are also important.

2\. Innovation: Flash is a tool that has created a lot of innovation, yes, but
so has Javascript. I'd argue projects like jQuery are promoting innovation
much better: it's Javascript that runs on pretty much any browser without the
need of a CPU-sucking plugin.

3\. Rain City bikes: the author needs to brush up on SEO. Firstly, the page
has quite a bit of content that is NOT flash, as cached by Google ( see
[http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:ggNvi1Rjd3UJ:www.raincity...](http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:ggNvi1Rjd3UJ:www.raincitybikes.com/+Dutch+Bikes&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk)
). Secondly, the anchor text of a page will make it rank higher for queries
that match the anchor text; this is regardless of the contents of the page.
The extreme examples of this are called Google Bombs:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb> . For Rain City, this query shows
you how much the anchor text is helping them:
[http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=allinanchor%3ADutch+Bikes](http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=allinanchor%3ADutch+Bikes)
.

In short: nothing in the post is really arguing why Flash doesn't suck.

------
GiraffeNecktie
There is one area where Flash doesn't suck: it provides a great toolset for
creating rich interactive audio visual web experiences. If you're making games
or animations, it's a great choice.

However it's always (with a few rare exceptions) the wrong tool for making web
sites.

------
wvenable
My biggest complaint about Flash is that it isn't truly part of the web. If
you have a completely flash based site, all browser conventions go out the
window: bookmarks, the back button, and deep linking. Sometimes even non-
browser conventions are gone like cut'n'paste, printing, or saving to a file.
If you're going to do that, you should have a good reason beyond "it's easy"
and "you can have music"

Flash is most successful when it's used properly: for small regions of video
or cool interactivity. It's least successful when it's used to replace a
properly coded website.

I don't think the 'web elite' want Flash to die necessarily; they just want
all the same cool toys but with something that plays nice with existing web
conventions. And they also don't want to sharecrop on someone's proprietary
platform. I'd argue the author has taken a very shallow look at the issues
involved here.

~~~
est
> all browser conventions go out the window: bookmarks, the back button, and
> deep linking.

Most of the ajax in the wild is no better than that. Instead of saying Flash
breaks everything, why don't we think about the good n' old browsing behavior
model. Does it suit our Web 2.0 world well?

~~~
wvenable
Actually, a lot of Ajax handles the back button very well. The Extjs
framework, as one example, lets you back through almost all the navigation
including flipping between dynamic tabs. I'm not even sure how they've
implemented that.

There was a Ajax chat application that was posted here recently. And this was
my comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128206>

The back button is an extremely useful feature and should probably be in every
application. Whenever a user gets confused or lost they just click that button
-- it's a universal undo for navigation.

------
dougmccune
As a Flash dev myself it's exactly this idea of the _possibility_ that Flash
provides that made the platform appealing to begin with and continues to do
so. Sure, you can make some horrible things, but the sheer number of things
that you can make is so huge. Is it a good idea to make a 3D visualization of
live sound data from the user's microphone and run facial detection on their
webcam to overlay the visualization over their mouth while they talk? No,
probably not. But I _can_. And because I can I'm going to experiment a lot
more. And out of a million experiments that are only possible with Flash,
maybe one is going to produce something truly innovative and unique. That's
the power of Flash.

New capabilities of HTML are going to open similar experimental doors, and
we'll all be better off in many ways because of it. I believe anything that
expands what we can do is inherently a good thing, even if it allows things
that should never be done.

~~~
tomlin
Precisely. This is the point I try to make. Flash gives life to the
experimental web.

Anyone care to tell me why web devs should want Flash dead? No, not a dumb
blanket statement regarding open source. Think.

Flash sets the stage (no pun intended) for innovation on the web.

What if a developer wanted to introduced a new approach to video conferencing
/ VOIP and allowed developers to play with the experience among multiple
audiences?

Why is Flash the spooky village witch, to which we must burn at the stake?

We'll wait on the W3C to "standardize" innovative processes into browsers.
Good luck with that.

~~~
jrockway
_Anyone care to tell me why web devs should want Flash dead?_

Because it's broken and therefore a pain for users. Should something like
Flash exist? Yes. But Flash itself is a bad implementation of a good idea.

~~~
tomlin
Flash has issues and anything the W3S and WHATWG do is without fault. Down
with plugin architecture! All ideas and possible innovations that live outside
of our dying, simple-minded, slow-moving, "One or None" religion should be
killed! _chant_ Kill Flash! _chant_ Kill Flash! _chant_ Kill Flash! _chant_

/sarcasm

~~~
jrockway
Give us Flash's source code. That's the problem. Nobody cares about specs,
they care that they can't use their computer when a website using Flash is
open.

If you were a programmer, you'd know that bugs can be fixed. But not by
sitting around and complaining, but by writing code. Since Adobe won't let
anyone fix their code, so the only solution left is to stop using Flash (and
start using something else). The "something else" is improving browser support
for fast Javascript, Canvas, video, 3d acceleration, etc.

~~~
tomlin
_Give us Flash's source code. That's the problem._ It is a problem, but I am
having a hard time believing that perspective.

The OOS community _can_ create a player. Since the SWF format is inherently
open there is nothing really stopping anyone from making an _awesome_ Flash
plugin, yet no one has. Must me a reason for that.

Oh wait, there is a reason. Money. Time. Adobe invests millions into R&D every
year. Money that is used to do test cases and audience dynamics. OSS community
does not.

The problem is software patents. Not Adobe. Not OOS. And of course, not Flash.
A root problem exists and Flash, like much software, is the result.

------
megaduck
_deep breath_

The most fun I've ever had in programming was programming Flash. There, I said
it.

Flash is an absolute blast. In my first experience with it, I was able to slap
together a simple sprite-based game with basic physics, sound, and a video
background. The whole project took about 10 hours, and most of that was
learning the toolkit and ActionScript. ActionScript is still one of my
favorite languages.

Yes, it's terrible for standards, has awful usability, etc. We should be
pushing web standards hard. However, we shouldn't forget that Flash makes
programming fun and accessible. That's pretty neat, and so I hope it never
dies entirely.

------
teej
I think the article makes a pretty poor case for Flash with it's examples.
Blizzard's marketing sites are the de facto example I give of Flash used right
- incredible and unintrusive layering of audio and animation on top of a
website. Flash makes the difference between good and great.

I'll leave these here:

<http://starcraft2.com/>

<http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/>

<http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/?rhtml=y>

~~~
jeff18
Just for the record, all of that could be done better with HTML5.

~~~
tomlin
The record of what? Talk is cheap. Let's see some examples.

~~~
jeff18
I meant that there is nothing in those examples that couldn't be achieved
using HTML5. Basically, the effects could be achieved using HTML5 video for
the background, canvas for the particle effects, and either your choice of
canvas or CSS transformations / animations for the movement of the character
pieces.

It certainly wouldn't work for the vast majority of visitors, as most people
are still using Internet Explorer (hence why I can't produce any examples of
AAA HTML5 sites), but there is nothing shown there that is inherently Flash
only, technologically speaking.

~~~
tomlin
I need to see HTML5+JS perform as well as Flash doing multiple things. Sorry,
sliding PNGs across the page with jQuery isn't really the same.

If we're gonna go into debate about Flash vs. HTML5, I am gonna need to see
more than simple equalizers and canvas bar charts.

Show me <http://mycanvas.landsend.com> or <http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo> in
HTML5. I wanna see this level of complexity without a hindrance on development
time, performance or scope. Enough with the double talk.

~~~
jeff18
jQuery and PNGs are actually not HTML5. I'd recommend checking out the CSS
animation / transitions modules at the W3C to get familiarized. Safari's
implementation is actually hardware accelerated. Also, check out the SVG
animation module. See the ADC for a pretty nice selection of examples which do
actually rival Flash websites, often without even using JavaScript.

~~~
tomlin
_jQuery and PNGs are actually not HTML5._ I understand they aren't the same.
jQuery is often cited as a "Flash killer" of sorts, just covering the bases.

 _See the ADC for a pretty nice selection of examples which do actually rival
Flash websites, often without even using JavaScript._

Right. Except that they don't always.

I'm not saying that Flash _should_ be what we use for creating innovative
content. Standards are slow. Video tag? We're just starting to see this
implemented? After how many years has video been a demand on the web?

Flash will always do what the browser can't handle native. New demands for
VOIP, Web Conferencing, h/w accelerated 3D will keep Flash alive as well an
IDE (with mind crushing bugs, mind you) that brings everything together.

And if it doesn't live as a file format, that would be alright, too. There is
a different experience with creating content within the Flash IDE. If Flash
eventually outputted in native standards, that would be a great thing.

~~~
jeff18
If that was your point, you could have just said "Microsoft doesn't support
HTML5, end of story."

I wasn't trying to argue that HTML5 has the same adoption as Flash, simply
that HTML5 is technically capable of creating those "state-of-the-art"
websites cited in the first post.

FYI, HTML5 also addresses hardware accelerated 3D in the WebGL module. ;)

~~~
tomlin
How I love the "The Flash-hater side-step".

If you read, I wasn't talking about adoption rates (although that is also an
issue worth noting).

You might have noticed that I mentioned that Flash brought about new
innovations to the web. Most notably, how video is handled.

Try to look forward and see beyond HTML5, just as you seem to have no problem
doing with HTML5 adoption rates.

~~~
jeff18
To be honest, I don't know what you're saying.

All I wanted to say was that those three sites could be technically created
using HTML5.

You then seemed to say that HTML5 doesn't actually let you create the effects
exhibited in those websites. I corrected you and referred you to the modules.

Sorry for any misunderstandings. If we are clear on the above, and you would
like to bring up a new point, I'd be happy to engage in a separate debate.

~~~
tomlin
_You then seemed to say that HTML5 doesn't actually let you create the effects
exhibited in those websites. I corrected you and referred you to the modules._

The side-step again. The _examples_ that you gave (a vague reference to ADC)
did not support your argument. You might remember: "Show me
<http://mycanvas.landsend.com> or <http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo> in HTML5."
It was apparent to me that we had moved away from the Blizzard sites.

The very simplistic Blizzard sites (which I agree _could_ be done in HTML5 to
some extent) are not what I would consider heavy or complex.

I asked: "I wanna see this level of complexity without a hindrance on
development time, performance or scope."

You replied with the same double talk I expect in a Flash vs. HTML5 thread:
"I'd recommend checking out the CSS animation / transitions modules at the W3C
to get familiarized. " You mean the fully implemented CSS transitions?

If you can't give examples, then just say that. Don't come back with a vague
blanket statement.

~~~
jeff18
Both of those websites, like the Blizzard sites could be completely done in
HTML5. Is there a specific element that you believe could not?

I already explained why I cannot give you an example of a AAA HTML5 website
(Internet Explorer doesn't support it).

If you'd like to discuss the technical aspects of HTML5, feel free to email me
at jeff@wolfire.com - I am going to stop checking this thread.

------
wglb
Consider, in the context of _Two big reasons why Flash won’t disappear any
time soon. The first is porn._ that there was porn well before the invention
of .gif or the img tag, and well before the invention of flash.

Also consider that an important property of the web is that its content is
searchable.

Finally, I think that there is a desire to have a more open video standard.

~~~
timdorr
I'm pretty sure porn can switch to HTML5 <video> tags anyways. Not quite sure
why Flash is a requirement there at all.

~~~
Timmy_C
I think that he was speculating that since popular porn sites are already
using flash that there is no need to switch.

Or that there is some unmentioned barrier to switching video formats that porn
sites don't have the means or ways to overcome. Either way, his point is
unclear and I agree; porn can switch to HTML5 <video> tags when/if there is
sufficient browser support.

~~~
jeff18
Or more likely, they will roll out HTML5 video support and use Flash as a
seamless fallback, like YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo are publicly beta
testing.

------
thristian
Probably 90% of my time on the web is spent working with information -
searching for it, reading it, manipulating it, submitting it. Sometimes I'm
using Firefox and reading and typing with my own eyes and fingers, sometimes
I'm copy/pasting or even writing scripts to submit forms and screen-scrape.
After all, that's the sort of thing the Web was designed for - free exchange
of information (modulo HTTP's 402 error code).

Flash sucks because it interferes with my usage of the web. Almost every use
of Flash puts a barrier between me and the information I want to get or give,
a barrier that can be very annoying (though never impossible) to overcome.

About the only thing on the Web that isn't "information" is "experience" - I
can't think of any example besides games, but there may be some. You know,
where the valuable thing is the interaction, the ping and pong. That's not a
thing I can paste into a spreadsheet, process with a script or bookmark. For
such things, I can accept that the powerful Flash plugin is a better platform
than the documents-and-tables world of HTML.

Still, most Flash usage that I see on the web is just to add glitz and glamour
to an otherwise informative page - swoopy page transitions, animations, sound-
effects. To the extent that your website prevents your visitors from obtaining
and making use of the information they came to your website to obtain, Flash
sucks.

------
icefox
"What if I told you that you can do anything you want. You don’t have to
follow convention anymore. You don’t have to do things the way they told you
to in school. You can do anything."

What a lie. I can't do squat because flash either is either a POS on my
platform (OS X & 64 bit linux) or nonexistant (blackberry and iphone).

~~~
gb
..."Turns out that’s not totally true, but within the realm of Actionscript
there are, without a doubt, more possibilities, and more opportunities to
innovate. This is why I learned Actionscript."

------
Timmy_C
As I was reading this article I kind of felt the urge to go learn flash
(again, just for fun).

------
protomyth
As to video: Flash pretty much replaced Real Player and HTML5 will replace
Flash.

~~~
tomlin
You're not very well informed, it appears.

