

Flash is dead. Long live the internet. - tensafefrogs
http://blog.deconcept.com/2011/11/12/flash-is-dead-long-live-the-internet/

======
robdodson
As someone who has pretty much exclusively developed for Flash over the past 6
years in both AS2 and AS3 I think it's important for the more resistant
members of my community to try and look at this change with some optimism.

First of all let's look at the current state of Adobe and the entire
Flash/Flex/Air ecosystem. Around the time that AS3 came out everyone was
griping about how hard it was and what a pain in the ass the static typing
was. They were used to the forgiving nature of AS2. But eventually pretty much
everyone converted and fell in love with AS3. The departure from AS2 to AS3 is
like learning a whole new language, like stepping up from JavaScript to a
watered down version of Java. I think that everyone's resistance was not based
on how much better 3 was than 2, but really because we just didn't want to
change. I don't know any Flash devs with CS degrees. They're all artists and
designers and musicians who somehow got into development. For us, changing to
a new language is difficult because we're self taught and didn't go through
years of higher education in C and Python and Java. Once we got comfortable
with a flavor of AS we just didn't want to move. But didn't you learn a whole
lot going from 2 to 3? Trust me, when you go back and see what people are
doing with JavaScript it'll be a little painful at first but then you'll get
over the hump and have that same enthusiasm for it that you did for AS3 and
the reason will be because the JS community is on fire these days and they're
making so much cool shit you'll quickly forget about being forced to live off
the junk that Adobe produces.

And let's talk about that junk for a sec. Let's talk about Adobe as a whole
and what they've become. Because I feel like at some point they totally lost
their way and tried to turn the whole thing into some messed up flavor of
Java. Case in point: text. For years we've struggled with getting the right
fonts to show up on a page and getting text to flow properly. Their solution,
after literally like a decade of us begging for it, was the Text Layout
Framework. Rather than just enhancing the embed button they gave us the
biggest pile of over engineered shit and to this day I've never seen a project
that actually uses it. Adobe spends so much time building dumb features and
tools that are totally half baked and then they basically hold a studio's hand
to build a demo for MAX and then they waste a shitload of time trying to jam
their way into some market and in the end I still can't get my fucking
textfields to work and it's 2011. I'm completely over being tied to the whims
of that company because for them, it's all one big land grab and they're
trying to get into every market possible. They're stretched, their features
are watered down, and half the people in there have never done a real world
project and are just applying their CS degrees to problems they don't actually
understand.

Finally, I just want to say that we need to look forward to our future
successes. Because right now each of us probably does not have a sparkling
track record of amazing web apps or mobile apps that are not tied directly to
the Flash platform. A friend of mine who has been doing Flash way longer than
myself just recently launched an app that went to number 1 in the iOS store.
He actually wrote it all in C++ but now he's really eager to learn
Objective-C. I think this illustrates two points: 1) You don't have to do
JavaScript if you don't want to. Learn Ruby or Python or Objective-C. Take
this as an opportunity to broaden your horizons. You don't want to slooooowly
sunset with a language and end up being the only COBOL guy left in the area
code, so consider it a blessing that Flash is getting the rug pulled out from
under it. 2) As soon as you start seeing success in a new language you will
very quickly forget about Flash. It's kind of like getting into a new
relationship. It sucks right now, but it won't always suck, and when it stops
sucking it'll be awesome again.

~~~
nascentone
"I don't know any Flash devs with CS degrees. They're all artists and
designers and musicians who somehow got into development."

Exactly. And this is why Flash was so awesome.

Standards are the opposite side of the spectrum, full of the most pedantic and
hyper-technical people, and it's why I hate standards. Just standardize
everything in Flash and I'd be happy.

As an artist, you're right, I hated going from AS2 to AS3 but once I got past
the challenge (rather quickly) I loved it. I'd like to have your enthusiasm,
but going from Flash to standards doesn't look the same: I hated going from
AS2 to AS3 because it made some things more strict, but it paid off because
the resulting product was better. Going from Flash to HTML, however, is the
opposite -- things are incredibly messy in JS, and as a result, stuff breaks
and is inconsistent and buggy all over the place. This, to an artist, is soul
crushing. I want to make cool stuff, and I will climb any mountain to do so,
but once I do I don't want to see my work just crumble to bits because I
switched to a different machine/device/screen.

~~~
rickmb
To me this just sounds like "somebody else should make me my shiny toys so I
can be an 'artist'".

Take some responsibility. If you "artists" hadn't all ran after the shiny toys
Adobe offered but taken those "pedantic" standards people seriously, you
wouldn't be in this position.

The success and dominance of Flash held open standards back for over a decade.
An you were not an innocent bystander in that.

~~~
nascentone
Wow. Certainly a different perspective. I thought Flash really changed the way
we view the web for the better (video, audio, animation, interaction) pushed
by artists who wanted these things for their own creative fulfillment, and
standards should be grateful. I remember being told by pedantic standards
advocates that all those things were not the purpose of the web and had no
business, yet we did it any way out of "irresponsible" desire for "shiny toy"
(I do find those descriptions slightly offensive, btw -- "pedantic" and
"hyper-technical" are both terms I've heard such people use as words of praise
for themself, but I don't mean them as compliments so I suppose I deserve the
offense.)

I just wish you could do your thing, and I could do mine. Well, congrats, you
win.

------
loup-vaillant
The internet and the web aren't the same thing. Please don't talk as if they
were.

This is more important than it may seem at a first glance. Non-techies already
tend to genuinely confuse the two. Those people have no problem buying a
crippled data plans that will let them query web servers and nothing else,
because they will believe they "have the internet" on their phones. But when
you're behind a big NAT, with no public IP and most ports filtered, you don't
have an internet connection. (Even according the big French carriers
themselves. Thank goodness, They since stopped calling their data plans
"internet" in their ads.)

The obvious effect is that the web is taking over the internet. As it does, it
becomes increasingly acceptable to block nearly everything else (for home
connections at least).

That would surely "tame the internet".

~~~
dredmorbius
_The Internet and the Web aren't the same thing. Please don't talk as if they
were._

Fixed.

------
nascentone
"Just keep making awesome things with whatever tools you have at your
disposal."

This is what's depressing, though. I want to make awesome things, but HTML is
simply an inferior and more restrictive platform than Flash. The thought of
programming in Javascript instead of ActionScript 3 is soul-crushing.
Javascript is basically ActionScript 1.0 (which I thought I migrated from
years ago) without the cross browser consistency and more advanced graphical
APIs.

Long live the internet, but losing Flash is a bad thing for the internet. It's
not Flash that needs to die, it's the entire archaic and poor sighted
standards stack (HTML/CSS/Javascript and the horrible plain file HTTP delivery
system) in favor of a new standard stack that can actually do something close
to the Flash Player.

~~~
tensafefrogs
I agree that Javascript isn't as mature as Actionscript 3 feels, but would you
really choose to build a website or web application in Flash over Javascript
even if it meant a poorer user experience for your users?

Your users don't care about your opinion of Javascript's syntax.

More focus on Javascript and the tools available will only help improve the
language faster, and I believe Flash has already made a huge impact (good!) on
the Javascript language.

Maybe Adobe will give us our next great Javascript editor?

~~~
nascentone
I like your optimism about Javascript's future, but I think it's a bit naive.
Even if Javascript was AS3 today, we would still have to deal with a lack of
cross browser consistency, the ancient text document oriented DOM, a lack of
the same powerful graphical APIs found in Flash, and the lack of a standard
top level object oriented structure (as found in the Flash platform with MXML,
SWFs, SWCs, symbol and timeline architecture, etc.)

I'm not just hoping I'm counting on Adobe or someone delivering a good
Javascript IDE that mimics OOP design, and I'm keeping an eye on Google's Dart
project, but even after that I'm not expecting the experience to be nearly as
smooth or creatively liberating as Flash.

~~~
jiggy2011
One of the biggest advantages of flash was that beyond a few DOM wrangling
capabilities it basically threw away the rest of the browser and was really
more akin to a Java applet than being part of the browser.

This meant that even somebody using IE6 can have a good experience with a
flash app, assuming their flash is upto date.

What annoys me with HTML5/JS apps is I constantly see people showing off demos
of something cool they did with the "open" HTML5/JS tools. Then I load their
demo and it's all like "hey, sorry your not using the latest version of Chrome
come back when you've installed it"

Hopefully this will get better over time , but you've still got IE dragging
it's feet and doing things a bit differently + Microsoft's habit of dropping
support for new versions in older OSes.

Maybe the answer is for all browsers to just standardize on one rendering
engine / JS implementation otherwise I can see this becoming a nightmare and
everyone having to keep multiple versions of multiple browsers installed just
to run all the apps they need.

~~~
Sandman
_Maybe the answer is for all browsers to just standardize on one rendering
engine / JS implementation_

Heh, this would be an ideal situation, but good luck trying to get them to
agree on that. The browser wars are not over yet, who knows if they ever will
be.

We thought that the Web would be that final platform that would give us the
ability to write our app once, and then make it available instantly on all
operating systems. Well, technically, we got that. Except now we have to worry
about browser incompatibilities. We didn't solve the problem of cross-platform
compatibility. We just have a different set of platforms today.

What wee need is a language that will do for web development what Java has
done for development in general in 90s - something that will allow us to write
our apps once, and have them display perfectly on all major browsers. But
seeing that this magical language would probably also need to support arcane
versions of various browsers I don't see that happening any time soon.

~~~
jiggy2011
> _What wee need is a language that will do for web development what Java has
> done for development in general in 90s - something that will allow us to
> write our apps once, and have them display perfectly on all major browsers._

I thought we did have that and it was called _gasp_ Java!

~~~
Sandman
Yeah, but applets never really took off, for numerous reasons. One of them
being that you needed to have a Java browser plug-in installed in order for
them to work. This new language I'm talking about would either need to be
understood natively by browsers or it would need to compile the code to
something that the browsers would understand and be able to display natively
(without any additional plug-ins). At the moment, that's HTML+JavaScript, but
if browser vendors could agree on some other, common language that would be
supported consistently across all browsers and that would provide a richer
experience, that would be an ideal situation. Don't forget that the purpose of
HTML was never to give us the ability to create applications, it was to
display documents, which were the basis of the early web. However, now we need
something that will allow us to create rich web apps that have a consistent
look & feel and functionality across all browsers without the need to write
additional code to cover all the quirks of specific browsers. Maybe something
like Flash, but that's open, understood natively and works equally good across
all browsers and operating systems. But that, of course, is just wishful
thinking.

------
poppysan
People act as if flash is being abandoned. Its not. Mobile Flash is. Several
new smart-phones and tablets nowadays use browsers with REAL FLASH on it, so
there is no need to continue development on mobile flash. That's all that
happened. No big win for anyone.

Adobe has been focusing on html5, as have the rest of the web, and imho, Adobe
has some great tools to author content in html5 already.

~~~
joshtynjala
You're thinking of Flash Lite, but that's not what everyone is freaking out
about. Adobe has, in fact, stopped development of the exact "REAL" Flash
Player for mobile (tablet and smartphone) browsers that you refer to.

------
sabret00the
It's far from dead, it's just fighting battles it has a chance to actually
win. Practically every company out there has finite resources and as such can
only fight so many battles if it has a will to win the war. It's not Adobe's
fault that Flash has been overused and as such they've made strides to
compensate. The AIR platform was a huge step in dissuading webmasters from
Flash based websites instead it's incubating the desktop app culture. The work
that has gone into the platform has been a huge win for them from a PR
perspective. Again with their recent concession in regards to video with HTML5
(webm). We're likely to see Flash reborn in order to take advantage of things
that it can do well, rather than being the stop gap it accidentally found
itself as. I suspect they'll still be a major player in the web video market,
but rather than fight against the tide, they'll embrace it. They'll work to be
a lower cost alternative for webmasters by exploiting P2P technologies that
vanilla HTML5 doesn't have. It'll be an interesting few years.

~~~
melling
No, it's dead. It's about to enter a death spiral. If you want to write
anything for the web that appears on any mobile device then you can't use the
Flash browser plugin. We're going to have a billion mobile internet devices
within 5 years, if not double that. Now, since this greatly diminishes the
market, Adobe will invest less in it and more in their HTML5 tools because
they want that market too.

They're going to follow the money and where is the money going?

~~~
sabret00the
The money right now is in apps. It's why ideas like Mozilla's B2G will
struggle. It's why Adobe has thrown so many resources at AIR. To reiterate; If
you ask a user if they prefer an app on their smartphone or a website, you'll
be told an app. Flash really isn't a player in that regard. In truth it
should've never been and hasn't wanted to be for a while. HTML sites will be
and rightfully so, the standard for a long time. But we're living in the age
of the app now. It's far more social and measurable than a website can hope to
be. It's kinda like "there's web presence and there's PRESENCE" the app
provides that in a way where by a website remains simply functional.

~~~
tensafefrogs
I'm curious what you think about the issue of mobile apps and scalability (in
terms of having a distinct app for everything you do on your phone).

The argument is that users won't want to install a separate app for all the
various things they do on their phones (especially not the things that they
don't do often) and would perhaps favor a mobile website instead.

~~~
sabret00the
You have some users who hate the idea of installing loads of things and those
are generally users who have the phone for having the phone sake. They're
users that have been forced to migrate to smartphones from featurephones. You
also have the social users who like being able to talk about their apps with
their friends and share via the different services available. For those users,
which often overlap the more 'ignorant' users, what they simply want is a
reachable recognisable service they can use anywhere.

The argument that users don't/won't install lots of apps on their phones is
simply wishful thinking. The reality is exactly the opposite of that. Users
that have traditionally struggled with various features of the internet in
browsers are able to do what they've always wanted in apps with far more ease.
Even despite the a lot of the Mozilla community being dead-set against using a
native UI, they've pushed on and will eat more market share as a result due to
the instantly recognisable interact they'll get as they launch the app rather
than waiting for the interface to load on XUL/HTML/JS/XML that just aren't as
quick.

You also have to take into account that with a website, you have no one to run
to. Users generally feel ignored, where as with the social aspect of any app
market users feel like they're patt of a community.

Anything that currently states users prefer websites over apps is incredibly
ignorant of the facts. A prime example is with Twitter. Tweetdeck on desktop
and mobile shows far more usage than that of the website. As does Ubersocial
and in fact their own apps. There's a firm desire on the parts of many to see
people use the web over apps but those are merely desires of a small
percentage.

------
kirbydooo
I have not read any of your comments yet but I plan on doing so...I feel right
at home when I see comments as long as the ones are below because I know that
I am dealing with intelligent people that understand and most importantly will
probably understand or at least take the time to try to understand why it is
that I too type such LOOOOONG comments....including places that I sholdn't
like the corporate phuking job that I have as an account manager for an IT
reseller company here in Scottsdale, AZ. Also, FACEBOOK...short and sweet
seems to reign supreme because you are usually just dealing with family and
friends and or considered the masses and most of them are not as 'technical'
as I am and have only recently joined this FAD of weilding technology as a
lifestyle that has only really been recently socially accepted by the masses
and non-power users (I hate the stupidity of the term geek but to each their
own) and not as a passion like I have always had and been doing for the past
30 years... I mean come one and face it people...the 'old school geeks' like
me have spent half of their social time explaining technology to people and
usually only when asked about something because they never got into that or
all of a sudden want to be your best friend because they need technical
assistance. That always burned me out I don't know about you folks but it was
disconcerning at best when you would be doing your fifth 'tazmanian devil' on
your buddy's computer because he still won't stay off the dirtiest porn sites
imaginable and of course... when you were rendering this phreeeeeee assistance
they would usually make the comment..."I don't know what I was doing when it
got all phuked up...I think someone was surfing porn sites..." Thus the reason
I always made a FRESH IMAGE of their machine after the 1st time I laid into
it. Now I just tell them to call geek squad so that when they get a bill that
costs them more than a new computer they think twice about taking us
professional power users for granted. I don't think that their time is more
valuable than mine in any way but they certainly seem to think so when they
bring these antiquated machines to me and think that I am going to spend 4
hours fixing an OS infected with butt-sex viruses I call the 'AIDS of puterz'
instead of the 30 minutes it should take me if they were to have a modern
machine. Just the sight of one of these A-holez on my caller ID or now in my
contact list coming up on the screen of my micro-powered hand held computer
from hell (T-Mobile G2x running Cyanogen 7.1.0.1 MOD coupled with the Trinity
kernel that let's me overclock the sucker just for phun and on the phly to
1560 Mhz PER CORE!!!) Oh yeah!....Just the sight of them coming up on that
little powerhouse of a tri-corder that just also happens to make phone calls
makes me want to wretch!

NOW ONTO FLASH.....as you can see we are all 'skilled' and have deep roots in
microprocessing love and many of you might even have more history than I but
not very many of you trust me... I used to run BBS's back in the early 80's
with my PORTABLE Commodore 64-SX computer with an IEEE 8 bit bus HBA jacked
into my cartidge port so that I could hook up my SPIFFY SET OF 2 1001's SUPER
HIGH DENSITY 1MB 5.25" floppy disk drives... so if you used to log onto
COCONET and remember COMPUSERVE and the infamous ARMOR PLATED CARTRIDGE PORTS
(one left and one right) of an Atari 800 that you played your first game of
'ULTIMA' wasting hours and days and weeks and months doing Lord British's
laundry then you might be worthy of understanding the big picture here...
we'll see though...

APPLE PURCHASED ADOBE FOR ONE REASON ABOUT 6 or 7 years ago...THEY WANTED TO
DISALLOW, PUT THE KABOSH(sp?), PURPOSELY NOT GIVE SUPPORT TO ALL OF THE PEOPLE
THAT WERE GOING TO BUY THEIR CRAPPY iDevices and future iPhones they had in
their plans of releasing with all of the other crappy iCrapple gear like iPudz
and whatever other rotten crAlpples that have yet to fall from the crApple
tree of nightmare lipstick on a pig devices that we TRUE and LONG TERM (thus
the big into on my credz) SUPER USERz have NEVER BEEN INTERESTED IN FOR ONE
REASON AND ONE REASON ONLY!!! WE HAVE NEVER HAD THE DESIRE OR NEED TO PLAY
WITH OVERPRICED YUPPIE TOYZ THAT WERE PROPRIETARY AND CREATED OUT OF PURE
GREED AND DECEPTIVE MARKETING IDEAS TO TRY TO FINALLY TURN A PROFIT FOR A
COMPANY THAT NEVER MADE A DIME ON THEIR BOTTOM LINE IN OVER 30 YEARS OF
EXISTANCE UNTIL THEY STARTED SELLING A STOLEN PATENT BASED DEVICE CALLED AN
iPud! Then they gave this iPud thingy the ability to make phone calls and
started calling it a SmartPhone...You new people (last ten years) that think
you know what the phuk is up....just shut the phuk up on this one because you
have no phuking clue and you never will... Ya see new people... crApple Inc.
has never invented a god damn thing ever...they have either borrowed (stolen),
aquired, or just plain copied everything they have ever done and put a dress
on it and then tripled the retail price of anything like it and the crApple
subculture continued to bite like a school of freshly hatched guppies (but
they were actually old school hipped turned yuppie so now I like to refer to
them as YIPPIEz!) the whole time being snobs because they think that unless
they didn't overpay and basically get ripped the phuk off that they weren't
buying the BEST of the BEST gear. Well sorry to burst all you crApple wanna
be's bubblez but any old school and still way ahead of the curve today geeks
out there because of just plain common sense and not because we're wanting to
tweak everything all the time would tell you today that they have never owned
a crApple product, never had the desire to own or spend a dime on a crApple
product and will never purchase a crApple product until the day they die or
they can finally afford to buy that $HIT lying company and burn the phuker to
the ground and build a memorial in its place in memory of the MAC
LISA....(Don't know what that is???? then stop reading this ya jackazz!)

So you've gotten this far in my lovely little tale of two worlds...one being
the alien lifeform that has recently gained momentum but really has no
sustainability because even you recent morons that are calling themselves
techie'z are starting to realize that crApple SUX! always did, always will,
and you got taken! So you made it this far? Well there is not that far to go
for you to read why I am writing all of this first... so here it is!!! crApple
Inc. purchased ADOBE so that they could purposely NOT GIVE TO THEIR IGNORANT
DEVICE OWNERz the ability to watch the majority of VIDz out there on the
internet but especially from YOUTUBE!!! Guess why or already know why? BECAUSE
DUMMY, simple deal...it's owned by GOOGLE and GOOGLE is going to take over the
entire planet...and this phuking geek is okay with it. Okay with it because
Micro$oft is almost as bad as crApple in their bull$hit deceptive everything
and GOOGLE and I have been in bed with each other for over 8 years of
smartphone love. I have been using their PHREEEEEE everything even before my
same day it was released to the public aquisition of the G1. THE VERY FIRST
GOOGLE PHONE...keep it safe if you still have one people because some day it's
going to be worth a fortune when it's inducted into the Smithsonian Institute
of Science as the VERY 1ST GOOGLE HARDWARE DEVICE EVER!!! GOOGLE preys on the
companies and advertisers that prey on you...Micro$oft Inc. and crApple Inc.
PERY ON YOU! The device or product owner themself! I have never directly (read
that again...DIRECTLY) given GOOGLE one thin dime of money and yet I use all
of their products and services for PHREEEEEEE 20 times a day...however...when
I first set up my PHREEEEEE GOOGLE VOICE account appx three years ago when it
was still INVITATION ONLY! I also set up my GOOGLE CHECKOUT and when they
verified my debit card account that day they gave me the dime...YEP...and I
STILL HAVE ALL .10 CENTS BITCHEz! When I look at my GOOGLE VOICE VOICEMAIL TO
TEXT TRANSCRIPTS using their widget (Don't worry about what a widget is
crApple people because you don't have them) I always see my account balance at
the bottom and it still says ".10" and its even colored in GREEEEEEEEEEN!
awwwww....a nice touch.... so crApple Inc. valuable...?? NOPE, nothing about
them adds anything valuable to your life...just more debt, deceptive
advertising and marketing, half truths, only one part of the REAL story, and
most important YOU the crApple device owner is now imprisoned into your little
crApple trendy fad driven world and will be left with your little crApple dikz
out when this bull$hit is over!

~~~
kirbydooo
continued... you got this far so you might as well finish it because I really
do get to the point mang!

FLASH IS DEAD!??? Yeah, FLASH is being put-down, murdered, snuffed out...wtf
ever... but the REAL reason is because the whole $hit backfired on crApple
when people that bought their crAp and complained about not being able to use
a product that crApple themselves actually owned...and most of you still don't
even know that ADOBE was owned by them and more of you have never even
bothered to think about why even if you did... THEY DID IT JUST LIKE THEY ARE
NOW KILLING IT SO THAT THEY COULD REMOVE even GOOGLE ANDROID and every other
SmartDevice player on the planet would no longer be able to have support for
this either because they are all gaining marketshare over crApple and with the
late and NOT AS SO PHUKING GREAT AS YOU THOUGHT HE WAS, STEVE JOBLESS having
now succumbed (all over his gay boyfriends butt in the afterlife) to his
lifestyle of living like a YIPPIE PHREAK and is NOW DEAD!!! crApple is running
scared and in a desperate attempt to thward the inevitable overtaking of the
planets main portable device users because people started taking their 'anti-
rip-van-winkle brainwashing pills' and even the A.A.P.P.L.E. (Against Apple
Product Purchasing Lame Endusers) <\-----<<< MY GROUP of PhAnAtIcZ!!! people
out there are asking me...what kind of phone should I get. The answer is
always the same when I say these simple and non-biased words to a lost soul
who I don't want to jolt with this type of explaination because they just went
through a rough period in their lives and need to be nurtured into the REAL
world of technology like carefully training a new puppy as to not make any
permanent imprints onto their already completely manipulateable minds because
of pure innocent ignorance... I say to them... "Anything but a crApple product
braddah!... anything but something with a little 'i' in front of it...and I
will help support you on it...)

.............END OF LINE..............

This was brought to you by the very opened minded because it was written in
the open sourece coded putity of intelligence and not the glutteness
sphincterness of stupidity and dumb@$$ ignorance of listening to their friends
who doesn't know jack about krakin a code let alone what kind of nightmare
they would be getting themselves into let alone their family and friends by
telling them to buy what they already have and have only has in their entire 2
minute career of 'SMART' technology.

My name is KiRbYdOoO...and I just pooped all over you! I'll leave you with one
of my favorite SmartPhone email signatures that I wrote...

"You can't polish a turd, yet I see people rubbing their iPudz and iPhoneyz
everyday trying..." -KiRbYdOoO (Sure...you can use it).

Thanks for comin' in and playin' ... have a nice day... or as we used to say
when we were done chattin' it up via our PAGE SYSOP button with with one of
our logged on users typing away on our 40 column, 16 color, composite video
attached monitors... L8r!

------
gerggerg
streaming video, streaming audio, socket connections, fast 3d(soon),
advertising, webcam support, mic support, clipboard manipulation, install
base...

youtube, rdio, pandora, hulu, kongregate, flickr, imgur, github, googledocs,
every site that has ads...

There's a ton of money made off flash these days. No one's saying you have to
use it, but lets be a little realistic with ourselves.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> streaming video, streaming audio

Partly works now if you don't need much control over it, or if you do work on
the server to split the media into chunks. Full streaming support in progress,
see WebRTC and other ongoing work.

> socket connections

See WebSocket, which has gone through some initial hiccups but otherwise works
fine.

> fast 3d

WebGL provides 3D which runs as fast as the user's system can handle.

> advertising

Don't care. "The web still has ads?" But for the sake of argument: iframe,
javascript, arbitrary web content just as capable as any other webpage.

> webcam support, mic support

In progress. [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/video-conferencing-and-peer-to-peer-communication.html#video-
conferencing-and-peer-to-peer-communication)

[https://jboriss.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/enabling-real-
time-...](https://jboriss.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/enabling-real-time-
communication-on-the-web-platform/)

And on a related note,
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/input#Image_ca...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/input#Image_capture_from_cameras)

> clipboard manipulation

Already exists in JavaScript, just blocked in modern browsers for privacy
reasons. Needs to become another grantable permission, like geolocation, but I
suspect it just hasn't become prominent enough on the radar yet compared to
other features.

> install base

By definition smaller than the install base of web browsers. The proportion
continues to decrease as mobile devices become more widespread.

> youtube, rdio, pandora, hulu, kongregate, flickr, imgur, github, googledocs,
> every site that has ads...

<https://www.youtube.com/html5>, [http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/16/pandora-
radios-html5-rede...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/16/pandora-radios-
html5-redesign-hands-on/), github only uses it for the clipboard, never seen
flash on flickr, imgur, or google docs, the web still has ads?

~~~
51Cards
I'm all for Flash dying in time, don't get me wrong but let me summarize your
answer here:

"Partly works, recent hiccups, runs on good hardware only, in progress (aka
not here yet), blocked, smaller install base..."

I am all set for Flash to die, but I am not sure the web is QUITE ready for it
to die yet. Replacements are coming quick... but the operative word is
"coming". I look forward to the day it's all _really_ here and ubiquitous as
Flash is/was.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I said flash has a smaller installed base than web browsers, not the other way
around. :) Also, I said WebGL runs as fast as the user's system can support.

I intended my post to summarize the ongoing work on the replacements for the
various things people cared about in Flash, specifically to make it clear that
HTML does have all the same use cases in mind. As each new technology becomes
available, more bits can migrate off of Flash.

Flash needs to start dying _now_ , so everybody on the sinking ship can start
figuring out what they need and solidifying the replacements. It'll have a
lingering death scene, so the sooner it starts, the sooner it finishes. If the
replacements don't work, they need fixing, without people thinking "oh, I'll
just use Flash instead". People need to think "no, it needs to work _now_ , I
need to migrate off of Flash as soon as possible".

Ideally, in the next couple of years, we'll get Flash to the point that Java
has reached now: an oddity that the occasional legacy site uses.

------
driverdan
90% of the developers I've discussed Flash with hate it, myself included
(note: I haven't discussed it with many game devs). A much lower percentage of
designers hate it.

Geoff's article and the comments here seem to reenforce that. The Flash
fanboys here all seem to be designers. I'm really curious why this is.

~~~
armandososa

        The Flash fanboys here all seem to be designers. I'm really curious why this is.
    

Really? Try to write code using a brush on a canvas. That's what designers
feel having to design using code. It sucks.

~~~
commieneko
I was doing visual design using code 30 years ago. It's doable, sometimes even
preferable. It only sucks until you develope a facility with the tools. Just
like watercoler paints or charcoal; which I've used for 40 years.

Design happens in your head, but it's a feed back loop between your tools and
your imagination. Different tools _do_ influence the outcome.

------
zabar
It's not dead yet. Actually there is two things :

\- one of course is that as HTML5 get stronger flash loses interest for some
scenarios (even if it's still the best choice for many like games right now)

\- the other is that for mobile web, it was never the right choice. If you
want to target mobile right now, you either do a really simple site in HTML or
you target a deeper experience with an app, but there was no space in between
for a plugin. Adobe try to embrace both of these cases with their HTML5 tools
for the web and Air for the apps. I think that what Stave Jobs understood
early on and a reason why he never allowed plugins on mobile browsers.

~~~
tensafefrogs
Most of the arguments against Flash being dead seem to be one of these:

1) Games 2) Mobile apps 3) Video

#1 I agree that flash is better for making games, but how big of a market are
games on the internet? It's a 'big' market, to be sure, but how big compared
to the number of Flash websites a few years ago? Surely it's a low percentage
(anyone have actual stats? I don't know of any). Is the amount of Flash games
being made enough to keep Adobe interested in continuing to improve Flash? As
the desktop market recedes and mobile devices become more popular with users
(and I truly do believe that it will) what will happen to the Flash games?

As for #2 - mobile apps. This could be the answer to the above, but why use
AIR when you can get better performance writing native code for whatever
platform you are working on? I'm sure it will work out for companies that want
to save a few dollars and be able to launch a simple game on many platforms
while writing it once, but that kind of development has rarely succeeded in
the world. Look at Java apps on windows/osx - they often feel klunky and look
ugly and don't support the native UI elements of the host OS (does AIR do this
on mobile phones? I'm admittedly not that familiar with it). Because of the
history of this area of technology, I'm highly skeptical.

#3 I agree with, and covered this in a comment below. I believe Flash will be
useful for desktop video delivery for a few years to come, but will eventually
lose to native support.

~~~
benologist
Games on the internet are _massive_. We track 100s of millions of hours a
month spent playing them.

Adobe's not really killing Flash, what's happening is it's transitioning to a
development platform rather than development + consumption platform and that's
not a horrible thing - Flash is a great platform to develop in, being able to
export mobile apps from it is far more important than being able to play the
SWF files on mobile.

Flash on mobile could have worked but there's two reasons it doesn't ... one
is purely technical that time and improved hardware would erode, the killer
one is consumption - games on websites are just a plain inferior way to play
them vs apps, and ads + video + applications are all solved problems. There is
no must-have use case as a consumption platform on mobile.

They made the right choice - let Flash become just a development platform and
let the output be whatever provides the optimal user experience - on desktops
it is (or can be) the Flash Player, on mobile it's apps and HTML5.

------
gord
Theres no reason why Adobe [ or more likely, a startup ] cant write a superb
(web based) animation editor for designers, which spits out HTML5/CSS or SVG +
Javascript.

Couple that with basic workflow and 'publish to site' and you have a product
with very wide appeal and usefulness.

------
frooxie
It's dead? Now how am I supposed to make a game with music and sound effects
that is easy to play on multiple platforms?

------
ale55andro
Dead is a rather harsh statement. It's true that the mobile market is
flourishing and is more important now than ever, but what I see clearly is
that adobe wants that market _too_ and they seem to be investing in html5
tooling _whilst_ maintaining their flash offering.

So in the end it will come down to using the right tool/tech for the right
job. More choice to you, more power to you and works out for adobe as well.
Don't forget that flash still enjoys an excellent penetration rate on the
desktop and there will always be a market for it.

Perhaps one day when the pc is dead too and the indefinite, perfectly working
apps written in flash are rewritten in html5 because we've now replaced the pc
with tablets and mobile devices.

------
brownhornet
I guess I'd be OK with the move to HTML5, if it worked on all of the browsers
that my clients want me to support.

My last application that I rolled out using canvas and excanvas is still
quirky. Unfortunately, IE6-8 still lives on. Until there is a feasible way to
do custom control creation, and have it work properly, there will still be a
purpose for Flash/Flash Builder.

------
ggerrard
Yep, things change. Adobe also killed Director, another seminal and important
product. They bought Supersplash, turned it into Flash (and a pile of money)
and with Apple's help killed it too. Things change, but they stay the same.

------
jphackworth
I'll believe Flash is dead when there's no Flash running on Kongregate any
more.

------
jhuni
Flash is still a fundamental part of the desktop user experience, so the
battle is not over. The free flash alternative gnash remains a high priority
project.

------
missing_cipher
Far from dead. Only Flash on mobile is being discontinued, the larger,
stronger, desktop market won't be discontinued.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Thousands of popular tv cartoons shows are made using flash only; competing
head-to-head with Toon Boom Studio.

------
edison_c
dead or not, companies STILL want to make a bunch of flashy, frustratingly
not-very-useful websites. Until companies realize that consumers want
information, quickly, and don't want to have to hunt around for it, we're
going to plagued one way or another by web sites that eschew function over
(yeeg) 'form'.

------
secretbatcave
Try and animate a walk cycle in pure javascript.

now tell me that flash is dead.

~~~
stuartmemo
<http://digitalsurgeons.com/labs/html5/canvas/zombies/>

Flash is dead.

~~~
scarmig
Weird.

1) The url would suggest this is done using the canvas element. On my browser,
though, it's implemented using SVG. Is anyone else seeing this?

2) SVG is a really terrible medium for this use case. What should be used
instead, and would probably give better performance, is... canvas.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Yep, is on SVG on my browser too (Chrome).

And i think they made a zombie as an excuse for their bad implementation of a
walking cicle.

------
Thonbo
why is every body talking about it like adobe is giving up on flash on
desktops- they are not a new version just came out friday and they have huge
list of things to come in the next releases

------
brunoimbrizi
\- You want this? Sorry, can't do it. Flash is dead. Not possible in HTML yet.
Design something else or wait a few years please.

------
trolol
Java Applets FTW :D

------
frenchfries
probably the best article I've read about flash this week ... gr8

------
almogdesign
Great post

