Flash Obsolete, What about html5 or css3 is really that powerful?

Question

i dont claim in any shape or form claim to be a Flash Activist, but apart from its obvious annoyances and discrepancies, any fool can see its couple of uses, that are in a big way reasonably important to the right consumer and website.

There has been a lot of talk that HTML5 and CSS3 is the future of the web, so much so that ie9 is actually going to heavily incorporate it (Yes, you read it, internet explorer may be half decent), i know i was as shocked as you are right now.

But what are there key features (technologies, advances , whatever you wana call them) behind HTML5 and CSS3 that allow the possibility of Flash becoming obsolete despite Adobe constantly trying to improve the Flash platform, and if so why are they bothering?

Answer 1

The big thing is that HTML can be programmatically manipulated, while Flash content is a black-boxed object. XHTML can be transformed via XSLT, rendered differently by mobile devices, scraped by spiders... It lets you do stuff with it. Flash does not. Flash content is an object embedded in a page, stuck there, immobile.

Second reason: Flash rendering is performed by proprietary software. HTML rendering is part of the browser itself. No plug-in, no extra source of crashes, no proprietary blob to load. Just pure browsery goodness. HTML has a huge community behind it. So does Flash, but a single corporation has the final say in its destiny.

Answer 2

I don't feel that Adobe is constantly improving Flash at the pace they need to be improving it, if they want to stay ahead.

Also, they will always have the inherent drawback of being a proprietary plugin which needs to be installed. If they're lucky, they will make deals with browser vendors or maybe even operating system vendors (didn't Windows 98 actually include Flash?) to include Flash in new installations, but even so it will have to be updated periodically, separately from the browser itself.

There's more competition in the browser market, which might speed up development, so with each browser upgrade, you may have performance improvements. Adobe doesn't really need that, as they had hardly any competition.

So maybe (probably) Flash isn't going to be obsolete. Maybe it'll be one of the possibilities that you, as a web developer, has, to develop your rich webpages. Maybe it's going to be a bit more open in the future, and maybe development will speed up so they can keep competing. Who knows. ;)

Answer 3

This is a big topic. To answer it briefly, Adobe is still constantly improving Flash because as you said it, any fool can see that it still works! And I don't see the complete transition to HTML5 happening soon, but yes I believe it will happen eventually. I see only one advantage of Flash over HTML5 and it's a huge one: backward compatibility. As long as there are significant number of people using browsers that do not support HTML5 and developers continue to make flash programs, Flash is still alive.

Why is it that many people think that Flash is dead? Is it because Steve Jobs said it?

See references for HTML5:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/

Answer 4

The main one is the video tag. Video on the web will stop using flash. Youtube will be the first to do this. IE9 that supports html5 will be released early next year. It's the last (and most importantant) browser everyone is waiting for to support html5. When that happens, the porn sites will get on the html5 too and flash as we know it for video will die.

Secondly you're wrong concerning Adobe. Adobe are one of the best tool makers and they rule the web graphics market. They're actually on the HTML5 bandwagon too. Flash CS5 allows to export to HTML5 canvas. What this means is that people that make those annoying ads in flash will export those same things to HTML5.

So basically, video and ads will be replaced by html5. I give it about 2 years for the Flash plug-in to not be used for these. (Note: the flash plugin still might be used for games and RIAs for some time.. Adobe still hasn't figured out how to export actionscript into javascript - they only know how to export animations and graphics. But when that happens then casual games will probably be replaced by html5 too.)

Check this out in any browser except iexplorer. html5 is looking pretty sweet these days:

http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/

Answer 5

With all the hype around HTML5 it seems that the controversy get's lost in the shuffle. While the video in the HTML will make flash obsolete for this purpose; that is for the purpose of showing video, one should remember that Firefox wont' be supporting the video standard if the standard becomes H.264. Until this is sorted out, there is going to be a big divide between the browsers again which IE and Safari supporting H.264 and Firefox supporting Theora.

If the powers at be deciding on the HTML5 standard for the future choose H.264 as the video standard, it will cut off all open source projects from having video enabled H.264.

Additionally, with it's strict XML formatting and schema validation it means that devices can consume the information on the site separately from the presentation of the site; which could open up a whole new world of applications that harvest information for the end user.

Just needed to add these 3 cents.

Answer 6

Bit discussiony, but anyway, speaking as someone who’s very under-informed about Flash:

• HTML5: <video> and <canvas>
• CSS3: transitions and animations

Of course, the animation stuff in CSS3 is a bit far off — I think only WebKit supports it so far (Firefox 4 might be supporting transitions?), as Apple is leading the way in implementing this stuff experimentally.

(Primarily, I think, because Coca has animation frameworks, so when Apple proposes a way to do animations in CSS, it’s basically just suggesting a CSS syntax to access its existing cross-platform code. I could be wrong though — maybe their Cocoa animation framework isn’t included in WebKit? Someone who actually knows this stuff, please correct me.)

I’ll fall off my chair if animations make it to IE any time soon.