Will plug-ins such as Flash, Silverlight, etc. eventually replace XHTML/CSS/Javascript?

Question

I've been developing with XHTML, CSS and Javascript for about 4 years now.

I love it a lot and hate it a little. I've looked into Flash and Silverlight a bit, but as a developer, I'm not too keen on them.

One reason is that they lock you into a vendor and generally, into using that vendor's tools. E.g. Adobe Flash or Microsoft Visual Studio, etc.

Also, Silverlight seems to mix content, layout/styling and behavior and into a single markup language, whereas I like the XHTML way of separating them out in code, but bringing them together in the user's web browser.

I also applaud the usability of the web, e.g. back button, hyperlinks, etc. which are set-in-stone standards that people are used to dealing with.

However, I'm seeing a lot of industry support for Silverlight and Flash. As far as .NET Developer jobs, I'm seeing less jobs for front-end/.NET developers and more jobs for Silverlight/.NET developers.

Will HTML developers still be employable in the future, or should I consider moving to a proprietary platform such as Silverlight?

Answer 1

While Flash/Silverlight skills may be worth developing, I think you will find that general web development skills will still be required for some years to come. Mobile apps in particular seem to place more emphasis on good, basic web design without dependence on plugins and or client-side code. Eventually, I would expect web standards to evolve to subsume the best (or at least most used) features of proprietary plugins. The web, at least, seems to be a place where people tend to favor solutions that maintain independence over lock-in to specific vendor technologies.

Answer 2

No, I think that idea will never fully catch on. The problem is really about the platform being developed on.

Look at how accessible the web is. Almost any machine can get on the web. My phone, my iPod, my laptop, my 11 year old PII machine, my gaming tower, all can access the same web.

The devices I have are not the limit to what can reach the web either. I think just about every gaming platform and cell phone can get on the web, as well as thin terminals running any OS imaginable. I'm sure there are others also.

The big thing looks like it's going to be the mobile market in the next few years. Some mobile devices can run flash, but it isn't used much because of the poor support & performance. The only way that the mobile web can work is by using pure standards based solutions, because that's really the only baseline that can be trusted to exist.

No matter what proprietary technologies come out, I can always rely on the fact that my XHTML pages will still render successfully on whatever device decides to access it. The same can't be said for flash or silverlight.

At the same time, I can also guarantee you that there will be a bigger market for flash and silverlight because the web is becoming more "media rich" in some niche markets (YouTube, Adobe Air, Hulu, Google Gears, etc. to name a few examples). There will absolutely be a market for it, but I wouldn't say it will defeat XHTML and web standards because the web is constantly being redefined.

No matter how much Flash or Silverlight try to take on, the technology will move so fast that the only baseline that I think will remain will be standards like XHTML and CSS.

Flash has been around for years and still hasn't taken over. I think that is one good example of how hard it is to replace XHTML.

Go for server-side development of any kind, but I wouldn't become a Silverlight or Flash specialist.

Answer 3

Consider for a moment that you can manipulate a web page using Javascript, (X)HTML, and CSS with a great deal of overlap in functionality and yet ALL three technologies remain in prominent use today. The reason for this is because all three languages are different tools meant to solve different problems and no one of them can serve as an adequate replacement for the other.

Its the same thing with Flash / Silverlight vs these existing web technologies. In fact, I work in a dev shop that builds Flash based e-learning. One of our current products was originally built to use a purely Flash-based solution for navigation, etc. However, as the product has continued to evolve we have actually moved a lot of the functionality from the Flash-based e-learning module and into regular html pages.

In other words, I don't think that we'll be abandoning the current tools that web developers use any time soon. For the most part I see Flash / Silverlight as additional tools that will solve particular problems better than we were able to solve them previously.

Answer 4

Neither one is going to win out anytime soon. I expect which one is used will depend entirely on the purpose for many years to come.

The reason you're seeing so many job offerings for Silverlight of late is because it's a relatively new technology and just recently gained some momentum.

Though, I do expect Silverlight to make quick work of Flash.

Answer 5

<CrystalBallMode>

To be honest I can't see it happening. Other than the reasons mentioned by tvanfosson and DanHerbert, the XHTML + CSS + JS stack just grew mature enough so that things like AJAX and jQuery make pretty much all the lightweight client side stuff easy with these tools (as opposed to things like streaming video, heavy computations or sockets etc.)

Common technological inertia will just guarantee that the existing things will stay around. People are much more likely to use something that has been around for a while and has been extended to meet the latest requirements than to use something totally new. Of course there are great paradigm shifts every now and then like the native to managed code transition but I don't see that happening with Flash or Silverlight.

</CrystalBallMode>

Answer 6

My hope is that what comes out of all of this is a new standardized web platform truly suited to building the web applications that people want to see with tools that developers really want to use. I see all of the effort going to trying to shoehorn these legacy web technologies into the "Web 2.0" model and I just wish that this effort could go towards making a truly revolutionary "Web v.Next".

Don't get me wrong, I really like what jQuery is doing to make Javascript client code easier, but it's still Javascript and my personal preference is to work with strongly typed languages with productive development tools.

In the meantime, I think tools like Silverlight and Flash have a lot to offer and help you do things more easily in some cases than in other web technologies, and there are some things you simply can't do any other way. But I don't think Silverlight or Flash or any other technology is the end game, just a step in the right direction.

Answer 7

I sure hope so. And yes, I think they will. There will be some development on legacy (XHTML/CSS/JS) apps for re-tuning purposes, but I think there will come a day when new apps are simply not created on those platforms.

Mobile phones are the issue right now. Flash isn't available on many of the major phone models. And their browsers are all over the map. Luckily there's Webkit (iPhone and G1).

If Silverlight makes it to a web platform then it will be a nice viable alternative to the hodgepodge of technologies that are currently in use. FYI, Microsfoft says Silverlight on Android is very possible. On the iPhone, hard to say, Apple is weird about such things.

AOL recently created a RIA version of it's email client in Silverlight. Looks nice and there's no Javascript errors to worry about. From a developer standpoint, that's huge.