Today we got news that Adobe was ceasing development on Flash and focusing on HTML5.  We’ve all worked with or consumed Flash in our personal and professional lives over the years, so we have a a few comments on the matter:

Charlie: I’m not a developer, but from the perspective of a web end user I’d be happy to experience less Flash in my day to day browsing.  Does this lend some validation to Steve’s “Thought on Flash”? http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Nick: I’ve been Flash averse since 1997.  Just sayin’

Michael W:  I’ve noticed that all of the Flash haters I know (not naming names!) are all Mac faithful and honed their hate ages ago. Still relatively new to the mac world myself, I found flash to be an annoyance when using Safari, and since then, realized it’s only in Safari I had those problems. Having moved on from Safari to Chrome, I have no need for extensions such as ClickToFlash (a thousand thanks to Ivan for that little beauty.) It certainly felt like it had been poorly executed there, but anywhere else I’ve used it, be it Chrome, Firefox, on both Mac and PC, on a handful of Android phones, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Trying to load a page as simple as a Gothamist post in Safari chugged and made my (at the time) shiny new laptop moan and seemingly beg to be put out of it’s misery. ClickToFlash eased that pain since it would only load flash objects after I approved them, but I don’t see the same problem with other browsers/OSs/etc.

Applying a general troubleshooting logic to the situation, if you’re only having a problem with an app or plugin (Flash) in a specific instance (in Safari) and it works fine the rest of the time, it’s not the problem with the app or plugin…

Sure HTML5 is the future, it’s open, but give it enough time, everyone will look back at HTML5 with the same ire they are giving Flash right now when the next big leap comes forth. Just because the new hotness is here doesn’t mean the old one was never worth anything. Without Flash, we’d have no Home Star Runner, TROGDOR!, Super Mario Twins, NewGrounds, LineRider, Youtube, etc.

I for one am glad to have The Burninator in my life.  <Nostalgia>

Dan: Maybe Flash haters all live in thatched-roof cottages….

Will: I’ve disliked Flash since the days my computer still had a floppy drive. Slow and resource-consuming while rarely adding any useful functionality to whatever site it’s maligned.  While I have ethical qualms with how Steve Jobs leveraged iOS’ success against Flash, I think the ultimate goal of replacing a bad, proprietary technology with an open one is a good one. Now if only Adobe had a competitor so that they’d be motivated to fix the plethora of bugs in their products.

Ivan: Well, not for nothing but the development of Flash for OS X lagged behind the Windows version for years. Any institutional dislike for Flash has been taught to Mac users by Adobe themselves. Heck, I don’t think Adobe even bothered to match versions between the OSs until Apple started being vocal about not wanting Flash on iOS.

Otherwise, flash video was great for the Mac because we finally didn’t have to worry about having a WMV codec installed. That said, I’m glad we got away from it for obvious reasons.  I can’t say why Safari doesn’t work as well with Flash now, except to note that Safari isn’t the most plugin-friendly browser out there. I’m not big on them myself, so it’s no loss to me.

Nick (again):  To be clear, I was a Mac hating Windows douche until around 2002.  And I too loved Homestarrunner et al, and accept the necessity of Flash in very specific instances which are becoming less and less frequent.  The problem is, aside from the resource hogging bloated piece of dung arguments that everyone is tired of, Flash is completely over- and inappropriately-used in the vast majority of instances. And often ugly.

And I really hate ugly and unnecessary things.

Colin: It’s really weird to watch the rebirth of everything again “isn’t it amazing I can do x with HTML5?!” yeah, it is super cool, but it was cool in flash in 1999 too.  it was the coolest thing ever, then it got old and crusty and a pain in the ass to deal with…. like a lot of people I know

Thanks flash, on to the next, next thing.

Will (again): I haven’t used Safari in five or six years but still find I have to use Flashblock in Firefox and Chrome to keep runaway Flash apps from maxing out one of my cores when I’m not paying attention. Before its redesign, I found trying to load a MySpace Music page to be a guaranteed way to crush any and all browsers because of the obscene amount of Flash.  I see no reason why we’ll look back on HTML5 the same way. Its implementation is determined by the browsers, which are varied and competitive. (Also, I find HTML5 rendering engines already perform better than Flash ever has.) Flash, on the other hand, has only one implementation developed by one company that until recently had no competition. It took the largest mobile platform out there blacklisting it to make Adobe even start looking at improving its performance.

Michael W (again): To Nick’s point, Flash got out of control in regards to bad design because they made it so damn easy for anyone to pick up a (likely pirated) copy and start banging out animations within a couple hours. Suddenly Geocities exploded with wizz! bang! websites that had 7,392,103,134 things flying around. Same thing happened with animated gifs…

http://www.myspaceantics.com/images/myspace-comments/words/juicy-lips-blacks.gif

Chris R: I just hope that in all this opinionated side choosing, people realize that it is really about poor code from developers using the technologies. You’ll still see a bunch of crappy resource hogging crap using HTML5 technologies as well.  I prefer to just say, I like properly written software…I don’t care if you use AS3, HTML5 tech, C++, etc.

Ivan:  Damn it, where’s the Like button?

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I wanted to add some thoughts to Chris’s post about Flash and HTML5. However I should preface this post by saying that HTML5 supporting video is really cool, both technically and because HTML5 is an open standard that anyone can implement for free. As we all know, for the last several years, Flash has been the de facto choice for online video delivery. Flash support on different platforms has been pretty good, but end users still don’t have total flexibility depending on their OS. Until recently, Flash on Linux has been about a version behind the release for Windows or OS X. Even now, Adobe only releases a player for x86, and the x86_64 version is unsupported beta software.

Everyone seems to be touting HTML5 video as the “open” alternative to the proprietary Flash plugin required for .flv playback in the browser. But how open is H.264, the codec that powers HTML5 video, and the current pick for encoding video for online delivery? Using H.264 as the codec behind HTML5 video sours things a bit for me. H.264 is encumbered by software patents; to develop or distribute a player or encoder for H.264 you might have to pay a licensing fee to MPEG-LA. Even though MPEG LA announced last week (PDF) that H.264 will remain fee-less for free internet video through 2016, this is not the same as being free or open. MPEG-LA can still go after people that produce the software to encode or decode H.264. And MPEG-LA is not just one organization, it’s a collection of patent holders that have their own agendas.

All this is a bit of a slap in the face to the open standards that power the web. Imagine if you had to pay a half million dollars to create or display JPEGs, GIFs, or HTML… The only people that would be able to afford to make software for the web would be huge companies. But what are our alternatives? Beyond Ogg Theora and Matroska, the pickings are slim. These codecs are open and free, but not necessarily better than H.264. Plus it would be next to impossible to compete with the marketing machine of Apple behind H.264.

Open and free standards have been what has made the Internet successful since its inception. I think it’s important that users understand this so that the Internet of the future cannot be controlled by corporations with enough cash to cover licensing fees.

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There’s been much discussion and debate recently surrounding the iPad’s lack of Flash, which in turn has fueled discussion about the future of online video delivery. This week’s preview release of the HTML5-powered SublimeVideo player is seen by some as the beginning of the end for online video delivery in Flash player. As Senior Multimedia Development Consultant at Control Group, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the topic.

To me, this isn’t so much a debate about Flash/ActionScript 3 versus HTML5, but rather another win for HTML + Flash/AS3! It’s all about creativity as a developer. Bad coding leads to poor applications, proper coding leads to a proper experience. It is a common pitfall that most people think “HTML or Flash”. I see this as more power for the mixing of technologies, raising the cap on what can and can’t be done in a web browser.

Adobe’s technologies provide clear benefits to the end user, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the developer. As a developer, I can utilize the unique capabilities of the .flv format to protect content in some fashion or for metadata injection, all of which can be done on the fly and server-side, if implemented using Flash Media Server (FMS).  I’m also really excited about Flash Player 10.1 – it brings the ability to scale all the way from mobile to HD flavors, and will be available on smartphones and other Internet-connected mobile devices.

This is about more than just video delivery, it is the platform combined with the tools, and Adobe has been making tremendous strides in going open-source with them. Adobe is providing a cohesive environment that is deeply integrated with some of the best tools out there for content creation. HTML5 is just starting out, and the gap between the tools and technology is too immense to make it the competition. Flash has fantastic penetration and Adobe can rapidly evolve the technology. Remember, HTML5 still is not a standard – in fact we are looking at sometime in 2012 before we’ll see a final recommendation. These are cohesive technologies and they are here to stay for a very long time, which means plugins will be around for a long time too. Simply put,  plugin implementations have the potential to penetrate faster, and as history has shown they often do. Plugins forge the path, and the Web comes right behind them to standardize those paths.

If you want to better understand what the big picture is regarding Adobe and its technologies, I recommend reading a little bit about:

OpenScreenProject
Catalyst
SVG and FXG
Flex Data Services
RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)
Binary Sockets

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