In a recent article for A List Apart, Dan Mall likened the simmering aggression between advocates of Flash and those of open web standards to the Cold War. It's an appropriate comparison.
On each side, people bitterly oppose the 'rival' technology. Standards proponents claim Flash is resource-hungry, proprietary and buggy, and say standards should rule. Flash proponents argue Adobe's plug-in remains the only delivery option that offers cross platform consistency and that it provides scope for projects you can't create with open standards.
Political battles are also rife, notably between Apple and Adobe over the decision not to support Flash in Safari for the iPhone OS. And like in any parliament around the world, no one seems to agree on anything, spinning viewpoints until they're dizzy enough to vomit.
The standards camp claims a determined transition towards open web standards is necessary because Flash's install base is falling, as is demand. Tom Kershaw, Beam's senior art director, blames the decline of the microsite: "A few years back, a client would launch a new product and we'd make something cool in Flash. Now, clients aren't willing to spend that money."
Jeremy Jones, creative director at Digital Marmalade, adds that technical considerations are also a cause: "Clients have seized upon SEO, and a mantra of search engine optimisation is that Flash isn't search engine friendly. It's also viewed in a dim light as the awareness of accessible and standards compliant websites has increased."
INVENTIVE: MySpace's Fan Video (myspace.com/fanvideo) can insert an avatar in commercial videos. Jespers says it's a "great example of why Flash isn't going anywhere soon"
Issues regarding performance on mobile devices (and Flash's omission from the iPhone) hasten this supposed dwindling, although Adobe counters that it isn't a decline at all. "Flash on internet devices isn't falling – it's in growth," claims platform evangelist Mark Doherty.
"Flash Player 10 was installed on 93 per cent of desktops within 10 months and, on mobile phones, we've shipped 1.5 billion devices with Flash Lite – that's 16 per cent of all mobiles ever built."
Doherty admits that "a few developers are reporting changes in client demands for Flash," but claims this isn't a reduction in usage per se – merely that demand for microsites is essentially being replaced by the need for animation, video and rich media apps.
Others aren't convinced. UX and interaction design consultant Faruk Ate likens Flash's current position to IE's some years ago: "Flash's installed base hit its peak when almost all browsers in use had Flash enabled – and most of them the latest version. Once you hit the top, the only way is down. The way down is ensured by open technologies catching up to its feature set and chipping away at the uses for Flash."
He thinks it will be increasingly difficult for Adobe to battle against this particular tide, especially if media buzz is heavily skewed towards 'poor performance' arguments.
Standards
Standards advocates rally against Flash too. Alistair MacDonald of Bocoup reckons that during a downturn, people are less likely to pay for a development platform, preferring 'free' technology such as HTML5.
Jeffrey Zeldman adds that Flash is simply not good as a 'complete' solution. "The all-Flash site has always been problematic and will continue to recede as more people access content via devices that don't support Flash," he says. "This doesn't mean no more Flash, just that you build the semantic HTML layer first."
Zeldman considers this shift a win for accessible standards-based design. Unless developers are happy to shut out millions of iPhone OS devices and desktop users who block Flash, they must adjust their methods, adding optional layers of Flash UX, in the same way that JavaScript UX improvements are added once a site works without them.
"Adding to the pressure is the fact that HTML5 does many things Flash does, and browser support is growing rapidly, including in devices that don't support Flash." Software developer Simo Kinnunen adds that if this thought pattern takes hold, the shift from Flash will quicken. "If you use a plug-in, people will expect something that justifies it – the result will have to be mind-blowing. Using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you don't need the 'wow' effect so much."
FONT GAMES: Until recently, it would have been a no-brainer to use Flash to construct the animated iPhone at fontgameapp.com. This site, however, uses JavaScript
Ajax pioneer Thomas Fuchs goes further, claiming Flash is largely redundant. "It adds a layer of complexity, because it's self contained, and it introduces an artificial barrier. Although the file format is open source, the reality is that you need browsers pre-configured with the non-open source Flash player, which suffers from various problems, and does what a browser can do anyway – bitmap or vector-based graphics, layout and rendering – but in an inferior way."
While few go as far as Fuchs, many are treating it as a stopgap. "Flash remains an excellent tool, but I only recommend it when an app is so complex that the alternatives would take too long to develop with, or the graphics capabilities of Flash lend themselves to a specific purpose," says Morgan Adams of Adams Immersive. "Games are a good example. I create Flash games for clients whose budgets couldn't stretch to any other method." Video and audio also remain Flash-oriented.
"Flash is easier and faster if you want to support the majority of users," says Ate . "However, a lot of the time, Flash is used to make things 'flashy', and so you must determine why you're adding sound, video or animation. Does it improve the user experience, or are you simply reaching for Flash to make a site have a richer experience?"
Your comments (9) Click to add a new comment
stevej
January 21st 2011
9. I was just saying, but I could be wrong<a href=”http://www.refrigeratorfocus.com>.</a>..
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stevej
January 21st 2011
8. It does seem in a lot of ways that flash is dying out though. Jquery is putting it through its paces. We shall see. Flash needs to become more user friendly and more efficient in terms of memory usage and speed to compete with the open source offerings.
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newtonstree
August 14th 2010
7. I'm a Flash / Actionscript 3 Developer who loves Apple Macs. The whole ridiculous debate over the future of Flash has been polarized by fools. The simple truth is that Steve Jobs thought he could marginalize Flash so that Apple can better control how internet users watch internet video in the future. All Steve Jobs' arguments about Flash being mouse based, processor hungry and proprietary have been blown out of the water by Adobe Developers with no hidden agenda, but Jobs doesn't want to hear the truth. This whole absurd Flash vs HTML5 debate is not a debate about one technology being superior another. The real truth behind all the misinformation is it's a battle for hearts and minds. It simply goes to prove that Steve Jobs is the self-important, conceited, greedy, closed-off Apple snob his detractors have always accused him of being. If he were not, he would have the decency to put his hands up and admit his knee-jerk attack on Flash is based on Apple's greed to dominate internet video viewing in the future and the whole exercise is based on cheap technical misinformation.
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anteaus
June 23rd 2010
6. It's worth noting that today, Flash is overwhelmingly used to play video, which is NOT its design purpose. I very rarely encounter Flash being used for its intended purpose -animations, menus, etc- these days.
This does seem a bit of a crossed purpose, using an animation package to do the work of a media player. Would an app designed as a media player not be more suitable?
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windymiller
June 3rd 2010
5. Craig Grannell.Well known Rabid apple Fanboy.
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shadow14l
June 1st 2010
4. Flash has at least another good 20 years before even 'a chance' of dying out.
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boybunny
June 1st 2010
3. Well TechRadar is now peddling one eyed reporting. And I AM including the one eyed snake that should be present in Craigs pants, but is surprisingly absent.
This war is on. It is a battle of technologies. I for one dumped all Apple products long ago. But this recent pile of trash from Apple has made me take the next step. I have already stopped hiring all apple fanatics. I will never hire another person that uses any Apple product. I check Facebook, blogs, and even look to see what tech they bring into interviews. If there is ANY hint of an Apple product, the person is not hired, no matter how good they claim they are. I have wasted enough of my time, and my companies time working around cult of mac retards. It is just not efficient. Oh, and I own a TV production company. The type of company cult of mac people believe can only run on Apple hardware.
Yes, it is time to dump obsolete tech. Apple tech is obsolete. Steve Jobs has spent the past six years devoted to obsoleting all Apple tech... and alienating once happy users.
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discoposse
June 1st 2010
2. This "war" will be fought over years. HTML5 is a phenomenal step towards open standards, but it relies on community and corporate support to move into the common market as a wide standard.
I might even say that Flash is the new VHS - What do you think? http://bit.ly/9DX5Js
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awjr
May 31st 2010
1. The real problem with this type of article is that it doesn't understand some of the major issues that Flash deals with, and to a certain extent tries to justify itself by specifically looking at sites probably designed years ago.
Most modern sites that use Flash use it selectively and when they do use it they use it for specific purposes where there is nothing else that does the job.
So in the case of video, it's used because it works so well, it can be used for DRM, it can also be used to deliver video, feedback metrics to the site and overlay other functionality.
The <video> tag allows you to "Save video as" which is an absolute killer.
Another issue which nobody wants to really address is the "ie6" problem. Currently it's a huge user base of people out there. If you want to deliver a rich environment that runs across any platform, then Flash is still your answer.
The performance of Flash is something that is being addressed, admittedly it took Steve Jobs having a hissy fit to actually have Adobe take it seriously. However a lot of this has to do with the way people write programmes in Flash (or any other language). With netbooks and smartphones coming along, suddenly performance is a major factor that has largely been ignored previously.
You get into a situation where we have a major shift in the way we use the web suddenly 4 year old sites struggle. No ****.
I think it is naive to say Flash is for building websites. It's designed to deliver rich experiences where nothing else comes close.
When they finally ratify HTML5 in the next 2 years, the dev tools are mature (ironically Adobe are working harder than anyone else on those tools) AND 98% of the browsers out there are HTML5 capable, I'll revisit it as a way of delivering web based applications.
Perfomance is also an issue. Flash 10.1 vs HTML5 Canvas mobile demos on the Nexus One show Flash at 28fps vs 6fps for convas. This is not good.
ONCE the mobile version Flash 10.1 is finally released and people stop reviewing beta versions/older versions this should all calm down.
Flash in the next 3-6 months will allow me as an application developer to develop an application that runs on pretty much anything and I can deliver the app as a runtime to any app store. There may be limitations on what hardware it will run on, but this is something that will go away over time as people upgrade to better smartphones.
Think I've ranted enough.
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