Is HTML5 going to put the hurt on Flash? Rumors of Flash's demise may be greatly exaggerated, but the long term prospects for Adobe Flash seem pretty dim indeed.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5 and whether Flash is in it for the long haul. Word on the street is that HTML5 will be able to deliver rich content without the need for a proprietary plugin clogging up your Web browser. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Let me get this out of the way up top: I don’t have any particular axe to grind against Flash or Adobe. I’m happy that the company ported Flash to Linux and eventually made Linux more or less a first-class citizen for Flash content. Having used Linux as my primary OS for more than 10 years, I can remember what it was like when Flash became ubiquitous but wasn’t well-supported on Linux. It was a frustration on most days, and sometimes made it outright impossible to get things done online using Linux.
I’m glad those days are over. And because I don’t want to relive them, I’m really hoping HTML5 can put a stake into Flash’s proprietary little heart. It’s not good for an open, standards-based Web to have a proprietary toolchain required to view and enjoy rich content. Adobe’s had plenty of time to really become open with Flash, and has failed to do so. So the Web is finally routing around the damage.
Flash is Not Well-Loved
Even though Flash is widely used, it doesn’t have a lot of love outside Adobe and Web designers who’ve invested a lot of time and money in Flash tools.
Microsoft wants to supplant Flash with Silverlight, and has not only invested time and money in its Flash alternative — Microsoft has allowed and encouraged an open source implementation in the form of Moonlight.
Apple has flat-out refused to put Flash on its mobile devices, and isn’t being particularly subtle about its dislike of Flash. Though Apple’s execs have made noise about performance problems with Flash (which isn’t untrue), the most likely reason Apple doesn’t want to see Flash on the iPhoneOS is because it would be too easy to compete with native iPhone apps.
Google has worked hard on HTML5 and is already testing out HTML5 video with H.264 on YouTube. Microsoft is also supporting HTML5 and H.264 with IE9. Oracle seems to be interested in pushing JavaFX, which could be a competitor to Flash if it takes off.
Opera’s weighing in to say that HTML5 will make Flash “largely redundant”. Even though Opera is a proprietary browser, the company has been enthusiastic about supporting Web standards. Despite the ubiquity of Flash, no one sane would call it a “standard.” So put Opera firmly in the “we don’t really need Flash” column, though Opera’s CEO has been careful to avoid predicting Flash’s demise.
Flash is a bane for Linux distributors because of the frequent crashes it causes with Firefox, and because it’s closed source. Even though the Flash plugin has liberal terms for redistribution, it’s a headache for Linux vendors and projects. Adobe has been slow to deliver a 64-bit version of Flash, further complicating life for Linux projects that offer 64-bit releases of the OS. Which is to say, all of them.
As a proprietary technology, Flash is counter to the Mozilla Foundation’s goal of an open Web, and it’s a technical headache for the second-most popular browser as well. Flash is one of the driving forces behind the multiprocess browsing features coming to Firefox soon. Why? Because Flash causes crashes so often it needs to be isolated to keep from bringing the entire browser down.
In short, it doesn’t seem that anyone outside Adobe is rooting for Flash. All of the browser makers have their reasons for wanting it gone. All of the operating system vendors have good reasons to want it gone. Flash is at best an annoyance and at worst a direct competitor to some or all of the players that Adobe needs to work with to make Flash successful.
But that doesn’t mean it’s doomed. Yet.
Comments on "Can Flash Survive HTML5?"
All over the internet, including in this article, people refuse to look at flash from the perspective of a developer, which in the end is the only perspective that really matters. You, like many others, are right that everyone hates flash player, but why does that matter? People never used flash player because it was fast, because people liked it, people used it merely because it was the only thing they could use to playback the content they encountered on the web. So long as developers continue to make content that requires flash player, flash player isn\’t going anywhere. Now, I\’m not saying that the opinions of consumers don\’t matter. Obviously Facebook wont want to create an interface that\’s slow, crashes, or that doesn\’t work on some phones. I\’m just saying that they ONLY matter because the developers want their users to have a good experience.
The key point of all this is that developers care about other things besides the users\’ experience, like productivity. Many developers won\’t listen to people begging them for html5 because when it comes to creating interactive animations it is that much easier to create them for flash player. Developers will only listen when it comes to creating static videos because in that case it puts no extra strain on them. In that scenario it doesn\’t matter which tool you to use create your video. All digital video cameras will provide a file that you can then convert for use with flash or html5 at the push of a button. Flash tools will convert that video to an f4v, flv, or swf file and html5 tools will convert it to either an h.264 or ogg theora file (it\’s still undecided which video codec html5 will use). But when it comes to playing interactive animations the tools you use to create your video matter greatly. The interactive animation tools currently out there aren\’t cross-compatible like your video camera is; they only support flash player.
And it is immensely easier to use the current interactive animation tools than going the html5 canvas tag route because they don\’t require you to write any code!!! And if they do, very little. How many of the interactive flash animations out there do you think were written entirely in code? Maybe 7? Writing in code makes sense if you want to create a GUI(graphical interface) but not a complex interactive animation like a game. There is no reason someone can\’t create a tool for the html5 canvas tag that works just like the tools out there for flash player, but it hasn\’t happened yet, and I don\’t know of any in development. And even if development on one starts, it would take quite some time to complete such a complicated program.
It really bewilders me how so many people on the internet can compare the future of html5 and flash and not even mention the interactive animation tools out there that are tied to flash player. It\’s one of the most important things flash player has going for itself, and its the reason while despite everyone\’s dim predictions, flash player will be around for a very very long time. And to make one thing clear, as long your animation isn\’t interactive you can convert it to other video formats, even those used in html5. So you can still use Adobe flash to make non-interactive animations, encode the video to html5\’s video standard and then display them in an html5 video tag.
Also, even if html5 is better, and even if you had better tools to create content for it, people are used to the flash tools, probably mostly to Adobe\’s Flash and maybe flex/flash builder, and that\’s going to make people stick around. Honestly, I don\’t know what would stop Adobe from making a “convert to html5 canvas” button. After all, adobe doesn\’t directly make money off the distribution or use of flash files. I think they only make their money on the tools to create them (Adobe flash cs4 professional costs $700). But, I think I\’m misunderstanding something about their business model because under that logic there is no reason for flash player to contain any proprietary code. I know some of it is open source (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html) but as I understand it a largely still proprietary.
I recently experienced just what I described in this post when I wanted make an RIA(Rich Internet Application). Because of all the huff and fuss about flash player sucking I initially stayed away from Adobe Flash and Flex/Flash Builder. But then I tried flex/flash builder out at it made things so incredibly easy, my other concerns became irrelevant. I can\’t say for sure there weren\’t equally easy tools out there that didn\’t require flash player. I didn\’t go look in depth at the Javascript tool-kits out there like Google web toolkit, jquery, or the 1 thousand others, but I got hooked on flex and never looked back.
In the end, Apple refuses to support anything on their devices which adds a remotely programmable environment it seems to me.
They could of chosen Java as their development environment and solved a boat load of problems that Obj-C introduces and which they are still dealing with.
They are trying to manage a quality of user experience paradigm through restricting the forces of what can happen on their devices.
I admire them for that, but still tire of fighting with Obj-C and memory management. Compared to Java it is a nightmare, and productivity is so much slower when one change requires you to go look through all your code to make sure that you are managing lifecycle issues correctly.
Flash should die because it\’s a proprietary solution to a problem that only exists because of the fact that people didn\’t want to write Java applets due to MS fracturing the compatibility and stability promise of java.
Apple will probably not ever support Java. But, if it was the premiere dynamic web page content (as it should of been, but which Sun had no idea how to accomplish), Apple may have had slightly more motivation to support it since it is open source and they already have experience with porting it to MacOS-X.
@aviynw I skimmed your unnecessarily long rant about \”developer perspective\” and that entire thing could have been condensed into, \”we need better tools for developing HTML5 content.\”
I agree. It would be wonderful to have some strong competitors to the Flash development tools. In fact, that\’s another problem many people have with Flash is that to even get your foot in the door you have to buy into an expensive tool chain.
However you\’re also failing to recognize that employers are going to being putting pressure on web developers to either not use Flash, or provide flash-free alternative pages. It\’s becoming a big problem as more and more people are browsing from their iPhone or Android (or other mobile device lacking flash) and are unable to use a website at all because it\’s entirely done in Flash. As a result, customers are being turned away. Here\’s an excerpt from one developer\’s blog.
Remember the font wars of old? Adobe had Type 1 hinted typefaces that rendered better on lower DPI devices (printers), but these fonts were hidden using a closed source encryption scheme. Thus only Adobe (or its licensees) could make really nice hinted fonts for a 300 dpi device. When did they open this standard? When Apple did an end-around and created TrueType, and when Microsoft annouced they had broken the encryption scheme, then SUPRISE, Adobe levels the playing field by publishing (through Addison-Wesley) the \”black book\” detailing their Type 1 Font encryption. If history repeats itself, expect the same thing to happen. As soon as Flash becomes irrelevant, Adobe will attempt to keep market share by suddenly opening up and playing nice. Sad! I love Adobe as a company, but they need to stop being so greedy and open up Flash, NOW!!!
@rogermp7
Isn\’t that essentially what I said in the conclusion? :-)
Best,
Zonker
@jzb
Yeah, you did! I just wanted to remind everyone of Adobe\’s history of always doing the right thing after exhausting every other option.
:-)
Great article, BTW!
@dragonwisard: That was the funniest thing I\’ve seen all week! Thanks for putting a smile on my face by reposting.
Flash should die,it has so many disadvantages..
Apart of the slow,unstable,unopened source core of it,it is also a huge security risk.
You can look at the numbers,60 or 70% of the exploits found in the browsers is because of flash..
As a multiple OS user,including big variants of distros,the flash player is among the buggiest applications.
HTML 5 is a very nice,multimedic standard,it should succeed.
Good riddance to Flash. I am sick and tired to google web sites that tell, me how to install Flash Player on my Distribution X or Y.
@aviynw:
All over the internet, people refuse to look at flash from the perspective of a user, which in the end is the only perspective that really matters. If I want games yes I\’ll use flash, if I\’m on YouTube ok I\’ll use flash. I don\’t want it when I\’m reading articles in Linux Mag, or reading the news in CNN. I don\’t want it when I\’m on a slow machine. I don\’t want it if it\’s not relevant to the content of a page. I don\’t want it hogging my bandwidth. I don\’t want it for navigation. If developers have a need to scratch an itch at least give me the option to turn it off like javascript or an alternative page.