Recently, while following the hype that the iPad produced, Steve Jobs made a comment which stood out for me over the iPad and the fact that it didn’t support Adobe Flash. He said that Adobe were “lazy” and lack of Flash wouldn’t be a problem for the iPad since everyone will be moving onto HTML5, but is HTML5 really going to replace Flash?
Flash probably won’t disappear very fast, even if it disappears at all. Flash is (as you’ll probably know) embedded into the web, and Steve’s dream that HTML 5 is going to replace all of that is pretty unrealistic. Sure, HTML 5 will most likely replace video players and stuff like that, and big websites like video sharing giant Youtube will probably switch to HTML5 eventually because of its speed.
Don’t believe me? I even have statistics to back me up. According to Adobe, Flash is currently supported on 99% of computers. Did IE6 just disappear? No, it’s still here.
It’s just unrealistic not to support flash and expect a user to get a full web experience, and Apple are promising a full internet experience. As this quite humorous blog post points out, a load of stuff just doesn’t work without Flash. These aren’t small sites either, ranging from CNN to Facebook and beyond. Okay, so you could argue that these sites might eventually switch over to a HTML5 alternative, but that still leaves all those elements that can’t necessarily be done in HTML5, or even as well in HTML5.
Flash games and movies aren’t going to disappear for a long time. Too many people enjoy them and there are way too many websites based around them. Imagine if all browsers cut support for Flash. I could never play Gemcraft again. Sure, HTML5 might eventually be a viable way of creating good games for the internet, but that won’t change the fact that there will still be flash content.
Chances of Flash just disappearing like nothing ever happened are slim to none. Not to mention websites based around Flash. If I visit a Flash website I want to see that damn Flash website. I don’t want my brand new full internet experience iPad extravaganza to tell me that it won’t work. It’ll totally ruin the experience of the internet.
The fact is, even if the iPad supports flash in the future (unlikely) and all flash elements from the web disappear because of HTML5 (very unlikely), right at this moment, people who are thinking about buying the iPad won’t be able to view Flash objects. That means people like me and you, who go out and spend their hard earned money on a device which, lets be honest, is most likely going to be used for easy internet access, will not be getting the full internet. They’ll be getting the internet minus Flash.
Although I think that Flash should be supported in some form or another in every web enabled device (just because Flash is a big part of the web at the current time), there are still some benefits of the Internet without Flash. Flash is a proprietary technology for which there is really no alternative. One company having such a grasp over the internet isn’t right, and that’s why HTML5 is a sort of godsend for the web as it’s going to reduce the need for things like Flash. However, unlike what Steve hoped for, it’s not going to totally eliminate it.
On top of that, (and as the guys over at Apple pointed out) Flash has quite a few problems of its own. It can sometimes slow down your computer, and might even crash which is awful, especially when you’re busy.
Here I am, moaning about how Flash may slowly wither and die like a flower in the winter, when in reality Flash has so many uses beyond video and trendy user interfaces. Flash is used in animations and on mobile devices, and well, I don’t think many Flash Artists will be swapping CS4 for HTML5 anytime soon.
Sure HTML5 will replace a few aspects of Flash, but it won’t replace them all. Flash is more likely to evolve as it’s such a big product over at Adobe, they’d be crazy to let it die. Only time will tell if Flash ends up being an old antiquated technology that goes down in the history books, or a still important part of our web in years to come. What’s your opinion?
Comments
Interesting article! I agree that flash certainly isn’t going to disappear overnight. For developers, the web moves quickly, but for consumers, it does not. Until the vast majority are using a HTML5 video enabled browser, it simply won’t be an option for most sites. Internet Explorer and Firefox have the vast majority of the browser market share, and I don’t see that changing for at least a few years, if at all.
Let’s also not forget all the web designers out there who love flash, and specialise in it. They’re not going to want to waste all that experience knowledge and convert to HTML5 any time soon either.
Exactly my point. It’s unrealistic to hope that Flash is just going to disappear and it might never go away. On top of that, HTML5 will never fully replace it because people using Flash are unlikely to want to learn a whole lot of new stuff when what they do now works.
If anyone’s been reading my blog for a while, you’d know that I really don’t like Flash. In my opinion, it has no place on the web, except maybe for those little games.
The main reason for this is Flash’s crappy support for Linux, especially 64-bit. Viewing videos is usually fine, but games make my (normally very fast) computer slow to a crawl. All-Flash websites can sometimes even crash Firefox for me.
Flash can cause a lot of problems, and the web would probably be better off without it. However there are some things that at the moment only Flash can do properly, and that’s why it probably won’t disappear.
Since i’m not a Flash programmer, i’ll find HTML5’s features useful. And i think it’s better because you won’t need to know 2 languages for making an interactive website. Anyway, i agree that Flash must not disappear, but 2 ways of making a music or video site aren’t bad at all :)
It’s all about consumers, NOT developers. Apple can try to push HTML5 all it wants by not allowing Flash content on it’s devices, but the truth is that Apple feeds a niche market and ONLY that market will be affected by Apple’s decisions.
Personally, I think Apple is marginalizing itself. It’s all good to support emerging technologies, but it’s just dumb to not support what’s already well-established. This is a VERY poor business strategy on their part, and there’s no way they can force the issue with the iPhone or iPad (ha!) and still compete with devices that fully support the web as it now stands.
HTML5 will have it’s place, no doubt, but it never replace Flash due to browser rendering issues and the sheer pain of programming from the ground up in javascript. Apple will either have to accept this reality or fall by the wayside as people begin dumping their over-hyped ihardware in favor of devices without limits.
I think the real point with Flash tecnology in a web enviroment is to develop very complex visual applications: games.
Nowadays you can create impressive Rich Applications using the power of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We don´t really need flash for that.
The benefit of Flash is to use a quite good programming languague like AS3 over a really powerful visual enviroment, what let you build really impresive and complex visual applications.
Why should we use Flash for Web Apps if we can create them in a cross-browser and plugin-free mixture of tecnologies like HTML+CSS+JS? We shouldn´t.
The multimedia services associated with Flash tecnology is a more complicated topic. I think that, right now, the Flash tecnology to watch video online really sucks: it is slow, buggy, and it demands a incredible ammount of CPU and memory. Is a plug-in problem, not a tecnology problem? Maybe, but anyways it´s a shame that not-so-old computers have performance problems using this tecnology and this is a fact.
Nice blog, by the way!
Flash will always be here and will always be super useful to many people and nothing (I MEAN NOTHING) will change that. Mark my words!