17Jun Why HTML 5 is NOT a Flash killer
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The RSS feeds are abuzz lately about the new W3C standard of HTML 5 for browsers. In my opinion, the new standard defines new features that are way overdue. Canvas drawing and video playback are features that should have been implemented nearly 10 years ago. Perhaps if the W3C had their act together a bit more, we would have HTML 9 by now. I digress; the point is, Flash or any other multimedia plugin is not going to be threatened by HTML 5. Video playback and simple canvas drawing only steals the boring work from Flash development.
The misconception is that people associate video playback as a major reason to be using Flash since it is a common use for websites. Even in the video playback category, Flash player will still live on. Features like secure streaming, dynamic buffering, and rich video controls will keep professional from switching technologies. It seems like the people who are hyping HTML 5 the most are HTML developers who are daunted by or have a disliking towards Flash. I do not blame them as it is a hassle to create a Flash video player for just showing a simple video on a web page. However, the notion that HTML5 can kill off Flash, Silverlight, Unity3d, O3D, or any other rich multimedia plugin ignores the facts that these tools were created for large scale Application, game development, and even 3D multimedia development. You could argue that someone could write a 3D engine that uses the Canvas, but it wouldn’t have the speed as a plugin that has access to low level processing and video card integration.
What I am trying to say is, use the right tools for the job. Silverlight is a multimedia tool meant for .NET developers. Flash is a multimedia tool meant for non-programmers and Java-style developers. HTML is a great tool for web page markup and some presentation content. Trying to bend a tool beyond their intended use is only abusing the platform. Picking the right tools for the job is the most important project decision you can make.
Soapbox ranting aside, I will be working on uploading more advanced examples for FlashMVC as soon as I have some more spare time.
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Author: Jonathan Dunlap Jonathan is an experienced software engineer, sole blogger of JADBOX, author of FlashMVC, humanitarian, and has contracted work for Microsoft, Coke, and Disney. |
14 Comments
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- Joeflash’s Enigmacopaedia » HTML5: Yet Another (yawn) Flash Killer
- NxtGen Media - The Freeman View » Long Live Flash
June 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I don’t outright disagree, but… Flashs use as a video platform in the primary channel for player adoption and the site that drives adoption the fastest is YouTube. If YouTube changes to an HTML 5 implementation Flash Player adoption/upgrades will take a huge hit. With a slower adoption rate developers will struggle selling clients on the the newest features in the latest player.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I do agree that Flash as a video player helps drive its adoption and updates, but I don’t foresee large companies like youtube switching to a technology that is not nearly as robust as Flash for video display but also the low target market. The percentage of users upgrading to HTML 5 browsers will take years before it’s even a quarter of what the Flash penetration rate is. By the time it does catch up, I have a feeling that browser plugins will be different in nature. (for example, Unity3D’s plugin updates silently and requires no action from the user)
June 17th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Lets not forget that Adobe’s flash player had a penetration above 90% even when it didn’t support video.
I say it helps to spread versions *faster*
June 17th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Update: I broke the URLs, in hopes of getting past the spam filter….
Hi, thanks for the essay (but I’m not sure of your name…?).
To Jacob, YouTube is indeed a big site, estimated at 20 million unique global visitors per month:
ht tp:/ /www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/boom-twitter-more-than-doubles-unique-visitors-to-93-million-in-march/
That’s about as many people that successfully install/update Adobe Flash Player each day:
ht tp/ /weblogs.macromedia.com/emmy/archives/2008/08/two_four_six_eight_numbers_we_appreciate.html
(In other words, the total ecology is much larger than even the largest sites.)
As Zeh noted, people overwhelmingly adopted Flash Player long, long before web video became easy:
ht tp:/ /web.archive.org/web/*/ht tp:/ /www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html
I definitely agree with the closing point of the essay, about examining the need, then examining what will solve it.
jd/adobe
June 17th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Hey John, thanks for stopping by. You can check me (Jonathan) out in the about section (jadbox.com/about).
As a final point, take a hard look at Unity3d. As far as game development, it’s head and shoulders better than Flash. However, despite even being technologically superior, it will never kill Flash, simply because of it’s install count and developer community size.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks! Great post. Excellent analysis.
Since the web is the new TV … there already is a *HUGE* amount of innovation and commerce bearing down on the video-on-the-web space.
It will be interesting to see where HTML 5 will ultimately emerge in this melee. Interesting, even, to see when it will be able to get into the scrum.
Seasoned tech commentator Robert X. Cringely offers some provocative thoughts on how fast the transition of the critical mass from broadcast to the web may be (though haldevoid of comment on which technologies will ultimately prevail as video-on-the-web gains primacy):
http://www.cringely.com/2009/05/the-future-of-television-part-ii/
Best regards,
g
June 18th, 2009 at 1:53 am
The HTML 5 video tag, in itself, doesn’t specify anything about the capability of the undelying video player, just that ‘this area of the page is a video’ and ’served from this URL’ – it’s a bit like the img tag, which has seamlessly supported new image formats.
Most of the actual implementations, so far, use the underlying operating systems media plugin, some of which (like Quicktime) have similar capabilities to Flash – and with Flash video also moving towards a MPEG/H.264 based format, and opening up the protocols, I think we’re rapidly approaching a point where non-DRM video can be regarded as standardised – thanks to Flash for creating that standardisation.
(It could have been Real or Quicktime, both of which are not content to be plug-ins, but insist on taking over other parts of your computer, and conducting their war against Microsoft).
Equally, some implementations of HTML5/CSS3/etc do use GPU acceleration, and I believe there is talk of creating
As for GPU acceleration, etc – Canvas 3D is a (prototype) binding of OpenGL with JavaScript, and some of the browsers also use GPU acceleration to improve performance (and notably this is something that has only recently come to Flash).
While I think the Flash platform will continue to advance, it’s also a case that as basic browser technology catches up, those advances will be into increasingly niche areas.
This is exactly the same as the debate on web apps/RIA vs Desktop apps – an SDK like Cocoa on OS X is still way ahead of Flex, but for the vast majority of tasks web apps are capable enough.
June 19th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Hi,
I don’t develop in Flash because of the movies. I develop in Flash because of my dislike of CSS and browser quirks, neither of which seem to be going away anytime soon. As for visual designers, once they get used to pixel precise rendering, there is no turning back. I think it’s about the pain, really. Making a website without Flash is less painful than making one without.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:16 am
HTML5 vs Flex vs Silverligth, it is a reality.
from reality, I agree the author.
from the ideal, I disagree.
Let’s take them to the ideal:
HTML is browser based in a standard way;
RIA is a virtual layer beyond native platform in a non-standard way;
native program is platform-dependent.
so, from cross-platform criteria, HTML is standard and is/will be used most widely. RIA give the same ability, but with non-standard(and less) support.
from functionality criteria, HTML have less function than RIA, and RIA is less than native program.
from the Trend, HTML will catch up some funtion, and RIA do this from native program.
during the Trend process,HTML will always lack function than RIA, and RIA less than native program.
to the end of the process, HTML will be the base of WebOS,RIA is no reason to exist any more, and so do the native program – expect that HTML program with native module. — total ideally.
why?
that implies:
programs should be written under a total standard way, run totally platform-independent. HTML is the standard so far, RIA and native program is NOT.
native functionality should be embeded as plugin only if necessary.
How?
the answer is un-predicatable.
competition, collaboration anywhere, invention anytime,
any decision matters much.
what’s my point?
choose by the reality, think for the future. that’s all.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I can agree with the bulk of the article, but I disagree with a few points.
“Features like secure streaming, dynamic buffering, and rich video controls will keep professional from switching technologies.”
Actionscript and Javascript are alike in more ways than one, rich video controls on Flash aren’t any better than the same recreated in Javascript (and arguably Javascript is easier to pick up than Flash despite sharing a similar syntax).
And things like secure streaming and dynamic buffering have already been figured out long before the HTML5 video spec was proposed (for plugins like Quicktime).
“…the notion that HTML5 can kill off Flash, Silverlight, Unity3d, O3D, or any other rich multimedia plugin ignores the facts that these tools were created for large scale Application, game development, and even 3D multimedia development.”
To mention, O3D is planned to be integrated into web browsers alongside HTML5, it shouldn’t be clustered with Flash, Silverlight or Unity3d plugins that fork web development or make it proprietary, especially being that O3D relies on Javascript for coding.
“You could argue that someone could write a 3D engine that uses the Canvas, but it wouldn’t have the speed as a plugin that has access to low level processing and video card integration.”
I’ll point you here then: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Canvas:3D
Oh also that’s why O3D is being integrated into browsers as a standard.
“What I am trying to say is, use the right tools for the job. Silverlight is a multimedia tool meant for .NET developers. Flash is a multimedia tool meant for non-programmers and Java-style developers. HTML is a great tool for web page markup and some presentation content. Trying to bend a tool beyond their intended use is only abusing the platform. Picking the right tools for the job is the most important project decision you can make.”
Ok, I can understand what you’re saying here (side note, Flash is for those familiar with Javascript not Java) and yes HTML is for markup and presentation but that’s why we have other standards like Javascript and CSS and plus aren’t all visuals apart of presentation.
Alongside this we have another working standard Native Client (http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/) which will allow development of web objects in native C code, allowing developers to create wrappers for things like .NET, Java, Python, Actionscript (via Gnash), and so on. Killing the need for proprietary again.
Plus the web was designed for sharing information and communication openly, this shouldn’t be expressed by proprietary plugins and protocols.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:09 am
What is the point of the video tag in HTML 5? Won’t it just be something else to block?
September 4th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
SO TRUE, SO TRUE. Flash is amazing, I love you Flash, you make me a happy web developer. Those “standardistas”, ie, fascists neonazis haters of anything cool and potentially difficult to create, can suck on my nutsack.