February 10th, 2010HTML5 & Flash, An Overview of Hysteria & Misinformation
I’ll preface this article with, I am not for or against either Flash or HTML5; unlike most, I just want to present the information and wait to see what happens.
I’m sure most of everybody that develops or designs websites for a living, or is just up to date with internet technology knows about the massive debate over Adobe’s Flash and HTML5 technology. HTML5 is toted as the “flash killer”, tens of thousands of site posts/comments and Tweets alike have flooded the internet with messages like “R.I.P Flash”, “Goodbye Flash”, among other illogical two to four word statements pronouncing the death of Flash. Lack of flash support for the iPad and iPod has even furthered the debate.
What we know: HTML5 can DO ALOT, it will change the way we design for the web, develop for the web, and interact with the web. The same thing happened from HTML3 to HTML4, and even to lesser steps like HTML4.1 and on to XHTML 1.0. You can now develop full games, embed sound and video, overall, just do a lot more with the browser by essentially rendering things dynamically all without the need for browser plugins. Many people don’t even know what they are talking about when they say HTML5 will kill flash, because when in fact, everything is actually being controlled by JavaScript and used in the new HTML5 <canvas> element. Maybe JavaScript (with some help from HTML5) killed flash!
Even with the prevalence of things like Flash and JavaScript over the years, older technologies like full Java-based web applications still exist on the web, as does other “nasties” like applets, embedding video formats directly, shockwave applications, and WildTangent games. It didn’t kill them, they are still there; albeit, very few and far between, why would Flash be any different? Considering 80% of online videos are Flash, millions of games are Flash, millions of websites are Flash, millions of advertisements are Flash – Flash will not go away; furthermore, Flash is so prolific in terms of market share, even if it wasn’t updated for years, it would still live on indefinitely like the rest of the nasties.
But the fact is, Flash will be updated, Adobe is not giving up, and will continue to push the limits of Flash, which at it’s current form can still do a lot more than HTML5 and JavaScript, and far easier too. The codebase and API library that is available for Flash developers is MASSIVE, Actionscript 3.0 is more extensive (especially in the visual department) than JavaScript is. Did C++ kill C? Did C# kill C++? Technologies and languages, like that found in Adobe Flash have been learned by millions of people. Do you really think every single one of those people will say, “Oh well, time to port over 300 of my flash games over to JavaScript + HTML5”.
If Adobe Flash is ever in jeopardy or in dire need, I’m sure we will see Adobe opening up Flash completely and getting a <flash> tag in HTML5.x or even HTML6 for that matter.
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