Comment by amadiver | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amadiver | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a person who thinks that the web is the most important invention in the history of humanity, first, and a Flash developer second. We absolutely do not want to secede from the web. We love the web so much that we want to use the most powerful tool we can to express ourselves (even if it has its own problems). If that means developing for a closed-source(1) plugin that makes us pariahs in the development community and subject to some vitriolic Flash-bashing every time we open up HN or Proggit, so be it.

I love HTML5, too. And ES4. And CSS3. I like reading their specs, and articles about them, and flame wars on their mailing lists. I can't wait for them all to catch on. I don't care if any open web technology impinges on Flash's turf - with Video, Canvas, WebGL, Transitions, and fundamental changes to ES/JS - or even overtakes Flash. The author of the post said as much, and I know plenty of other Flash devs that agree.

I don't know what Flash developer gave you the impression that they don't want to be part of the web. I don't know why you seem to think that's "what they seem to want". I have a feeling you're scoring some easy karma. All I'm asking for is: Can we have a little less "They took our jobs!(2)" in this discourse?

(1)I have complex feelings about Flash being closed source. On one hand, I believe the web should be open. On the other, I believe open-sourcing it means Microsoft builds its own version, forks it enough to cause a fractured development space, gains a near monopoly and then lets it stagnate for seven years (sound familiar?).

(2)Just to clarify: I'm quoting from South Park here; using it as an illustration of the simple-minded populism I see a lot of. I don't believe Flash devs take HTML devs' jobs -- other way around, in fact.

Yeah I'm just dying for karma.

I'm generalizing a lot here, I know there are people who work on Flash stuff and aren't huge dicks about it. When I read most comments in support of Flash, they're usually something like, "Flash gives me the tools to deliver the experience we want to deliver, nothing else that exists right now allows us to do this, etc." Which is probably true. And I don't want your experience. When something is Flash, I can't do shit about it. It runs in an opaque box in my browser, controlled by some other company that makes shitty products. It devours cpu, trashes browsers that don't isolate the plugin into its own process, and can do shady things with cookies.

Flash has two uses now: ads and video playback.

A "rich media experience" site is almost always just a big ad for something. And you use Flash in the ad because there's not much content there. If there was content, you could just put it up as HTML. Instead you need to dress it up in glitz and parade it around with sound effects and junk.

"It's what consumers want! This is the real world. This is what sells products. People love dazzling moving sparkly things!"

Yeah? http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/

It's an HTML page. With images. And text. It scrolls vertically. It's a pure distillation of the web.

How is moving from Flash to HTML 5 going to resolve any of your complaints with a rich media experience?

I loved this experience http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/ but it's still a closed box and uses up 100% of my cpu (Win XP/Chrome). If we move from flash we are just going to replace those rich experiences with another technology, which has the same issues. You can't turn it off any easier than you can turn off a full page flash example.

Will your complaints be directed at HTML 5 for serving up the same web in 2 or 3 years time that we have today?

I'd suggest directed your energies into getting more large corporations delivering the kind of content you want (The iPad page is a great example), as well as serving up a rich experience e.g. (http://www.apple.com/ipad/ipad-video/#large)

I was working on something that used HTML5 mouse interaction. There was a bug in WebKit with detecting its position on the page. I patched it, submitted the patch, and it was accepted. Bug gone.

That's the difference.

Canvas is not a closed box. I can look at an implementation (and there is more than one) and see what's going on. It can be improved by anyone. Just as importantly, an idle canvas doesn't consume 5% of my cpu. Canvas, to my knowledge, does not frequently crash my browser.

I'm with you on the rich thing definitely. I think more companies are starting to catch on that what they've wanted all along is just some video showing off their thing, not a 'site' which is actually just chunks of video/swirly animations with text that you have to fidget with your mouse on to see all of. Hopefully we'll continue to see the situation improve.

Right, and that difference is to do with the experience of implementing the solution not consuming the solution. I agree the decision to choose an open source solution over a closed source solution that you can patch yourself if you come across a roadblock is very powerful. But to the end user consuming the rich media experience there is very little differences between the two implementations at this moment in time, both are buggy, overload the CPU and have issues with accessibility. To them the only perceivable difference is likely that one also works in IE.

I'm hoping there will be a big shift back to content just being content without the need for big shiny bells and whistles as well. That said, if after a user has read my piece, viewed my video, but still wants something else I'd like to give them the option of something "different" if there is a demand for it. E.g. http://www.thecoronabeach.com/ it bugs me though when the brand doesn't offer the more friendly traditional experience as the primary presence on the web... e.g. www.corona.com its just awful.

BTW, the only time I really get a browser crash due to flash is when I'm working with my own code in a early state if ever, its very rare. I see alot of errors on about 25% of sites as I run the debug version of the player, but they don't cause my browser to crash. They are just as annoying as those old javascript error alert boxes that older browsers use though. And I run flash alot!

Flash is pretty OK in Windows, generally. I wouldn't have such a big beef with it if Adobe could get its Linux and especially Mac OS X versions at least as fast/non-crashy.

By putting content inside a Flash applet you isolate it from the web. It cannot be crawled. It cannot be deep linked to. It cannot be styled as the user prefers, rendering it inaccessible to disabled users.

Flash is not a web technology. It is anti-web. It may as well be a zipped .exe, served up over Gopher. The simple act of placing content within an SWF file is tantamount to secession in itself.

It can be crawled; moreso than a bit of <canvas> (canvas is used in a similar manner to the way Flash is sometimes used). It can be deeplinked, just as asyncronous js/HTML can be deeplinked (using a code library).

Video, audio, vector graphics and bitmaps all fail to meet your criteria for a "web technology", and they're still a part of our web (and more growing more important everyday). I'm not in favor of using Flash as an Html replacement, but it works just as well as any other binary format on the web used to deliver content.

That all said, I was objecting to the idea that we Flash developers don't want to be part of the web.

You lie. http://www.google.com/search?q=filetype%3Aswf+%22contrary+ev... http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/ http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/

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