Comment by waxpraxis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by waxpraxis | Hacker News Reader

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Ah, but necessary is the key word there. Very little that Flash is used for is necessary, it's almost always about entertainment. HTML 5 is well suited to overtake some of the reasons developers have to use Flash - inline video players and many Flex apps.

The HTML 5 technology stack is not well positioned to do everything Flash can do though - and I pointed out three key places where that's absolutely the case.

The biggest point though is that HTML creeps slowly forward through a standards process that is laborious at best. Flash, being a de-facto standard controlled by one company doesn't have to wait - it can push and prod forward and let developers explore new ideas and create new experiences. Even if you don't care for Flash, you should appreciate what it does for pushing the web forward. Sure there are missteps - I think Flash ads are awful too, but the work and because of that HTML5 and canvas will be used to build just as annoying ads in the future.

html creeps forward exactly because of people using sub standard workarounds like flash, and those times are changing, anyone following what is happening on the web can see that real web development is starting to move at an extraordinary pace.

the standards committee dont "design" the internet, by definition to become a specification someone needs to have implemented it, browser vendors are free to implement cool new features as fast as they want, w3c is just a forum for agreement on those new features.

if we were waiting on rubber stamping from the w3c, we wouldnt even be using ajax right now.

Right - but when did XmlHTTPRequest first rear it's head? 1999. When did AJAX actually take off? 2005.

Six years.

During the same time Flash went from a no scripting (well it was essentially programming via madlibs with Flash 4) to ActionScript 3 (Flex 2, the first place AS3 was used, was in early beta at the time I believe).

New versions of the Flash Player only take a few months to hit 90%+ penetration rates.

yes but "noone supports new web standards" is a self fulfilling prophecy, we all know users dont know or care about what is happening under the hood, they arent going to push for ie to support canvas.

as web developers we need to be pushing canvas and font-face and webgl etc and stop running back to propietary plugins every time a font kinda looks not exactly the same on every other machine as mine.

Its pretty unarguable that open standards are fundamentally better than proprietary formats, a single company owning the format the web runs on would be disastrous, instead of opening this gap to push flash into, I think energy is better spent pressuring those involved to help push web standards to a point where flash is not needed, if every website didnt support ie6 tomorrow, next week ie6 would not exist, obviously that is a contrived situation but the fact is its us web developers that need to make sacrifices to make things work better on the users behalf, they cant and shouldnt be expected to do it themselves.

Sure - but it's a constantly running cycle, people seem to forget that. HTML 5 will get adopted given enough time - but by that point Flash will have moved on and will do more and do it better. Then HTML will catch up again... etc.

You can push HTML 5 and canvas all you'd like - but from a pure business standpoint if I can reach 98% of my audience with Flash, but only 40% with HTML5/Canvas I'd be an idiot to not choose Flash.

It will be WONDERFUL when I can use canvas to draw realtime graphs and know it will reach 98% of my users. That day is not today and it won't be for some time to come. Now, that being said I and doing exactly that task with canvas for a project - but it's as a backup of the Flash version since the client expects a sizable iPad/iPhone audience.

people also seem to forget that flash is only "better" for some small definitions of better, there is a reason people hate it and most of them arent political.

your "from a pure business standpoint" is exactly what I was referring to, people are far too quickly jumping to quick and ugly fixes like flash that do nothing to help fix the core problems of why web standards are limiting. It takes a lot of "idiots" to push canvas and friends into widespread adoption, I am glad to see people like github taking the initiative.

What do you mean by "small definitions of better"? Can you do a cartoon with synchronized sound with HTML5? Better is a matter of "does it work for enough of your audience that it makes sense to build it".

If you know your audience and can push the technology, by all means go for it! GitHub has exactly that audience. They aren't idiots for going with canvas - for them it's a savvy move. But the Flash option is still there for a reason too.

my point was similiar to you last one, while html is catching up with video / audio / animation, flash is still miles behind html in terms of a lot of basic features, accessibility, adoption, easy of introspection, reliability, performance, I am wary of "html is catching up with flash" arguments because as you said its all situational.

Ah certainly. They are all tools - you use the correct tool for the situation. For entertainment purposes I would want to make sure Flash was in my tool belt.

You're forgetting that that was a Flash being developed by a hungry Macromedia. Progress in Flash development today has to bear the weight of Adobe's lethargy.

It sounds like you're just jumping into web development when you say that. Adobe has been faster with release cycles than Macromedia.

Often known as Hackromedia, they were not the powerhouse dev. studio it sounds like you're trying to push.

I'm just pissed by the shit they've turned Macromedia's Mac apps into, namely Fireworks, at least as of CS4. I will reserve judgment on CS5.

In the bad old days of 1998, HTML was flashing forward along several haphazardly chosen paths, as Netscape and Microsoft were busy creating their own incompatible extensions like document.layers vs. document.all.

I prefer the present situation, where the experimental envelope-pushing happens in the controlled sandbox of Flash, and only the most vital innovations will eventually trickle down into the HTML standard.

I think he means necessary to deliver the appropriate entertainment, not necessary in the True-Grit sense.

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