The second day Flash died | Hacker News Reader

The second day Flash died

sylvainzimmer.com

14 pointssylvinus11 comments

Adobe has on the road to being the publishing work horse.. I don't think they care whether it's HTML5 or Flash. They just want you to use their tools to produce it. I don't see Flash going away, but I certainly see them ramping up their development tools to build HTML5 apps.

For some reason, people seem to have a personal vendetta against Flash. Adobe is first and foremost a company that makes and sells tools. Flash or HTML5, they make money either way. I don't know any company that buys Flash without buying it bundled with Photoshop and Illustrator.

Flash saved us from Real Player and WMP and gave us YouTube. HTML5 is saving us from obnoxious full-Flash sites that drain our batteries, but it won't save us from obnoxious animated ads. And those obnoxious Flash websites will turn into obnoxious HTML5 sites that screw with our scroll wheel or have awkward UI. So I really wonder what everyone is celebrating.

People are celebrating because the move to open standards is accelerating . When I read reviews about the Chromebook having poor Flash support, it's just a sad reminder that companies need Adobe's help/support to build another platform.

Adobe actually is a good company but they can't spend the necessary time supporting Flash on every new platform that appears. Flash is only ever going to be good on a couple of major platforms.

Building the web around open standards gives many companies a chance to build the next great Internet device.

As long as Adobe can find ways to help steer an awful lot of what is great about Flash into the HTML5 space (with tools and process to support it), then it's all to the good.

I get a bit exasperated reading all the HTML5 boosters who, for understandable political reasons, blithely dismiss flash at a technical and especially domain-specific level. Flash let's me do the following in a browser with relatively clean deployment, like, two years ago: http://www.icecreambreakfast.com/flash3d.html . I'll be ecstatic when I can reliably get the same possibilities from HTML5, but these are real, hard-and-fast features based on specific knowledge about a relatively complicated domain, and often times I get the sense that the domain knowledge issues and feature specificity are somehow beside the point with Flash bashers. At least for browser based games, Flash lets me do a lot of things I want to do right now.

It's hard to shake the feeling that a lot of the anti-flash feelings mirror the structure of GIMP versus Photoshop as discussed occasionally on slashdot. I love the idea of GIMP, politically, but taking away Photoshop from me would literally be like partially lobotomizing me.

I don't understand why Adobe doesn't just port Flash to HTML5 Canvas. I don't mean compiling AS to JS. I'm talking about being able to write Javascript code with a graphics library that resembles the Flash Actionscript presentation stack.

They will/are. However, until HTML5 canvas has the same market penetration as Flash, there's not going to be as much consumer demand for such a tool.

They effectively bought PhoneGap so they can do this right now for mobile.

as I wrote in the article, I also think Flash will have some valid use cases for the next few years. Games, like you mentioned, are definitely one of these.

I agree with you on GIMP vs. Photoshop. It's not even close. But Flash vs. HTML5/JS is quite different. The iPad has forced all the biggest websites to have Flash-free versions and, well, no one seems to have been lobotomized yet :)

HTML 5 is beautiful and portable. Someone deciding to go with HTML5 must be appreciated. However, it doesn't mean that the world of Flash has to be left behind from right now. The support to HTML5 by the modern browsers, is a major concern till now.

Flash hasn't died yet, and wont die for few more years, until the browsers come up with everything HTML5 and everyone starts to use the latest updated browsers.

Sensationalist garbage.

The recent days when Pandora and Slideshare dropped Flash were also damaging blows. 'Tis but a scratch, I suppose.

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