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Have you ever thought about using flash for your web chat service? I'd actually prefer it over standard javascript, especially because it would have a real socket connection.

Also, flash has pretty good support for text rendering. You can embed any font into any swf file, and it has anti-aliasing and effects. There was a presentation about the new flash 10 text features recently - http://is.gd/ejKj

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From a user point of view, why do you care if it has a real socket connection, or a emulated connection that does exactly the same thing? I'm not sure any user anywhere would notice the difference. There is no noticable difference in terms of latency, negligible difference in terms of bandwidth. I have thought about the possibility of using it where available, but I don't think it'd really be worth the effort and potential issues.

Fair enough for text rendering, but html is getting better font rendering also. I know which I'd put my money on. I can't even select the damn text on scribd.

The problem with HTML is there's a decade lag between when the new font rendering is introduced and when you can rely on it to be accessible to all of your customers.

True, although I think things are speeding up. Chrome, firefox, safari, emergence of the iPhone as a browser...

HTML5 is definitely heading in the right direction though. WebSocket will be awesome when it arrives, making comet a thing of the past. <video> and <audio> tags will pretty much put flash out of business, etc etc

The more browsers that exist, the more stakeholders there will be in HTML 5, and the longer it will take for it to be implemented across the board. And if the process is anything like ECMAScript, it could literally take a decade.

Flash does everything you need for rich media, now. Sorry, but flash is never going away. There's Youtube and advertising networks that will guarantee its ubiquity.

I agree things are speeding up, but think it's largely because Microsoft is now realizing that they need to keep IE up to date and standards compliant. They still have 70%market share, and it's not shrinking fast, so the onus is entirely on them. IE7 is kind of a sucky browser but a step in the right direction in terms of compliance, and IE 8 will be much better.

70% might be true in some places, but it's changing a lot. For example, Mibbit gets about 19% IE usage on the main client. On the widget as you'd expect that figure is higher - 30%.

The surprise is how well chrome is doing these days - usually beating Opera and Safari, and sometimes beating IE6.

I think most of the push is coming from firefox,chrome,safari and opera. People using the new wave of webapps aren't using IE, because it's ridiculously slow (Even GMail now deter the use of IE).

I'd say it is shrinking very fast in webapp early adopter circles, and that's a key area of growth for browsers. IE better up its game with IE8, or get left behind.

70% is true as an overall average. 90% is true in some places. Mibbit is very atypical, but even at 20%, you still have to support it.

That's the problem with browsers, you're always stuck with the lowest common denominator.

The real place I could see Flash being great for mibbit is it would allow you to build an embed that could be used on sites like Myspace which allow Flash but not Javascript content.

Let me know if you ever want me to show you how to get a sane Flash dev environment set up - I have the war-wounds from writing most of Justin.TV's Flash code ;-)

Make it a blog post of some sort? I'd read it.

I'd be interested in reading that as well.

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