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21st February 2010, 05:23 PM
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It's easy to bash the Flash-bashers as being elitist, but that just completely ignores all of the points we raise in why we think mobile devices and flash just don't mix, and why HTML5 (and CSS3, and JS5 when it's released) are the future, especially on mobile devices.
Flash Player is bloated and resource hungry Flash Player is a dog and the current crop of mobile devices just don't have the processing power or battery life to support it. The only way it's getting onto the iPhone is if it's included as standard in Mobile Safari, and that would be disastrous for performance. Plus, we can all do without those annoying ads. These days it is the equivalent of ActiveX and Java Applets: annoying, big, and slow. The browser is already acting as an interpreter of one technology that's quite capable of producing dynamic content, so there's no real need to include a second interpreter on top of that. It's not touch-friendly And it certainly has no ability to deal with multi-touch interfaces. This is not Apple's responsibility, it's Adobe's. So until Adobe develops Flash in way that is specifically designed to deal with peripheral-less devices, it has no place demanding support for those devices. Animation != Web technolgy The OP asks if we can produce animated features like Quads or Drawn together. Well, we probably could, with the right IDE and frameworks. But there is no reason why you couldn't animate in Flash then export to a (relatively) open format like H.264. You don't watch Drawn together straight in your Flash Player from the SWF file, it's converted to a video first and then Flash Player is used to play that file. Something which isn't necessary anymore. Apple's interface guidelines are thrown out the window We use Macs because Apple has spent as shit-load more money than any other company in perfecting it's user interface. We use iPhones because Apple has extended that desktop aesthetic to a mobile device. The Flash IDE does not incorporate any of the UI guidelines that Apple builds into it's own IDE (XCode), throwing away decades of usability research. If you start building apps in Flash and exporting them the iPhone, you're destroying an essential part of why many of us use the platform: consistency, usability, and aesthetics. Flash will not have access to the core of the system Apple protects many of the iPhone core from being accessed by 3rd-party software. This is to protect users. Adobe will not have a plugin approved if it will let just any random SWF on the web have access to the core. Unless Adobe is willing to spend the time and money writing Flash Player from scratch using Apple's frameworks and within the restrictions of those frameworks, they won't get Flash on the iPhone. HTML5 (with Canvas) + CSS3 + SVG + JS = Standards Standards are the best way for the web to progress. Until Firefox came along with standards compliance, the web was stagnant, stuck with buggy and slow IE6. IE6 is the only reason Flash got so big, because it was the only way to do anything dynamic or out-of-the box: animation, page transitioning, non-grid layouts, etc. But that's not the case anymore. Now, we can do dynamic right in the browser, without needing proprietary plugin's adding a level of abstraction that doesn't need to exist. CSS3 will (and in some cases already does) provide for a level of graphic control that could only be achieved with static images and Flash (rounded corners, shadows, gradients, etc.). SVG allows for vector graphics. HTML5 allows for video and animation. And JS is the language that ties it all together. Why should Apple support a proprietary format with all its inherent pitfalls when open source standards are already out there, waiting to be embraced? Developers, developers, developers ActionScript = JavaScript + a framework. Both ActionScript and JavaScript are based on the ECMAScript standard. I know both of them pretty well, but AS has one advantage over JS, and it's nothing to do with the language itself: the Flex framework behind it. Developers will start producing frameworks for the new web technologies in the same way they've already produced the likes of jQuery and MooTools to make the current crop of dynamic web easier, and the way frameworks exist for server technologies. Once these frameworks exist, churning out content will be faster. Flash content !== Flash IDE Most of the OPs piece refers to "Flash" as the program from Adobe that produces the content. Yes, the Flash IDE is quite powerful and it allows rapid development of animated vector content, even cartoons. But the IDE is not essential to the Flash content: you can create Flash content without even opening it, in pure code, and you can achieve amazing effects you could never do in the IDE alone. Content is also not a set product of the IDE. If Adobe wanted, they could have Flash export to Silverlight, or HTML5 Canvas, or any other number of formats that support vector animation. You could still use the Flash IDE to produce HTML5 content ... if Adobe would let you. It could be just as powerful, just as dynamic, just as rich. But again, the ball is in Adobe's court as to how they remain relevant. --- I suppose my point is that Flash content is old technology. It's popularity is a result of the old internet, where protectionism and lack of competition resulted in a decade of stagnation. Sure, it was great at the time — it was the bees' knees — and the IDE is still second to none. But the advancement of web standards and innovation, of mobile technology, and of user education has resulted in an environment where users want an alternative, and developers are jumping ship. Flash is losing relevance, and Adobe is falling into the Microsoft Trap, a trap MS only just recently managed to escape. Don't get me wrong, I used to love Flash. Half of my web-design portfolio is Flash-based websites. But familiarity is no reason to ignore emergent and (in my opinion) superior technologies. Last edited by banjo; 21st February 2010 at 05:44 PM. 
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21st February 2010, 05:31 PM
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Excellent posts morn and banjo
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21st February 2010, 05:44 PM
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I agree
I hear you all, and I hear that you think Flash will die.
Apple is playing a little elitist, especially when you consider how small of a market share they have. Flash will be around for a few more years, as I've not seen any great examples of rich interactive multimedia come from the HTML5 story yet. As a designer who loves to make flash interactive projects, banners and websites, I cant see it being replaced for a few more years. I honestly think Adobe will make export to HTLM5 in future versions of Flash. Dreamweaver, Flash and other Adobe products will give non-coders the tools to design in HTML5, and you nerdy code writes can shove that up your jumpers. I think the point is, flash is old, its got the momentum to take on the next few years with vigor. Apple, iphone, and the ipad will not break flash. Apple will come to the ballgame when online content providers grab steve by his nuts, squeeze tight and say "we want to advertise on iPad using flash". iPad technology is today, but HTML5 is tomorrow. What do we use while its at the level of providing the standards that flash has? Yes, I have an iPhone, yes, I'll line up at midnight for an iPad, but flash needs to be included on the ipad, as HTML5 is in its infancy.
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21st February 2010, 06:10 PM
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Content providers will come to the party when they want to advertise on mobile devices. This is the way it's always been: advertising wasn't done in Flash until it was supported on 95% of web devices (desktops). When they proportion drops due to mobile devices not supporting Flash, they'll fall back to the next best thing. In the short term, that may not even be HTML5 but blast-from-the-past animated GIFs. Content producers have to adapt to the platforms they want to support, not the other way around. Apple is setting the standard and everybody else will have to follow. Sure, it's arrogant, but if the majority of "smart phones" ignore Flash then content providers have to account for that whether they like it or not. And once they ignore Flash on mobile devices, they may as well drop support on desktops too.
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21st February 2010, 06:48 PM
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As a pure consumer of websites and content, I truly don't care if its Flash or something else that provides the experience. For most of the time I couldn't even tell without really looking.
What frustrates to no end is Flash made content harming my web experience. Until I installed ClickToFlash, my browser would slow down or crash with sites using any Flash content, to the point of freezing the entire browser. For the moment, I'm much happier without Flash.
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21st February 2010, 06:50 PM
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Flash sites are a subset of the Worldwide Wide Web, which is a subset of the Internet, which is a subset of the iPad's functionality. The iPad does so much more than browse the WWW. People will buy the iPad because of this. Even if it doesn't support Flash. So once again, why MUST Apple include Flash? Ok, people wont be able to view their favourite flash sites. Yes that will be an annoyance. But then again, so is having your web browser crash due to flash crashing. So is having you iPad get hot because of excessive CPU usage. So is having your battery drained because excessive CPU usage. Apple does not control Flash. Adobe does. If you want flash on the iPad, then yell at Adobe to FIX IT so that it runs to Apples standards. Because obviously Apple are not willing to compromise when it comes the their products. Because in their minds, performance, efficiency and stability is far more important than being able to view a web site.
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21st February 2010, 07:10 PM
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they're too slow, too much "flash" and bubble, not enough content. seriously. sucks too much of everything, memory, bandwidth, time...
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“the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” John Gilmore, 1990. iMac G3/Panther, iBook/Tiger AcerOne, Mac mini, MacBook/SnowLeopard iPod Photo, nano, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone4 32GB
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21st February 2010, 07:10 PM
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21st February 2010, 07:18 PM
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I'm a Flash developer too, but I'm not crying that there's no Flash on the iPhone. Performance and stability are the main reasons why Flash isn't there. Apple (not Adobe) is judged by the performance of their device, and if every page loads faster because there aren't any Flash ads to load, people will have a better impression of the device.
While there are many cool things that Flash does better than anything else, most people simply use Flash to watch video — and you don't need Flash for YouTube on iPhone or with Click2Flash on Mac. That's not the big reason, though. Most Flash takes advantage of the mouse pointer, reacting to its position. Hover is very important to a lot of Flash, but there is no pointer and no hover on the iPhone or the iPad. Flash can't work just like on a desktop, it has to be made differently, probably into a custom app. I'm really looking forward to Flash CS5 exporting to the iPhone and (eventually) to Canvas elements, though. Adobe wouldn't even mind — they make money from selling Flash, not giving away the player.
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21st February 2010, 09:15 PM
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Great posts Banjo.
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Also, it's Flash developers who are complaining that there's no Flash on the iPad, not the advertisers. Advertisers will use whatever gets seen. They don't care about the tech. Last edited by marc; 21st February 2010 at 09:40 PM.
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21st February 2010, 09:21 PM
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To add a bit of a cross-view to the debate, here is the take on the same issue from another Flash developer who has a very good reason why Flash will never really work on the iPad..
An Adobe Flash developer on why the iPad can’t use Flash — RoughlyDrafted Magazine
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21st February 2010, 09:41 PM
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Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool. In other words it doesn't run bytecode like a traditional jvm does, you compile it to .dex format instead with some dx tool. There's no mention of being able to write in C. Anyway this is kind of a side branch to the main one, being that flash is dead. RIP.
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21st February 2010, 09:53 PM
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Pfff
Apple has an agenda, and none of you see it.
 Do you really see that killing flash off will make the web plugin free? Proprietary software will always empower non-coders to do the stuff coders do, so you'll always be anti-wysiwyg. I've used apple products all my life, and will preorder mine next week, but it does shit me no end to not have flash. Flash sucks battery life, and electronics have poor battery technology. Im no about to block flash out of my life cos one (sorry, two) devices dont support it. Answer me this people, will this canvas HTML5 stuff do rich, interactive content like flash?
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21st February 2010, 10:02 PM
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In other news I'm anti-WYSIWYG editors yes, but it's got nothing to do with flash. I hate Dreamweaver, Front Page and almost any other WYSIWYG editor I've ever seen
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21st February 2010, 10:07 PM
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Apple have a new path for their custom, bleeding edge browser tech (as do other browser vendors). Most experimental features are being implemented using CSS. Apple uses the "-webkit" at the beginning of properties that are specific to WebKit, Mozilla use "-moz" and Opera use "-o". When something is demonstrated to be of value (people have been excited about it) and well implemented, it's incorporated into the CSS3 spec. I believe this is how CSS Animation and CSS Transformations started life. They were things Apple wanted, so they were included in WebKit for use in Dashboard and on the iPhone. That's how you add custom browser features while still remaining standards compliant. That's how you keep evolving without the need for plugins. Quote:
Also, let's not beat around the bush... writing HTML and CSS isn't "coding". They're markup languages. They're just ways to describe the design of a page. Keep in mind that I'm a designer saying this, not a programmer. Really, it's not that hard. If you're building a website with a lot of pages, styles (CSS) are the way to go—you'll be able to create 100s of consistent pages quickly, then change the design of them all at a later date, simply by editing one file. Quote:
Last edited by marc; 21st February 2010 at 10:14 PM.
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21st February 2010, 10:22 PM
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The right tools for the right job.
Yes Java on the desktop and GUI side sucks. But it is excellent for server side work. You don't have buffer under/overruns and other nasty things that pure C/C++ based server side code needs to deal with. Sun has spent a lot on creating ways of making back-end scalability via Java a reality, so I am quite confident that this side of Java will stay and will grow, particularly with someone like Oracle behind it. I also agree that Flash is a great tool. But... this is what I have observed over the last two years. Two years ago, I was hooking JSP (Java web application server based web pages) into Flash using its Actionscripting. Quite fun/easy. The designer created the actual animated doodadds. We added the extra scripting to make the flash file do a bit more of the dynamic stuff most designers don't have the skill/training to do this properly without using graphical tools. BTW, the coding cut the use of assets in Flash down by quite a bit in this instance. I mention skill and training, because a lot of self-taught web designers don't realise what kind of work and knowledge actually goes into building the application side of things. My hat is off to BJango because they seem to have both sides of the design/development together. I went back to school and got this learning. Heck I am still studying at university level now and am learning to get better at this. What I have seen since working as a professional Java developer is to appreciate what can be achieved, when a design company that has a respectful relationship with a software development company. Now back to my observations. Two years on and I am being asked to carry out animation/UI functions BY THE DESIGN COMPANY that I am creating using.... you guessed it CSS and Javascript. Even the designers are abandoning it as the medium. Don't mistake medium for tool. Flash is still a pretty good tool. But as a medium, I can see it has already started to run out of steam. There are flashy corporate annual reports online that are purely written in Javascript where traditionally (read 2-3 years ago) Flash would have been the first choice. These are being used by some of the biggest companies around. To do things right on the web, you will always need designers AND (shock horror) developers! Nothing irritates me more than listening to a web designer pile shit on the craft of software developers. A good designer is worth just as much as a good software developer and that is what Apple has gotten right all these years. Adobe is just a big hungry pig that has gorged itself on its initial success. Having now forgotten how to move on, is now more likely to be destined to be turned into ham. The browser is becoming more ubiquitous to the operating system, now more than ever. This is why Google is creating its own OS and why the iPhone and iPad as a platform will shit on anything else. N.B. I am currently brushing up on my old C skills and learning Objective-C and using the iPhone SDK, I am a big advocate of using multiple languages. Even though I am a Java developer, I work in different languages every day. It helps keep my skills sharp.
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21st February 2010, 10:23 PM
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Also, I forgot to add, Web 2.0 has nothing to do with Flash, that is a totally misleading statement.
I believe AJAX is at the heart of Web 2.0. And if I have to explain that to a Flash developer/designer, that is a bit sad.
__________________
The Russianator @ ReverbNation | TheRocketSurgeon GeekBlog My Buyer/Seller Feedback
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21st February 2010, 10:31 PM
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I don't think I've worked on a project yet that didn't require both.
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22nd February 2010, 12:54 AM
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Has this article been put on the blog just flame bait?
Trying to sway people with the old "choice is good" platitude is ridiculous! With iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad - we're talking about computing "appliances" now for the masses..... (not individually hand chosen and built components in computers by their geek owners) [hey, I've done it too!] Its not about choice WITHIN a product. You don't demand Holden give you the "Choice" of Volkswagen DSG transmission in ur Barina! Similarly, are people choosing mobile devices for their ability to run flash? No, people are demonstrating the irrelevance of Flash by CHOOSING the iPhone (and soon iPad.) Get with the program Flash people - Flash is O-V-A-H! ;-) Cry about wanting to maintain ur legacy skills - but the world has moved on! (throw out your floppy disks while ur at it!) Even if you can't deal with the evolutionary "world has changed" argument; or, the proprietary limitations argument; or, maybe the "just to slow and battery hungry" argument - how 'bout you take a look at this article quoting a REAL flash developer who's thought about it outlining structural reasons why flash will NOT work properly on touchscreen devices even if Apple did allow it: An Adobe Flash developer on why the iPad can’t use Flash — RoughlyDrafted Magazine Can't we all (including Adobe) just move on!!!!
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22nd February 2010, 02:44 AM
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I think for basic everyday stuff like watching movies, ads, and basic interactivity, HTML5 and other new standards will take over. However I believe you will see "flash sites" continuing to exist. They are simply the easiest and most cost effective way to make "oooooh shiiiiiny" kinds of sites.
I am a flash developer on a mac. And it's the biggest love hate relationship i've ever had. I do all my coding in FlashDevelop (pc app) through parallels which actually works really well, however it's still a pain to have Synk Standard running every few mins to test my project in firefox (OS X side) Some days i bash my head on my desk hating flash for its inefficiency and major bugs (found one the other day that set me back a good week of development) and other days it’s the most easy to use wonderful developing platform. Until HTML5 etc etc can let me take advantage of class files and proper developing environments, I won't be switching over. That said i am sure when development packages start being released for HTML5 that allow for proper development environments like flashdevelop the game will change and we will start seeing flash be less common. At the end of the day, if you do this kind of stuff for a living, you will follow the technology to wherever it evolves. I know I will.
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