Yeah, sure, you can do loads of awesome stuff with Flash. I think no one ever disputed that.
But are websites which use Flash for some of their important features really “the most awesome and innovative websites”? I, frankly, can only think of one, and that’s YouTube.
All the websites which make the web the web, seem, to me, not be dependent on Flash. eBay, amazon, Google, Facebook. And so on. Potential doesn’t matter so much when you don’t need the features.
Flash might die or it might not – but users (developers not so much, I think that’s perfectly alright) will have the ability to choose! Adobe should be super motivated to get mobile Flash right and Android is a viable competitor against iOS. (It’s really nice that history is not repeating itself. No utterly lame competitors like in the MP3 player market where a lack of competition lead Apple to produce the lamest iPods ever – except for the iPod touch, of course, the best iPod ever).
I will wait and see and not be too upset either way.
(Oh no! I didn’t want to cause some discussion about what’s the most important thing about the web. Really not! Those things tend to get ugly. That was a really bad phrase I picked there. What I meant was that many of the websites they linked to were niche websites focused on nice presentation. None of the websites everyone knows uses Flash for a major feature. I at least don’t know of any except YouTube.)
It's funny that the say that's the "wrong way" to do an image gallery, as image galleries in Flash are something that really annoy me, since it's so unnecessary.
I agree. There is no wrong way but Flash galleries for the most part annoy me to. They're useless for the most part because mostly they can be implemented without Flash anyway.
But you do still see a lot of flash galleries on professional photography sites. Having talked to quite a few photographers I think most of them want to have Flash websites because "that's what everyone else does" ergo it must be right/cool. Some have claimed they want Flash galleries because of copyright issues, that images can't be saved directly from Flash sites. I guess they've never heard of print screen/screen grabbers.
The thing that really got me about this site though was how right down at the bottom they claimed "This page was made on a Mac using Adobe Flash but you probably won't notice". And they're right. I didn't really notice until I saw that text. Which is cool I guess. But it also explains why I couldn't ctrl+click to open links in new tabs or copy text off the page. You know, those kind of minor behaviors that have become standard in browsers and people have come to expect.
That's not true. Flash doesn't prevent you from copying text. You can copy other text on the page, and that's still in flash. It's probably something they simply didn't do with putting together the page.
It's probably something they simply didn't do
with putting together the page.
Flash sites are annoying also because they break a lot of simple, but very useful things: copying of text, different URLs to different parts of the site (all-flash sites usually have only one url and now way to share address to some specific content), opening links in new tabs by middle-clicking them, scrolling with mouse wheel.
I know that _now_ some of these are possible to do properly in flash, bet you have to put some effort into that, and that's rarely done.
One the other hand text and links in HTML5 will display and work as expected no matter what browser you use HTML5 capable or not. I can enhance plain navigation with some nifty CSS animations and transitions. If users browser does not support that it will have just the same plain navigation. If I do that in Flash and Flash plugin is not available — too bad.
That's the beauty of progressive enhancement which you don't have in the case of Flash.
Great so flash has set the groundwork for this kind of capability.
But I'm confused as to the motivation behind this; certainly it highlights the fact that HTML5 is only just coming into beginning as a standard. That we are only just working to replace flash with totally open standards.
Beyond that I don't see a cohesive argument in favor of flash. It's mostly just mud throwing (note: I was equally derisive of Apples' "HTML5 rocks" nonsense).
Flash is, as far as I see it, a non-optimal solution to many things we have been using it for (video, scripting/gaming etc.). So working on alternatives is a great idea.
The argument for HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, etc isn't an argument against Flash. I don't see this page as suggesting HTML5 is bad, either, and that we shouldn't work on it.
However, you have to admit there is a LOT of backlash against Flash for HTML5, and a lot of people suggesting that HTML5 can replace Flash now.
Everything I've seen from the Flash community has been pretty reasoned: they are fine with HTML5, and want to see it succeed, but they aren't throwing away Flash now. Let's face it, Flash is still useful now. HTML5 cannot replace Flash now. Heck, even video isn't solved as a standard yet.
(I'm a Web Developer) The big issue I have with Flash Developers is that they use Flash for everything as it's what they know. Which I get, and sometimes that is the right route to take. Learning a new technology takes a long time and you often aren't going to get it right the first time.
But a professional website needs to use the right tool for the problem and very very often Flash is a substandard tool for the problem and is simply used because that's what the developer knows.
Flash Developers don't want a move away from Flash because they already know Flash and appreciate a lot of it's capabilities. And Web Developers want people to stop using something that crashes their non-windows browser and is often used to create low quality interfaces and break browser features.
"
Apple loves to repeat history and made some supercool amazing examples that show you how the web was like 8 years ago with any browser equipped with Macromedia Flash 6. To recreate the full retro experience, Apple also developed the iPad, a tablet-device with a processor that could have blown your socks off 12 years ago. It's equipped with a browser that depends on HTML5. Due to the slow processor rich internet content will not play very smooth. However, comparable tablet-devices running Android 2.2 and the flash player 10.1 are able to show all the following Flash examples (marked TODAY) on this page. Just like the other 97% of all online users are used to. Too see the examples you need a normal computer with a normal browser. That's all."
Nothing, I get a great big gray page with the Doom Button (the one to read flash) on it.
Oh yeah, and if I click on it, I can't copy the titles to my clipboard, my middle button breaks, I don't know where any link leads me and I don't get access to text services anymore. The bottom-right bunch of texts might as well be an image, nothing works on it and the links are completely fucked (instead of linking the text, you have to click the tiny little arrows on the right, how's that for discoverability?). Wheee.
I'm using a normal computer with a normal browser. I have Opera and no Flash plugin. Most of the rest of the Web doesn't treat me like a second-class citizen.
"Flash the way it is supposed to be today & tomorrow: fresh & innovative" and since the whole site is made in Flash, middle click on the demos doesn't open a new tab. It's just great!
OK so did anyone go to http://www.lollibomb.com/ - the site/person who made that? Really? The bevel and drop-shadow they use are from the 80's - along with the crap-tastic logo... And did you actually say 97,00%? really?
I enjoy Apple-bashing as much as the next guy, but the execution here is sloppy-joe. For example, the sentence, "Due to the slow processor rich internet content will not play very smooth" could really have benefited from a decent editor.
Also, using Flash to achieve a simple mouseover on the side-by-side comparisons means I can't open the links in new tabs. That pisses me off as a user.
Having said all that, the original Apple HTML5 page of which this is a parody doesn't work for me at all - because Apple decided that only Safari is exalted enough to display Apple's showcase HTML5 content.
From the site: "Too see the examples you need a normal computer with a normal browser."
Pitty that Lenovo X200 ThinkPad running Fedora 12 with Chrome or Firefox doesn't count as normal.
I really tried putting Flash on it, but the experience was so horrible that I got rid of it. Basically, the only Flash content that worked correctly were the ads.
Flash may be fast, but the problem is that my macbook pro get's so hot I can fry an egg on it after viewing a video on vimeo.com in flash for a few seconds.
I don't even consider Flash as part of the web. For me, the whole web ecosystem is about open, human-readable, text-based formats – namely HTML, CSS, JS – backed by several high quality (open source) runtimes available for virtually any platform. No authoring tools needed beyond text editor, source viewable by anyone. You can even access the content with tools like curl and grep.
Flash is nothing more than arbitrary, proprietary binary thingy, which just happens to have a runtime implemented for plugin APIs of few selected browsers on few selected platforms.
42 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 93.2 ms ] threadBut are websites which use Flash for some of their important features really “the most awesome and innovative websites”? I, frankly, can only think of one, and that’s YouTube.
All the websites which make the web the web, seem, to me, not be dependent on Flash. eBay, amazon, Google, Facebook. And so on. Potential doesn’t matter so much when you don’t need the features.
Flash might die or it might not – but users (developers not so much, I think that’s perfectly alright) will have the ability to choose! Adobe should be super motivated to get mobile Flash right and Android is a viable competitor against iOS. (It’s really nice that history is not repeating itself. No utterly lame competitors like in the MP3 player market where a lack of competition lead Apple to produce the lamest iPods ever – except for the iPod touch, of course, the best iPod ever).
I will wait and see and not be too upset either way.
But I think the point is that the things that you can do with Flash today are the things that HTML5 might do in the future.
But to be quite honest I find the whole stacking HTML5 up against Flash to be lame anyway.
If anything Flash is a much lesser worthy competitor to the apps which in themselves are not well known.
But you are right. Let's not get into a discussion about the web as such :)
Luckily you don't really see them anymore.
But you do still see a lot of flash galleries on professional photography sites. Having talked to quite a few photographers I think most of them want to have Flash websites because "that's what everyone else does" ergo it must be right/cool. Some have claimed they want Flash galleries because of copyright issues, that images can't be saved directly from Flash sites. I guess they've never heard of print screen/screen grabbers.
The thing that really got me about this site though was how right down at the bottom they claimed "This page was made on a Mac using Adobe Flash but you probably won't notice". And they're right. I didn't really notice until I saw that text. Which is cool I guess. But it also explains why I couldn't ctrl+click to open links in new tabs or copy text off the page. You know, those kind of minor behaviors that have become standard in browsers and people have come to expect.
Plus or minus?
Also, I tried to copy and paste that text from the footer but I couldn’t because it’s all wrapped up in Flash.
But I'm confused as to the motivation behind this; certainly it highlights the fact that HTML5 is only just coming into beginning as a standard. That we are only just working to replace flash with totally open standards.
Beyond that I don't see a cohesive argument in favor of flash. It's mostly just mud throwing (note: I was equally derisive of Apples' "HTML5 rocks" nonsense).
Flash is, as far as I see it, a non-optimal solution to many things we have been using it for (video, scripting/gaming etc.). So working on alternatives is a great idea.
However, you have to admit there is a LOT of backlash against Flash for HTML5, and a lot of people suggesting that HTML5 can replace Flash now.
Everything I've seen from the Flash community has been pretty reasoned: they are fine with HTML5, and want to see it succeed, but they aren't throwing away Flash now. Let's face it, Flash is still useful now. HTML5 cannot replace Flash now. Heck, even video isn't solved as a standard yet.
And no, I'm not a flash developer.
But a professional website needs to use the right tool for the problem and very very often Flash is a substandard tool for the problem and is simply used because that's what the developer knows.
Flash Developers don't want a move away from Flash because they already know Flash and appreciate a lot of it's capabilities. And Web Developers want people to stop using something that crashes their non-windows browser and is often used to create low quality interfaces and break browser features.
" Apple loves to repeat history and made some supercool amazing examples that show you how the web was like 8 years ago with any browser equipped with Macromedia Flash 6. To recreate the full retro experience, Apple also developed the iPad, a tablet-device with a processor that could have blown your socks off 12 years ago. It's equipped with a browser that depends on HTML5. Due to the slow processor rich internet content will not play very smooth. However, comparable tablet-devices running Android 2.2 and the flash player 10.1 are able to show all the following Flash examples (marked TODAY) on this page. Just like the other 97% of all online users are used to. Too see the examples you need a normal computer with a normal browser. That's all."
Nothing, I get a great big gray page with the Doom Button (the one to read flash) on it.
Oh yeah, and if I click on it, I can't copy the titles to my clipboard, my middle button breaks, I don't know where any link leads me and I don't get access to text services anymore. The bottom-right bunch of texts might as well be an image, nothing works on it and the links are completely fucked (instead of linking the text, you have to click the tiny little arrows on the right, how's that for discoverability?). Wheee.
I was just pointing out that scrolling with the mouse wheel isn't necessarily disabled by Flash.
Also, using Flash to achieve a simple mouseover on the side-by-side comparisons means I can't open the links in new tabs. That pisses me off as a user.
Having said all that, the original Apple HTML5 page of which this is a parody doesn't work for me at all - because Apple decided that only Safari is exalted enough to display Apple's showcase HTML5 content.
Frankly, Apple and Adobe deserve each other. :P
Pitty that Lenovo X200 ThinkPad running Fedora 12 with Chrome or Firefox doesn't count as normal.
I really tried putting Flash on it, but the experience was so horrible that I got rid of it. Basically, the only Flash content that worked correctly were the ads.
[1] Sorry, "multimedia studio": http://www.lollibomb.com/
Flash is nothing more than arbitrary, proprietary binary thingy, which just happens to have a runtime implemented for plugin APIs of few selected browsers on few selected platforms.