Farewell to Flash
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Adobe has no intention of ever announcing an EOL for Flash. People only think to use "EOL" and "Flash" in the same sentence because Alex Stamos made a melodramatic tweet during the uncomfortable 48 hour timespan between the world becoming aware of the existence of Hacking Team's 0-day and Adobe releasing a patch to fix it.
As far as Adobe is concerned, they stopped development of Flash on mobile and recommends switching to HTML5 video/audio so don't think Adobe is still head over heels about Flash.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702043580045770279...
That's irrelevant, Adobe is known for keeping dead products afloat. The Flash platform is gracefully becoming another Director or Cold Fusion which are still being sold.
From 2011: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702043580045770279...
Has he looked at the sheer amount of JavaScript modern HTML5-based sites download, especially the advertising-based ones? They make Flash look positively efficient and friendly.
A couple of megabytes of JavaScript which is then gzipped to a few hundred kilobytes is nothing in comparison. The biggest slow down today is in performance AFTER loading due to 3rd Party ad code; not due to the weight but what it actually does.
If we're comparing apples to apples, there actually was a lot of things Flash did more efficiently. For instance, efficient storage of vector shapes, more complex masking which allowed the use of JPG images in place of PNG's (which resulted in a smaller file size), and a large API that reduced the need for external dependencies (and thus code size).
Flash also had far more advanced animation capabilities that HTML5 is still struggling to reproduce. HTML5 still lacks decent tooling for producing such animations that work in an efficient, cross browser way. Think about why GIF's and autoplaying videos are so popular now. They provide the most reliable way to add motion and interest to a page and they those things are huge file size wise.
One concrete example - we're making the move from Flash banners to HTML5 banners and finding that we'll need a much larger file size to even approach the same level of polish that we did before. Whereas before Flash banners were typically limited to 40-50k, the IAB is going to recommend 200kb banners as the standard for desktop HTML5 banners.
Now I'm not saying the world should stick with Flash, but instead of just ripping on Flash, I think as web developers we need to be pushing for better tools and better capabilities that will allow for more creativity and expressiveness than we are typically able to produce now. And just as a disclaimer, I've tried Adobe Edge, Google Designer, and coded many things by hand using Canvas, SVG, CSS3, etc.
Well.. yes, because that was what Flash sites were mostly used for. Yes, it didn't have to be uses for that - but it was mostly used for needless crap.
I mean, that makes sense because if you didn't want the useless fancy crap you wouldn't have been using Flash in the first place. It's even in the name of the program.
The rest of your post is just justifying all the ways Flash has extra crap in it that was used and abused. Yes - flash is a better animation tool than HTML5. Guess what - most Javascript pages don't need that. Most Flash apps didn't either - but it was still used a bunch.
You're making my point for me while arguing against something I've not said.
I don't think 'impede' means what TechCrunch think it means…
Also, when I visited their home page I got an 'Install Flash plugin?' dialogue…
As a side note, I found this page to be a great follow-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML5_and_Flash
Its changing though, but it does mean we need a standardised way of deploying bundles of html/css/js and traditionally we haven't been great and standardising.
It's not my area but, but considering it naively I wonder why all the ad networks don't just pick a version of Swiffy, then keep using SWFs with the rule that the content has to play well with swiffy. (Or maybe they already do such things.)
With the possible exception of "security flaws", replace "Flash" with "HTML5" in that sentence and it still makes perfect sense.
I was under the impression that overall HTML5 benefited search engine indexing through defining and encouraging the use of semantic tags and embedded microdata. Plus extending the capabilities of the browser with geolocation, drag-and-drop, extended input types, etc.
If by "HTML5" you mean that more extensive browser capabilities lead to the trend of building fully client-side/single-page applications, maybe I could see something there.
I think there's a chance that flash still stays useful, despite Adobe's action/inactions.
> there are still many Flash-powered multimedia items on the web, including graphics, videos, games and animations, like GIFs, a preferred method of expression for millennials and adults alike.
The author could have used GIFs just as a comparsion though, to help readers understand what kind of animation is being talked about, i.e. "like GIFs", not Toy Story.
They need to break out of that stagnation soon or they risk being completely obsolete and not noticing until it is too late. I for one don't have flash installed (or enabled in cases where it is present as a built-in) in my usual browsers (and that isn't going to change: we are long past the point where anything a Flash app does is replicated by something else so if it is a choice of "use flash or don't be able to use X" I'll skip X and use Y instead of re-enabling Flash). I'm not the only one I know with this attitude and while we are in a minority currently that will change over time, and probably not a long time.
> It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5).
Waiting for that would be a bad business decision on their part. It is obvious where things are going (or at least where they are not going or where they are no going to stay) so waiting for Adobe to tell them the facts is silly. They should be researching alternatives now if they have not done so already and making migration plans.
By technologies/languages that are older than Flash?
Floppy discs are pretty much obsolete yet spinning hard disks, the first commercially available units of which pre-dated the first available floppy disks & drives by 15 years, are still a current tech (arguably they are on the way out, but right now they are still very much here and will be few at least a few years yet).
Whether it is a good idea to do this is open to interpretation.
Honestly, though, I am not going to lose any sleep over developers / programmers / businesses who are not keeping up on latest development trends.
Flash-the-authoring-tool has been able to publish HTML for some years now, and an EOL from Adobe wouldn't mean anything (there haven't been any new features for SWF authoring in years anyway, so killing the tool now would basically just mean killing the HTML-authoring part).
The fact that some devs still make Flash content has little to do with Adobe, and everything to do with the fact that some clients (like ad networks) still want SWFs for various reasons.
I disagree. There are many people who simply say: Adobe is still developing this, as such it is viable technology.
Eol-ing this would solve that problem. I agree it is not any technical solution.