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Comment by bensummers | Hacker News Reader

It's not easy trying to hold back the web and prevent open standards from making expensive authoring tools redundant, especially when it's in everyone else's interests for them to fail.

They're doing the best they can. We should admire their persistence.

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It's a funny situation, in the sense that Microsoft did exactly the same thing on the ECMAScript 4 standard on which Actionscript 3 is based and managed instead to stall the evolution of the ES standard...

http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/08/ru-roh-adobe-screwe...

Everyone focused on Microsoft at the time but Yahoo and others also dissented. I think for good reason; ES4 is nearly completely different from normal Javascript (static types, class-based inheritance).

Also Adobe was getting a standard that was what they already had and Mozilla had a AS3 VM runtime from Adobe. Microsoft would have been starting from scratch. I don't blame them for blocking it.

(EDIT: If you look at this Apple also marked red to much of ES4: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pFIHldY_CkszsFxMkQORe...)

I don't see how HTML5 makes authoring tools (commercial or not) redundant. Do you expect people that are relying on visual authoring software to migrate to writing HTML5/JS/CSS in a text editor "just because"?

I meant their particular authoring tools, which output Flash rather than HTML5.

They could adjust them to output HTML5 with Flash fallback, and that would be a Good Thing. But it seems odd to keep on going with a poorly integrated[1] plugin which duplicates the work done in open HTML+JS runtimes available everywhere from desktops to smartphones[2].

1) eg Flash 'cookies' which don't get wiped when you delete your cookies in the browser.

2) And 'superphones', of course. :-)

So we agree that there is a lot of room for innovation in the space of tools enabling people to output to the HTML5 stack.

Absolutely. And it would be a good thing, since every new internet connected platform is going to implement an HTML5 runtime, and the more people who can create stuff the better.

I think they are planning on updating their tools to output HTML5, check out this video

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/10/sneak_peek_ai_fl_dw_can...

And its built around their own Flash-renderer-optimised clone of SVG (FXG)... because... its more convenient for them, I guess?

Obviously there is a whole flash ecosystem that Adobe profits from. If html 5 helps move the market away from Flash, Adobe's influence and market position would be impacted. Going from a position of controlling Flash to being one of many html 5 tools companies is not in their best interest. So, its understandable that a public company is digging in their heals, but its up to the community to help push through the politics.

They only profit from the sale of the authoring tools; the runtime is free. (In fact they're probably paying everyone to preload Flash.) Their content authoring suite has no real competitor. I can see culturally why they are so wedded to Flash (they spent $3.4 billion on it four years ago) but it's not like CS* sales would crater if everyone switched to HTML5 (assuming Adobe tools started writing HTML5). If anything the market would grow. I think Adobe knows this. The writing is on the wall so far as Flash is concerned.

6% of Adobe's revenues come from Platform segment, which includes Flash Player, AIR, Cold Fusion, Flex and the Flash developer tool. ($181M in 2009). While Adobe would survive if Flash disappeared tomorrow..

In the end, Adobe's actions speak for themselves. They are heavily promoting Flash.

http://news.ebrandz.com/miscellaneous/2009/2472-adobe-unfold...

I agree that the writing is on the wall, but Adobe isn't going to watch millions of dollars in revenue disappear without a fight.

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