The Web does not need flash. | Hacker News Reader

The Web does not need flash.

stimuli.com.br

17 pointsronnieliew6 comments

It bothers me that people seem so angry at flash. It's been the only way to do so many things for more than a decade--and the technology to replace it isn't even really ready yet.

It's now more than a decade old. Of course it's going to be replaced at some point. But let's keep in mind that the open source/standards complaint alternative is fourteen years late to this market, and give credit where it's due.

(Author here)

I am sorry I sounded angry. Besides the sensationalist title, I surely didn't intend to.

I've done more Actionscript programming than any other language, keep OSS projects with it, I am not angry at all.

I do think, however, that specially inside the agency niche (to where I belong), there is a very strong blindfold, people really believe that flash is the only tech that matters on the web. Really.

I was aiming more at agency flash devs, to try to stir up some of the signs one can pick up.

I do have a lot of frustration to vent, however, with the toolset, community (certain parts of it) and Adobe. But ironically, all 3 of these have improved greatly in the last couple of years.

Honestly, this is more about the general attitude than your post. You were pretty reasonable and acknowledged more of what's going on than most others. Sorry I chose to vent on your post.

I don't think you sounded unreasonable.

Just because it's been the only viable solution, doesn't mean it's a good one. Between, slow speed, a history of horrible support for non-windows system, a kludge of vector animations morphed into other purposes with plenty of cruft along the way. Also security vulnerabilities... And how long has that been the situation?

Additionally it's not the lack of an open source solution, it's that the worlds most popular web browser (IE) has been off doing it's own thing, mostly reacting, rather then advancing. Microsoft's solution to Flash is their own VM/Plugin (SilverLight, before that ActiveX). It furthers their platform and technology stack.

Lastly, Adobe themselves does not have the best track record in software development. See http://adobegripes.tumblr.com

Consider most of the Flash most people see.

1) Ads. Animated ads. Ads that suddenly make noise. Ads that do both.

2) SKIP INTRO. (Enough said.)

3) Playing video easily on a web page.

4) Games.

Of these, only the last two are things most people want, and they see far more ads than they ever do YouTube clips.

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