HTML5 is not a Flash replacement and shouldn’t be seen that way | Hacker News Reader

HTML5 is not a Flash replacement and shouldn’t be seen that way

andrewgreig.com

10 pointsmahipal5 comments

I maintain that video is what made Flash ubiquitous, and thus enabled websites to assume that visitors would have Flash installed.

HTML5 removes that advantage, so the installed base of Flash will decrease, causing more and more sites to not develop for a Flash-audience.

So nominally, the post is right - HTML5 doesn't replace Flash. It renders Flash obsolete.

Remember Shockwave? Also a browser-plugin, but only used for small niches, games etc. Never had the ubiquity of Flash. This is where Flash is going after HTML5.

"you will have to decide between using Flash with a 99.6% market penetration or HTML5 with roughly less then 40% of users browsers"

Adobe keep rolling out the '99 percent' argument, and it is false. This argument is essentially 'hey look, everybody is already running our proprietary virtual machine so there is no need for a standards based solution!'. If we all thought like that, there would never be any progress.

HTML5 is not a flash replacement, but HTML5 + CSS3 + Canvas + Javascript + SVG + new DOM etc. sure is

When most articles refer to HTML5, they are often refering to the combination of new technologies, rather than the markup standard itself (ie. what was initially 'Web Applications 1.0' from WHATWG).

I think it is usually understood that when people say html5, they are discussing the set of technologies that you mentioned, at least among developers. Unless another buzzword arises, the term html5 is going to stick. When the nyt or wsj write an html5 article, for example, do they really need to explain the details to their readers?

I'm not impressed. The flash demos which were linked to were weak - slow, and non-intuitive. And he didn't really have an argument to back up his claim. He pretty much just said, "well sometimes you'll still want to use flash." Why? I didn't see a clear reason.

Can flash do this? http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/

Answer: Yes. But if you can do it natively in the browser, why bother with flash!

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