I don't understand how we've gone from "Flash is crap for entire websites" (edit: which is almost always true) to "Flash is the devil in every situation". It has its place, Javascript will never and shouldn't try and "kill" Flash, they're different.
And how can you say JavaScript "will never" kill Flash? Aren't Apple and JavaScript already hurting Flash's market share? Doesn't every major browser release leave less and less that Flash alone can do? Aren't we looking at an example of a major, mainstream brand avoiding Flash for a site? What is going to change over the next few years to reverse these trends?
<video ontimeupdate="sendXHR(currentTime)" src="myvideo" controls></video>
...where "sendXHR()" is a five- to ten-line wrapper around XMLHttpRequest.
First, I don't own a single apple product. Thinking back, I don't think I ever have. When I worked at Yahoo they gave me a macbook, and I traded it with one of the Indians when he visited (Yahoo india got HP laptops which run linux, and were kinda okay copies of the thinkpad T series. My boss was okay with it, but Yahoo India made us trade back the next time the guy came to America.)
I'm a linux guy; I don't use flash. Security hazard, you know, if you compromise my workstation, it's damn hard for me to stop you from compromising the systems I admin.
but you know what? that website? works great on chrome in Linux.
Me, I don't like apple any more than you do. I like it less, most likely. I'm extremely unlikely to buy any of their hardware (if nothing else, the macbook keyboards and trackpads just feel /wrong/ somehow. I mean, it's just preference, but they just do not work for me. I've been using ThinkPads with the little eraser head pointers for well over half my life. Not switching now.)
But we can all cheer for the death of flash, that is, if you can do everything you can do in flash with something more open and less buggy.
The push here is to eliminate an unnecessary layer from the web stack. And I would point out that while apple has taken the steps to rid flash from their mobile platforms, they aren't leading the charge per say, they are just a very large player in this space.
Finally, just because flash dies, doesn't mean you'll have to buy an apple computer, last I check FF / IE / Opera and even gasp Safari run on non-apple platforms.
That a company with such incompetent programming and slimy marketing can come to be so ubiquitous -- this indicates something is broken in the functioning of our software market.
The last time I visited my sister, I asked her why she had Adobe Reader installed on her new 15" Macbook -- AFAIK, she doesn't need it, and Preview, which comes pre-installed, is so much more responsive. (Yes, I was watching her wait for a PDF to come up.) She just pretended I didn't ask. I wonder what trick they pulled?
Once, a few years ago, I started snooping around my old work laptop. Some background process was soaking up large amounts of CPU, even when I had no applications up. I found it was some Visual Basic background process polling so it could instantly spring into action with some Adobe Suite thing. After I deinstalled Adobe and installed Foxit Reader, my machine was much snappier!
* Silly animations are a bad idea in Powerpoint, a bad idea in Word, and a bad idea in web documents. Word seems to be the only place where most people avoid them though.
* Running a program in a web page breaks statelessness.
* Support for disabled readers will get lost.
I understand that gopher - just text and a list of links - is a little too minimalist. But the other extreme (setting up a GUI just to show a document) is worse.
One of these days, a "must have" killer app is going to come around--that could have been written in flash--that will force me to buy an Apple. At a ridiculous premium.
I don't think that's too hard to understand, predict, or dislike, given that people have been bitching about a similar strategy from a similar company for many years.
This seems really, really simple to understand, but let me know if it's still confusing.
On top of all of that, you are confusing how Apple is trying to kill Flash and replace it on the iOS devices (which is not entirely accurate).
So, while you thought you were clear, you weren't. You were confusing, incoherent, and frankly, even after I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, I still find your arguments weak.
> This seems really, really simple to understand,
Context. You cannot join a conversation talking about something completely unrelated and expect to be understood.
The topic is flash. Everybody is saying that it should be replaced. Its replacements include 'X' and 'Y'. The fact that I reference 'Y' rather than 'X' is a completely natural context switch.
It took reading through multiple comments that were out of context from the original discussion. Your original comments weren't clear.
> I'm pretty sure that everybody else understood me, even if they claimed otherwise, because we're not idiots here.
That's your sign. =)
We generally aren't idiots here. So if people are having a hard time understanding what you mean, assume the problem lies on your end and that you are failing at communicating. Again, context is important, especially in threaded conversations.
> It's a cheap tactic to pretend that I'm "incoherent" when I am certainly not.
But you were. You're believe that you were perfectly clear hinders your acceptance of that.
And please understand I say this with the hope of helping you see how you weren't clear. I mean, I took the time to read your comments, which meant I had to highlight them, even though they were voted down. I could easily have ignored them.
> The topic is flash.
Flash on the web and JavaScript, CSS and others replacing Flash. That's the topic. It's not just flash.
> Everybody is saying that it should be replaced.
Yes, everyone is saying Flash on the web should be replaced.
> Its replacements include 'X' and 'Y'. The fact that I reference 'Y' rather than 'X' is a completely natural context switch.
It's "replacement" on iOS devices is not part of the topic, for several reasons.
The technology being linked to is not limited to iOS devices. In fact, it has nothing to do with Apple. Apple, in truth, has little to do with the desire to remove Flash from the web. However, they did put a spotlight on it.
So, if the technology being linked to and discussed (JS, CSS, HTML, etc) has nothing to do with Apple, but rather open standards, then it's fair to assume when you talk about proprietary devices, you're referring to iOS devices and the apps there. This is confusing. Flash has never been on iOS, meaning it's not being replaced. Also, Flash isn't being replaced on the desktop either. Flash is the one trying to be the platform to develop desktop applications on.
But that's mostly irrelevant, because you said this:
"I really don't want to be forced into paying the 50-100 percent Apple premium for hardware just because they managed to "kill" a technology everyone decided to hate for no reason."
You won't be forced to pay Apple premium for hardware. In fact, costs will only go down, because what is replacing Flash is open standards. If Flash dies today, nothing changes in terms of your choice of computer to use.
In fact, by keeping Flash alive, you are forcing others to pay a premium. By replacing Flash with open standards, you essentially level the playing field.
Anyways, this has gone on for quite a bit.
However, it in no way stands as example of either good design or the strengths of Flash.
There are certainly a few corner cases left in which flash remains a better fit, but it's losing territory, fast. Good work Nissan.
That Nissan example ran pretty clunkily on my laptop and another desktop I checked in the office.
(That said, gradient transparencies always seem to doom Flash pieces to slow-hell for me.)
Anyway, the quip with rendering performance is only a matter of time. With every browser release, CSS and HTML rendering performance is increased, for example, by leveraging GPU acceleration.
Flash will be beaten soon, I'm sure. And at least that works for every platform, not just the ones on which Adobe decides it's important.
I've had a bad day dealing with HTML email newsletters so I'm probably a bit more pessimistic about it than usual, but all sides of working on the web are a serious pain in the arse!
It has been said before: not Flash is the devil. It's people who program but who have no clue how it's done. They have destroyed the reputation of a not-too-bad platform.
edit: Just saying, people who knowingly choose Linux don't expect to use Flash.
When the web relies on a technology where the "protocol" is "first install this proprietary plugin, if it's available for your setup, and if not, screw you," it is antithetical to the protocol-based approach.
Look at how much browsers have improved in the last few years, making new things possible on sites. This happened because anybody can write a browser that conforms to HTTP protocols, Javascript specifications, etc. Do you see the same kind of improvement in Flash players? No. Because there isn't competition.
The web is better off without Flash. Or anything else that can't have 100 competing implementations.
Note: I use Windows / OS X on the desktop.
When I read a title like this, I pretty much assume that I'm not going to get any decent semi-objective information from the post.
It's flame-war fodder if you ask me.
Aside from technical issues, I think the above is valid philosophical argument per se due to closed nature of Flash.
From the very beginning, the Web evolved as an open system; no special tools are required for content creation and every browser has equipped with a "view source" feature.
Namely, video, and site navigation.
For other things it could be used - but you could also use HTML5 like the site in the example to do anything you'd do in Flash, and not lock out iPad, iPhone, Android users. Plus, it's open.