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Comment by hahaiamatwork | Hacker News Reader

Why? Can you present a coherent argument against enabling flash that isn't just "I don't want to use it so nobody else should be allowed to"?

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Flash is a proprietary standard with one major implementation, HTML 5 is an open standard supported by multiple vendors.

Accessibility (i.e. for the blind) used to be an issue, but Wikipedia claims that has mostly been fixed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML5_and_Flash#A...

Flash may be owned but it is released as open source. The language is completely open, there is an open source compiler and an open source VM.

HTML5, as it is, is a pain in the butt because of multiple vendors supporting subsets of it. I still have to fall back to flash to play mp3s in Firefox.

HTML5 will be great someday, but it's not today and probably not soon.

Coherent argument?

Sucks battery

Poor usability on touch interfaces

Memory hog

Buggy, leads to browser crashes

The battery argument is just silly. Playing HD movies on a phone will suck battery faster but we don't remove the user's ability to do that.

As for the others, I use Flash frequently on my phone and none of them have occurred for me in the last year or so. I have Flash set to load on demand. It's not about Flash being the future (it's not), or even continued development in it. It's about access to existing content here and now and for some users that is a continued need.

Edit: One quick edit since HN doesn't seem to want to let me reply to the below. I think the crux of it is that it removes the option to access content... key word option. If it's not the default, etc, that's fine... but you're placing the disadvantages of Flash over my ability to get to content I feel is important. The "no Flash for you" argument hinges on saying "our opinion that Flash is bad is more important than your opinion that you want to see the content you desire, even if it's not available in other formats". And for the users like myself that like to retain that option, we feel very strongly the other way.

> The battery argument is just silly. Playing HD movies on a phone will suck battery faster but we don't remove the user's ability to do that.

If you could watch HD movies in a different way that didn't use as much battery, we would. Much of the stuff Flash does doesn't need to suck down the battery life of a phone if done in HTML5.

I agree, most of the arguments from individuals I've seen against Flash are simply, "I don't like it therefore I want to stop others from using it".

I find it interesting that one of the leading arguments against Flash is that it's a proprietary plugin that is not "open". So clearly the solution to this is to close off the option of using it, doesn't seem like a very "open" attitude. I thought it was about choice but I guess it was wrong.

> So clearly the solution to this is to close off the option of using it

Apple did not secretly turn off a global flag "allowFlash = NO;" - they did not put work into supporting it. These are completely different things.

If you are referring to them not allowing the plugin to work inside their browser for iOS then I agree, it is different. I have no problem with that choice that they made, it's their system. But, it was possible to build apps for iOS that used Flash development tools and Apple directly put a stop to it. Therefore, they did put some work into that aspect even though all it amounted to was changing the EULA and banning apps from the app store. In my opinion that was an effort to prevent development tools they did not control from entering their market; that's not an "open" attitude.

But, anyway, I wasn't referring to Apple in my comment. I was referring to individuals who present the argument I described; people who are all for "open" as long as it involves software they want you to use.

disagree. flash is often used for other content that may equally suck battery just as badly. Sometimes when I visit techcrunch on my laptop, one of the badly written flash ads causes my processor fan to crank on... when I close the tab the problem goes away. How does one explain that?

and when that becomes an html5 ad in the future, it will do the same or worse

The problem is I watch the movies when I want to watch them. Flash is embedded in random. You can always have click-to-flash solutions but those are usually buggy and there are other solid arguments in the list.

Flash does not use any battery power at all, except when you choose to use a flash based application.

The stock Android browser has the option to load plugins on demand. That is: no flash application is loaded within the browser until you click on the application to enable it. The same is true for memory usage or bugs.

I don't think there are any advantages a browser without flash has over one that supports it.

A great many webpages have Flash adverts, so if you're browsing news sites, etc, normal sites that people do browse, you will probably end up being served Flash and so your battery will drain.

Again: not a single one of these adverts will load when you visit your website. You will see grey boxes with an icon on Android, similar to what you see on iOS. There is no flash running that could drain battery.

On-demand flash support means that you can touch one of these grey boxes, and only then will flash load and execute the application.

Only if you go out of your way to load the Flash advertisements.

These are all current arguments against HTML animations as well as Flash.

HTML also supports a 'mouseover' element, just as Flash does, so I don't consider that to be a strong argument.

Let's not forget the security hole of the week.

Then I guess we should stop using a good chunk of internet capable software, such as browsers.

Wrong. We should limit the number of attack vectors as much as possible. Flash has a horrific security track record. Firefox and Chrome are pretty solid.

Funny, almost all of my software that connects to the internet gets security updates. Granted the browsers may be more solid on security than Flash is, but still, reducing attack vectors does include security updates.

Poor usability? What does that even mean in this context?

Flash allow you to create any kind of interface and experience you want.

"Flash allow you to create any kind of interface and experience you want."

Exactly, and that's the problem. It means that it behaves the way the author wants it to, ignoring the users preferences. That is poor usability. I have lots of small annoyances with Flash, take for example the inability to auto-scroll across it (at least in Firefox on OS X). This would not be the case with normal content.

So does HTML+CSS+JS

I still have a hard time seeing the point here

With Flash, the user or the developer has no choice if scroll and keyboard shortcuts break. With JS+HTML+CSS, the user has a choice to force the developer to fix their code (and a developer to not write code which breaks browser stuff).

How exactly does a user "force" a developer to fix their code when they use HS+HTML+CSS?

Answering both ThomPete and talmand here:

In Flash, browser shortcuts like ^L are always broken and you have no choice about that, because that's the way Flash is designed. If a similar thing happens in a non-Flash environment, it's because the developer designed it so.

If many users complain to the developer about stuff being broken, it has to count for something.

Again, how do they "force" developers to fix their code? Asking nicely is one thing but forcing is another. You implied that the user has more control over the developer in a JS+HTML+CSS environment over Flash. Plus, if some commonly used commands are broken in Flash then it's broken in all of them which doesn't mean broken; it means unsupported, there's a difference.

Not enough to claim poor usability (which is btw, have nothing to do with)

Care to elaborate? Don't think I understand you point.

Isn't there an extent to which forced deprecation of software like Flash might hasten the uptake of newer technologies like HTML5?

Fortunately iOS already did most of this on its own. But reduced support can always encourage more websites to move to HTML5.

I agree, but as another poster said, the technology simply isn't there.

I haven't tested an iPhone 4S yet, but I did develop some javascript canvas based animations for some time, and the performance was extremely poor. The old benchmark I used was http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ I believe, and I have yet to see HTML outperform flash on it.

Hardware acceleration for Canvas and SVG makes a huge difference in this case.

Firefox 4+ (Windows Vista/7), IE9+ (Windows Vista/7), Chrome(I forget which version)+ (All Windows, Mac Soon), and Safari 5+ (OSX) all support hardware acceleration of Canvas.

Opera development builds support hardware acceleration too.

Chrome Beta on Android supports hardware acceleration of Canvas. iPhone 4S also supports hardware acceleration of Canvas.

Hardware accelerated Canvas completely destroys Flash on the Desktop.

A lot has changed in `~2 years

Not to mention that modern JS engines outperform even statically typed AS3 code.

Of course, if you don't have a supported graphics card for your computer, you won't get hardware acceleration.

However, I imagine this won't be a problem on Mobile once Android 4.0 eclipses other versions of Android since Hardware acceleration is a standard Android 4.0 feature.

I agree too (though I can't remember the last time I myself had to use Flash on my phone); but it doesn't feel like an entirely unreasonable argument for not supporting Flash.

As much as I'd like to see HTML5 pushed for interactive content, it's not there yet. I can tell whenever Youtube gives me the HTML player because everything breaks. Apple's webplayer is even worse. I think the only good experience I've had with an HTML5 video player is on The Verge, and half the comments complain about it so it probably just works well on Chrome.

I think Flash still has a place in the current web, while we work on getting HTML up to snuff.

Funny you should mention it. While we're talking anecdotes, youtube's flash player is more likely to crash my browser than the html one.

Fortunately iOS already did most of this on its own.

By pushing everyone to apps? iOS is no shepherd in the movement to standardized, cross-platform solutions. It is probably the greatest setback the open web has faced in over a decade.

Safari and Chrome are both based on Webkit. SVN here: http://www.webkit.org/building/checkout.html

Apple's original plan was that third-party stuff would be in web app form. They took tons of flak from the developer community over that, so no, they didn't "push everyone to apps".

Safari and Chrome are both based on Webkit.

And webkit derived from KHTML (loosely), the project coming to public attention as Apple came under criticism for taking but not giving.

Apple's original plan

And Google's original plan was don't be evil. I would never -- even if I ever got some screwed up idea that I need to defend a corporation online -- reference that to defend their honour.

I'm not "defending their hono[u]r". I'm pointing out that they didn't "push everyone to apps", which is a fact.

Kind of hard to believe, given that iOS was and still is the only mobile OS with a browser that does not suck. Even Android has only been catching up. iOS and Android have been an unambiguous blessing for the open web on mobile devices.

I don't even understand what you want Apple to do. Not allow third party developers to make native apps for iOS? Apple did that and nobody liked it. I can't imagine that you think this is a realistic solution.

> I don't even understand what you want Apple to do. Not allow third party developers to make native apps for iOS? Apple did that and nobody liked it. I can't imagine that you think this is a realistic solution.

Here's the chain of events as I see it:

1) Apple decides not to support flash. 2) A lot of people get upset. 3) Apple releases their thoughts on flash[1] which revolves around flash being proprietary and HTML5 being an open solution. [1]http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ 4) Content owners can't delivery video through HTML5 because it's not DRM. 5) Apple works with content owners (specifically ABC) to create native iOS apps. Native apps on other platforms come way later, if ever. 6) HTML5 still doesn't have a solution for DRM content. Apple isn't working on this problem.

Basically they said one thing and then did another.

Yeah, that would have been swell had Apple worked with all their might to bring DRM to Safari! /s

What is wrong with you?! You are talking about the tiny slice of all possible stuff that pretends it needs fucking DRM. What. The. Hell.

Big studio video content accounts for the vast majority of video streamed over the internet. Apple did not ignore DRM on their own platform; they have it, they encouraged big studios to use it (and they did, happily), they just ignored the cross-platform part. Which would be perfectly fine had they not released their "Thoughts on Flash" piece saying the exact opposite.

Pfffff. You are hilarious! Really, you are. Truly funny.

Kind of hard to believe, given that iOS was and still is the only mobile OS with a browser that does not suck.

Yeah, I see John Gruber likes to say that.

It is, so to speak, horse shit. I apologize for the language but it's all that satisfactorily delivers my opinion on that. Have you ever actually used the Android browser?

Yes, and it sucked. I have been quite happy with the browser that comes with ICS, so I would say there's parity now. But nice job ignoring the actual point I was making.

The point you were making was that the iOS browser is so superior to its competitors that it demonstrated Apple's commitment to the web.

Only the Android browser doesn't actually suck. I've never, ever heard someone actually describe why it sucks, they just repeat that going meme and smile and nod at each other. Yet despite all of its CSS chrome, many mobile dev projects abandon the effort and switch to an app after facing the less sexy, but deadly deficiencies in the iOS browser.

People are sure the iOS browser is great because they never actually use it. Instead they use apps.

"People are sure the iOS browser is great because they never actually use it. Instead they use apps."

I agree with some of your points, but as far as I'm aware every article I've seen on the subject points to iOS devices accounting for a large majority of mobile web browsing, so clearly a lot people don't think it sucks.

My personal experience using the Galaxy Nexus default browser for the last 2 months has been:

1. A bit more overall studdering when scrolling webpages than my iPhone. Nothing dramatic, but noticeable.

2. Double tap to zoom on paragraphs of text is really hit or miss. Half the time it zooms in incorrectly cutting off the edges of the text.

3. Embedded videos on a lot of websites refuse to play and prompt me to install Flash. On iOS they just serve up the html5 version and pay.

Overall I never found the default browser to be absolutely terrible, but I didn't love it either. Chrome beta has been a big step up in the last 24hrs already and am hoping this is where Google is set to put it's energy.

Huh? Why are you so sure that people don't use the iOS browser?

I use an RSS reader and the Twitter app (both pf which I also use on my PC). The rest (and majority of my time) on iOS devices I spend in a browser and I love it. The web experience on my iPad is awesome. I just don't see how Apple is hindering or sabotaging the open web with iOS. Sure, people like apps, but that's not unique to iOS, that's also true for Android. It's a property of native apps, not a property of Apple pushing native apps.

> Only the Android browser doesn't actually suck.

My two years on a Nexus One say otherwise.

> People are sure the iOS browser is great because they never actually use it.

What?

> Instead they use apps.

Last 8 apps launched on my iPhone: Safari, Messages, Settings, Flashlight, Mail, Phone, AirPhones, Kindle.

I spend more time in Safari than the latter 7 combined.

There will always be native code in one form or another. It used to be Windows applications now it is iOS apps. The web will coexist and thrive in parallell to this.

To be honest, after I had used iPhone for a while I preferred the flash-less web so much that I also disabled the plugin on my computer. I haven't really missed it at all, and the web experience has been much better for me.

Because half the Flash "enabled" pages I load on my Android phone end up crashed, lagging, or completely borking the touch controls. About the only thing Flash ever works for on my phone are simple ads or video players (with unresponsive playback controls).

That said, not wanting to use something is certainly a fine reason to not want it installed. For example, I don't want to use closed media formats. I also don't want others to use closed media formats because I believe it to be detrimental to long term archival and sharing.

Replace Flash with IE6 and I think you'll get a clearer understanding of where people are coming from.

My argument isn't 'Flash is great'.

It's 'Flash works and I see no need to break a bunch of websites when the replacements are not yet up to the task'

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