Designers and Developers

Recently with the launch of the iPad we have this new controversial issue of HTML5 vs Flash. Some even term it as the ‘End’ of flash. Millions of bloggers out there has celebrated this issue and it has overblown into such big proportions that all the concerned companies have released posts to clarify the issue. Primarily the issue started with Apple vs Adobe rivalries in limelight.
Apple Steve Jobs comments can be read here
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynchs response is here
Adobes John Nack has some interesting thoughts here and here
Some other random posts, here, here
Read a neutral post for all web designers.

So responses boiled down to some points which can be stated as :
* Apple will only allow beneficial markets/players/technologies on their turf. They want to move their business forward and make people use their technologies and services. This is a fair point for any business.
* People think that HTML5 is some kind of flash killer and they believe that its gonna replace flash within few years. DUMB.
* Flash is still annoying, still crashes browsers, still is a closed black box. It is EVIL.

I just wanted to clarify what i think about all this and would like the community to add their thoughts.

Flash works on majority of the browsers, in almost all the operating systems and hence is called multiplatform deployment tool. Doing that calls for some technological marvel and its is not simply displaying formatted web page but streaming audio/video, live collaborating or engaging people with multi user collaborative games. So it tend to use up more memory and occasional system crash. Thne again these crashes are not attributes of flash, but it strictly depends on the coder behind the development of the specific software. Also number of crashes = popularity * bugs, so it doesnot really mean that flash player is a buggy software as its is the most popular third party software out there.

Its been some time that Adobe has opened up flash and also given out the open Flex compiler. Many third party tools now deploy swf content and it can even be dynamically created. So if there are still people who think that flash is a black box, then we should let them crawl out of the rock under which they are now living. Accessibility and DOM searching is a bit of a problem with flash. If you make your entire site in flash then it may not be readable by crawlers/bots unless engineered properly. Currently flash content is made searchable for Yahoo and google and its being worked upon. Again for better accessibility we can mix Flash with other technologies to deliver RIA and use flash where it marvels. Checking out Adobes sites itself will give you all pretty good idea how they have successfully engineered their sites with the right blend of flash, coldfusion, ajax, acrobat, flex etc.

Regarding HTML5. Lets just think again, do anyone really think that HTML 5 will be complete in all its specifications in 5 years from now and be adapted in all browser platforms? People tend to believe it will ultimately be able to do all that flash is capable of doing and be an open standard. Well do they really think flash will be all the same after 5 years? . Flash was a pioneering technology invented back in time when such stuff was unimaginable. It let users see videos, play games, browse porn, click ad banners and what not. Now it has laid out standards for such things and one open technology is trying to close the gap. Thats extremely great and my only concern is if it will be so much easy to build games on HTML5 and it ends up using less system resources at runtime. Flash will evolve as it is doing now. 5 years from now the open standard will be coping to make everything happen which flash does ‘now’ and flash will be doing some thing which is unimaginable/revolutionary at this point.

So lets welcome HTML5, the technology which takes the burden away from flash and lets it evolve, helping it redefine the web once again. Lets try respecting revolutionary technologies and people behind it. It takes a lot of courage and skill to think ahead and succeed. Every one deserves their bit of respect.