some points to think about between Flash and HTML 5

[nutmac]

Flash still has the widest reach, especially when you consider that IE still represents the majority of the browser market, at over 60%. Heck, IE 8 (25% market share) is barely HTML 4 compliant.

Ignoring the codec issue for a moment, HTML5-capable browsers represent only 10% share. However, this figure will no doubt increase a year from now, particularly when IE 9 is out in the wild.

It certainly doesn't make sense to design new web pages Flash-based unless it can't be done otherwise. And I think that makes it a dying breed. Just as AJAX-based Google Maps was able to dethrone its Flash-based competitor Yahoo! Maps (which has since switched back to AJAX), I suspect more and more websites will move away from Flash.

 

[EssentialParado]

But wouldn't that argument be true of HTML 5 and the canvas tag as well?

Well no, not exactly. The problem with Flash is that a lot of wannabe web designers used Flash for what should really have been quite simple CSS animations, some even went so far as to create an entire website in Flash, which it was never designed for. As HTML 5 replaces Flash, it is actively reducing those heavy 3MB Flash files down to basic images and much more efficient CSS code. If you gave me a 3MB Flash website, I could give you a 500KB HTML 5 version.

But this is an inherent problem with your proposal in my opinion. Flash has hit critical mass. Even with IE mucking up and Firefox coming on the scene - IE never really lost their dominance. IE slowly worked (and is still working) on "compliance." People didn't stop using one piece of software and go to another like you're suggesting people do with Flash. Do you know how long it would be before people stopped using IE even if they hadn't changed a bit? A LONG time. Too many users, too many machines.

Flash is similar - it's at critical mass. For there really to be a revolution, websites and designers would have to abandon it and change all their sites rendering the need for flash on browsers useless at which point the browsers and/or adobe would abandon flash.

Yes, I don't disagree. It will still take time whatever approach is taken. BUT if we do actively push for HTML 5 sites to be required for modern devices like the iPad, it will kick start that revolution to at least *begin*, and developers can start coding HTML 5 versions now, to sit alongside the Flash versions, at which point Flash can slowly be phased out.

Do you not feel that if Apple complied with user requests, and put Flash on the iPad, that it would just take us right back to square one? There would no longer be this huge motivation for web developers and browser makers to overhaul the internet to HTML 5, and I fear it would end up on the back burner. The iPad is the biggest excuse for web developers to finally make the move to HTML 5 and fully standards compliant browsers, and I agree with many of the tech pundits who say Apple should be commended for such a bold stance.

 

[EssentialParado]

Personally I feel the happy medium to our debate and the problems on the internet are for designers to use both HTML 5 and Flash. This way the entire world wins. For those that hate Flash you can fall back to the HTML 5 version of the site. For those who do need some of the features of Flash that option is there. I realize this option doesn't sound good to you but your solution doesn't sound good to me or my clients right now. When HTML 5 can support everything I use in Flash I will be more then happy to drop Flash and use it.

This is basically what I just said in my post above, so I feel we're fundamentally in agreement there.

 

[Sketh]

But wouldn't that argument be true of HTML 5 and the canvas tag as well? You are talking about any form of rich media that will be slow and not just Flash. Cramming 3MB of data down a pipe is going to take awhile no matter what way you deliver it. There are also ways of using Flash so it doesn't take a long time to load.

I agree with you to a certain point but I see jobs posted every day for Flash designers so somebody must still be requesting the use of it somewhere. Our company gets requests all the time from corporate clients for Flash content. You and I are both correct because the internet is huge and has niche markets. Your client base is going to be different then my client base.

True, about the 3MB of data, but in this case it's not really the data load that's causing poor performance. The video can load in seconds and stutter from start to finish due to poor Flash implementation. Though in all honesty I DID install the 10.1 beta with GPU acceleration and it moderately alleviated the stuttering, still not on par with HTML5.

And I do Flash sites, still. It's just now instead of getting a request for an entire site in Flash, they want an interactive portion to be done in it, which I think is the best way to go for that type of contact with a user.

 

[smetvid]

This is basically what I just said in my post above, so I feel we're fundamentally in agreement there.

Which is what I have been trying to say from the beginning here. The web is big enough for both for now. If HTML 5 really is better then it will make Flash not as important anymore.

The problem I have faced so far with clients is that none of them want to pay for both. As soon as somebody is willing to pay for both I would love to use both Flash and HTML 5. In fact I may do our companies next version of our website in HTML 5 and Flash just for the heck of it.

 

[smetvid]

True, about the 3MB of data, but in this case it's not really the data load that's causing poor performance. The video can load in seconds and stutter from start to finish due to poor Flash implementation. Though in all honesty I DID install the 10.1 beta with GPU acceleration and it moderately alleviated the stuttering, still not on par with HTML5.

And I do Flash sites, still. It's just now instead of getting a request for an entire site in Flash, they want an interactive portion to be done in it, which I think is the best way to go for that type of contact with a user.

I'm not talking about video but keyframe animation or a series of images in a slide show or animated elements randomly flying across the screen. Each one of those jpeg images takes up bandwidth. A HTML site for example may be made up of 10 images that are 300 KB each. Each one loads one at a time until the site is finished. The Flash version still has to load those 10 300 KB jpeg files but it tries to do so all at once which means you wait until it is ready. Since it is easy to throw graphics into Flash and abuse the privilege people tend to put in more then they should which equals super long load times hence the need for pre loaders. Flash actually doesn't need pre loaders. You can have the first frame of the Flash file display right away and it will continue to progressively download each frame in order. At one point somehow it was decided that a pre loader was a good idea so that way the end user could enjoy 100% of the site once it loaded. It worked well for content such as games but ended up in pretty much everything eventually. I agree pre loaders kind of suck but with HTML every page you go to has to load. With the Flash version if you load the entire site at the beginning then there is no more waiting. The sites where there is further waiting is because they break the site up into smaller chunks that load for each "page" sort of like how HTML has to do it. At the time it made sense but I do agree it can be annoying.

HTML 5 could face the same problem of over use of graphics just like Flash did because it will allow people to throw in MB's worth of images or slides that animate all over the darn place. This will be even more true if a visual design tool is built for HTML 5 and the canvas.

I sort of consider this the cylon effect. It happened once and it will happen again. Rich media always starts out with the best of intentions. Eventually however people get carried away and start to put the visual quality to the limits of what the hardware and software can handle. In the end this leads to frustration because at some point when you push the edge somebody gets left behind. HTML 5 is going to have to teach people to enforce certain limits in what kind of performance should be expected. For example a HTML 5 highly animated website with 200 random animated jpegs may work great on a 13" MBP but could work like garbage on a Iphone. It all comes down to cpu load based on how many calculations are expected. I have already viewed some HTML 5 demos with animated particles that caused my 3.06 Ghz Imac to hit 60% on my cpu. That is pretty high for that powerfull of a machine. I can only imagine how slow and bad the performance of that demo would be on an Iphone. Are HTML 5 users hopefully going to learn more restraint then Flash developers did? Or will they create the next Cylon that will bring us all back here in 10 years to try to save humanity?

The ultimate test of course will be to create a project with Flash and create the same project with HTML 5 and the canvas and compare the results. This I would love to see.