Flash is back?
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- formed0
I respectfully disagree. Maybe it is our clients, but they still want interactive (visually based) that HTML5 still cannot do. Refinement, attention to detail, etc., etc., just aren't there yet.
Sure, for generic text based sites (a la the vast majority of boring, Word Press-ish sites), HTML5 is just fine, even an improvement over what we saw a few years ago.
But for other sites, there is just nothing that is as compatible and reliable.
So yeah, it is the 'developers and designers' that are not happy, but that's because there is nothing (certainly not with reasonable budgets) that can replace what we were doing 5+ years ago.
You can say Apple didn't kill it, but it was the nail in the coffin. The moment a client says "I want something like we made last year, but that works an iPhone" that makes it pretty clear (to me).
[there was tons of crap before, for sure, but there were also great sites. Just like now, with most of the web being template-ish WordPress, or similar...which is worse is subject]
- there are fine examples out there, but it is still only beginning to get back to where we were many years agoformed
- Hombre_Lobo0
^100% agree.
I genuinely can't understand how people can say flash is bad, when there still isn't (at the very least for a smaller budget) a better alternative with the same capabilities.And not only that, complex animated/interactive html5 still runs like shit on mobile. When flash ran perfectly well.
If someone says we can't use flash because of IOS, that's fine.
But when people say flash is crap, it's a bad format, when there isn't a better alternative, it's plain stupid.
Flash uses more resources than HTML? Of course it does. Videos are a resource hog compared to HTML, do users complain about that?You choose your tools for the job, flash had downsides, but for rich interactive unique web experiences, flash was (and in a lot of cases, still is) the best choice.
A lot of crap might have been made in flash, but blaming the format is stupid. do you say jpgs are shit after seeing a bunch of crappy images?
Like formed says, people are now impressed by stuff we were doing 6 years ago in flash, just because its in a different format (html5). Is that progress? It's a huge set back to the web and I'm surprised designers and developers are happy about it.
Further to that a decent amount of successful apps are still made using flash / as3 (that yes, work on IOS devices).
In fact a while back (maybe 2012) the top grossing IOS app was machinarium, and it was built in flash.
So it can't be that bad can it. And it's chosen because of its unrivalled cross device, cross browser compatibility. It's not perfect but it's still one of the best cross platform app deployment processes.TLDR: Flash was a great option, with no better alrenative, and IOS aside, it still hasn't been surpassed. The web has taken a step back in terms of progress.
- btw, I agree Flash was rad, and that it was being used in amazing ways, and I wanted it on my phonemonospaced
- monospaced0
If people really cared about having Flash on their mobile phones, and if it were really a feature that mattered to them, or was in any way important, than the iPhone wouldn't have sold as well. People would have said, "Hey, that phone doesn't have a seriously important fucking internet feature in its browser, I can't live without Flash, fuck Apple."
But they didn't. Apple may have made the anti-Flash decision because of it not being mobile optimized, or that it was shit for touch, or that it competed with its app store, but they were the odd duck, and the new kid on the block at the time. At that point, if Adobe thought Apple would be a success (nobody thought they would be), they could have taken a mobile-optimized version of Flash seriously, but they didn't. They thought they could sit back and everything would be fine.
Eventually they realized Apple was right, Flash wasn't really great on phones, even the ones it ran on. They discontinued support for Flash on mobile. That was their decision, and the decision of the customers who simply didn't care that Flash wasn't on their phones, and those who simply didn't care that it WAS either.
Now there's this. Flash outputs HTML5 and it's got missing features, and that means it can be on mobile again, I guess. It's seriously late, but good for Adobe for not killing Flash completely.
- nope - was too small a feature to concern the sheepfadein11
- you're only backing up my argument when you say that.monospaced
- formed0
That's a ridiculous argument. That's like saying if Ferrari didn't put cup holders in their cars and you bought one, it means you don't like cup holders.
All the large touchscreens in my industry are made with Flash. Why? Because HTML5 is still inadequate. Flash is fast, efficient, reliable and self contained.
Jobs made a brilliant business decision and forced everyone to build apps, which Apple kindly takes 30% of. He knew his leverage, he knew what the iPhone could be and he leveraged that position for every damn dime. Great for Apple shareholders (and you mono), but lousy for the rest of the world.
As we all know, Apple does not play nicely with anyone else. I tip my hat to him for his power move and the cash it brought Apple, but it was at the cost of the user.
- No, it's more like if ferrari decided to build a car that you couldn't drive on 60% of the roads being built and didn't do anything to correct it.hereswhatidid
- anything to correct it.hereswhatidid
- huh? 60%? Wha? Now you are just trying to be confusing :-)formed
- The extremely short battery life that Flash would have caused would have cost users more.evilpeacock
- 60% = rough percentage of mobile devices unable to to play flashhereswhatidid
- More like 90%, Adobe doesn't ship it on Android anymoreanimatedgif
- At the time, when the iPhone was released, Flash ran on anything except the iPhonemonospaced
- ukit20
I'm not saying Flash doesn't have its niche, but when you say HTML5 is OK "for the vast majority of boring sites..." that's pretty much 99% of the web you're talking about, isn't it?:) Even before Apple did anything to marginalize Flash, it had pretty much been limited to advertising sites, banner ads, games, video and other specialized uses. Outside the world of advertising, hardly anyone in the year 2009 (pre iPad) was saying "build me a site entirely in Flash."
- formed0
Almost all of the sites we created were Flash, even the simple ones. It was fast, worked well on all browsers, had butter smooth transitions and we weren't limited.
So yeah, small market compared to the overall web, but that's the market I care about :-)
Almost all of our clients asked for Flash sites, specifically. Now most things are just WordPress templates as most people have just given up on anything really creative (unless you have massive budgets).
So it killed the little guy creative, more or less.
- Yup been using flash alot for interactive presentations, HR, and edu.74LEO
- Again, the only people that miss flash are those who design and develop with it.hereswhatidid
- and the clients that want itformed
- Haven't had a client ask for an all flash web site in ages. Long before the ios issues started up.hereswhatidid
- ukit20
Those smaller sites are exactly the ones that benefit IMHO from HTML5. Because let's face it Flash was not particularly great for SEO, for large amounts of text, for making a site easy to manage and update. With HTML5, they can have at least some animation/interactivity without relying on a plugin and departing from the standard format of the web.
What I liked most about Flash were the higher end sites that really pushed the capability of what was possible. For the little guy, HTML and yes, something like WordPress are actually a better option in most cases.
- Sure, just like HTML before it. I prefer to aim for the higher end sites.formed
- I had to quote more for Flash projects than HTML-based ones on average.evilpeacock
- hereswhatidid0
Flash did a fine job with exactly those specific use cases you guys keep bringing up but it had far too many major flaws to be useful for the vast majority of web sites. Printing, SEO, CMS integration, linking, accessibility, etc... These are things that you'd be hard pressed to get a client to be willing to ditch in order to make it "creative"
- if it worked on an iPhone, clients would line up for it, all those things you mention weren't a problemformed
- Sorry, flash doesn't have a problem with printing? SEO?hereswhatidid
- You gotta be just trolling to make a statement like that.hereswhatidid
- evilpeacock0
Don't forget that the Flash plug-in and Java runtimes have been the number one security liability for years. Most malware exploits involve one of the two.
- As well as PDFukit2
- specifically the Acrobat plugin. PDF itself is fine.hereswhatidid
- Adobe has 2 of the three big security messses here hmmmmmvaxorcist
- chossy0
It's really simple.
Flash = Totally rad sites that look the same on whatever browser you are using and do cool shit.
HTML5 = Pot luck and enjoy your blog / template. Here is a big bill.
- lolhereswhatidid
- Your first post says you are primarily a front end / wordpress coder... so yeah enjoy your blog.chossy
- enjoy your dead platform :)hereswhatidid
- It's back coder :D haven't you heard.chossy
- export to html5 canvas != return of all flash web sites, not by a long shothereswhatidid
- either way, I'm not going to argue about flash being back. like I said, flash was great for a while, now the web has moved onhereswhatidid
- onhereswhatidid
- well said chossy.Hombre_Lobo
- omg0
The new lowest of low. You know Flash is dead, when you see this message on Amazon...
- I imagine Microsoft paid for this.instrmntl
- They most certainly did.animatedgif
- Netflix was built on Silverlightmonkeyshine
- omg0
- Irafis0
We are developing a RIA for a multinational client entirely in Flash. It runs on the company extranet and connected with SAP. When we found out that most users were still using IE 8 and slow computers (Africa and Asia), Flash was the only and best solution we could find. Flash is not just for websites, you can build great an stable piece of software with it.
- I can see that. kudos for picking a technology based on your users needs rather than dogma.monNom
- animatedgif0
> RIA
> Written in FlashJust kill me now
Who the fuck wants to use awfully coded non-native text boxes, combo boxes, scrollbars etc
- chrisRG0
hard to believe people still arguing on this.
even worst people who take one side, if you are preaching that you must use this or that, you're probably in the wrong job/position.
- Exactly. Flash was/is wonderful for some of us, just like HTML is boring for many of us...depends on your needsformed
- jhey0
"Which one of these cross platform tools do rate the most?"
http://www.riaxe.com/blog/top-cr…
- utopian0
Boz Bump
- lolernexbcn
- Why do they call it the "Xbox One" when Boz will buy 3 of them?animatedgif
- animatedgif0
"hard to believe people still arguing on this."
But Flash developers don't have souls so they're not reallllly "people"
