Why I don't want Flash to die (and you shouldn't either)

The author makes a compelling case for Flash as a vector of innovation, but he really misses the case <i>against</i> Flash. I haven't seen any critiques of Flash based around the idea that it's "conformist". Rather, the critiques focus on one or more of the following issues:<p>* It breaks web standards like persistent URLs and the back button (granted, there are some workarounds) and eschews native UI elements.<p>* It is inaccessible to visually impaired users.<p>* It is built on closed, proprietary technology, which raises both principled and pragmatic concerns (one pragmatic concern is the poor security framework, which might be ameliorated by more eyeballs on the source code).<p>* It tends to emphasize superfluous visuals over meaningful content (this isn't a requirement of Flash but it's a common result arising from Flash's dominant motifs).<p>And finally, a posterior observation:<p>* An awful lot of Flash applications just suck.

It's not about "wanting Flash to die". It's about improving web browsers so Flash is not necessary.

<p><pre><code> To put that in perspective, right now, somewhere around 60% of the browsers in the hands of users aren’t capable of rendering the canvas tag. </code></pre> That's unfortunate choice of words. <i>A lot</i> of browsers that users actually have <i>in hands</i>—those on iPads, iPhones, iPods Touch are indeed better off with canvas, not Flash. I know there is a promise to have Flash on mobiles anytime soon, but not on Apple's devices, and those make up for a huge part of mobile browsing.

I want flash to die; I just don't want closed platform policies to kill it.

flash will eventually go the way of java applets. modern browsers will be able to do 99% of what you need to do and for that remaining 1%, you'll have this clunky web browser plugin that you probably have disabled by default for security reasons, that you'll decide not to turn on to view the particular website and just hit the back button or let the blue square icon sit there.<p>browsers can now natively play video, play audio, find your location, store offline data, and do direct socket operations. i can't imagine a webcam api being too far off, enabling a flash-free chatroulette (that's all we really care about anyway, amirite?)

I think what the biggest problem is with HTML5 nowadays, is that even with HTML5/CSS3/JS every browser supports other parts of the standards and even if there are common elements they can behave differently. Everyone ever written a complex webpage for IE/FF/Safari on Windows and Mac will know what i mean: It's a nightmare. Flash offers a common API for all browsers and operating Systems and even more features then HTML5/CSS3 deliver with a feature rich platform for development.<p>Don't understand me wrong, i actually wish Flash to die. But i'd rather like it dead when programming for different browsers becomes less of a pain. Internet standards need to evolve faster (how long did it take for HTML5?) and browsers need to be more standard compliant/support a common feature set. Also, as a sidenote, i wouldn't write websites in Flash, but i can see some actual benefits for the developer.

I've said it before; there needs to be an flash-like IDE for html canvas (and whatever Microsoft uses) that outputs html, css, and javascript (maybe its own library or it would use something like mootools or yui).<p>This IDE could start off as a clone of earlier flash versions where you just manipulate shapes over time(<a href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/canvas-api/canvas-2d-api.html#images" rel="nofollow">http://dev.w3.org/html5/canvas-api/canvas-2d-api.html#images</a>) and of course you could do more useful stuff using common html elements and incorporating audio/video. Once more features are added to the html spec, the application's functionality could grow.<p>I thought about attempting to start this up as a web-based app, but I have to familiarize myself a bit more with canvas, canvas shapes, and animation.

The author of this hits on a really important topic in my opinion: that for all of the talk about adhering to the standards, in every other field of engineering adhering to the standards it the absolute bare minimum to have a product.<p>Imagine if you made cars and you didn't conform to the safety standard? Obviously that wouldn't work and you'd be shut down. However, a lot of web standards zealots seem to imply that meeting the standard is a great goal to achieve. There needs to be a bunch more innovation in all browsers, even just as tech demos or features for the vendor's home page so that other browsers can adopt the ideas.<p>Basically I think the author is spot on, but I wish it didn't have to be done through Flash.

Does anyone else think once 75% of what flash does is supported by canvas, HTML5, etc, Adobe will just make it a compilation target for the Flash toolchain?<p>I mean: Wouldn't that be great?

What ever happened with that company with the proprietary video codecs that Google bought? There were rumors that Google was going to adapt it and release it as a better open standard than HTML5

If Adobe wanted to advance the Flash 'standard', they should put the specs and standard in the public space. They do not have to open source their implementation, but the bytecodes and file formats should be submitted to a standards body.

he obviously doesn't own a mac.

(reply in comments by the author:)<p><i>Then don’t install flash!</i><p>That is the degree of freedom that I appreciate. Not so much Flash that bank/shop/gov. sites expect anyone to have it.<p>And not so little that all the, er, uninteresting-to-me stuff now in Flash is rendered in unavoidable HTML5 standards. (Note to self: save a copy of an ancient browser.)