Flash vs. HTML5 :: posted by Sean Ashcraft

I'll start with a quote from Steve Jobs obtained by Wired from an unnamed source not authorized by Apple to speak with the press:

"They (Adobe) are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5."


Quick sidebar - as a Mac user since the original Apple II (the Oregon trail days were awesome) I can say that Flash has never crashed my Mac, and I use Flash almost daily.


We touched on this briefly in class so I wanted to dig deeper and find out what the story really is. Truth be told, the story really depends on who's telling it.

Here's what Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had to say when asked about what HTML5 means to Adobe:


"...to the extent that an improved HTML standard accelerates innovation and consistent reach for web content, we’re very supportive and clearly from the perspective of our tools, we will support the creation and management of HTML content to the level that they want.

I think it speaks increasingly to the realization that rich Internet applications and delivering engaging experiences is increasingly important to all of our customers. I think the challenge for HTLM5 will continue to be how do you get a consistent display of HTML5 across browsers. And when you think about when the rollout plans that are currently being talked about, they feel like it might be a decade before HTML5 sees standardization across the number of browsers that are going to be out there.

So clearly supportive in terms of making sure as HTML5 is evolving that we will support it in our web authoring tools but from the perspective of continuing to drive Flash and innovation around Flash and rich Internet applications, we still think that actually the fragmentation of browsers makes Flash even more important rather than less important."

Looking for a more unbiased view of the debate, I found a post by Jeremy Allaire, the co-creator of ColdFusion.

His quick answer to the versus question was this, "I’m often asked 'Will HTML5 replace Flash?' on the Web. The quick answer is no. However, there is a lot of nuance here and it’s helpful to make the distinction between two broad classes of content applications that are deployed in browsers."

What I found is that there is no clear cut winner. At least not yet.

What I really wanted to find out though, beyond the video debate, is what the capabilities of HTML5 will be. We use Flash to create animation, video, etc. Can HTML5 do this? Will we be able to create vector-based animation in HTML5?

This is the most comprehensive article I could find on HTML5 and its capabilities: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/16/html5-and-the-future-of-the-web/

Flash is so much more that just a means to play video online. It doesn't look to me that we'll be designing in HTML5 the way we are in Flash right now. I'm sticking with Flash, and though I'm a lifelong Mac user, there's no iPad in my future until Flash is supported.

There is so much information floating around from so many different sources it's hard to sift through it all and come up with a concrete conclusion. Case in point, this is another great article: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/05/26/html-5-now-or-never/

Bottom line, in today's world, without Flash support, users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

Flash Game/Movie collection websites

Games on the Internet are not a new thing, and neither are the following websites I'll be talking about, but to those who haven't heard of them, these are a pair of the most popular and most important flash websites on the internet.

http://www.newgrounds.com
http://www.kongregate.com/

Newgrounds has been around since 1995, and since its humble inception, with the tagline,"The problems of the future, today." It has steadily grown into a giant of a website with a community of well over a million frequent users and the new slogan, "Everything by everyone."

This slogan barely needs to exaggerate anymore, as they've become a behemoth of a website with portals to submit user created Flash Animations, Flash Games, Music, and more recently, Art.

The music section of the website is filled to the brim with music of every genre, created by its members, to be used in flash projects. (If you're ever having trouble finding a song for a flash project you're working on for class, swing by the Newgrounds Audio Portal.

Now, probably what makes NewGrounds so important to the flash community, is that they have had a user-moderated collection since 1997. They've got a system on their website for voting on flash animations, and if your flash animation/game receives too low of a score from the userbase, it becomes "Blammed" and deleted from the website.

A steady trend of members getting more picky, and standards improving over time (Not to mention the actual Flash Program improving significantly) has lead to the average submission to Newgrounds changing from stick figures drawn with the line tool hitting each other with crudely drawn thicker lines that are supposed to be swords, to deep and moving complicated animations that rival those of commercial animation studios!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/304212

Animators trying to be the most popular and get their name out on the Internet as a worthy artist have improved over time, and, depending on how you look at it, Newgrounds (which, I remind you, has been around almost as long as Flash, itself, has) has grown alongside the artistic community, and gradually made Flash into the widely popular program that it is today. If not for NewGrounds, Flash might be used for graphic user interfaces, and that's it!

The other website I want to mention is Kongregate.

Kongregate is a flash website similar to Newgrounds, except they focus on games and only games. What makes Kongregate special over websites like Armor Games or One More Level, is a special API that Kongregate pioneered to make most of the games on their website work together to create global leaderboards of High Score tables, and Achievements (such as a badge on your userpage if you collect 100 stars in a game, or some other challenge) like XBox Live, or more recently, Playstation 3 trophies.

By adding achievements to games, users are forced by their need to COMPLETE things and accomplish something for a little badge on their userpage so they can show off to their friends, Kongregate has managed to make Flash Games much more popular and widespread. Before, people might find a game that they really liked, and stick to it, but now, thanks to Kongregate, everybody on the website tries just about every new game that rolls in, and more artists are able to get their work known by more of the public.

Ever since Kongregate pioneered the system of making every game on the website a part of the overall collection game, other websites, including Newgrounds, have copied them, but none have implemented it so completely as Kongregate.

These two websites make up the majority of the non-commercial flash community. With forums that discuss and describe animation tips, collaborative projects where everybody makes 20 seconds of some song and they piece them together into a complete music video, and a tremendous archive of stuff, be sure to check them out!

Also, be warned, the flash animations have ratings, and some of them are rated mature. :)

Media Exploration: "Port-Ability"

Right around this time a year ago, at the start of 2009, you couldn't type flash in combination with the word iPhone and expect much of a result. Last week 7 million tried to download flash with their iPhone. So why the big deal? Killer apps, and the possibility of getting services like Netflix or Youtube on your smart phones.

For creating an iPhone app, Smashing Magazine lays out the steps pretty well. However, in the past it was expensive to develop for the iPhone. In addition to having the phone you needed to join a $99 developer program. It was also a daunting task developing alone for a project. Needing the skills of a web developer, interactive producer, graphic illustrator, programmer (Objective C), and understanding the source; the SDK which you needed to download.

With the release of CS5, Adobe will have a flash platform tool to develop standalone applications for the iPhone. Originally it was going to be released in open beta but since there is no open beta now, only the few developers in private beta have had a chance to use it.

Here are some of the features listed at Adobe Labs that will come with the Flash Platform Tooling -

• MultiTouch
• Screen Orientation
• Saving images to Photo Library
• Accelerometer
• Geo-location
• Cut / Copy / Paste

These are some powerful API's. Accessible to flash developers using AS3. Also you can play H.264 video on the iPhone. Which means that Netflix and Youtube are sure to come soon. You can find these apps at the Apple store - designed in flash! Crunchyroll and SouthPark

So what does that mean for us as Flash developers in training. I think now is the best time ever and probably the most lucrative to get involved with Flash. The average hourly rate for a flash developer is $38.51 and the average hourly rate for a mobile app developer is $213.67 It will be interesting to see what will happen to the Flash development community after the launch of CS5. Also - iPhone aside there will be the Android, Palm Pre, Symbian, and Windows Mobile to design for; which already have flash working.