Will Flash ever go away?

[Deeko]

Netflix still uses Silverlight. Its funny I find Flash a nightmare to use, I'm sure its different for everyone.

To be honest, I have never written a Flash application - I have written an Adobe Air application, using Actionscript, and it was fairly terrible too. I do a considerable amount of Silverlight development, and as a developer I think it blows either of them away. However, my background is "traditional" programming, and Silverlight behaves more like a "standard" application than Flash or HTML5, so that could just be me.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I LOVE Flash. Five years ago when I wanted to run Linux on PowerPC I hated it, but today Flash is my boy because it is the rebel platform.

All those sites the SOPA and PIPA are meant to shut down that I love use Flash almost exclusively. During football season my phone and tablet is glued to www.firstrowsports.eu. In fact I will say firstrowsports is the killer Android app for me compared to my old iPhone.

That is part of the reason I am not rushing to put ICS themes and the like on my SGS2. The way I see it I will be using ICS on there for a LONG time (since Jellybean won't have Flash support), so I don't want to get sick of it too early.

 

[micrometers]

well, someone please explain why HTML 5 doesn't work in iOS either.

 

[theeedude]

Adobe needs to do AIR browser plug-in. I don't like downloading apps for websites. They should run in the browser and disappear when I leave the website.

 

[ponyo]

I LOVE Flash. Five years ago when I wanted to run Linux on PowerPC I hated it, but today Flash is my boy because it is the rebel platform.

All those sites the SOPA and PIPA are meant to shut down that I love use Flash almost exclusively. During football season my phone and tablet is glued to www.firstrowsports.eu. In fact I will say firstrowsports is the killer Android app for me compared to my old iPhone.

That is part of the reason I am not rushing to put ICS themes and the like on my SGS2. The way I see it I will be using ICS on there for a LONG time (since Jellybean won't have Flash support), so I don't want to get sick of it too early.

I'm 100% in agreement with you. I have that site and couple others bookmarked on my Chrome browser. To have the ability to watch any sports game LIVE on a phone or tablet? That is stuff dreams are made of. Ability to follow and watch your favorite team live on a phone? Unreal. Flash makes that possible right now on Android device. And people want to downplay that and say there's no useful Flash sites out there? I guess there are people who hate watching sports.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Lets also not forget how hackable flash is. On both my Prime and my Nook Color I have hacked versions of Flash that make Hulu think I am on a desktop so I can watch shows without paying for Hulu Plus. I don't know how you would do that with HTML 5- hack the browser?

Finally as far as Flash performance goes both my Prime and my SGS2 play video pretty much the same as my quad-core desktop.

 

[Mopetar]

Flash sticks around for two major reasons:

1) Ads. Flash ads are far more interactive than normal ads. I guess advertisers' hope is that blinking areas of the screen attract clicks.

2) Premium content - sites like Netflix and Hulu would not exist if you could easily access the .mp4 file stored on their servers.

Number 1 is why a lot of people despise Flash and run blockers.

Number 2 isn't a problem if you have people access the content through an app.

The only people I've found who really hate Flash are iOS fans.

No, a lot of people other than iOS fans hate it, for a variety of reasons. Flash blocking add-ons wouldn't be so popular if disdain for Flash were limited to iOS users.

Once Adobe announced they would cease development of Flash for mobile platoforms it was clear: Flash is dead.

It has no future, but it's still going to stick around for a long while. As others have pointed out, HTML 5 doesn't have an answer for everything that flash was previously used for at the present time so flash will continue to exist, and some people will even develop new things that use it. Also there's a wealth of existing flash content still out there, some of which may never be changed into other formats.

 

[cheezy321]

The only people I've found who really hate Flash are iOS fans. Which make sense their devices can't run it. So they make excuses. "I don't need it. It makes everything slow. It drains the battery." I find the excuses funny and laughable. If Flash is available on demand, what's the downside? You get Flash when you need it. When you don't, it's not on so it doesn't slow anything down and it doesn't drain the battery because it's not running. You get all the benefits with no drawback.

When I can stream live sports and foreign videos using something other than Flash, I'll say it's useless and consider switching. Til then it's valuable to me since it's the only thing that works.

Sounds like the only reason you enjoy flash is because it lets your stream illegal broadcasts...

 

[poofyhairguy]

Sounds like the only reason you enjoy flash is because it lets your stream illegal broadcasts...

Flash belongs in the toolbox right next to Transmission, my usenet subscription, and my monthly donations to groups who are trying to stop PIPA and SOPA. All of them give me a control over content that the content providers don't want me to have, with a flair that only "the entitlement generation" can pull off.

Of course, all of those things can also be used for legal purposes. I use torrents and usenet to download legal files, and PIPA/SOPA suck for more than pirates. With Flash my Alma matter allows me to stream sports legally off its website- but it doesn't work in browsers like Skyfire.

 

[rh71]

the only thing I learned from this thread is HTML5 is still not ready. If people are reverting to Flash, when will HTML5 ever be the accepted norm? I've done Flash apps in the past and it's quite involved / time-consuming. HTML5 pleeeeeeeeease. It's on my list of must-master-so-I-can-get-a-better-fn-job.

 

[Deeko]

the only thing I learned from this thread is HTML5 is still not ready. If people are reverting to Flash, when will HTML5 ever be the accepted norm? I've done Flash apps in the past and it's quite involved / time-consuming. HTML5 pleeeeeeeeease. It's on my list of must-master-so-I-can-get-a-better-fn-job.

The biggest problem with HTML5 is its uneven adoption. Different browsers have implemented different parts in different ways. For all the talk of "adhering to standards", the standards really aren't all that clear or precise, so two browsers "adhering to a standard" can still look or behave differently.

Not to mention the amount of stuff that just isn't fully implemented by anyone yet. A good example is the new <input> tag. Its very easy to use and adds very useful stuff...but its very inconsistently implemented.

 

[hans007]

The biggest problem with HTML5 is its uneven adoption. Different browsers have implemented different parts in different ways. For all the talk of "adhering to standards", the standards really aren't all that clear or precise, so two browsers "adhering to a standard" can still look or behave differently.

Not to mention the amount of stuff that just isn't fully implemented by anyone yet. A good example is the new <input> tag. Its very easy to use and adds very useful stuff...but its very inconsistently implemented.

html 5 sucks, for the same reason that open GL lost the gaming api war on windows PCs.

the "made by one company" standard (direct 3d) in this case actually worked and kept up to the latest stuff.

html 5 is still having proposals given to it and other things that they may add to the standard that they may implement on X browser some day. as great as these open standards seem, a lot of the time the groupthink and slowdown to proposals really slows down what they could be.


i find it hillarious by the way the apple double standard on this. apple fans seem to hate on android users for having the OPTION of having flash, which is a closed standard. yet they can't use it a all, becuase the company with the most closed ecosystem , that uses languages no one else uses like say objective C and a platform they are trying to close more by the day, wants an open standard like html 5.

i think html 5 has a lot of potential, but it can't even do half of what the closed source offerings like silverlight / flash have. and then theres always the, well if you cant do it in html 5, make a native app excuse. thats typical the "hey well its ok if apple doesnt support X or Y, you can just do a workaround instead of just have it work in the browser" .

flash / silverlight will be around as an alternative to companies that don't want you to use a seperate app and need DRM so people dont redistribute. you aren't going to have a .exe app on an actual desktop just to say use hulu or cbs sports (march madness streams on cbs require it among others....) or countless other apps, so regardless of if flash loses support on mobile, itll still be there for desktop.

 

[ViRGE]

Sadly Flash isn't going away, at least not in the next 5 years.🙁 Adobe just published a development roadmap for the next 2 years, with an eye to the next 5+ years.

 

[Phynaz]

They can publish all the road maps they want. In a few years mobile will be the vast majority of devices accessing the Internet. And there will not be Flash on them.

Just because it still has a pulse doesn't mean it's not dying.

 

[MrX8503]

html 5 is still having proposals given to it and other things that they may add to the standard that they may implement on X browser some day. as great as these open standards seem, a lot of the time the groupthink and slowdown to proposals really slows down what they could be.

I don't see why this matters. CSS and HTML4 started out the same way and took several years to be standardized/adopted. The same thing is now happening to CSS3/HTML5, so I don't get your point.

Like I said before, I don't think HTML5/Flash will replace each other completely. The one area where I see that happening is video delivery. Applications is an entirely different matter.