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HTML 5 As a Viable Alternative To Flash?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri May 22, 2009 02:33 PM
from the frameworks-should-be-open dept.
The Internet Technology
superglaze writes "Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO, has claimed that the open standards in HTML 5 will make it unnecessary to deliver rich media content using the proprietary Flash. '"You can do most things with web standards today," von Tetzchner said. "In some ways, you may say you don't need Flash." Von Tetzchner added that his comments were not about "killing" Flash. "I like Adobe — they're a nice company," he said. "I think Flash will be around for a very, very long time, but I think it's natural that web standards also evolve to be richer. You can then choose whether you'd like [to deliver rich media content] through web standards or whether you'd like to use Flash."'"
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Submission: Opera: HTML 5 will be viable alternative to Flash by superglaze (1112971)
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  • Yeah, video and sound are two biggies that HTML 5 needs to get correct. No doubt about that.

    But as someone who's thrown together more than a few web applications in my time, I'd like to talk to you about what I'm really excited about--the datagrid element [w3.org].

    Now, I know a lot of people are going to argue with me, but the most important tag in HTML is <table>. Every single graphical trick done to either speed up or sexify your web site is done with tables inside tables inside tables--it's tables all the way down!

    When's the last time you laid out a site without a table element on every page? Hell, it's almost always the next thing to follow <body> on my pages. And you know the code I write to interact dynamically with that table is a bitch. An unmaintainable mess. Yeah, there's probably some library out there I could use to simplify that pain but it always comes down to me messing around with advanced Javascript code trying to squeeze some more functionality into the user's interaction with that table. "Oh, I want this box to highlight red when this happens!" a user might say. Everyone wants a "simple table" with Google Spreadsheets functionality.

    So we switched a whole project to Flex once. Yeah, Flex. Free [slashdot.org] right? Not if you want the datagrid [adobe.com]!

    Advanced DataGrid component -- The Advanced DataGrid is a new component that adds commonly requested features to the DataGrid such as support for hierarchical data, and basic pivot table functionality. Available only with Flex Builder Professional.

    Need to fork over cash for that gem. Oh, you can drone on and on about "vendor lock in" and "hidden costs" with Flash. Don't matter. Customer is king.

    My only hope is that HTML 5 presents a competitive datagrid with pivot table functionality. From their specs:

    The datagrid element represents an interactive representation of tree, list, or tabular data.

    HTML 5, I await you with open arms, hope and understanding. Improve the table element (if possible) and create a solid datagrid element. Deliver me from Flash.

    • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2009, @02:44PM (#28058293)

      Datagrid or not, if your site requires flash for anything other than playing sound or video files, then it is more than likely I will not spend much time there.

      • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JOrgePeixoto (853808) on Friday May 22 2009, @08:34PM (#28061863)

        Datagrid or not, if your site requires flash for anything other than playing sound or video files, then it is more than likely I will not spend much time there

        Absolutely. And it is not just for being unavailable to disabled people, slow, insecure, buggy, destroyer of the control a user has about the navigation (top-of-the-head example: if a menu is implemented in flash, how do you choose whether to open a menu entry in a new tab or new window?), bandwidth-wasting, proprietary, restricted and not class-platform; it is also about the content.

        There is a very strong negative correlation between the usefulness of a site and the amount of bling in it.

        https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook [cia.gov] : no Flash; javascript unnecessary
        http://www.c-faq.com/ [c-faq.com] : no Flash; no javascript
        http://news.google.com/ [google.com] : no Flash ; javascript not necessary
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] : Fash restricted to the videos ; javascript unnecessary

        Now compare this to a typical teenager-oriented website: even menus are Flash. They choose Flash both
        for things that make 0 sense being flash (like menus) and for things that may be easier with Flash, but are almost always a big waste of time. They think a website needs to animate every other element.

        The one positive aspect in Flash is that it its use warns you against the quality of the content before you waste your time loading and reading it.

    • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by koala_dude (1104777) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:45PM (#28058299)
      "Now, I know a lot of people are going to argue with me, but the most important tag in HTML is . Every single graphical trick done to either speed up or sexify your web site is done with tables inside tables inside tables--it's tables all the way down!...When's the last time you laid out a site without a table element on every page?" Whoa, I haven't done than since IE4 / Netscape 4.7 days. I use tables for tabular data, very rarely for layout. I'm quite positive I'm not alone in this. While there are a number of Javascript-based datagrid controls available, it would be good to have some sort of standardized control as part of the standard definition.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by phantomfive (622387)
        How do you handle centering objects vertically inside divs?

            • No. Because if you even so much as think about layout and design, while writing HTML, you already have proven yourself to be an amateur.

              (X)HTML is pure semantic structure and content. No layout or design involved. If you do it anyway, you are doing spaghetti hacks. Why do you think the <i> tag got replaced by the <em> tag, etc?
              CSS is the language for layout and design.

              I really like that, because it extends the MVC pattern somehow. You now can split the view into data, structure and visuals.

              I think all applications should be developed in that separated way. It would be much cleaner than to program the UI layout manually.

              • You know what, if it were truly possible to divide content from the presentation, I would be the happiest man in the world right now. The unfortunate reality of the matter is, it's not, at least with the current incarnation of CSS and HTML.

                At the end of the day, on most websites, the thing that matters IS the presentation (otherwise the only tags we'd need were h, a, and p). If you can't align one image correctly next to another one, then that is a problem. If you have to sacrifice your design vision at all, then that is a failure of the system. No one coming to your website cares if you've managed to separate the design from the content, that is purely a matter of making life easier for the programmer. If the system can't support the design vision, then it has failed.

                Although I do like the idea of CSS, it's the implementation that has failed. Also, it would be great if we could have variables. As in $text="Put your long interesting content here" and then be able to put it anywhere you want on the page. It would be so much easier to read and move stuff around that way.

    • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mordac (1009) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:46PM (#28058311)

      When was the last time I didn't use a table tag on a page? Uh, today... the day before that, and before that.

      I use tables rarely and only for displaying data, never for formatting a page. I stopped using tables for design years ago, that's why we have CSS.

      I think its time for you to stop using tables for design. Tables lock your user into your content via your specific design. Flexibility and accessibility requires properly formatted CSS with divs and spans, knowing how to use floats and relative positioning.

      But yes, datagrid element will be great.

      • CSS has some nasty cross-browser problems that tables do not, making them far easier than CSS for many things, assuming you can do them in CSS at all.

        • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Informative)

          by ericlondaits (32714) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:07PM (#28058577) Homepage

          TABLES have nasty cross-browser issues when combined with CSS, and it's ridiculous to program without CSS for formatting. I recently had to return to my old table-layout ways for an HTML newsletter (HTML mails have to be done the old fashioned way because CSS support in mail programs and webmails is 'less than stellar') and experienced long lost pain and anguish from it.

          I used to do real complex layouts with tables, graph paper and a simple text editor (even before Photoshop sliced images for table layouts) and I'm glad I have CSS now. The only exception would be using a table with a single cell for vertical alignment now and then, but that's just a small hack. Everything else can be done simpler with CSS.

          As for the main topic, I say: not yet... I'm all for replacing Flash with DHTML and do so every chance I get... but it's still to slow and jerky compared with flash animation for smooth scrolling and fx.

      • Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MisterSquid (231834) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:21PM (#28058751)
        I'm with you on the WTF about the "tables everywhere" rant. Just because eldavojohn is stuck in 1996 doesn't mean everyone else is. Some of us read and understood Chapter 10, "Floating and Positioning," of Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets, The Definitive Guide [amazon.com].
    • I'd like to talk to you about what I'm really excited about--the datagrid element.

      I'm disappointed. I read that as the datagirl element, and I figured the link would take me to some lady's web design howto page, filled with examples, essays, rants, etc.

  • I'll say it, then. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gary W. Longsine (124661) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:35PM (#28058195) Homepage Journal
    Kill flash. Kill it stone cold dead.

    • Re:I'll say it, then. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by qortra (591818) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:38PM (#28058985) Homepage
      Mods: Flamebait, really? I resonate so much with this sentiment. Some mortal sins of flash:
      • Proprietary
      • *Extremely* poor client support from Adobe. Example: still no stable version of native 64-bit flash for all platforms. Seriously, it's 2009 people.
      • Often, the lack copy/paste using the browser
      • Often, the lack of the ability to save presented media (images,videos) using the browser
      • The difficulty of crawling/indexing sites with flash content

      One might argue that Adobe should just solve these problems. However, Flash has been around for quite a while - if they haven't fixed these things by now, are they really ever going to? I think not. So, I agree with Gary: can we please start killing it now?

  • Options (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aero2600-5 (797736) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:35PM (#28058197)
    More options is always a good thing.

    But I can't imagine HTML 5 being capable of something like this [nin.com].

    Aero

    • "But I can't imagine HTML 5 being capable of something like this [nin.com]"

      Nor should it be. That's like saying my car should be able to traverse water too. There are tools for crossing water and tools for crossing land - and they are usually different.

      But for simple "Here's a video of my cat yodeling" or "here's a sample of the music file you are about to download" you SHOULDN'T need a plug-in any more than you need a plug-in to view a picture (with apologies to the Lynx users among us).

      However: there is no way HTML

    • Re:Options (Score:5, Informative)

      by hesiod (111176) <nookschreierNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 22 2009, @02:59PM (#28058485) Homepage

      Except for the music controls, just about everything on that page can be done with current HTML/CSS/JS now.

  • "A nice company"? (Score:4, Informative)

    by twidarkling (1537077) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:37PM (#28058209)

    "I like Adobe â" they're a nice company,"

    Has he actually used any of their stuff? Apparently not. Also, according to my friend who works in a Flash coding shop, they can real pricks occassionally.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by afidel (530433)
      Adobe gave us PostScipt, PDF, and SWF formats as open standards, that alone gives them the nice company seal from me =)

        • Re:"A nice company"? (Score:5, Informative)

          by afidel (530433) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:53PM (#28059177)
          PDF is an ISO standard, SWF is now completely open and much of the related technologies are in the process of being opened, see here [openscreenproject.org]. Postscipt has always been fully documented and third party interpreters have been available. I can't find any reference to Adobe threating to sue over Postscript so while it might not be a formal standard it's effectively open (see Ghostscript).

  • <first post />

  • Someday maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LWATCDR (28044) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:38PM (#28058229) Homepage Journal

    How long until HTML 5 is supported in every browser?
    The "good" thing about Flash is that it is a plug in. Flash can be added to just about every browser by downloading a plug in.
    HTML 5 will take a lot longer to get into every browser.
    I really don't like Flash or plug-ins but in this case it is an advantage and will be for a long time to come.
    Oh and NOBODY except Slashdot will write to a standard that IE doesn't support.

  • Hey Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chlorine Trifluoride (1517149) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:43PM (#28058283)
    We were just thinking that, if you were to hold off on implementation of HTML 5 in MSIE, we might, uh, contribute to your re-election campaign.

    Sincerely,
    Adobe

  • Flash uses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Parker Lewis (999165) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:46PM (#28058315)

    In current days, Flash is only used to:

    - Casual games;
    - Boring add banners, like "hit the monkey";
    - Video players;
    - Webpages menus, when the designer has no know-how to use CSS/Javascript.

    Excluding games, all uses can be replaced by web-standards (even videos, in next-generation browsers).

  • JavaFX (Score:5, Informative)

    by javacowboy (222023) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:48PM (#28058349) Homepage

    JavaFX may be trailing Flash and Silverlight, but it's the only RIA framework that has a snowball's chance in hell of being open sourced.

    It supports charting, animations, and rich media. Version 1.5 is rumoured to have support for complex form controls, just like Flex.

    What's more, it's totally integrated into the Java Virtual Machine, meaning it can use all of the Java class libraries. It even has a mobile component, meaning it's possible to port applications between the desktop and supporting mobile platforms.

    To me, this single runtime sounds like a much better alternative that the kludge that is HTML/CSS/JavaScript/AJAX support a multitude of IE6/IE7/IE8/Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera browser runtimes, especially if there's no framework behind them.

  • In MOST ways you don't need Flash (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat (796938) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:50PM (#28058367) Homepage Journal
    "In some ways, you may say you don't need Flash."

    I can't tell you how many times I've come across a site which uses Flash to show a single, individual picture. Not a stream of pictures. Not a mosaic of pictures. Not a slideshow of pictures. One picture.

    WTF? You're telling me it's easier to code a Flash object to display that one picture than it is to throw in a link to the picture? Seriously?

    Then you have those sites which insist on having their front page as Flash-only. Brilliant. Just brilliant. How the hell am I supposed to find anything on your site if there is no way to save that link for future reference?

    Flash is ugly, slow and just plain annoying. Almost as annoying as punch the monkey. Web designers who rely on Flash to do their work should have their knuckles pounded with a five pound cast-iron doorstop dropped from a height of ten feet then made to punch a punching bag.

    Hopefully HTML 5 will cure the web of this illness.

  • Adoption beyond Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tronster (25566) on Friday May 22 2009, @02:55PM (#28058425) Homepage

    HTML5 has a lot of potential, but adoption above and beyond Flash (or Silverlight, etc...) will depend on 2 factors:
    1. Implementation Penetration
    2. Authoring Tools

    Flash's strength is in the tools more than the language(s), Actionscript and MXML. For every 1 Flash "programmer" I meet, I know about 10 people who know Flash well enough to make graphics and simple script work on the time line.

    If a majority of the browser users have HTML5 support, and a killer app exists for editing content; I would then put weight towards the possibility of HTML5 trumping Flash.

  • Don't need Flash? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CopaceticOpus (965603) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:03PM (#28058537)
    I kiid, kiid. I like Adobe -- they're a nice company... for me to poop on!

    </triumph>

  • already available (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Danny Rathjens (8471) <slashdot2@@@rathjens...org> on Friday May 22 2009, @03:04PM (#28058545) Homepage
    We've always been able to embed videos in web pages. The reason places started embedding them in flash was to make it more difficult to save/view the videos without loading up the whole page and/or to let them force ads before or after the video. And partly just because flash web "design" people only have one hammer so every problem looks like a nail.

  • Ignoring the 800 pound gorilla (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon (326346) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:25PM (#28058807)

    It's unlikely Internet Explorer will die any time soon. So unless the Microsoft developers somehow magically start putting together a browser that is current in support of web standards, Flash and its brethren will never die. It doesn't matter how great the HTML5 support is in Gecko (Firefox) and Webkit (Chrome, Safari) - as long as IE continues to lag, we're stuck ("we" meaning those of us who code pages for the real world).

  • Flash has another advantage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Trerro (711448) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:36PM (#28058965)

    Flash is Flash. Period. If your Flash file works in IE, it works in FF, Opera, Safari, etc. It requires a plugin sure, but it's one that's almost universally adopted.

    By comparison just about everything else is developed in 2 phases:
    1. Write standards-compliant code that's well-formatted and works properly.
    2. Fix about 37,000 IE-only bugs, knowing that ~70% of your users are going to be viewing your site with that piece of crap. Additional time is required because IE6 and 7 aren't even consistent with each other in terms of how they piss on the standards. This is especially true with CSS, which IE is absolutely terrible with.

    I welcome HTML 5, as I think it has a lot of nice improvements, as well as a lot of stuff that should've been there years ago. We just have to pray that browser support - especially from MS - actually allows us to USE the new features on a regular basis.

    Also, one side note: Even assuming Flash is no longer used AT ALL for layouts or content delivery (and I hope it isn't), Flash movies and games will of course continue to exist... so Flash isn't going to die as some are saying, it'll simply be used for what it was actually designed for - creating animations and games.

  • It has already begun (Score:5, Interesting)

    by abhi_beckert (785219) on Friday May 22 2009, @03:38PM (#28058995)

    I work at a web development company, and we are already starting to move away from flash and relying more and more heavily on javascript. The motivation is mostly because:

      a) the flash development tools are inferior to javascript ones
      b) every web programmer knows at least basic javascript, many don't know any flash. Easier to build on basic js than train someone in flash from scratch
      c) the flash development tools cost a fortune, the javascript ones are either free or very afordable

    In fact, just yesterday I wrote a javascript replacement for a flash script which we use on many of our websites. (a general purpose loop of photos, with animated transitions). The javascript alternative is smaller, faster to load, *smoother animated in most browsers*, and easier to maintain or improve on in future.

    We're also planning to do the same for other flash scripts in our code library.

    Even when we do still use flash, it's in smaller ways. We will virtually never build an entire page (let alone website) with flash, instead we'll do the website in html and then embed a tiny piece of flash.

    For example, a photo gallery will be pure html/javascript right up until the point where you click the "full screen" button. And even then, the flash doesn't exist in the page until you click that button, it is injected into the page and configured using javascript.

    There are still some places where we need flash: video, full screen, and proper file uploads. Video will be the next to drop off the list, pretty soon we'll be doing video in javascript/html, with flash loaded in as a fallback in browsers that can't do video in html.

  • xhtml to die? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pizzach (1011925) <pizzachNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 22 2009, @03:47PM (#28059113) Homepage

    Sigh. I really hope that HTML5 is somewhat similar to xhtml. I really do believe it went in the right direction in general. Even with xhtml strict pages not displaying at all if they had some unclosed tags. It all in general was working toward having authors writing better, more interpolatable pages.

    Is xhtml dead? Will the applicable changes in html5 make it back to xhtml? I get the feeling that MS never implemented xhtml strict because they didn't want to drop the ability to extend it.

  • Come on folks, let's be a bit realistic here. It's been what, nigh a decade, and we still do not have browsers properly rendering stuff as simple as tables and positioning using CSS, DOM, etc.

    And while granted that HTML5 may provide a nice alternative for embedding video and audio. If that's all you think Flash is for, than you've never done more than scratch the surface.

    Check out Flex, AIR, and some of the 3D libraries for Flash. Experiment with remoting. See what you can REALLY do in Flash.

    Check out Sliderocket for an example, or Aviary.

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