How Adobe Flash Lost Its Way 354
snydeq writes "Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'The bigger picture — which I've touched on before — is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows. Each step of the way, Adobe is getting left behind,' McAllister writes. 'Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"
Platform apps huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
So wait, now we're NOT writing rich applications to be delivered by the browser and instead focusing on native, platform-based apps? I thought that was EXACTLY what we were getting away from. The only 'platform' apps are iPhone and Android mobile apps due to the screen real estate available, even a tablet has the size and responsiveness to work fine with web based apps. Oh wait, a Windows 8 article, that explains it... this is just Microsoft PR being propped up on the backs of mobile interfaces.
Re:Video (Score:2, Interesting)
If I could mod this comment up, I really would. I wrote the Flash3 player for the Sega Dreamcast, and it was (at that time) a decent lean & mean format. Macromedia's player wasn't suitable for embedded use, but the format itself was fine (they'd got too many C++ dependencies and system level dependencies for embedded systems of the time). The last version I actually implemented was Flash4, and at that point the format itself was all still relatively sane and manageable.
Re:The replacement(s) will be shitty, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Any replacement(s) will be shitty, too. It won't matter who creates them, or how they're implemented. They will be shitty. That's just the nature of any attempt to have the browser host remotely complex applications. The browser is merely a document viewer and navigator; it is not an operating system of some sort. It will always fail as an operating system or an application host.
This is a debate with a long and storied history going back to Andreessen [wired.com], and probably beyond. Browsers have taken over much of the work done by native apps on many operating systems, and whether you like it or not, that's a trend which is accelerating, notwithstanding the recent trend for mobile binaries. There are a good reasons for the way the web has taken over our computing lives, and also good reasons why binary solutions like Flash are gradually being deprecated - they break one of the main advantages of the web, which is that it works everywhere - even on devices which haven't been invented yet. That is also why various companies have attempted to introduce binary solutions to web problems - in order to gain a stranglehold on the market again, as they can easily do with binary apps (all the solutions you list were attempts to do this, from applets, to ActiveX to Flash).
It's interesting that you focus on javascript as a roadblock and blunder, as javascript is not actually the language the vast majority of the code in web apps is written in - it's used as a simple way to add interactivity and animation to documents, and occasionally to allow requests for page fragments. I suppose it makes a good rant if you can focus on javascript which, if you know nothing about it, seems an easy punch-bag. It's actually quite an interesting language, though I wouldn't try to create something large in it. The javascript involved in creating a modern web application is typically pretty minimal, and often reliant on libraries like query which smooth out a lot of the inconsistencies between browsers, so javascript is not really the question when comparing flash to html development to native binaries. It's not the technology in which the vast majority of time is spent for web app development - on the contrary, it is strictly optional. The languages used for actual web development vary wildly from C variants, perl, PHP (ugh), ruby, python, smalltalk etc etc. You can use whichever language or framework you like when developing web apps, and the beauty of it is, your users won't care, whether they are viewing it on a mac desktop from 2005 or a Windows phone from 2011.
The end result is that the browser should not be used for anything more than displaying and linking documents.
The vast majority of the work many people do all day includes displaying, editing and linking documents - for that the web is a perfect fit - a far better fit than binary apps like MS Word. For something like photoshop editing huge image files, a binary is still the answer, but it does have downsides. The real question is what trade-offs does your app face, and do the advantages of a web app (faster deployment, cross-platform, document based, stateless, collaborative) outweigh the disadvantages compared to binaries (slower performance, non-local, network dependent, limited file access etc). That's not an equation which has the same answer for all apps or all people, but it's clearly one which has worked out in favour of web technology for huge numbers of apps.
Does The End of Flash = Death of the Web? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people dislike Flash because of how it is used. Mainly, heavy visual advertisements which replaced the far worse era of continous pop-up adds.
Very few who criticize Flash have ever used it to any great extent. They've never explored it's benefits for rich web applications or cross-platform usability.
Many view HTML5 as the death nail in Flash's coffin. And think Adobe is greatly concerned. As the article says, Adobe makes tools. They will just as gladly make developer IDEs for HTML5. In fact, it'd probably be economical cause they could cut a large number of empoyees in both the Flash player and ActionScript development teams.
But there is something that is TERRIFYING in regards to the death of Flash. While so many rejoice in Flash's suffering. They are blind to the real horror on the horizon. They shout "Give us Barrabus".
Why is Flash dying? What killed Flash? Apple's decision to refuse the software to run on it's computers. And now Microsoft is joining Apple by proclaiming the death of the plugin in Windows 8.
And Slashdotters cheer blindly "Open source! HTML5! Yea! Yea!" failing to realize that there is something MUCH more dangerous than a closed source proprietary runtime such as Adobe's Flash.
The fact that it is being killed by closed proprietary platforms. I find it ironic that Slashdotters will cheer the death of the proprietary Flash at the hands of Apple saying "You can not run the software of choice on your own computers." And will applaud Microsoft joining the bandwagon. And call this "good"?
Seriously, Microsoft saw that Apple didn't even get a wrist slap for it's anti-competitive behavior. So is it any wonder that Microsoft has announced no more plugins. No one else's software but ours. Sure, we'll gain an open standard that will likely be split and marred by three main compatriots (Apple, Microsoft & Google).
The result is that you are being told what you can or cannot run on your own machine. And as this blends increasingly more with the cloud (ie: Kindle Fire). We will start to lose ownership and control over our own computers. We'll be locked into proprietary systems.
Ironically, for all Flash's proprietary aspects, it was still very accessible to both users and developers. Yes, Flash has it's problems. But it also has it's strengths. But most of all - it was there.
It's not being killed by a "technical victory". HTML5 is not killing Flash. Rather large companies are deciding to close their platforms. To limit what you can run on them. And THAT is what's killing Flash.
THIS IS NOT PROGRESS, THIS IS REGRESS BACK TO 1984.
Re:Does The End of Flash = Death of the Web? (Score:2, Interesting)
What the...?
Ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahaha!
*wipes tears from eyes* That's probably the funniest thing I've heard all day, thanks!
Flash? Cross-platform? You have got to be kidding! Or on crack. Or maybe you can point me to where I can get Flash 10.3 for *BSD/Solaris/Plan9. Or where I can get Flash for any OS running on IA64/generic ARM (not just Cortex-A8)/MIPS/PowerPC/Sparc/Alpha? Heck, they only started supporting x86-64 properly this year, despite that arch being over 10 years old.
Flash cross-platform. Heh. Good one!