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I've read little about HTML 5 that it can play vid without plugin and such.
What are your thoughts about the advancements of HTML against the future of Flash?
I mean, Flash in the old days was the thing you need to do animated menu bar, vid player, along with some other flashy stuffs. Now that HTML itself can do those things to some extend. Will u see the decline in users of Flash in the future? Will Flash come up with something that will enhance the web even further again?
heh... was just tweeting about this yesterday. the <video> and <audio> tag is basically dead in the water right now due to codec/encoding squabbles of h.264, thus Apple Quicktime versus Ogg Theora. Opera and FF support Ogg Theora, Safari supports h.264... Microsoft is being quiet.
Read more here...
Personally, I'd love to have that option... but as PAlexC points out, with a better implementation of controls. As it stands, it's rather (dare I say) hokey and badly implemented at the very moment... much like Silverlight and WMV.
HTML 5 will be pretty neato in 10 years when all browsers support it.
If all goes well, and when it's actually acceptable to be used, Javascript engines will be fast enough to do any kind of animation necessary, so I'm voting for Flash to become obsolete in the web world and it migrates over to purely some games and actual cartoon animations.
Even now, I personally strive to do as little in Flash as possible. If it's a little bit harder to do it in Javascript, as long as it performs well (and it usually does), I'll take the slightly longer route to not require the user to need Flash or watch their CPU sitting at 100% for an image slideshow.
Gerbs bore the brunt of my ramblings last night.
1.) Go build a customized video player in flash: design, controls, throw in some additional features like playlists, etc.
2.) Go look at how video is implemented on Mozilla's site, specifically mozilla-video-tools.js and video-player.css. Then factor in inconsistencies between browsers in implementing HTML5.
Tell me which you'd rather deal with as a programmer.
Also, cameras, cell phones, and tons of utilities have standardized on H.264 b/c of YouTube and Apple. Consumer devices use it because it's instantly sharable. Theora means people will have to convert JUST for the web, and quality wise it sucks compare to H.264.
I was just laughing with someone the other day over how many "flash killers" there have been over the last several years.
I think the trend is moving in the opposite direction. HTML is a markup language. Associated implementations of logic are unwieldy and bizarre when compared to traditional programming conventions.
I'll be stoked to use multiple scaling backgrounds with rounded corners via CSS3.... as CI said, in 10 years.
HTML5/CSS3 is like learning of a scientific breakthrough. Bitter sweet in knowing that It will still be a hell of a long time before it benefits you.
Not sure how I feel about the <canvas> tag. Doesn't look very seo friendly but that could change with a good canvasobject.js
@taco, I'm really leaning that way dude. The handful of tricks that are considered clean use of motion graphics can pretty much be javascripted anymore. Few performance hurdles to overcome but tons of potential.
Heh, some would say the same about MXML :)Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashLackey
Don't you dare call MXML a markup language... the first M in MXML stands for aMazing.... dammit!Quote:
Originally Posted by jAQUAN
*RANT*
The FOSS community (herein 'FOSS') believes that web standards should be able to do everything Flash does, that nothing should be locked up in anything proprietary.
Flash came about to provide a capability that browsers didn't have. The problem, was that it was successful. FOSS didn't like that. Not. One. Bit. Why should Adobe hold the keys?
Well, we do have an alternative: Java. The problem with Java as a runtime inside the browser, is it sucks. Java FX is a joke.
The real issue, is that the private sector was able to innovate, and grow a technology, that FOSS didn't have an answer for. It was an ideological defeat for them.
But proprietary technology has no place in the 'real' web, no matter how practical. There MUST be a FOSS alternative TO. EVERYTHING., just in case one day, Adobe decides to change the copyright. Because, it would make total sense for their business to do that.
The fact of the matter is you're never going to get an open standard that can effectively compete with Flash. It's too well entrenched, and it has years and years of development and refinement sunk into it, guided by really good product managers.
Go build your web-multimedia project using XML, SVG and OGG. I'll wait.
But as much as HTML, the browser, and they way we use the web has changed...that kind of case is well out of scope for HTML. It SHOULDN'T be trying to do that stuff. Sure, Flash has influenced the way we use the web. But FOSS just can't give credit to Adobe, and say 'well done', because they're a private enterprise.
They simply cannot envision a world where standards and proprietary technology can find an effective, practical middle ground. (Which, is essentially what we have now.) They're ideologues as bad as Palin supporters.
HTML 5 is abandoning the semantic web, in an effort to make HTML compete with a technology it shouldn't be bothered competing against. The more I read about it, the more I dislike. Extensibility? Gone. Only to be used (eventually) in XHTML 5, if it ever gets done and only dished up as application/xhtml+xml.
It's going to be HTML4, with a few new tags, all over again. And that's a goddamn shame.
Quite a good rant. I've been battling those nuts for years when they've showed up to sabotage a project.
Indeed. I believe that one of the main reasons that was commercialized was to attract and make use of mark-up experienced programmers.Quote:
Originally Posted by jAQUAN
Working with MXML only is quite a bit different than developing unique logic in flash, imo.
How in God's name is HTML 5 trying to abandon the semantic web? It's trying to enhance it by bringing in some of the non-semantic aspects of Flash, and making them into more semantic representations in HTML alone.
Eh, MXML isn't really "markup" language. You're still just delivering instructions to a compiler, you're not validating for compliance issues, or using it to describe content, it's just an alternative method for getting those instructions TO the compiler.Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashLackey
Because they're shafting extensiblity. HTML 5 is really all about: "Hey, what's popular today? We should jam it into the language as an update. Video? Great, that's popular, let's do it!"Quote:
Originally Posted by MyFriendIsATaco
Whereas in XHTML you can use a custom namespace, that references a DTD to provide the vocabulary for it. (MathML and Spry pages/elements can then be identified and described as such.)
XHTML 5, is supposed to address that, but they're saying it shouldn't be delivered to browsers, only to applications.
XHTML 2 was supposed to just have some of the new elements of HTML 5, with the extensible format, and be delivered to browsers.
I have no problem with a video tag (provided they can implement it right), or trying to clean up the shortcomings of object/embed, but the way they're going about it is wrong.
Interesting read here on html5:
http://blog.halindrome.com/2009/07/w...rant-slut.html
::EDIT::
Also - http://www.zeldman.com/2009/07/07/in...eb-developers/
The process of using MXML is somewhat different than HTML. But, MXML is still a markup language. Actionscript is used within MXML and is not a markup language. Similar to how Javascript is used within HTML and is not a markup language.Quote:
Originally Posted by PAlexC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_FlexQuote:
MXML, an XML-based markup language, offers a way to build and lay out graphic user interfaces. Interactivity is achieved through the use of ActionScript, the core language of Flash Player that is based on the ECMAScript standard.
Right, I guess I meant more by the way it's used. While Flex is 'open', validation for indexing and accessibility isn't an issue. It's not being distributed to be interpreted by a dozen or so major environments, it's only getting fed to the Flex compiler, or an open-source one if someone ever bothers to make one.Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashLackey
It's less important for Flex, I meant. :)
Agreed. It really illustrates the fundamental flaw of the current HTML model. HTML has an absolute dependency on an unpredictable renderer. Loose dependencies are one of the oldest and most basic no-nos of software engineering in general.
HTML would be far more efficient to use if it were also plug-in based.
I made a unicorn with donuts on its horns with CSS and HTML5. I'm awesome.
interesting little demo.
http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/
Something like?Quote:
Originally Posted by lefteyewilly
Pretty cool.Code:<unicorn>
<horn class="donut"></horn>
<horn class="donut"></horn>
</unicorn>
As far as I can tell, in a practical every-day world, I don't have to write <div class="header"> anymore, I can just write <header>?
If you visit Google in Safari or Firefox, it's in HTML 5.
Asheep, your code classifies the horn as a donut, so that would make it a cream horn (aesthetically speaking) :p. A sub element <donut></donut> or maybe stylizing it with something fancy like: background-image:url(donut_stickers.jpg) would be a better option. :thumbsup:
Cute, but I'm sure it's easier to do it in Flash. Just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you SHOULD.Quote:
Originally Posted by WannaBe_80z
I don't get why people think HTML5 is a Flash killer. It's a stupid comparison, and it's stupid for HTML to focus on that competition, rather than focus on important issues like accessibility and semantics.
Oh I wasn't implying that at all. I am with you all on that it should focus more on things like compatibility and not try to fight a already lost battle.
403 forbidden.
Ya want flash ya don't want flash. yada yada yada.
For those who don't like adobe there are plenty of other flash products on the market.
Browser wars, yeah there's something new.
Right now, ten years from now and ten years ago. Which output is the most consistent?
Flash took the old java mantra and made it a reality. Write Once run everywhere.
Dude. Slideshows aside, why would you ever think about implementing any kind of serious app or even a half-decent motion site with JS? First of all, it's not going to be any more search compliant than just throwing the content in a noscript tag and laying some nice flash on top of it...and then you have to deal with all the bullsh*t of the DOM and going back and forth from platform to platform to make sure that the width of the scrollbar or the innerHeight or the freakin' margins/padding/top/width/etc. of every possible interaction of DIVs look okay from IE6-8, to Firefox, etc. ... unless they're paying you an absurd amount of money to waste away your sanity for no good reason, why the **** would you put yourself through that when you can do it once and right with a flat HTML noscript and a nice, one-off Flash file?Quote:
Originally Posted by MyFriendIsATaco
The problem w/ doing 'ria' type crap in JS comes down to the same old web standards nastiness. I know there's a type of codermonkey that loves the aggravation of banging his head against this or that standards mismatch until coming up with the greatest hack ever to reconcile some tiny bit, but it's such a waste of effort; everything in the dom still runs like a hog in Windows because IE and Windows are massive hogs themselves; the Flash VM is just so vastly superior to anything else that takes place in a web browser, including silverlight, nothing even comes close...
Hahaha, it's like reading a post from 2000.
Wrong. Using js on existing markup is the most predictable and reliable to progressively enhance a UX that must degrade gracefully.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
They're called jQuery, JSON and to a lesser extend YUI.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
The amount I would charge to create TextFields, size and position them, stylize them, make them legible and index able just so they could be animated would be much higher than some xhtml and mootools.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Yes, clearly the gmail team are having no success.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
That, I agree with. When all capabilities are considered and weighed against dev time, stability and search visibility, flash is a superior platform. That does not however make it the default choice net-based interaction. And the fp does have a few glitches in various browser contexts.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
I'd be the first to agree that there are lots of inappropriate places where Flash/Flex isn't the right solution, including text-heavy sites.Quote:
The amount I would charge to create TextFields, size and position them, stylize them, make them legible and index able just so they could be animated would be much higher than some xhtml and mootools.
But there are times when motion and UI experience is supposed to be the center focus of a work. Most of the jobs I work on are custom, image-oriented branding exercises, rather than informational pieces alone... and when it comes to doing layouts and interfaces that are not some derivation of a grid, just because the DOM might be wrangled into doing something superficially flashlike through a framework like jQuery, mootools, etc. doesn't mean that it should be. I think a great case in point is the new Google Fast Flip, which is ugly and rigid, and shows all the symptoms of what happens when coders spend more time fighting cross-platform issues in dhtml than in coming up with creative or logical interface solutions. Why they didn't choose to write that interface in Flex is beyond me.
And gmail, still in beta after how many years? Is absolutely riddled with bugs and quirks. It's even known to crash browsers from time to time. Mail readers, being so text- and html-heavy, obviously shouldn't be written in Flash; but it just shows that the current state of JS is not so advanced as to ameliorate all the inherent failings of HTML 4. Nor is it a particularly fast or efficient way to handle application logic, by any standard other than "it's all we've got"...
You beg to differ with yourself.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Quote:
unless they're paying you an absurd amount of money to waste away your sanity for no good reason, why the **** would you put yourself through that when you can do it once and right with a flat HTML noscript and a nice, one-off Flash file?
No one said there wasn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Branding = exposure. Exposure = visibility. Visibility = search ranking so that statement makes no sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Saying flash is not the obvious solution does not imply one of the alternatives is.Quote:
Originally Posted by jAQUAN
Since when? http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/...es-really.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
Fast Flip doesn't appear to suffer from anything except envy. There's more that goes into providing accessible 508 complaint content en mass than button design.
Whoa, Gmail is OUT OF BETA! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by joshstrike
And yes, I agree, the kind of sites you're describing will almost always be done in Flash. Flash is going to be the defacto when it comes to true animation. There is no point in manipulating the DOM or even using <canvas> to animate a cartoon character or make some crazy animation. It's just not practical. Yet.
I'm talking about the typical Flash uses now that aren't really needed to be done in Flash. A roll over effect, or a menu or basic animation like I mentioned, a slideshow, can all just as easily be done in Javascript with no messing around.
But speaking of <canvas>, have you ever looked into that? It's some crazy ****! I don't see it that far out of the question for that to replace Flash in it's entirety. No DOM, just a canvas. A stage, if you will. You draw pixels on it wherever you want. It's quick, and renders the same in all browsers that support <canvas>. Now, the only big point here is that not all browsers support it. But by the time they do, I'm sure someone out there will have a killer framework like jQuery or something that utilizes the canvas and give you functions similar to Flash. Creating objects, putting them on the "stage" and moving things around. And also by then, computers will be 10x faster, so that won't even be an issue.
Agreed. Although even if canvas progresses quickly, flash still has a massive lead. Just think of some of the depressingly difficult thinks flash has made easier over the years. It's takes countless real world feedback hours to fine tune some of things we take for granted. It's only ever been about the right tool for the job, and if/when canvas is there, so am I.
I stand corrected. Just in time to break the new version of firebug ;)Quote:
Whoa, Gmail is OUT OF BETA!
I guess I can break down the two things that really bother me about the possibility of discarding Flash for browser-reliant solutions, including canvas renderings that run their logic in JS, as being
(1). The overhead of cross-browser compliance, framework or not, and the annoying workarounds that will always be inherent when dealing with IE, since it never supports new features on time or implements them in quite the expected way (preferring to embrace and extinguish, as they say)...
and (2). The fact that AS3 has evolved to become just so damn elegant for doing heavy client-side logic, so widely used, and so easy to code in and get the expected results. Much of that has to do with Adobe's pouring money into the language's refinement. Javascript hasn't evolved along the same path, mostly due to squabbles between Mozilla, Sun and Microsoft and until the day when all browsers are perfectly ECMA-4 or -5 compliant, it will continue to require hackish workarounds, if not for the developers using the frameworks, then certainly within the frameworks themselves...
When all browsers are ECMA-5 compliant, they'll basically be VM's themselves. So the evolution to HTML-5 is really, in a way, the slow, unsteady progression of browsers toward becoming more like Flash.
And btw; there's no reason a site can't have a very nice under-layer that works just like the Flash side, with excellent searchability, driven by the same database that drives the flash, and be completely standards-compliant from a search engine / disabled / mobile / degraded POV...
I suspect that your motivation here is that, while there are many valid reasons to build things in something other than flash in various circumstances, it's usually far less enjoyable to do so. That's because you have to spend more time addressing redundant browser-related issues when that time could have been used fine-tuning the tangible product (user experience, features, aesthetics, etc.).
I agree.
It's like the difference between sculpting artwork in clay and digging ditches in clay. Which would you rather spend your time doing?
Most succinctly put. That is my motivation. There are few other languages that let you spend the bulk of your time solving new puzzles. A better parallel might be that coding in AS3 gives you a chance to be an architect without making you spend half your time as a carpenter. Having worked the carpentry side of the biz for years in the '90s, and having burnt out on it, I'm loathe to return.Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashLackey
I think HTML and JS are foundations that every flash designer needs to have a firm handle on... but they don't interest me much these days...
The concept of cross browser coding will be irrelevant once <canvas> is in all browsers. I may stand corrected since I don't fully know everything about this, but from my understanding is that it is just a stage and you draw stuff on it. Pixels. Bitmap graphics. So if we were to utilize canvas objects for things, everything is working off of exact x/y coordinates, and you basically have a Flash movie object.. inside a standards compliant canvas object.
Now where I do agree is that AS3 is a much much better language to work with than Javascript. You're never going to write an application as elegantly in Javascript as you can in AS3, but that's not really the point here. The point here is that we all agree that Flash DOES have it's place in the industry and it'll be around for quite some time. Where I tend to disagree is how I see the web evolving out of what is required from Flash. Flash was the hot trend back in the late 90s and early 00s. It was the fancy new thing that everyone had to use and created the buzz word and hysteria around it. Now, everyone is cutting back on that and going back to the basics and paying more attention to what matters. Usability, standards, and content. People are more focused on selling their product or advertising themselves, and having a nice elegant, easy to navigate website that doesn't require instructions to use. They want their content as easy as possible to be found and accessed by anyone. Yes, that means screen readers and the like. Just in a whole, the normal web is shifting away from Flash. The fancy show-off one hit wonder microsites will still exist, but that's about it. Beyond games.
I don't believe that the evidence supports your theory. You might be trending toward more non-flash work personally. But, flash is being used quite healthily and in an ever increasing number of ways.
Um, I agree. But I've never found much interesting in 99% of websites I've visited. We're out here in the avant garde, don't you know. Even FlashLackey, reactionary that he is...very avant garde.Quote:
the normal web is shifting away from Flash. The fancy show-off one hit wonder microsites will still exist, but that's about it. Beyond games.
The thing is...and now I'm gonna pull out this soap box and shout my lungs out on it...what the *hell* are we really doing here? Once were webmonkeys? We're a bunch of hacks. Bustin ass for the man. We might as well work in a carwash. There were a couple years from '96 to '98 or so where we were made to feel important by guys in new luxury sports cars. Where are they now? Where are we? Flashers in particular: If you could put together an animated banner, you were making $80k a year plus benefits in '98. Then...what? Are we sitting here ten years later on FlashKit, explaining to our ex-boss's twelve year old daughter what a singleton pattern is? No! We've innovated. We're way beyond the curve. If there is a person in the sound of my voice who's billing less than $100/hr. for flash work, hide yourself now. AS has developed, and we've developed with it. The "normal" web you're talking about -- the template site with the flash ad banner and God-forbid the flash timeline knicknack garbage around the edges -- is a piece of crap and everyone knows it. So you're talking about work that was outsourced to the Philippines five years ago or more. Let me clarify that when I say Flash, I'm discarding anything that uses frames. I'm talking about introducing logic to the web. I'm talking about the exact thing that, in JS or AS3 or .NET or VB is what Google will never be able to catalog or quantify, and what I don't want to spend my whole life making obvious and apparent to a search engine, else I should become a cog in some machine myself.
Flash has freed me to leave my agency and live in six countries in the past three years. This is a major step up.
So, searchability is needed, sometimes. Plain text is good to have around, in case you need robots to be able to crawl it or a half-blind chickenhead telnets in off a 300 baud modem in a recently liberated sh*thole that hasn't heard of coca cola. But running logic on the web -- making every page a program -- is to me the only thing that makes it worth building these things. And in that, nothing comes close to AS3 in either the breadth of its penetration or in its flexibility.
If the whole thing's a bust and it comes back to being a mechanic, and there are no more interesting jobs, I'll go back to what I did from 1999 to 2002; waiting tables and driving a taxi. At least it's interesting work, unlike plugging content into a crap framework over and over again...
On the other hand, maybe I'm just wasted and need to eat some food today...