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Starting to hear quite a lot of concerns about work becoming harder to find, price pressure etc, coupled with louder and louder calls for HTML5 to replace Flash.
What's the consensus here?
Is there still plenty of work, are there still bright spots?
Is any downturn purely from the economic climate or are clients reluctant to use Flash these days simply because they've heard it won't work on iPhone?
Paul
It's pretty rough for me too and I actually know html5. My main problems are that I'm stuck in Germany and am only available for telecommute. That hurts because for a company to want a telecommuter bad enough, they'd better bring some serious talent to the table which usually consists of front-end, backend, ruby and python experience. I worked my ass off and simply havent had any ruby/python projects come up and now I'm penalized for it.
This hints a larger problem though, the html5 nonsense (see most of my recent posts here) has pretty much screwed everybody from paying client to developer. Clients are being led around blindly by the circle jerk bloggers, js library writers and basically every other dev out there who likes being employed. They are forced to order up "mobile" compatible sites because some erroneous statistic says most of the web is consumed on mobile now while it fails to factor in exactly what content is being consumed. I'm pretty sure mobile users are not excited to see a media rich experience bog down their phone. If you do see some jquery mobile or Foundation based site on your phone you can be damn sure its killing your battery just as fast as the flash player would... if it even loads.
So now clients are forced to purchase the equivalent of two to three versions of every project (see http://mediaqueri.es/) the developer is shamed into charging close to the same, except for the big agencies of course. But somewhere in the middle are companies trying to stay afloat by hiring multi-talented developers who've been writing code since they were f*cking eight and paying them a single persons salary. And no one... no one is picking their head up and saying, "hey, this is bullsh*t!"
F*ck you Steve Jobs.
I moved about 9 months ago, soon as I updated my online resume I got calls left and right. Alot of it was for PHP, but not all of it. I got an interview for a flash programmer.
At the interview I took a test that lasted about an hour scored a 90% and had a face to face interview that lasted less than 10 minutes.
I figured I was done.
After I got hired I found out I was the only one they interviewed that did better than 50% on the test.
Nothing less expected from you ;)Quote:
After I got hired I found out I was the only one they interviewed that did better than 50% on the test.
So perhaps this suggests that basic flash development is now easy enough for more mainstream users and has probably moved in house or to marketing agencies. But for proper scripting and development, work is still available.Quote:
Originally Posted by rynoe
Not a big sample of responses yet but sounds like a plausible maturing of the marketplace?
Yes misconceptions about Flash and HTML5 are hurting the industry.
Lamens just don't understand the technologies enough to appreciate the benefits of each.
HTML5 is a pain to work on compared to flash, and can not produce the same types of rich interactive experiences.
HTML5 = dynamic static content.
Flash = interactive media content.
The problem we are facing is that consumers are willing to accept static, content first, websites. And don't really care about engaging interactive media.
The next problem facing us is that business's found out people will pay for what was once free. They would much rather produce a static site, but a media rich interactive app.
Corporations have always wanted to shut down the web, now they have "apps" in their arsenal, and trying to use them to rid the web of free interactive media.
The whole situation is bad, bad for developers, bad for consumers. But it's moving so fast mis-information is running the show.
It's like waking up one day and finding your Mustang has been replaced with a bicycle and a bus pass.
the Tablet Era is in full swing, its much better for companies to have pages that render quickly and properly without the chance for a memory leak that flash can cause.
The days of 3 minute FI intros are just about over, and personally i wont miss them when they are gone. At this point when i go to a website i am going to it specifically to find information, if i want to watch a flash video ill go to a website specifically for that.
i would say 95% if a website has some sort of intro, or uses excessive "interaction" personally i get displeased.
Flash intros have been gone for years. hbogo.com is about the only all flash site left and that was a bad choice. Flash as an application code base is still a brilliant option however and that's what we're talking about here. Over a hundred thousand apps on the apple store are as3 based. Javascript has every bit of a chance for memory leaks as flash, heck even more so due to the lack of scope. Web development doesnt suck because no one wants flash, its sucks because the languages suck.
I agree with jaQUAN about the memory leak remark. AS3 has a fairly decent garbage collector and built in fuctions to manage memory. Most if not all of the flash produced files that are memory hogs out there have to do with poor programming and design practices rather than the technology itself.
I would recommend focusing on AIR development if your an actionscript fan. I've had alot of fun with it and my guess its got bright future.
If your a javascript fan you should be happy as a clam right now because as far as I can tell it is all the real brains around html5 anyway.
All this hubbub about flash vs. HTML5 is political retoric. Use the right technology at the right time, it's simple really.
It's tough out there, I agree. But its tough for everyone in every industry, not just flash developers. My guess is that because html and javascript is cheaper than developing in flash, everyone is trying to leverage that technology.
By the way, now that the flash player is dead on mobile, whats to stop the browser being the next on the chopping block with everyone focusing on apps....
Well I would debate the cheaper aspect.
Many things can be done faster in flash then in html5. And those waving the html5 flag qualified skilled in the field.
A better question becomes how much does the client really know about html5 or what he's getting. Many clients talk out of their arse and sales reps are so far up there they'll believe a client more then a developer. If you allow people to expect less and be happy with it then they will expect less of you and you'll have to be happy with getting less.
I used to be in the restaraunt biz. People don't come to look at the menu and they don't try to negotiate the price. They come to eat and if they think it's something is too much they order something they can afford. But usually they like to play the big shot. Order big eat big and think if something costs more then the place across the street it's because the difference is worth it. Same goes with clients if you promote your product/service as worth it for the price they'll budge so long as it feeds their ego.
Informed clients request an html5 site because they want to include iOS in their target. No problem there. But in all of W3C's push to improve on capabilities, they completely failed to consider the developers. Their complete failure to enforce a standard convention or implementation shot the price of development up due to trying to localize for all vendors. Profit margins shrunk and agencies are requiring the same size staff to do more. If you aren't skilled in everything from node.js to django to wordpress theming to mobile apps consider yourself to be lucky to be employed.
And that reiterates my point (though I didn't make it well)
The greatest advocates of html5 are the least aware of the demands do to the conflicting implementation on browsers.
Yes it would be great if all you had to do is code once and write everywhere but one can't and few seem to recognize this.
Maybe someone ought to build an html4 translator on one end you do all the coding and on the other end it spits out browser compliant code.
Well my dream scenario is a single highly regulated core (preferably webkit) which each browser manufacturer would wrap. The DOM would render exactly the same everywhere but they'd each be free to add all their own bells and whistles. Chrome could still implement V8 and all of their google integration awesomeness, firefox could still support plugins and IE could still manage to **** things up all they want. Those features are really the only place browsers compete anyway.
Not all rich contents have to interactive. A large portion of the medium consumption experience is inevitably going to be passive. A good animation can communicate ideas far better than a still image. A big problem in the Flash community that I see is how people look down upon timeline animations. That's really Flash's forte. Timeline animations, when properly optimized, blow away anything you can do in HTML5.
If one message from Steve Jobs can kill flash, this is the one guy who can kill HTML5.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mar...m_medium=email
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575...m_medium=email
Love it.
AIR is what Adobe seems to promote. If you look at Flash CS6, there is a new option for publishing AIR on Android to either get AIR from the Google market or embed AIR runtime with the application. That would eliminate any download from another source. The focus of further development will be on Gaming and Video. Thus Flash is not dead and games can still be developed in Flash.Quote:
Originally Posted by rynoe
Regarding Flash Adobe seems to develop a new AS, which fulfills the demand for high performance. It is based on AS3.
Don't forget you can publish to iOS too.
nice!Quote:
Originally Posted by jaquan
Not all rich contents have to interactive. A large portion of the medium consumption experience is inevitably going to be passive. A good animation can communicate ideas far better than a still image. A big problem in the Flash community that I see is how people look down upon timeline animations. That's really Flash's forte. Timeline animations, when properly optimized, blow away anything you can do in HTML5.
it does getting tough - but what do you expect? I come to flashkit and find only 5 posts made on that day. It used to be several pages.
Check this out.
Javascript....
I watch these guys get lost in this crap all the time. Usually it's some variable they cast originally as a string and then tried to divide it by 6 or add it to the global reallyItTruelyIsTheTotalScoreThisTime variable, or forget to create the object before they tell it to do something, or just plain doesn't work in safari and/or IE8 so they added a 'pauseForBrowser' function that is 666,000 lines long checking version, dementions, time of day, distance to the sun, length of toenail, bloodtype, race, religion, number of protons, sexual preference and waist size of the browser you are using so the can redirect you to a page that can handle your specific request.
Nice work by the way, only took you a month to do all that. Now you can post that poo on the WWW and all the other javascript monkeys can see it and throw it right back at you. great stuff...
Hahaha. Yep I love when guys like Paul Irish get all poindexter and explains how polyfills and a massive stack of debugging tools are "advancements" in the space.
This is a hilarious video of a mozilla employee who has clearly drank the kool-aid and attempts to convince us that if we wan't cool things that html can't do then we're doing it wrong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7xnK...ature=youtu.be
Your link sounds a lot like createJS from Grant Skinner who Adobe themselves have adopted and built into Flash Pro. Still, all that sprite animation makes for a bigger slower file than the same swf would be and yet Steve Jobs said no flash because its a battery killer.
I do want to try typescript though, couple a big flash guys have given it a thumbs up.
So what's up with you are you still stuck in Germany without a job?
Oddly enough, my previous employer has brought me in as a contractor on a big flash job. Hopefully that parlays into more steady work. I'll be done with school in April so hopefully that allows me to clear my head a bit.
Well that's good to read.
God. So many ideas in my head from reading this thread. This is a subject really close to my heart and which I can't talk to anybody about - not even talking shop with other "web designers".
The truth is, I've basically given up on web design in the last couple years. It's certainly not worth putting out template sites - I never did. And the demand for bespoke product and rich media apps has crashed as a whole, with Flash's decline leading that crash but by no means being the end of it.
+1M for jAQUAN's first comment, and to ryanoe's observations about javascript's equal (or worse) memory management, and the corporate undermining of free web browsing via apps. +1 to jAQUAN's (rarely made) observation that battery life is a lot worse when Javascript runs the same graphics routine as Flash...and that therefore steve jobs was a ****head who ruined a lot of people's careers for spite or personal gain.
Look, 99% of the bloggers, commentators, and douchebags you have meetings with, who have opinions about what language some web app or website should be programmed in, *are not coders*. That's basically all you need to know about their qualification to talk about anything.
I'm in a really weird position because I don't have a smart phone, and never used social media. I turn away clients who want to work with JQuery - I'll only do javascript animation if I can roll it myself. I vehemently refuse to put frames on a timeline, I write my AS2 in eclipse and my AS3 in Flex 3. I still actively develop and work on AS2 and AS3 apps that were written for private companies from 10 years ago onward. Feeling the need to keep up with the ****-factory of hype mongering business school graduates, I figured out HTML5's crappy canvas set far enough to write an open source screen graph based on it, so now when I have to do something and "no flash" is needed, I can code it comfortably without having to rotate the stage every time I put a pen down. But honestly, there isn't really even demand for canvas. That was just hype.
It's fair to say that stupidity reigns right now. There is a terror of making something that won't work for mobile. Yes there's still a market for bespoke websites with a lot of finely tuned CSS3 and HTML5, but we all know this is extremely tedious, uncreative and NO FUN. And there is still a business app market that doesn't give a damn what the app's coded in as long as it's secure and it works in a browser. Both of those have had to become focal points as the ambitiously interactive web experience has evaporated. The last great little site I've seen like that was http://www.doggelganger.co.nz/. In 2008 we were bringing in huge sums to develop really creative stuff like this. It's a tragedy that the world hasn't moved in that direction, but it's a function of corporate control and cost-cutting, along with a dumbing down of the public and a lowering of expectations.
If you love doing Flash, and you're really good at it, then you probably are one of the few people who's managed to bridge code and graphics and learned to navigate both sides of a single project. And wherever our future is, it's not on the WWW. It's in AIR apps, and possibly videogames. Again I'm amazed at how little attention is given to Scaleform. There is huge demand from video game producers for Flash devs to write Scaleform frontends. If you're fluent enough in AS2/3 to write large web applications, it's a cakewalk. And it's a blast. My current project coding the HUD for Star Citizen is one of the funnest Flash jobs I've ever been given... and it's in AS2 of all things.
All my on sites are still in Flash - including my bitcoin casino - and that won't change. If and when some other platform comes up that's equally good for doing immersive apps like that, I'll switch to it. But it's hard out there in the Flash-for-web world, and what hurts the most is that some of our best minds are being wasted or put to bad use. What stings is not that you're not good enough to do HTML5 websites, but that *any idiot can do than that tedious, uncreative crap - and it potentially means seeing years of honing your skills at writing really good code go down the drain*.
So my suggestion to all flash coders who feel this way is - go towards writing games. Put them in AIR, and put them on the web, and make people come to you to play them. Those kinds of experiences are just never going to be doable with HTML5/js/canvas. And for money, do what you have to do. But Actionscriptify your javascript. Work in HaXe, support jeash. Most importantly, when people ask for impossible things, or say stupid things about javascript, educate them.
The masses are digging yet another terrible hole for themselves, like when they banned smoking in bars and destroyed all the pubs, or when they were all excited to get a no-down-payment ARM. Only in this case, the substitute is nothing at all; we've just lost 10 years worth of advancement in interactive media because the companies don't want to pay for it anymore. They've effectively lowered the consumer's expectations and twisted a lot of our work into something negative. BUT THEY STILL NEED CODERS - because the suits in charge of this scam don't know how to build anything.
So lastly I want to urge everyone to charge a fair rate. If they aren't paying you for your time, and think they can get you to write multiple versions for the same price, then just say no. Let them go offshore and suffer the consequences. Businesses do lose in the end when they cut too many corners. The ones who don't cut corners tend to be the ones that succeed; and don't be afraid to let your boss's boss know that.
Alright, done ranting now.
Hi Josh nice to see you around.
I was going to write a long response but honestly don't have the time. Just wanna say I read ya.
Good read Josh. I just have this feeling that people with html skills only are the one's who are afraid to call b*llsh*t on the industry.
On a semi-brighter note, I did compile my first piece of typescript the other day. It was just a hello world but it was really nice to write logical javascript for once. I can't really say if it makes me feel better because I have to do a real test using markup and styles.
+1000Quote:
Originally Posted by jAQUAN
After a few years in this "post-flash" market, I now believe that the depressed economy is a larger culprit than I had thought. Flash hasn't fared well because many clients have scaled back on more ambitious digital marketing projects where the advantages of Flash over HTML5 become more apparent.
If HTML5 "killed and replaced" Flash as some people claim, we should expect that budgets that used to be spent on Flash would now be spent on HTML5 projects. We do enough business out there to observe with confidence that that isn't the case.
Unfortunately, the economy doesn't look like it's coming back any time soon. In fact, it looks like it's going to get a lot worse during the next 5-10 years. So, yeah, it IS getting tough out there. :)
So it's Obama's fault :-). Nice to see you.Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashLackey
Hey FL, glad to see you're still working.
I'll just say that those are some very expensive contraceptives.Quote:
Originally Posted by cancerinform
Good to see you as well! :)
Always. Are you moving back to the states eventually?Quote:
Originally Posted by jAQUAN
I'll be in El Paso between May and August.