Comments on: Web Design News 04/05/10

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:06:18 +0000

I agree with you both. While I do understand why Apple is restricting Flash from it's hand-held devices, I don't understand why the design community in particular has jumped on board with the backlash against Flash.

I think it's obvious that this debacle has more to do with protecting Apple's financial interests than it does with Flash's performance or the future of Flash on mobile devices. For example: If Flash were available on the iPhone, it would be possible that millions of applications that would be sold through Apple's proprietary store, would now be available in Flash format through any means possible via the web. This equals large revenue losses for Apple.

I'm not so sure about Steve Jobs claims in his open letter either. All it takes is a quick Google Search on Flash Player 10.1 benchmark tests for other mobile devices to see that it in-fact runs much faster than the current alternatives. In any case, if efficiency and battery-life are Apple's main concerns with Flash, why the fear of letting the user decide?

I'm not a Flash developer and personally don't enjoy the user-experience of 100% Flash-based websites, however I do think that it's a highly advanced technology for other aspects of the web such as gaming, video delivery, online applications and feature-rich animations.

I just don't understand the backlash from the designer community on this one.

By: Adam B

Adam B — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:31:01 +0000

There's one additional thing I'd like to tack on to the Flash debate. When it's said that Flash isn't an "open system" the idea is that Adobe controls the Flash/Flex Builder product lines, pricing, etc. True, but it is very possible to develop ActionScript applications without using any of their products!

In the same way that Apple has released an SDK that any Apple developer must use, so has Adobe released their Flex SDK with a Flash Compiler Shell. You don't even have to sign up for an account to download it. With this tool, I'm programming web applications and even games without any Adobe product.

This sounds pretty "open" to me...

By: Agustin Amenabar

Agustin Amenabar — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:30:42 +0000

What I don't get is this visceral hatred towards flash, I know it allows bad design, but so does jQuery, CSS3 and dear Photoshop. jQuery using more battery than flash for the same task.

Don't get me wrong, I think JQuery, MooTools and others similar are one of the best things to happen to the internet, but, just as flash, it's not the panacea.

People seem to forget that the main attribute to flash is not animation, it's the ease for making things work across platforms. Plugin architecture is far from ideal, but clearly it has worked far better than asking Software Companies to stick to a spec. 3 specs if you want to do what flash does.

If Steve Jobs claims sloppy coding on behalf of Adobe, but one can say the same about how Apple works with hardware.

Flash has huge improvement to do efficiency wise, still needs ways to handle crashing and resource utilisation. Flash Player 10.1 addresses this quite decently. Still I was hoping that with SC5 they would work on something better.

This is far from over, and I think this could lead to mayor mayor changes like the settlement of HTML5 as a real, stable, adopted spec. Or huge improvement on the flash platform and the fulfilment of the Open Screen Project (which, as a developer, am a bit ambivalent on).

The huge problem I have with JavaScript is performance (even on Chrome), compared with ActionScript 3, which is absurdly fast considering it is an interpreted language.

That would be the rant I had been choking on for a few weeks.

Let the wrath of the Open Source righteous rain on me.