Comments on: With Adobe backtracking on Flash, its time we did too

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Well you can always use a fallback method such as swfObject. You can serve Flash for desktop and have a fallback to something less impressive in jQuery or whatever for mobile. We really shouldn’t start stepping backwards because of mobile as it’s not like a desktop.

You always find those developers who can’t use Actionscript or just don’t want to learn yet another web language will always say they would be glad to see the end of Flash. The fact remains you can do things in Flash not possible with what is available today.

Adobe has given up on mobile not the desktop.

By: Earl Swigert

Earl Swigert — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Why do you think mobile browsing will overtake desktop browsing anytime in the near future? According to this: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201105-201110-bar mobile internet browsing only accounts for 6.62% of all internet browsing worldwide. In North America that number is only 7.35%.

As for flash, it’s not dead in any way whatsoever. Flash simply shouldn’t be used to create websites anymore, but that’s been the case for a while now. If you are building a game, an aesthetically complex web app, visualization, mobile app, or any type of video delivery system you should consider flash. With flash’s new Stage3D api you can deliver 60fps 3D with 10s of thousands of triangles. We are talking desktop game quality in the browser. And flash is the best way to deliver video on the web, and you cannot secure a video using HTML 5 video like you can with flash using RTMPE.

Mobile apps built in flash can be deployed to both iOS and Android (Blackberry soon) which is cool for anyone building an app for multiple systems. One code base and a significantly reduced development time. I realize you don’t get the same type of performance all the time using this technique, but the newest version of AIR for iOS uses the gpu and this will only continue to get better.

Flash won’t go away, and it shouldn’t. We just need to think about it differently.

By: Rachel Lehman

Rachel Lehman — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:12:00 +0000

By and large, there is less and less need for Flash even on the desktop. But there are still many enterprises doing things with Flash that simply cannot be done with HTML (think high end financial apps, data visualization) and it’s still perfectly relevant for them. So I’d like to emphasize that this really only applies to *website* owners (not *web app* owners).

By: Alan Stubbindeck

Alan Stubbindeck — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:44:00 +0000

Funny that your argument was delivered via Flash. :)

By: Christian Haensel

Christian Haensel — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:13:00 +0000

I agree. I have never worked with flash in my carreer as a developer, but have seen really nice uses of flash. So I’m not feeling bad about flash going down the tube… I feel it’s kind of like the old fashion “gif-websites”, just a little more mature. Flash is nothing more than a playful way of showing stuff which can be done in a much smarter way, especially now with HTML5 / CSS3.

By: Christian Haensel

Christian Haensel — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:13:00 +0000

By: Ricky Lee O'Neill

Ricky Lee O'Neill — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:49:00 +0000

Paul, I thought I’d pay this small Homage to Flash, as it served us so well in the early days ;0) http://www.looktouchfeel.co.uk/blog/a-homage-to-flash-ltf-back-in-the-day