Well, I guess Apple does not steer the internet. Steve Jobs's mandate that all developers abandon Flash has fallen on deaf ears. So to protect their iOS hardware sales, Apple is going to do "the whole banana" yet again. History repeats itself.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just partner with Adobe and make everyone happy?
1) what mandate that developers stop developing for flash? Making up you own headlines are we today?? :-(
2) Apple has gotten along with Adobe for 3-7 years and in that time Adobe has done crap to upgrade FLASH for Mac. Steve got tired of waiting around.
PS, there still is not really flash for mobile. 10.1 is a good start but most machines and most web sites cannot do it without updates and changes.
With so many competitors lining up to the iPad and iPhone, the stance against flash and java is beyond silly.
I agree. It is only a matter of time before android market share matches iOS and now even blackberry can run flash (not sure about the phones but the new blackberry playbook does). Soon apple and iOS are going to be in the minority with a relatively featureless product....
Sure websites like youtube and iplayer have mobile versions that run - no flash required but let's be honest.... The flash sites are much much better. You guys in the UK check out iplayer on the ipad for a perfect example.
Apple has really run themselves into a corner with the whole anti flash thing. Soon people will realise that limited choice and featureless is not worth it just to have a shiny apple logo.
I?m not sure I get where you are coming from. The basis of the iAd development was assuming Apple is making a platform that would allow ads to be made with relative ease and put in to sites as easily as Google?s ads are, not for each webmaster to build and design the ads for their site from scratch.
I could be completely wrong, but as I understand it iAds can only be developed and implemented through Apple, or through Apple's ad agency. There are no iAd development tools, just a way for application developers to integrate iAds into their apps.
Did you notice how it kept dropping the connection and resetting back to the beginning of the presentation? At first I was not able to figure out how to overcome that until I hit option/ refresh which then sent me to the current live broadcast again. That part still needs a bit of work, but overall I thought it was a pretty bold move to make the presentation live, and it worked quite well.
Yeah, that was a bit irritating. Was that something glitchy in the implementation or load dependent or what?
IQ, though, it was quite good, and if Apple can get the kinks worked out (or add servers or whatever) I think they have a real differentiator here. It'll also be nice if their desire to showcase the tech means more live feeds from Apple events, like the good old days. I'd much rather watch the thing itself than to take my chances with possibly snarky "live-blogging" (although Ars seems to hit a pretty good mix of accurate presentation with a little personality).
I hope these 'innovative' web sites are designed in such a way to work with most HTML5 capable browsers (including, Opera, Firefox and IE9) and not simply be limited to WebKit based browsers (Safari and Chrome). This is especially true when bringing in the related CSS3 and Javascript components into play,
What is the best strategy for users in the meantime? ISTM that HTML5 is rudimentary at this point, and additionally, has not yet become a standard.
I can't believe that it is best for consumers to just shut themselves off from using resources because someday, things will be different. I see that as being similar to avoiding driving until electric cars are ubiquitous. It makes no sense to me.
But I suppose that the grapes are too sour these days.
Most browsers have robust HTML5 and CSS3 support. Get a clue.
What is the best strategy for users in the meantime? ISTM that HTML5 is rudimentary at this point, and additionally, has not yet become a standard.
I can't believe that it is best for consumers to just shut themselves off from using resources because someday, things will be different. I see that as being similar to avoiding driving until electric cars are ubiquitous. It makes no sense to me.
But I suppose that the grapes are too sour these days.
HTML5 itself is actually just one building block of all the new interactive sites which we are seeing—sites which used to require something like Flash to behave (clumsily) in a comparable way. JavaScript's capabilities are advanced and established (and growing; getting faster) while we've got other tools like SVG, CSS, Canvas. HTML5 itself, while not a finalized standard (that's a long way out) is perfectly usable in many regards and in many applications. One particular element of Flash which cannot even dream of competing is in the field of accessibility and adaptability.
It is a rather large subject and there's a great deal of misunderstanding and misrepresentation (for example, creating bouncing balls in Canvas as a comparison to Flash—that's just stupid). In short, though, the combination of these technologies will replace more and more of what we know Flash to do today. Right now there are some major hurdles for advanced animation. One is backward compatibility. Another is cost/development time. There's no reason why JavaScript and these technologies cannot achieve something incredible, but without a proper development environment to piece it all together as readily as Flash (the application) can create Flash videos, that's mostly something to look forward to in the future or enjoy at the hands of large firms (e.g. Apple, Microsoft) or highly skilled developers.
In terms of what can and can't be used? It depends on the project and, especially, the demographic. Is a site designed for a whole mess of users who, somehow, are still using IE6? These new open technologies aren't going to cut it. Flash will be needed for a high level of interactive capabilities. Designing something for a technologically inclined audience? You can up the game quite a bit if you wish and leave Flash in the gutter. Some things, like slightly more complicated games, just aren't practical using these technologies yet.
Apple is after Flash's blood because Adobe has not been good to the OS X platform traditionally, and Flash sucks horribly on mobile devices to this day. Yes, that includes all Android devices. It only runs smoothly for basic operation (e.g. certain advertisements) and mobile-optimized media. From there you start to run into everything ranging from annoying/jerky scrolling to end-of-line errors and crashes. Flash has a long way to go. Companies like Apple cannot push it along the way, or help to develop it into what it needs to be. I can't blame them for wanting Flash to die, and as a developer myself, I want to see it die too. Well, I want to see it die for standard website functions such as video, navigation, presentation. Actual content should almost never require something like Flash to access.
Professionals? They should be thinking forward. If these new technologies are not yet appropriate for their website or project they should be designing with them in mind. Present video using HTML5 and fall back on Flash (easier said than done for very large established companies, but they'll come around as they need to). But for some time the demographic and budget are going to dictate some of these decisions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CIM
Most browsers have robust HTML5 and CSS3 support. Get a clue.
1) Don't be a jerk. Why be so rude?
2) Most new browsers have good support for key parts of HTML5 and CSS 3. Webkit is the best with good offerings from Mozilla Firefox and Opera as well. IE8 is workable, but is is definitely holding many things back. Microsoft seems to be working hard to turn this around and IE9 looks like it may have some good potential. But what matters most? It isn't what most modern browsers support, but rather what the browsers being used by most users support. We've still got crap like IE7 and IE6 out there, and that holds the whole internet (and especially these technologies) back.
I could be completely wrong, but as I understand it iAds can only be developed and implemented through Apple, or through Apple's ad agency. There are no iAd development tools, just a way for application developers to integrate iAds into their apps.
No there is now an SDK for all iOS devs. If i'm not revealing too much, there is a stipulation that the SDK, which is almost all javascript, be used only for delivery of iAds to iDevices. Not that Apple hasn't changed their User Agreement before but that part would have to be modified to bring iAds to the web proper.
Flash drains the batteries of mobile devices. HTML5 is more battery-friendly.
What makes you believe that moving multi-sprite animations will be more battery-friendly in an engine that not only has to do the same work as Flash, but also to parse a lot of XML to do it?
Moving lots of image data around simply takes horsepower.
If HTML5 looks like less of a battery drain than Flash maybe it's only because most folks are doing relatively trivial things with it.
Well that's what I mean! If you use Safari 5.x.x and Snow Leopard 10.6.4 you can get a HTML5 video tag with what looks like a Quicktime file format... it's not what I would call a flagship HTML5 video implementation
Oh, it's a flagship allright: one tiny boat while the rest of the fleet is doing something else.
What specific actions did Adobe take that you feel were "unfair"?
Quote:
Adobe is part of why the whole Carbon/Cocoa thing existed. They were in the top of the list for developers that didn't want to 'waste time' converting their software over to be Native Mac OSX compliant.
Are you aware that Apple's commonly used OS X app, the Finder, wasn't ported to Cocoa until this very latest OS version, Snow Leopard? How many years after OS X premiered did that take Apple?
And can you tell us when Apple's own Final Cut Pro will be converted to Cocoa?
Does "the rest of the fleet" not include IE and Chrome?
Chome has a tiny market share, and given Microsoft's history of ship dates which do you think will happen first: IE9 will ship, or HTML5 will be finalized?
Almost everything in Flash can be replicated with HTML 5 + Canvas + Javascript. Once you have a programmable graphics context that supports vectors you can build pretty much any type of graphics content. Here's a games site with HTML 5 games on it:
That site has quite a number of games. Some Flash games will look nicer as the SDK is more mature and has effects like motion blur and particle animations but it's just a matter of time until those things are added to HTML 5 if they haven't been done already by 3rd parties. There are even HTML 5 game engines:
HTML 5 and especially Canvas have been designed with the intention of fulfilling the role that Flash has taken up. An IDE would be nice but someone can even build an HTML 5 builder in HTML 5. That's sort of what the Sproutcore software does. That's something Flash can't do - author content for itself. Flash also can't do things like the following as easily:
The reason being that the graphics context is inside an SWF instance so you can't address it nearly as easily as a DOM object like Canvas.
Also note, the above HTML 5 games use very little CPU assuming you have a recent browser. Much less CPU than a typical Flash game. Naturally hardware accelerated Flash will improve the situation but it doesn't change the long term situation. Flash has had its day and it needs to be replaced by a much more flexible open standard. Adobe has proven time and time again it can't be relied up as the sole provider of rich web media.
As bad as Flash is, let's face it... HTML5 thus far has proven far less capable than Flash. Adobe should really commit to cleaning up their code and make Flash leaner and more stable. The HTML workarounds are not as sophisticated or interesting as a clever Flash implementation.
But OTOH, it begs the question: is there enough "clever" Flash implementation out there to justify sitting around and waiting while Adobe, who has owned this product for a long time, to finally get it right? Frankly, by volume there is an order of magnitude more Flash crap. For example, I don't miss 99% of what my flashblocker blocks from most sites. Now I may not be mainstream, or an "average consumer" but this speaks volumes to me about content delivery via Flash. I wonder if we get too enamoured of the tool and fail to see that the tool produces a prodigious amount of utter crap, which if sifted occasionally produces a gem or three. OT: I wish there was a good way to do that with all the blogs choking up the bandwidth - a relevancy checker or something that could be tailored to individaul use.
Anyway yes HTML5 is not yet, or may never be, the compleat content toolset that Flash has provided, but at this point, I will pretty much take anything that wrests control of content generation from the lakadaisical and conflicted control of Adobe management and a single, proprietary toolset.
Comments
Well, I guess Apple does not steer the internet. Steve Jobs's mandate that all developers abandon Flash has fallen on deaf ears. So to protect their iOS hardware sales, Apple is going to do "the whole banana" yet again. History repeats itself.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just partner with Adobe and make everyone happy?
1) what mandate that developers stop developing for flash? Making up you own headlines are we today?? :-(
2) Apple has gotten along with Adobe for 3-7 years and in that time Adobe has done crap to upgrade FLASH for Mac. Steve got tired of waiting around.
PS, there still is not really flash for mobile. 10.1 is a good start but most machines and most web sites cannot do it without updates and changes.
Just a thought here.
en
With so many competitors lining up to the iPad and iPhone, the stance against flash and java is beyond silly.
I agree. It is only a matter of time before android market share matches iOS and now even blackberry can run flash (not sure about the phones but the new blackberry playbook does). Soon apple and iOS are going to be in the minority with a relatively featureless product....
Sure websites like youtube and iplayer have mobile versions that run - no flash required but let's be honest.... The flash sites are much much better. You guys in the UK check out iplayer on the ipad for a perfect example.
Apple has really run themselves into a corner with the whole anti flash thing. Soon people will realise that limited choice and featureless is not worth it just to have a shiny apple logo.
I?m not sure I get where you are coming from. The basis of the iAd development was assuming Apple is making a platform that would allow ads to be made with relative ease and put in to sites as easily as Google?s ads are, not for each webmaster to build and design the ads for their site from scratch.
I could be completely wrong, but as I understand it iAds can only be developed and implemented through Apple, or through Apple's ad agency. There are no iAd development tools, just a way for application developers to integrate iAds into their apps.
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. ?Margaret Thatcher, 1976
We can't return to this kind of thinking.
And this has exactly what to do with HTML5?
Did you notice how it kept dropping the connection and resetting back to the beginning of the presentation? At first I was not able to figure out how to overcome that until I hit option/ refresh which then sent me to the current live broadcast again. That part still needs a bit of work, but overall I thought it was a pretty bold move to make the presentation live, and it worked quite well.
Yeah, that was a bit irritating. Was that something glitchy in the implementation or load dependent or what?
IQ, though, it was quite good, and if Apple can get the kinks worked out (or add servers or whatever) I think they have a real differentiator here. It'll also be nice if their desire to showcase the tech means more live feeds from Apple events, like the good old days. I'd much rather watch the thing itself than to take my chances with possibly snarky "live-blogging" (although Ars seems to hit a pretty good mix of accurate presentation with a little personality).
And this has exactly what to do with HTML5?
I think it's clear: HTML5 is Hitler.
What is the best strategy for users in the meantime? ISTM that HTML5 is rudimentary at this point, and additionally, has not yet become a standard.
I can't believe that it is best for consumers to just shut themselves off from using resources because someday, things will be different. I see that as being similar to avoiding driving until electric cars are ubiquitous. It makes no sense to me.
But I suppose that the grapes are too sour these days.
Most browsers have robust HTML5 and CSS3 support. Get a clue.
What is the best strategy for users in the meantime? ISTM that HTML5 is rudimentary at this point, and additionally, has not yet become a standard.
I can't believe that it is best for consumers to just shut themselves off from using resources because someday, things will be different. I see that as being similar to avoiding driving until electric cars are ubiquitous. It makes no sense to me.
But I suppose that the grapes are too sour these days.
HTML5 itself is actually just one building block of all the new interactive sites which we are seeing—sites which used to require something like Flash to behave (clumsily) in a comparable way. JavaScript's capabilities are advanced and established (and growing; getting faster) while we've got other tools like SVG, CSS, Canvas. HTML5 itself, while not a finalized standard (that's a long way out) is perfectly usable in many regards and in many applications. One particular element of Flash which cannot even dream of competing is in the field of accessibility and adaptability.
It is a rather large subject and there's a great deal of misunderstanding and misrepresentation (for example, creating bouncing balls in Canvas as a comparison to Flash—that's just stupid). In short, though, the combination of these technologies will replace more and more of what we know Flash to do today. Right now there are some major hurdles for advanced animation. One is backward compatibility. Another is cost/development time. There's no reason why JavaScript and these technologies cannot achieve something incredible, but without a proper development environment to piece it all together as readily as Flash (the application) can create Flash videos, that's mostly something to look forward to in the future or enjoy at the hands of large firms (e.g. Apple, Microsoft) or highly skilled developers.
In terms of what can and can't be used? It depends on the project and, especially, the demographic. Is a site designed for a whole mess of users who, somehow, are still using IE6? These new open technologies aren't going to cut it. Flash will be needed for a high level of interactive capabilities. Designing something for a technologically inclined audience? You can up the game quite a bit if you wish and leave Flash in the gutter. Some things, like slightly more complicated games, just aren't practical using these technologies yet.
Apple is after Flash's blood because Adobe has not been good to the OS X platform traditionally, and Flash sucks horribly on mobile devices to this day. Yes, that includes all Android devices. It only runs smoothly for basic operation (e.g. certain advertisements) and mobile-optimized media. From there you start to run into everything ranging from annoying/jerky scrolling to end-of-line errors and crashes. Flash has a long way to go. Companies like Apple cannot push it along the way, or help to develop it into what it needs to be. I can't blame them for wanting Flash to die, and as a developer myself, I want to see it die too. Well, I want to see it die for standard website functions such as video, navigation, presentation. Actual content should almost never require something like Flash to access.
Professionals? They should be thinking forward. If these new technologies are not yet appropriate for their website or project they should be designing with them in mind. Present video using HTML5 and fall back on Flash (easier said than done for very large established companies, but they'll come around as they need to). But for some time the demographic and budget are going to dictate some of these decisions.
Most browsers have robust HTML5 and CSS3 support. Get a clue.
1) Don't be a jerk. Why be so rude?
2) Most new browsers have good support for key parts of HTML5 and CSS 3. Webkit is the best with good offerings from Mozilla Firefox and Opera as well. IE8 is workable, but is is definitely holding many things back. Microsoft seems to be working hard to turn this around and IE9 looks like it may have some good potential. But what matters most? It isn't what most modern browsers support, but rather what the browsers being used by most users support. We've still got crap like IE7 and IE6 out there, and that holds the whole internet (and especially these technologies) back.
I could be completely wrong, but as I understand it iAds can only be developed and implemented through Apple, or through Apple's ad agency. There are no iAd development tools, just a way for application developers to integrate iAds into their apps.
No there is now an SDK for all iOS devs. If i'm not revealing too much, there is a stipulation that the SDK, which is almost all javascript, be used only for delivery of iAds to iDevices. Not that Apple hasn't changed their User Agreement before but that part would have to be modified to bring iAds to the web proper.
Flash drains the batteries of mobile devices. HTML5 is more battery-friendly.
What makes you believe that moving multi-sprite animations will be more battery-friendly in an engine that not only has to do the same work as Flash, but also to parse a lot of XML to do it?
Moving lots of image data around simply takes horsepower.
If HTML5 looks like less of a battery drain than Flash maybe it's only because most folks are doing relatively trivial things with it.
Well that's what I mean! If you use Safari 5.x.x and Snow Leopard 10.6.4 you can get a HTML5 video tag with what looks like a Quicktime file format... it's not what I would call a flagship HTML5 video implementation
Oh, it's a flagship allright: one tiny boat while the rest of the fleet is doing something else.
Oh, it's a flagship allright: one tiny boat while the rest of the fleet is doing something else.
Does "the rest of the fleet" not include IE and Chrome?
Apple tried, Adobe wouldn't play fair.
What specific actions did Adobe take that you feel were "unfair"?
Adobe is part of why the whole Carbon/Cocoa thing existed. They were in the top of the list for developers that didn't want to 'waste time' converting their software over to be Native Mac OSX compliant.
Are you aware that Apple's commonly used OS X app, the Finder, wasn't ported to Cocoa until this very latest OS version, Snow Leopard? How many years after OS X premiered did that take Apple?
And can you tell us when Apple's own Final Cut Pro will be converted to Cocoa?
Does "the rest of the fleet" not include IE and Chrome?
Chome has a tiny market share, and given Microsoft's history of ship dates which do you think will happen first: IE9 will ship, or HTML5 will be finalized?
See also:
http://www.deepbluesky.com/blog/-/br...-and-html5_72/
...where you'll find the current status of IE support for HTML5:
Oh, but Flash games, FWIW is not replaceable by HTML5 at this stage.
This one's kinda fun... But also shows the limits of web games development, in terms of resources and income.
http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Shadez.html
What do you guys think of Flash games?
Almost everything in Flash can be replicated with HTML 5 + Canvas + Javascript. Once you have a programmable graphics context that supports vectors you can build pretty much any type of graphics content. Here's a games site with HTML 5 games on it:
http://html5games.com/2010/04/asteroids/
That site has quite a number of games. Some Flash games will look nicer as the SDK is more mature and has effects like motion blur and particle animations but it's just a matter of time until those things are added to HTML 5 if they haven't been done already by 3rd parties. There are even HTML 5 game engines:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/aves-game-engine
HTML 5 and especially Canvas have been designed with the intention of fulfilling the role that Flash has taken up. An IDE would be nice but someone can even build an HTML 5 builder in HTML 5. That's sort of what the Sproutcore software does. That's something Flash can't do - author content for itself. Flash also can't do things like the following as easily:
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/browser-ball/
The reason being that the graphics context is inside an SWF instance so you can't address it nearly as easily as a DOM object like Canvas.
Also note, the above HTML 5 games use very little CPU assuming you have a recent browser. Much less CPU than a typical Flash game. Naturally hardware accelerated Flash will improve the situation but it doesn't change the long term situation. Flash has had its day and it needs to be replaced by a much more flexible open standard. Adobe has proven time and time again it can't be relied up as the sole provider of rich web media.
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. ?Margaret Thatcher, 1976
We can't return to this kind of thinking.
amazingly, you did it again
??? Was this intended for a different blog?
No no - he just missed the first line out. It should have read... "HTML5 is nothing like Capitlists who generally don't code." Then what he said....
As bad as Flash is, let's face it... HTML5 thus far has proven far less capable than Flash. Adobe should really commit to cleaning up their code and make Flash leaner and more stable. The HTML workarounds are not as sophisticated or interesting as a clever Flash implementation.
But OTOH, it begs the question: is there enough "clever" Flash implementation out there to justify sitting around and waiting while Adobe, who has owned this product for a long time, to finally get it right? Frankly, by volume there is an order of magnitude more Flash crap. For example, I don't miss 99% of what my flashblocker blocks from most sites. Now I may not be mainstream, or an "average consumer" but this speaks volumes to me about content delivery via Flash. I wonder if we get too enamoured of the tool and fail to see that the tool produces a prodigious amount of utter crap, which if sifted occasionally produces a gem or three. OT: I wish there was a good way to do that with all the blogs choking up the bandwidth - a relevancy checker or something that could be tailored to individaul use.
Anyway yes HTML5 is not yet, or may never be, the compleat content toolset that Flash has provided, but at this point, I will pretty much take anything that wrests control of content generation from the lakadaisical and conflicted control of Adobe management and a single, proprietary toolset.