HTML5 assault on Adobe Flash heats up with ClickToFlash

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 100
    I've been using clicktoflash for a month now and it's been brilliant.



    Not got anything against Flash, but my Macbook Air has never got on too well with it.



    Watching Flash video for any length of time meant the processors reaching 100 per cent, the fans whirring like mad and battery life taking a huge hit.



    It's worth installing just for Youtube in h.264!
  • Reply 22 of 100
    Dear Jobs sycophants,



    10 leading CEOs discuss the Open Screen Project and Flash



    Today, Flash took over the web development World. Flash is on 19 of the top 20 smartphones in existence. Guess who doesn't have it? Well, at least not in the browser. In case you haven't heard, Flash is now on the iPhone - whether you or Jobs like it or not.



    Flash is a superior technology in every way. It looks the same across browser and platform and uses a real OOP programming language.



    Of course there are some bad Flash sites. There are some slow Flash sites. But that's because Flash gives the developer Power - including the power to make crap. But it also gives developers power to make incredible multi-media experiences. You know - I know it.



    You guys sound a bit sad and pathetic. Join the revolution!! It's fun!
  • Reply 23 of 100
    aaarrrggghaaarrrgggh Posts: 1,609member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MissionGrey View Post


    As a graphic designer I love flash!



    But that is the problem! Why should graphic designers have full control of a browser?! What the hell is the purpose of a splash page? Yes, things can be beautiful from a design perspective, but when it reduces functionality it becomes quite annoying.
  • Reply 24 of 100
    bertpbertp Posts: 274member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sympleton View Post




    …Of course there are some bad Flash sites. There are some slow Flash sites. But that's because Flash gives the developer Power - including the power to make crap. But it also gives developers power to make incredible multi-media experiences. You know - I know it.



    You guys sound a bit sad and pathetic. Join the revolution!! It's fun!



    On the contrary, when a platform allows developers free rein, it means trouble for that platform. Remember cooperative multi-tasking and unprotected memory? That was a regression from already existing preemptive multi-tasking and protected memory technology.
  • Reply 25 of 100
    betobbetob Posts: 7member
    ClickToFlash is a dream come true.

    Honestly, who wants to be "FORCED" to watch stuff you did not choose to?

    The fact is that the abuse of flash technology has reached its peak.



    Thank you very much ClickToFlash.
  • Reply 26 of 100
    mrksbmrksb Posts: 2member
    the negative effect will be that users who block ads from news websites will be forced to pay for the content \

    Danish newspaper JP.dk have started blocking users from visiting their sites if they detect flash blockers.
  • Reply 27 of 100
    wildagwildag Posts: 21member
    These anti-flash articles on Apple Insider are becoming pathetic. Apple Insider should check their words, as THIS VERY SITE USES FLASH FOR ADS. I'm really considering emailing your advertisers to let them know that Apple Insider is advocating its users use a blocker for its own ads.



    Adobe quickly took Macromedia's Flash platform from a "spiffy graphics only" package and made it an extremely useful business tool. There are tens of thousands of developers making lots of money creating business intelligence, and analytics tools with the Flash/Flex platform.



    Your readers would do themselves a great favor in reading about modern uses of Flash, and how they can benefit from what the rest of the world has already discovered.



    SWF IS NOT A CLOSED SOURCE BINARY. The swf file format has been open and well documented for almost 6 years now.



    IF YOU DON'T WANT FLASH, UNINSTALL THE PLUGIN! Don't install another and scoff at the use of flash.



    ADOBE SUPPORTS OPEN SOURCE and open formats, with large monetary and production contributions. HTML 5 is a great standard that's sorely needed. The flash platform tackles a completely different set of work. Adobe doesn't sell Flash, or closed formats. They sell tools that make building Flash content (swf) easy. They also sell libraries of code that can be used in Flash. Its the same as a Microsoft Front Page and iWeb for HTML.



    THE FLASH PLATFORM AND HTML 5 ARE NOT COMPETING. They have totally separate uses. Have you ever seen a graph rendered in HTML? No, because that's not what HTML is for. That's what Flex (flash) is for. Have you ever seen an augmented reality application in HTML? Again, no, because HTML can't do that.



    Apple Insider is a great site for Apple news, and a terrible way to misinform yourself about the Flash platform. This kind of sensationalistic, misinforming and generally negatively charged journalism should be a crime.
  • Reply 28 of 100
    snafusnafu Posts: 37member
    Let's suppose HTML5 takes over and Flash dies. Just what is going to stop the Very Bad Flash Crowd to move over to HTML5 and produce resource-hogging HTML5 ads and things? And how will you be able to filter them if they become an integral part of the webpage's code, undistinguishable from the truly useful content?



    Also, going H.264 video would mean no open-source access to HTML5 video and expensive royalties.
  • Reply 29 of 100
    Recently, I've been looking into this as well.



    I thought it was the age of my mac, but tested FLVs on a few Very old PCs, and they ran them fine.





    I think the deal is that back in the day, certain Mac video cards couldn't do a given type or amount of acceleration. That was the era when a lot of mac Flash plugin code was frozen.



    There was even a report on one of the threads that a guy Side-by-Sided the same FLV-based web video on his PC and Mac. The Mac was somewhere up at ~75% CPU and the PC was down near 7%.





    I haven't figured out how to decompile the plugin in that nest of package contents folder to look at the actual code, But:



    ****It gets me wondering if some ninja Mac Developer can't just figure out a way to do a small Recode of the Flash Plugin, loop test for certain funcs, and bring the GPU into the game. 7% CPU sounds awesome to me.





    Here's one of the threads (it's for Leopard, but whatever): http://discussions.apple.com/thread....rt=15&tstart=0





    I find it also telling that under the plugin prefs and caches, it still calls parts of it, "Macromedia"
  • Reply 30 of 100
    Thank you very much.



    I love Flash, but it's architectural limitations make it a poor choice going forward. I see enough client web sites coded in flash that are essentially hidden from the analytics world because of the way they were put together...for component pieces I think Flash is great just as Java is great for those embedded functional components.



    But for whole web interfaces that provide critical web site functionality, I say dump it and go with anything else that can render in mobile devices.



    And for anyone who thinks flash is just peachy on the resource front, I worked on a team where the web developers had created flash banners for the project web site...the flash banners were fairly simple affairs, but to run smoothly they set the framerate to 125 fps for the animated elements. Out in the wild, people on some older computers who loaded the web site, encountered problems as those banners would consume upwards of 99% of cpu time if even the tiniest slice of the banner were visible in the browser window. So essentially Flash would lock up their browsers enough to cause some of the them to required doing a hard reset on their computers to regain control and use of the machine. The word spread and some people avoided the site like the plague thinking it was a virus or voodoo.



    I would think that Flash on a low power device like the iPhone pre-GS would lock up much the same way depending on how well the flash content was put together.



    No thank you!
  • Reply 31 of 100
    ClickToFlash is great. Especially the YouTube feature. It's amazing. When playing the Toy Story 3 video with Flash, Safari uses 30% CPU and Flash uses 95% CPU (yes, this works, it's dual core!). When playing the same video (in better quality!) using H.264, Safari uses only 17% CPU and there's no Flash process running. So it saves around 108% CPU time! What the hell Adobe!?!?



    The only thing that bugs me is that there seems no way to play the H.264 video in full screen. The QuickTime player has no button for full screen mode.
  • Reply 32 of 100
    I've been reading this site for a few years now and I'd say the articles are generally well researched and written in a balanced fashion however, it seems that this journalistic integrity disappears whenever Flash is discussed. Furthermore, I just don't get why there is SO much anti-Flash sentiment in the comments. For example this article states:



    "Flash 'applications' replace open and standard web content created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Adobe's proprietary .swf, a closed binary file that wraps up web content files (such as graphics and movies) with the company's own variant of ECMAScript (JavaScript), called ActionScript."



    ...when in fact, Adobe published the SWF specification as part of the Open Screen Project (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/pdf/...t_spec_v10.pdf) - that's a pretty significant inaccuracy that I hope will be corrected by the author.



    Regarding my second point, I think people are failing to recognise that Flash is just a tool. Whilst I accept that the Flash Player (and Adobe products in general) has become slightly bloated, this is just a function of it's enormous popularity as a easy-to-use multi-purpose tool. Most of the crashes that people experience with Flash content can probably be attributed to poorly written code on the part of the designer / developer - something that the strictly-typed nature of ActionScript 3.0 seeks to address.



    In my opinion, Flash plays a vital role alongside standards such as HTML and CSS in that it's low barrier to entry (from a development perspective) enables a great deal of amazing creativity (as well as a lot of crap). It is this experimentation that drives standards to incorporate new features as they reach critical mass (Flash video is a perfect example).



    As a researcher with no formal CS training, I use Flash to develop applications that allow people to interactively design their own textile products (using Nintendo Wiimotes, RFID, Augmented Reality, microphone / webcam input, etc) and have the compositions re-generated at high-resolution in Illustrator / Photoshop ready to be digitally printed onto fabric. Not something that would be easily done in HTML5.



    Finally... I hate annoying banner ads as much as the next guy but does anyone actually believe that if Flash content disappeared from the web tomorrow, it would be long before advertisers used CSS animations to grab our attention?



    Apologies for turning my first post into such a rant but in essence, I strongly believe that Flash is an important part of maintaining a healthy and balanced ecosystem.





    Cheers,







    Andy McDonald

    Centre for Advanced Textiles

    Glasgow School of Art
  • Reply 33 of 100
    ljocampoljocampo Posts: 657member
    I found out about ClickToFlash by reading post threads here a month or so ago (Thank you). I downloaded it and hopefully will never have to live without it again. It was free but I'd pay $100 to keep it if I had too.



    In grad school I loved the easy of animating with Flash, and I still do because it allows non-programmers the opportunity to prototype their ideas, but on the web it has become a nuisance of ad marketeers and covert cookie statisticians. I've always hated the proprietary nature of Flash and I'm glad to see open standards like HTML5 compete with Flash's domination.
  • Reply 34 of 100
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aaarrrgggh View Post


    But that is the problem! Why should graphic designers have full control of a browser?! What the hell is the purpose of a splash page? Yes, things can be beautiful from a design perspective, but when it reduces functionality it becomes quite annoying.



    Because that's our job. Asking why a designer is allowed to design something is like asking why an architect is allowed to architect something.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jon T View Post


    As a consumer of graphic design, I loathe Flash. It is invariably over-engineered, fussy and altogether slow and useless in the real world... [ClickToFlash] makes life a pleasure to be protected from inanities produced by out of college web designers.



    Some of you people are acting as though Flash is the root of all the bad design on the web. As if there's no HTML site without a splash page or superfluous graphics. As if no HTML content has ever been divided into 5 pages when it should have been all on one page, or been megabytes in size when it should have been split into multiple pages. Or what about custom CSS-based scrollbars? How about sites where enormous 3MB images have been embedded all over the place?



    I'm an interaction designer. I reluctantly took the time to learn ActionScript 3, and now develop in both it, Flex, and HTML / CSS / JS. I will tell you firsthand: Flash is a resource hog, it's overused, and it's not perfect by any means. Like many other people here, I'm on a MacBook Pro, and if there's more than one Flash file embedded on a page - even simple animations - my fans start spinning. For these reasons, tools like ClickToFlash are terrific.



    But if there's something I've learned, it's that nothing should be considered a one-size-fits-all solution. That goes for Flash AND for HTML (and Silverlight if it even registers on your radar). I love HTML because it's lean, it's quick, and as of late it can do a lot of cool stuff that people would have expected from a Flash-based project. But using it to create a game (e.g. FarmVille, Quake Live) would be no small task, if not impossible. And for the people talking about H.264 support, Flash has supported that in some capacity since Flash Player 9. Perhaps most important of all, even though there are a ton of terrific things HTML5 can do, it's not backwards compatible - whereas Flash plugins work even on crummy browsers like IE6.
  • Reply 35 of 100
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Snafu View Post


    Also, going H.264 video would mean no open-source access to HTML5 video and expensive royalties.



    So you're saying x264, libavcodec and others are illegal?
  • Reply 36 of 100
    lorrelorre Posts: 396member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sympleton View Post


    Dear Jobs sycophants,



    10 leading CEOs discuss the Open Screen Project and Flash



    Today, Flash took over the web development World. Flash is on 19 of the top 20 smartphones in existence. Guess who doesn't have it? Well, at least not in the browser. In case you haven't heard, Flash is now on the iPhone - whether you or Jobs like it or not.



    Flash is a superior technology in every way. It looks the same across browser and platform and uses a real OOP programming language.



    Of course there are some bad Flash sites. There are some slow Flash sites. But that's because Flash gives the developer Power - including the power to make crap. But it also gives developers power to make incredible multi-media experiences. You know - I know it.



    You guys sound a bit sad and pathetic. Join the revolution!! It's fun!



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wildag View Post


    Adobe quickly took Macromedia's Flash platform from a "spiffy graphics only" package and made it an extremely useful business tool. There are tens of thousands of developers making lots of money creating business intelligence, and analytics tools with the Flash/Flex platform.



    Your readers would do themselves a great favor in reading about modern uses of Flash, and how they can benefit from what the rest of the world has already discovered.



    SWF IS NOT A CLOSED SOURCE BINARY. The swf file format has been open and well documented for almost 6 years now.



    ADOBE SUPPORTS OPEN SOURCE and open formats, with large monetary and production contributions. HTML 5 is a great standard that's sorely needed. The flash platform tackles a completely different set of work. Adobe doesn't sell Flash, or closed formats. They sell tools that make building Flash content (swf) easy. They also sell libraries of code that can be used in Flash. Its the same as a Microsoft Front Page and iWeb for HTML.



    THE FLASH PLATFORM AND HTML 5 ARE NOT COMPETING. They have totally separate uses. Have you ever seen a graph rendered in HTML? No, because that's not what HTML is for. That's what Flex (flash) is for. Have you ever seen an augmented reality application in HTML? Again, no, because HTML can't do that.



    1) Exactly why is Flash superior from a technological point of view? The plugin runs abysmal on anything but Windows machines. On all other platforms, it uses 3-4times as many CPU cycles as necessary... Add that over the millions of devices, and that's a lot of wasted energy and carbon emissions...



    2) Yes AS3 is Object-Oriented, but so is JavaScript, albeit a bit more limited. However, the implementation is rather vague and it's rarely obvious to the coder what's going on behind the scenes. Without going into too much technical details, you'll end up with memory leaks and infinite loops without even realising it. If you really want to write web-apps in a full powered OO-language, use GWT.



    3) Yup, HTML5 can't draw graphs or provide for augmented reality apps. That's what the open standard JavaScript and the numerous open-source frameworks are for. (As SproutCore, Objective-J, etc)



    4) My main gripe is that the web is supposed to be an open place, free for all, with no limitations. The more and more people want to use Flash, the more and more Adobe takes control of the internet. Do you really want an internet where one company is in control of everything? Imagine all RIA's, all graphics, all videos etc on every single site being made in Flash. Adobe then can do whatever they want. I'm aware that the Flex libraries and swf's are rather open, but the Flash plugins themselves are not, so Adobe could incorporate anything they want in those plugins and we'd have to swallow it. All web pages would simply be Adobe's puppets on strings.I don't see how this can possibly benefit end-users or developers.



    I much prefer a web where the design tools are regulated and determined by a large group of companies and associations, and I hope you agree.
  • Reply 37 of 100
    I'm all for this ClickToFlash. Can't wait to see the day when Flash disappears for good. Such a damn processor hog. Intel should be pro-Adobe. Adobe will help Intel sell higher-end processors. Flash animation might be nice to look at, but I'll pass if it's gonna slow everything down. Fine for designers, but a nightmare for people with underpowered computers. As long as I can block it, then all well and good. Let the Flash people code to their heart's content as long as I don't have to see it. I'm sorry if it's the Mac OS that's screwing up the Flash plug-in coding routines or something. Then maybe Apple should do something about it if Flash works so well on Windows. Meanwhile I'll just block it for now. I don't need full screen videos so it should be fine for me.
  • Reply 38 of 100
    I had an older version of ClickToFlash that I update after reading the article so I could bypass Flash for YouTube videos. I'm tired of my Santa Rose MB's fans soundng like a jet engine when I watch YouTube videos. Unfortunately it made no difference loading H264 instead.
  • Reply 39 of 100
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Andy_McDonald View Post


    Furthermore, I just don't get why there is SO much anti-Flash sentiment in the comments.



    Simple: Flash is a resource pig. It consumes CPU and battery life at a high rate, and the tasks it performs is not worth the resource tradeoff. Dynamic manipulation of web pages can be achieved through HTML and CSS with a mere fraction of the performance hit that Flash imposes. Streaming internet video can be handled with H264, WMV, and a few other video codecs, oftentimes hardware accelerated, with higher quality and lower system impact.



    Then there are secondary reasons, such as Flash being the primary vehicle of intrusive web ads. It's gotten so ridiculous that the Internet is barely usable without a good ad filter. Just attempt to read an article at IGN.com and you'll be bombarded on all sides by ads--top, left, right, inline text, even superimposed over the text. It's gotten completely ridiculous. Users want quick access to content. Flash is an obstacle to that quick access: it increases load time with no tangible improvement or enhancement to the content itself.



    Lastly, just as a personal annoyance of mine, I dislike pages that are presented entirely in Flash. If I want to save an image or bookmark a specific section of the page, Flash prevents me from doing either. I can't save specific portions, and if I create a bookmark, I have to navigate the Flash interface back to the section I want to see.



    Flash is a graphic designer's wet dream and an end user's absolute nightmare.
  • Reply 40 of 100
    vinney57vinney57 Posts: 1,162member
    Flash can be a useful tool; I've used it on many standalone projects. However the 1st problem is with it running in the browser on non-windows machines and the 2nd problem is Adobe management. Its performance on Mac OSX is APPALLING - its the single greatest source of misery when browsing. Adobe seem to be either incapable or unwilling to do anything about that. Since it has become the defacto standard for pervasive advertising and a vehicle for 'luxury' web design companies to charge their clients monstrous fees, it must be stopped/destroyed/eradicated. ClickToFlash is like cool stream water to a man dying of thirst. Its outstanding and I love it.



    Yes of course you can create crappy adverts in HTML5 -but that's not the point - there is a chance they might actually run without bringing your machine to its knees.
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