HTML5 and Flash
There has been recently this huge contention in the world of web technologies as to whether Flash’s supremacy is at stake with the arrival of HTML5. I think Flash has no choice but to frown at it’s sooner or later rival and more welcomed successor HTML5, because certainly HTML5 would sideline Flash. If not for anything, it will at least for the “royalty” issue. We all are advocates of “the Open Web” and the Open Standards (Open Source Initiatives) that support it, at least for a fair play on the web.
The fact is that, having the web flooded with proprietary standards, it is possible to get locked into one vendor’s or patent owner’s noose, necessitating royalties and thereby making services on the web sell much more expensive and owned, which jeopardizes the effort towards the free web/internet. Imagine what it would be like if some company owned the HTTP protocol and requires that royalties be paid for each and every use of the protocol.
I think the situation for Flash is like, Flash has contributed its quota for the development and sustenance of the web at a time all other (open) rivaling technologies failed to deliver up to what is required or obtainable with Flash. Now that should mean time has come for Flash to start thinking of something else to hold unto than being the bedrock for web multimedia. Because the presence of all these arguments indicates it wouldn’t be long when a promising open technology such as HTML5 replaces Flash. Even though the present situation might not be this harsh for Flash, from all indications however, this cannot be that far.
Flash is rich for what its best known for, and also, very much well integrated into almost all web developers tools, and the love for it, its familiarity among the developers community is not negligible. Nevertheless, all these does not mean that Flash is indispensable. Take for example, if Apple is able to decide off on Flash without being severely hurt, then its very much possible to come across an open technology such as HTML5 that displaces Flash as well. It’s a matter of time and enrichment. HTML5 is just a “still in the process” technology and is able to raise this amount of fear for Flash, means its not just hype.
Although Apple’s Flash feud with Adobe might be highly strategically focused on business and other rivalry contentions, which I may not want to dabble into, I think Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” – (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/) to an extent, are quite reasonable. It is true that Flash has security issues of which even Adobe is fully aware, it is also true that Flash is an aging technology that fails to address a large set of consumer base which these companies, these professionals – the developers etc desperately wants to reach – the mobile users. Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. Since many Flash websites largely rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Most of the revolutionary multi-touch interface of mobile devices does not use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Which means most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices in order to reach that vast pool of consumer base. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern and open technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
HTML5 remains a threat to Flash because that’s what it’s designed for. HTML5 is purposefully, like many other Open Source projects such SMIL, AVG, UIRA and Ajax Animator etc, designed to get the proprietary flash out of the way of “Open Web”. HTML5’s many capabilities such as the support for multimedia content (
possible with elements such as the audio, canvas, video etc) and drag-and-drop style operations, and many, many more, indicates high chances that it would be the appropriate and long awaited open standards successor to Flash. The underlying principle is simple: Web sites are designed to reach out to and provide readily accessible services to current and prospective customers. These customers decide the rules of the market. No company loosing customers will sit back and hold tight to any technology holding it to ransom. If this pool of consumers on the mobile and touch-based platforms, with many on others such the Apple’s that denies support for flash, are either able to be satisfied by other technologies such as HTML5, by other developers and/or other businesses etc, which means certainly some businesses, developers and/or technologies such as Flash might already be loosing out, or instead, that these companies, these businesses and/or these developers would have to redesign and/or rewrite their websites to provides services using technologies that is able to reach to their mobile and touch-based customers, then certainly the demise of Flash as the carrier technology for web multimedia has just arrived.
HTML5 is just a draft. By the time the video codec stuff is finally agreed and other necessary fixes are put in place, no one needs to argue whether HTML5 means anything to Flash.
Below are some set of interesting information about this topic:
HTML5 is the next major revision of the HTML standard, currently under development. Like its immediate predecessors, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. The new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. (Wiki)
Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an Object-oriented language called ActionScript.
Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite). (Wiki)
Until the advent of HTML5, displaying video on a web page required browser plugins, which are uniquely implemented by third party vendors. Virtually all browser plugins for video are free and cross-platform, including Adobe's offering of Flash Video, which was first introduced with Flash version 6. Flash Video has been a popular choice for websites due to the large installed user base and programmability of Flash. In 2010, Apple publicly criticized Adobe Flash, including its implementation of video playback for not taking advantage of hardware acceleration, one reason Flash is not to be found on Apple's mobile devices. Soon after Apple's criticism, Adobe demoed and released a beta version of Flash 10.1, which takes advantage of hardware acceleration even on a Mac. (Wiki)
HTML 5 is gaining ground as a competitor to Flash: the canvas element enables animation, and scripting can be synchronized with audio and video element timeupdate events. In one example of this, Scribd, a 50 million user a month document sharing website, announced in May 2010 that after three years of investment in Flash, it is changing from that platform to the HTML5 standard. (Wiki)
WebM is a multimedia container format designed to provide a royalty-free, high-quality open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google. A WebM file consists of VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams, in a container based on a profile of Matroska. (Wiki)YouTube now offers WebM videos as part of its HTML5 player experiment.[40] All uploaded files with resolutions from 720p and above are encoded to WebM in 480p and 720p, and other resolutions will follow.[41][42] YouTube has committed to encode their entire portfolio of videos to WebM. (Wiki)
As of April 2010, in the wake of Apple iPad launch, a number of high-profile sites have started to serve H.264 HTML5 video instead of Flash for user-agents identifying as iPad.[49]As of May 2010, HTML5 video is not currently as widespread as Flash videos, though recent rollouts of experimental HTML5-based video players from DailyMotion[50] (using Ogg Theora and Vorbis format), YouTube[51] (using the H.264 and WebM formats) and Vimeo[52] (using the H.264 format) suggest that interest in adopting HTML5 video is increasing.
According to a YouTube blog post, the <video> tag does not currently meet all the needs of a website like YouTube[53]. The main reasons stated include the lack of a standard format, the absence of an effective and reliable means of delivering the video to the browser, JavaScript unable to display video fullscreen, and content protection issues. Hulu also has not adopted HTML5 video due to the inability of providing the user with adaptive bandwidth videos, securing the producer's content, and providing advertisers with data. (All thanks to Wiki :)
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