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This is a deceptive demonstration. The video is H.264, which can be hardware accelerated on many chipsets. This means Flash may be doing very little work, and

by ynniv 17y ago

This is a deceptive demonstration. The video is H.264, which can be hardware accelerated on many chipsets. This means Flash may be doing very little work, and undermines their goal of showing that Flash is an efficient runtime. A more revealing test would be a traditional FLV, since the argument for Flash is that it supports "innovation" and wrapping open, hardware accelerated formats is rather later in the game. The performance test I want to see is the most common one: a text page with a Flash banner ad, versus a text page. Adobe would never show it because this (most common) scenario is the worst case. What would be a 1% CPU situation becomes something between 5% and 100%, based entirely on the (in)competence of the (poorly compensated) designer who slapped it together for the ad agency.

wayneb 17y ago
Interestingly enough, Apple doesn't even allow developers to use the Mac OS's hardware acceleration for video. I assume that is also the case with the iPhone OS which is based on OS X. Is it not? To me, this highlights one of the drawbacks to developing for Apple's platform. Also, Apple could support the most common Flash scenario (flash video) very easily by using "click to activate" in Webkit. So then if you have a webpage with 20 flash banners on it, they are not all running simultaneously. I agree that you could still make a Flash game or animation that could use a lot of CPU, but Apple also has the ability to throttle the amount of resources that a single process can take up. In my opinion, Apple just doesn't want to lose control, as usual.
tomlin 17y ago
I see your point, however, I don't see a compared alternative. If you had compared it to a canvas-driven animated banner or a HTML5+JS driven video player perhaps? Still 1%? Doubtful.
- ynniv 17y ago
  I doubt that anyone would seriously employ a canvas based video player with the advent of the HTML5 video tag. However, your implication that JS can also chew up CPU is valid. I have no defense except to say that the browser vendors have fine grained control over JS, while Flash is an opaque box. For instance, the browser could restrict setTimeout to a lower framerate, which has a different (better) effect than simply limiting the CPU.
  - tomlin 17y ago
    It's incredibly trendy to beat up on Flash. How come whenever the conversation of Flash vs. JS+HTML5 comes up and we've all circulated our points of view, a sudden "dream world" emerges to save the argument? I tire of defending the present-day reality vs. the someday utopia that Flash-bashers seem to hold so dear. HTML5+JS is great, I love it. But no one who pays for content cares. We wouldn't even be discussing this if the opposite were true.

by ynniv 17y ago

wayneb 17y ago

Interestingly enough, Apple doesn't even allow developers to use the Mac OS's hardware acceleration for video. I assume that is also the case with the iPhone OS which is based on OS X. Is it not? To me, this highlights one of the drawbacks to developing for Apple's platform. Also, Apple could support the most common Flash scenario (flash video) very easily by using "click to activate" in Webkit. So then if you have a webpage with 20 flash banners on it, they are not all running simultaneously. I agree that you could still make a Flash game or animation that could use a lot of CPU, but Apple also has the ability to throttle the amount of resources that a single process can take up. In my opinion, Apple just doesn't want to lose control, as usual.

tomlin 17y ago

I see your point, however, I don't see a compared alternative. If you had compared it to a canvas-driven animated banner or a HTML5+JS driven video player perhaps? Still 1%? Doubtful.

ynniv 17y ago
I doubt that anyone would seriously employ a canvas based video player with the advent of the HTML5 video tag. However, your implication that JS can also chew up CPU is valid. I have no defense except to say that the browser vendors have fine grained control over JS, while Flash is an opaque box. For instance, the browser could restrict setTimeout to a lower framerate, which has a different (better) effect than simply limiting the CPU.
- tomlin 17y ago
  It's incredibly trendy to beat up on Flash. How come whenever the conversation of Flash vs. JS+HTML5 comes up and we've all circulated our points of view, a sudden "dream world" emerges to save the argument? I tire of defending the present-day reality vs. the someday utopia that Flash-bashers seem to hold so dear. HTML5+JS is great, I love it. But no one who pays for content cares. We wouldn't even be discussing this if the opposite were true.