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The most important part is when he shows a <canvas> demo running poorly and says something along the lines of "in my day to day work, I can't use this. It won'

The most important part is when he shows a <canvas> demo running poorly and says something along the lines of "in my day to day work, I can't use this. It won't work as a solution." The debate right now is one side saying you should use "HTML5" because it's more open than Flash while Flash is buggy, bloated, and proprietary. The other side is saying "I need Flash to give my clients what they want." Just like people started using CSS over table-based layouts when it was pragmatic, people will stop using Flash when Flash stops being the best tool for the job. There's nothing wrong with that.

bittersweet 16y ago
We are facing exactly the same thing with graphs, we're using a custom canvas based solution but we found out it just isn't up to the task anymore when we need them to display lots and lots of data. Browser lockups are a result because it is just that Javascript intensive. We are looking at Flash solutions right now to solve that problem.
not_an_alien 16y ago
Yes, they will. It's a big "when" though. I work with Flash and I don't think it's buggy or bloated - that's overblown. It's not perfect, but it's definitely much better than people paint it to be (specially people who don't work with it). In the same vein, HTML5/canvas is unreliable both in terms of performance, adoption, and consistency among different environments. People like to think of "standards", but when it requires as much hacks as any other 'standard' work nowadays do, and when it's not even available in half the browsers out there, I wonder how can anyone think it's the golden goose people like to claim it is.
- lukifer 16y ago
  > I work with Flash and I don't think it's buggy or bloated - that's overblown. Depends if you're using Windows or not. On Mac and Linux, the performance and reliability are pretty bad (compared to other modern software, anyway).
WilliamLP 16y ago
> Just like people started using CSS over table-based layouts when it was pragmatic, And vice versa. There's a nice table-based layout on the Google front page still!
- Timmy_C 16y ago
  I don't know about the old Google home page but the current one I see only has one <table> and it's wrapping what I would consider to be tabular data.
  - WilliamLP 16y ago
    I'm looking at google.ca (it redirects me there) and it has the blank space to the left of the search field as a <td>. Look here: http://www.google.com/advanced_search http://www.google.com/advanced_search Do you consider that mass of table usage to be for tabular data?
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
People (in general) started using CSS over table-based layouts way after it was pragmatically beneficial, because they didn't want to learn new stuff or were stuck in the old mindset (e.g. the design of Hacker News). And all those people not using CSS layouts for non-pragmatic reasons actually held up progress because it stifled the market for tools (and skills and frameworks etc.) that would work in the new manner. So good analogy, but I think it argues well for the opposite of what you intended.
- raimondious 16y ago
  I'd argue CSS took hold early: it was in an era where you needed a lot of hard-to-maintain hacks to get it to work in all browsers. Today as in the past, many people get CSS layouts just usable in IE 6, while they look as intended in standards-compliant browsers. If you want a site to look pixel-perfect in all browsers, it's still not pragmatic to use CSS rather than tables (or Flash). What's changed are the constraints: more people started using browsers that weren't IE 6, all the other browsers became more consistent with each other (or use the same rendering engine, Webkit), and clients have become more OK with websites looking different in different browsers as they've become more used to the way the web actually works. But this will eventually boil down to a difference in opinion, and I agree with your point that it would be better for everyone if more people were quick to adopt technologies that are better in the long-run.

bittersweet 16y ago

We are facing exactly the same thing with graphs, we're using a custom canvas based solution but we found out it just isn't up to the task anymore when we need them to display lots and lots of data. Browser lockups are a result because it is just that Javascript intensive. We are looking at Flash solutions right now to solve that problem.

not_an_alien 16y ago

Yes, they will. It's a big "when" though. I work with Flash and I don't think it's buggy or bloated - that's overblown. It's not perfect, but it's definitely much better than people paint it to be (specially people who don't work with it). In the same vein, HTML5/canvas is unreliable both in terms of performance, adoption, and consistency among different environments. People like to think of "standards", but when it requires as much hacks as any other 'standard' work nowadays do, and when it's not even available in half the browsers out there, I wonder how can anyone think it's the golden goose people like to claim it is.

lukifer 16y ago
> I work with Flash and I don't think it's buggy or bloated - that's overblown. Depends if you're using Windows or not. On Mac and Linux, the performance and reliability are pretty bad (compared to other modern software, anyway).

WilliamLP 16y ago

> Just like people started using CSS over table-based layouts when it was pragmatic, And vice versa. There's a nice table-based layout on the Google front page still!

Timmy_C 16y ago
I don't know about the old Google home page but the current one I see only has one <table> and it's wrapping what I would consider to be tabular data.
- WilliamLP 16y ago
  I'm looking at google.ca (it redirects me there) and it has the blank space to the left of the search field as a <td>. Look here: http://www.google.com/advanced_search http://www.google.com/advanced_search Do you consider that mass of table usage to be for tabular data?

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

People (in general) started using CSS over table-based layouts way after it was pragmatically beneficial, because they didn't want to learn new stuff or were stuck in the old mindset (e.g. the design of Hacker News). And all those people not using CSS layouts for non-pragmatic reasons actually held up progress because it stifled the market for tools (and skills and frameworks etc.) that would work in the new manner. So good analogy, but I think it argues well for the opposite of what you intended.

raimondious 16y ago
I'd argue CSS took hold early: it was in an era where you needed a lot of hard-to-maintain hacks to get it to work in all browsers. Today as in the past, many people get CSS layouts just usable in IE 6, while they look as intended in standards-compliant browsers. If you want a site to look pixel-perfect in all browsers, it's still not pragmatic to use CSS rather than tables (or Flash). What's changed are the constraints: more people started using browsers that weren't IE 6, all the other browsers became more consistent with each other (or use the same rendering engine, Webkit), and clients have become more OK with websites looking different in different browsers as they've become more used to the way the web actually works. But this will eventually boil down to a difference in opinion, and I agree with your point that it would be better for everyone if more people were quick to adopt technologies that are better in the long-run.