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I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporti

by neild 16y ago

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hates Flash because he thinks it's crap. Gruber is not an open source advocate. He has no objection to open standards, free software, or open source software, but they aren't his passion. You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. Chrome dropping H.264 support isn't going to push adoption of the <video> element, because Flash continues to be a perfectly valid alternative method of providing video to Chrome. If Chrome dropped H.264 and Flash, that'd be a different story. Gruber's position is entirely consistent: He supports moves that reduce the usage of Flash, and doesn't support ones that increase it. Google's choice to drop H.264 in Chrome will, in the short term at least, result in the latter. Acknowledging this fact is neither myopic nor fanboyism.

commandar 16y ago
>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. So is this debate about what's best for the future of open standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? >short term >myopic S: (adj) short, shortsighted, unforesightful, myopic (lacking foresight or scope) "a short view of the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking" http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic Sounds like exactly what I meant. It's focusing on short term consequences at the expense of long-term benefit. As I said, dropping H.264 may result in the already entrenched Flash being used more in the near-term; in the long term it could help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption.
- GHFigs 16y ago
  help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption Who says it needs help?
- rimantas 16y ago
  > So is this debate about what's best for the future of open > standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of <video> How's that better for the open standards? The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users.
  - commandar 16y ago
    >Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of <video> How's that better for the open standards? 20% of the browser market was never going to adopt H.264. That's a fifth of the market cut out from using <video> entirely. How in the world is that possibly good for web standards? >The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users. That majority of the market has the entrenched Flash until HTML5 <video> gets sorted out as a standard everyone can use.
    - evgen 16y ago
      20% of the browser market was never going to adopt H.264. That's a fifth of the market cut out from using <video> entirely. 20% and dropping... Should we also stop the <video> train in its tracks because IE6 does not support it?
      - sid0 16y ago
        Dropping?
        evgen 16y ago
        All lists for browser share that I have seen show FF as having either plateaued or started to drop by small percentages. If you add mobile browsers into the mix then even the plateau becomes a small drop.
billmcneale 16y ago
Actually, Gruber hates Flash because Apple hates Flash. He had no problem with Flash until Apple decided to ban it from its ecosystem. Gruber's love for all things Apple is consistent and well documented. The bottom line is that while a subpar technology, Flash is really not that crappy. It delivers rich content without any glitches to millions of desktops every day and while its implementation on phones is still not great, there is no technical reason why it won't improve to the same level we see on the desktops. Here is why Flash is not going anywhere: the anger against it is not strong enough nor shared by enough users. Most web surfers are pretty happy about it, and as long as that doesn't change, Flash won't die.
- tesseract 16y ago
  I'm guessing your experience with Flash on the desktop is on Windows? I've never had significant problems with it there. On the other hand, my experience is that on a Mac (or worse, Linux), Flash is slow, crash-prone, a major CPU and RAM hog, tends to steal keyboard and/or mouse focus in weird ways when you least expect it, and just generally does not provide a very nice user experience. This has nothing to do with Apple "crippling" Flash or anything like that either; if anything, Adobe has been improving the Mac version of Flash since before Apple started publicly ragging on it. They've still got quite a ways to go though.
statictype 16y ago
Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hates Flash because he thinks it's crap Not entirely: Let me be clear, though: there is nothing wrong with playing a video in Flash. I mean that seriously, no sarcasm. What there’s something wrong with is requiring Flash Player to play video. That’s the whole point of the HTML5 <video> element: to enable web video without requiring the use of proprietary plugins. From http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic

by neild 16y ago

commandar 16y ago

>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML <video> element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between <video> or Flash: It's <video> or nothing. So is this debate about what's best for the future of open standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? >short term >myopic S: (adj) short, shortsighted, unforesightful, myopic (lacking foresight or scope) "a short view of the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking" http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=myopic Sounds like exactly what I meant. It's focusing on short term consequences at the expense of long-term benefit. As I said, dropping H.264 may result in the already entrenched Flash being used more in the near-term; in the long term it could help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption.

GHFigs 16y ago
help HTML5 <video> see better overall adoption Who says it needs help?
rimantas 16y ago
> So is this debate about what's best for the future of open > standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of <video> How's that better for the open standards? The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users.
- commandar 16y ago
  >Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of <video> How's that better for the open standards? 20% of the browser market was never going to adopt H.264. That's a fifth of the market cut out from using <video> entirely. How in the world is that possibly good for web standards? >The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users. That majority of the market has the entrenched Flash until HTML5 <video> gets sorted out as a standard everyone can use.
  - evgen 16y ago
    20% of the browser market was never going to adopt H.264. That's a fifth of the market cut out from using <video> entirely. 20% and dropping... Should we also stop the <video> train in its tracks because IE6 does not support it?
    - sid0 16y ago
      Dropping?
      - evgen 16y ago
        All lists for browser share that I have seen show FF as having either plateaued or started to drop by small percentages. If you add mobile browsers into the mix then even the plateau becomes a small drop.

billmcneale 16y ago

Actually, Gruber hates Flash because Apple hates Flash. He had no problem with Flash until Apple decided to ban it from its ecosystem. Gruber's love for all things Apple is consistent and well documented. The bottom line is that while a subpar technology, Flash is really not that crappy. It delivers rich content without any glitches to millions of desktops every day and while its implementation on phones is still not great, there is no technical reason why it won't improve to the same level we see on the desktops. Here is why Flash is not going anywhere: the anger against it is not strong enough nor shared by enough users. Most web surfers are pretty happy about it, and as long as that doesn't change, Flash won't die.

tesseract 16y ago
I'm guessing your experience with Flash on the desktop is on Windows? I've never had significant problems with it there. On the other hand, my experience is that on a Mac (or worse, Linux), Flash is slow, crash-prone, a major CPU and RAM hog, tends to steal keyboard and/or mouse focus in weird ways when you least expect it, and just generally does not provide a very nice user experience. This has nothing to do with Apple "crippling" Flash or anything like that either; if anything, Adobe has been improving the Mac version of Flash since before Apple started publicly ragging on it. They've still got quite a ways to go though.

statictype 16y ago

Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hates Flash because he thinks it's crap Not entirely: Let me be clear, though: there is nothing wrong with playing a video in Flash. I mean that seriously, no sarcasm. What there’s something wrong with is requiring Flash Player to play video. That’s the whole point of the HTML5 <video> element: to enable web video without requiring the use of proprietary plugins. From http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic