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I don't understand how we've gone from "Flash is crap for entire websites" (edit: which is almost always true) to "Flash is the devil in every situation". It ha

I don't understand how we've gone from "Flash is crap for entire websites" (edit: which is almost always true) to "Flash is the devil in every situation". It has its place, Javascript will never and shouldn't try and "kill" Flash, they're different.

wladimir 16y ago
Well, to me it's good news, the web will be a lot snappier when it's fully integrated. No more clunky plugins. No matter what Adobe says, the Flash plugin still manages to crash a lot here, increases memory usage, and loads the CPU like crazy. There are certainly a few corner cases left in which flash remains a better fit, but it's losing territory, fast. Good work Nissan.
- prawn 16y ago
  I'm no Flash apologist, but there was recently a HN thread about CSS-only drop shadows. Many people on fairly modern laptops reported significant slowdowns when it came to scrolling the page, animations, etc. And that was just with drop shadows. That Nissan example ran pretty clunkily on my laptop and another desktop I checked in the office. (That said, gradient transparencies always seem to doom Flash pieces to slow-hell for me.)
  - wladimir 16y ago
    True -- I didn't say flash is completely useless, just that it's losing territory. There is no structural reason why pure browser rendering should be slower, but indeed some tricks are still slow. Anyway, the quip with rendering performance is only a matter of time. With every browser release, CSS and HTML rendering performance is increased, for example, by leveraging GPU acceleration. Flash will be beaten soon, I'm sure. And at least that works for every platform, not just the ones on which Adobe decides it's important.
    - prawn 16y ago
      Platforms Adobe decides are important vs modern or whatever subset of non-MS browsers are capable of handling what you want to do... I've had a bad day dealing with HTML email newsletters so I'm probably a bit more pessimistic about it than usual, but all sides of working on the web are a serious pain in the arse!
- homecoded 16y ago
  Making things simpler on the net is probably a good thing. I'm worried though about what will happen when the same bad programmers who make mem-leaking and performance consuming flash ads now will jump on the JavaScript train. Flash is in a shell: no messing up the global namespace, no interfering with the rest of the website code. It has been said before: not Flash is the devil. It's people who program but who have no clue how it's done. They have destroyed the reputation of a not-too-bad platform.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
benmccann 16y ago
Flash is a threat to the openness of the web. I can't reliably watch video, play games, or do anything else requiring Flash on my computer because I run Linux. Requiring you run an OS of Adobe's choosing is antithetical to the basic tenets of the web.
- radley 16y ago
  No it's only antithetical to the tenets of Linux users. edit: Just saying, people who knowingly choose Linux don't expect to use Flash.
  - fleitz 16y ago
    Some linux users. I love Linux but very little of the reason has to do with free software and has everything to do with Linux being the best way for me to do a number of tasks. Note: I use Windows / OS X on the desktop.
  - billybob 16y ago
    I disagree. The web exists because browsers and servers communicate based on open standards. The HN server doesn't know or care what OS or browser I'm using. I could be sitting here typing in my GET requests manually if I was fast enough. Nobody cares. It's a protocol. When the web relies on a technology where the "protocol" is "first install this proprietary plugin, if it's available for your setup, and if not, screw you," it is antithetical to the protocol-based approach. Look at how much browsers have improved in the last few years, making new things possible on sites. This happened because anybody can write a browser that conforms to HTTP protocols, Javascript specifications, etc. Do you see the same kind of improvement in Flash players? No. Because there isn't competition. The web is better off without Flash. Or anything else that can't have 100 competing implementations.
- omellet 16y ago
  I run flash on ubuntu/chrome. Not that you have to, but the option is there.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
spoondan 16y ago
How exactly are Flash and JavaScript different? I don't see the separate niches you envision these technologies occupying for the rest of their existence. And how can you say JavaScript "will never" kill Flash? Aren't Apple and JavaScript already hurting Flash's market share? Doesn't every major browser release leave less and less that Flash alone can do? Aren't we looking at an example of a major, mainstream brand avoiding Flash for a site? What is going to change over the next few years to reverse these trends?
- HNer 16y ago
  So can html5 continually ping a variable (say a time point) while a video is playing, including other variables back to a third party server (if the video content was embeded via a jsonp wisget etc.) ??
  - frevd 16y ago
    That's the point - it can do whatever you can do, all technical prerequisites are available (threads, background-requests, runtime-dynamic code etc). Once the proper tools are available providing diverse standard functions, it will spread and be easier for non-developers.
  - schwabacher 16y ago
    I don't want to weigh in on the flash/javascript debate, but couldn't you repeatedly change the src on a hidden image with get variables in the url?
  - Hixie 16y ago
    Sure. <video ontimeupdate="sendXHR(currentTime)" src="myvideo" controls></video> ...where "sendXHR()" is a five- to ten-line wrapper around XMLHttpRequest.
    - coderdude 16y ago
      Indeed. So now browsers can finally start to do what Flash can do. This argument is only recently valid then.
radley 16y ago
No YC-er would post such an inflammatory title like this. Hacker News has grown significantly in the past few years so the professional tone has inevitably diminished.
- doorhammer 16y ago
  I tend to agree with this sentiment. When I read a title like this, I pretty much assume that I'm not going to get any decent semi-objective information from the post. It's flame-war fodder if you ask me.
Yaggo 16y ago
"Flash is the devil in every situation" Aside from technical issues, I think the above is valid philosophical argument per se due to closed nature of Flash. From the very beginning, the Web evolved as an open system; no special tools are required for content creation and every browser has equipped with a "view source" feature.
Locke1689 16y ago
Well, to a certain extent. There's also a viable position that Flash is simply the improper tool for every job by the nature of its construction. The fallacy is believing that 1) the tool which should replace Flash exists or 2) existing technologies should be improperly shoehorned to replace the areas where Flash should be replaced.
webuiarchitect 16y ago
Btw, SVG isn't exactly JavaScript; its a part - just like ActionScript in Flash.
frobozz 16y ago
Actionscript is an ECMAScript dialect.
nikster 16y ago
For the vast majority of things Flash is being used for, it's crap. Namely, video, and site navigation. For other things it could be used - but you could also use HTML5 like the site in the example to do anything you'd do in Flash, and not lock out iPad, iPhone, Android users. Plus, it's open.

wladimir 16y ago

Well, to me it's good news, the web will be a lot snappier when it's fully integrated. No more clunky plugins. No matter what Adobe says, the Flash plugin still manages to crash a lot here, increases memory usage, and loads the CPU like crazy. There are certainly a few corner cases left in which flash remains a better fit, but it's losing territory, fast. Good work Nissan.

prawn 16y ago
I'm no Flash apologist, but there was recently a HN thread about CSS-only drop shadows. Many people on fairly modern laptops reported significant slowdowns when it came to scrolling the page, animations, etc. And that was just with drop shadows. That Nissan example ran pretty clunkily on my laptop and another desktop I checked in the office. (That said, gradient transparencies always seem to doom Flash pieces to slow-hell for me.)
- wladimir 16y ago
  True -- I didn't say flash is completely useless, just that it's losing territory. There is no structural reason why pure browser rendering should be slower, but indeed some tricks are still slow. Anyway, the quip with rendering performance is only a matter of time. With every browser release, CSS and HTML rendering performance is increased, for example, by leveraging GPU acceleration. Flash will be beaten soon, I'm sure. And at least that works for every platform, not just the ones on which Adobe decides it's important.
  - prawn 16y ago
    Platforms Adobe decides are important vs modern or whatever subset of non-MS browsers are capable of handling what you want to do... I've had a bad day dealing with HTML email newsletters so I'm probably a bit more pessimistic about it than usual, but all sides of working on the web are a serious pain in the arse!
homecoded 16y ago
Making things simpler on the net is probably a good thing. I'm worried though about what will happen when the same bad programmers who make mem-leaking and performance consuming flash ads now will jump on the JavaScript train. Flash is in a shell: no messing up the global namespace, no interfering with the rest of the website code. It has been said before: not Flash is the devil. It's people who program but who have no clue how it's done. They have destroyed the reputation of a not-too-bad platform.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

benmccann 16y ago

Flash is a threat to the openness of the web. I can't reliably watch video, play games, or do anything else requiring Flash on my computer because I run Linux. Requiring you run an OS of Adobe's choosing is antithetical to the basic tenets of the web.

radley 16y ago
No it's only antithetical to the tenets of Linux users. edit: Just saying, people who knowingly choose Linux don't expect to use Flash.
- fleitz 16y ago
  Some linux users. I love Linux but very little of the reason has to do with free software and has everything to do with Linux being the best way for me to do a number of tasks. Note: I use Windows / OS X on the desktop.
- billybob 16y ago
  I disagree. The web exists because browsers and servers communicate based on open standards. The HN server doesn't know or care what OS or browser I'm using. I could be sitting here typing in my GET requests manually if I was fast enough. Nobody cares. It's a protocol. When the web relies on a technology where the "protocol" is "first install this proprietary plugin, if it's available for your setup, and if not, screw you," it is antithetical to the protocol-based approach. Look at how much browsers have improved in the last few years, making new things possible on sites. This happened because anybody can write a browser that conforms to HTTP protocols, Javascript specifications, etc. Do you see the same kind of improvement in Flash players? No. Because there isn't competition. The web is better off without Flash. Or anything else that can't have 100 competing implementations.
omellet 16y ago
I run flash on ubuntu/chrome. Not that you have to, but the option is there.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

spoondan 16y ago

How exactly are Flash and JavaScript different? I don't see the separate niches you envision these technologies occupying for the rest of their existence. And how can you say JavaScript "will never" kill Flash? Aren't Apple and JavaScript already hurting Flash's market share? Doesn't every major browser release leave less and less that Flash alone can do? Aren't we looking at an example of a major, mainstream brand avoiding Flash for a site? What is going to change over the next few years to reverse these trends?

HNer 16y ago
So can html5 continually ping a variable (say a time point) while a video is playing, including other variables back to a third party server (if the video content was embeded via a jsonp wisget etc.) ??
- frevd 16y ago
  That's the point - it can do whatever you can do, all technical prerequisites are available (threads, background-requests, runtime-dynamic code etc). Once the proper tools are available providing diverse standard functions, it will spread and be easier for non-developers.
- schwabacher 16y ago
  I don't want to weigh in on the flash/javascript debate, but couldn't you repeatedly change the src on a hidden image with get variables in the url?
- Hixie 16y ago
  Sure. <video ontimeupdate="sendXHR(currentTime)" src="myvideo" controls></video> ...where "sendXHR()" is a five- to ten-line wrapper around XMLHttpRequest.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    Indeed. So now browsers can finally start to do what Flash can do. This argument is only recently valid then.

radley 16y ago

No YC-er would post such an inflammatory title like this. Hacker News has grown significantly in the past few years so the professional tone has inevitably diminished.

doorhammer 16y ago
I tend to agree with this sentiment. When I read a title like this, I pretty much assume that I'm not going to get any decent semi-objective information from the post. It's flame-war fodder if you ask me.

Yaggo 16y ago

"Flash is the devil in every situation" Aside from technical issues, I think the above is valid philosophical argument per se due to closed nature of Flash. From the very beginning, the Web evolved as an open system; no special tools are required for content creation and every browser has equipped with a "view source" feature.

Locke1689 16y ago

Well, to a certain extent. There's also a viable position that Flash is simply the improper tool for every job by the nature of its construction. The fallacy is believing that 1) the tool which should replace Flash exists or 2) existing technologies should be improperly shoehorned to replace the areas where Flash should be replaced.

webuiarchitect 16y ago

Btw, SVG isn't exactly JavaScript; its a part - just like ActionScript in Flash.

frobozz 16y ago

Actionscript is an ECMAScript dialect.

nikster 16y ago

For the vast majority of things Flash is being used for, it's crap. Namely, video, and site navigation. For other things it could be used - but you could also use HTML5 like the site in the example to do anything you'd do in Flash, and not lock out iPad, iPhone, Android users. Plus, it's open.