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There are some types of apps that are in demand and flash is well equipped to build. Users don't care about any of this stuff. They just want something that wor

There are some types of apps that are in demand and flash is well equipped to build. Users don't care about any of this stuff. They just want something that works and is useful or fun. It doesn't have to be an arch philosophical issue. When people like you rant about flash, it just demonstrates you've never built the sort of app that flash excels at. Sure, flash has its problems, but there are some tasks that javascript simply can't do, or can't do nearly as well as flash. Flash has done some things wrong, but it's also done a lot of things right and helped pushed the web forward. Get off your soapbox!

bad_user 15y ago
The issue here isn't that Flash is useless. Of course it is useful for some apps, especially the ones that are dealing with audio/video streams. The issue here is that Flash got used in all the wrong places. Lots and lots of websites use it for all the wrong reasons, and while you can blame the websites developers for that, the fact of the matter is that Flash scripts are everywhere and regular users don't even notice it. Because of that, on Android at least your browser experience gets a lot worse -- browser is noticeably slower and it bleeds your battery life like crazy. And users will just blame their phones. The worst thing about all this - besides the fact that Adobe couldn't pull their shit together to create a version truly optimized for mobiles - because Flash is not an open-standard like HTML5, the others cannot fix it for them. It's not like Google can come up with a new VM (like they did with Chrome), or like how Apple came up with a kick-ass rendering engine like WebKit, that eventually became the norm for mobiles - they can't do that. That's why standards are better and that's why Flash needs to go and be replaced by web standards. If Flash sucks, nobody but Adobe can improve it and judging by their history Adobe is really week in that department. And of course, as I said, at the same time Flash is useful for some apps - of course it is, ActiveX was useful too.
gaius 15y ago
I don't think that's true. Find an ordinary user who likes Flash intros on websites, or who likes attention-seeking Flash ads disturbing them while reading an article. The only thing that Flash is used for that real people (as opposed to marketing twerps) actually like is cheesy little games, and they can be done perfectly well without Flash these days.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Simply not true. Gmail calling is not possibly in HTML/js. There are a lot of cool websites that use Flash for more than games and video these days. Qwiki won TechCrunch Disrupt last year. Beatlab is a super cool music creation app. And Flash will likely always be the standard for DRM Video on the web. Being an open standard, HTML5 can never include DRM. I see Flash's place is as a stopgap for features that haven't been standardized/implemented yet. It does those very well.
  - daniel02216 15y ago
    Gmail calling uses Google's own plugin, not Flash. And they just open sourced it and intend for browser makers to integrate it into their browsers. Hopefully it will be possible to do video calling in HTML soon.
- evilduck 15y ago
  From a desktop perspective, video streaming is still a marginally more pleasant experience in Flash than in HTML5 equivalents (random position seeking, full screen controls, quality, etc). It may full well be an individual site's deficient/immature HTML5 implementations, I've never been curious enough to investigate in-depth, but I also have yet to experience a better experience in HTML5 that would create an incentive to seek out those implementations over a Flash version if Flash is presented as the default choice. Flash file uploaders also tend to be more mature and a little smoother to use in general. I'm sure HTML5 will surpass it soon enough, but at present, it's a use of Flash that I don't mind. Additionally, I somewhat dread the day when annoying and/or malicious advertising makes the switch. At present, blocking Flash is a stupid simple task, a standards based annoyance has the potential to be much harder to avoid.

bad_user 15y ago

The issue here isn't that Flash is useless. Of course it is useful for some apps, especially the ones that are dealing with audio/video streams. The issue here is that Flash got used in all the wrong places. Lots and lots of websites use it for all the wrong reasons, and while you can blame the websites developers for that, the fact of the matter is that Flash scripts are everywhere and regular users don't even notice it. Because of that, on Android at least your browser experience gets a lot worse -- browser is noticeably slower and it bleeds your battery life like crazy. And users will just blame their phones. The worst thing about all this - besides the fact that Adobe couldn't pull their shit together to create a version truly optimized for mobiles - because Flash is not an open-standard like HTML5, the others cannot fix it for them. It's not like Google can come up with a new VM (like they did with Chrome), or like how Apple came up with a kick-ass rendering engine like WebKit, that eventually became the norm for mobiles - they can't do that. That's why standards are better and that's why Flash needs to go and be replaced by web standards. If Flash sucks, nobody but Adobe can improve it and judging by their history Adobe is really week in that department. And of course, as I said, at the same time Flash is useful for some apps - of course it is, ActiveX was useful too.

gaius 15y ago

I don't think that's true. Find an ordinary user who likes Flash intros on websites, or who likes attention-seeking Flash ads disturbing them while reading an article. The only thing that Flash is used for that real people (as opposed to marketing twerps) actually like is cheesy little games, and they can be done perfectly well without Flash these days.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Simply not true. Gmail calling is not possibly in HTML/js. There are a lot of cool websites that use Flash for more than games and video these days. Qwiki won TechCrunch Disrupt last year. Beatlab is a super cool music creation app. And Flash will likely always be the standard for DRM Video on the web. Being an open standard, HTML5 can never include DRM. I see Flash's place is as a stopgap for features that haven't been standardized/implemented yet. It does those very well.
- daniel02216 15y ago
  Gmail calling uses Google's own plugin, not Flash. And they just open sourced it and intend for browser makers to integrate it into their browsers. Hopefully it will be possible to do video calling in HTML soon.
evilduck 15y ago
From a desktop perspective, video streaming is still a marginally more pleasant experience in Flash than in HTML5 equivalents (random position seeking, full screen controls, quality, etc). It may full well be an individual site's deficient/immature HTML5 implementations, I've never been curious enough to investigate in-depth, but I also have yet to experience a better experience in HTML5 that would create an incentive to seek out those implementations over a Flash version if Flash is presented as the default choice. Flash file uploaders also tend to be more mature and a little smoother to use in general. I'm sure HTML5 will surpass it soon enough, but at present, it's a use of Flash that I don't mind. Additionally, I somewhat dread the day when annoying and/or malicious advertising makes the switch. At present, blocking Flash is a stupid simple task, a standards based annoyance has the potential to be much harder to avoid.