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It's far from dead, it's just fighting battles it has a chance to actually win. Practically every company out there has finite resources and as such can only fi

It's far from dead, it's just fighting battles it has a chance to actually win. Practically every company out there has finite resources and as such can only fight so many battles if it has a will to win the war. It's not Adobe's fault that Flash has been overused and as such they've made strides to compensate. The AIR platform was a huge step in dissuading webmasters from Flash based websites instead it's incubating the desktop app culture. The work that has gone into the platform has been a huge win for them from a PR perspective. Again with their recent concession in regards to video with HTML5 (webm). We're likely to see Flash reborn in order to take advantage of things that it can do well, rather than being the stop gap it accidentally found itself as. I suspect they'll still be a major player in the web video market, but rather than fight against the tide, they'll embrace it. They'll work to be a lower cost alternative for webmasters by exploiting P2P technologies that vanilla HTML5 doesn't have. It'll be an interesting few years.

melling 15y ago
No, it's dead. It's about to enter a death spiral. If you want to write anything for the web that appears on any mobile device then you can't use the Flash browser plugin. We're going to have a billion mobile internet devices within 5 years, if not double that. Now, since this greatly diminishes the market, Adobe will invest less in it and more in their HTML5 tools because they want that market too. They're going to follow the money and where is the money going?
- sabret00the 15y ago
  The money right now is in apps. It's why ideas like Mozilla's B2G will struggle. It's why Adobe has thrown so many resources at AIR. To reiterate; If you ask a user if they prefer an app on their smartphone or a website, you'll be told an app. Flash really isn't a player in that regard. In truth it should've never been and hasn't wanted to be for a while. HTML sites will be and rightfully so, the standard for a long time. But we're living in the age of the app now. It's far more social and measurable than a website can hope to be. It's kinda like "there's web presence and there's PRESENCE" the app provides that in a way where by a website remains simply functional.
  - tensafefrogs 15y ago
    I'm curious what you think about the issue of mobile apps and scalability (in terms of having a distinct app for everything you do on your phone). The argument is that users won't want to install a separate app for all the various things they do on their phones (especially not the things that they don't do often) and would perhaps favor a mobile website instead.
    - sabret00the 15y ago
      You have some users who hate the idea of installing loads of things and those are generally users who have the phone for having the phone sake. They're users that have been forced to migrate to smartphones from featurephones. You also have the social users who like being able to talk about their apps with their friends and share via the different services available. For those users, which often overlap the more 'ignorant' users, what they simply want is a reachable recognisable service they can use anywhere. The argument that users don't/won't install lots of apps on their phones is simply wishful thinking. The reality is exactly the opposite of that. Users that have traditionally struggled with various features of the internet in browsers are able to do what they've always wanted in apps with far more ease. Even despite the a lot of the Mozilla community being dead-set against using a native UI, they've pushed on and will eat more market share as a result due to the instantly recognisable interact they'll get as they launch the app rather than waiting for the interface to load on XUL/HTML/JS/XML that just aren't as quick. You also have to take into account that with a website, you have no one to run to. Users generally feel ignored, where as with the social aspect of any app market users feel like they're patt of a community. Anything that currently states users prefer websites over apps is incredibly ignorant of the facts. A prime example is with Twitter. Tweetdeck on desktop and mobile shows far more usage than that of the website. As does Ubersocial and in fact their own apps. There's a firm desire on the parts of many to see people use the web over apps but those are merely desires of a small percentage.
  - secretbatcave 15y ago
    Where are the HTML5 web adverts? They don't exsist because: 1)you have to code things 4 times (once for all the browsers + fallback) 2) There are no artist friendly tools (google's flash translator only works for chrome, see above) 3) Everything looks different in each browser 4) JS animation is Sllllloooooowww 5) Animation primitives are missing, those that exsist are from the 1960s 6) there are no mature standard/implementations (in widescale use) with flash's workflow you: 1) create a flash file with the mature tools, test, release 2) create an animated gif as fallback yes its buggy, and the video is slower than decent native support, but it works the same across all browsers (90%)
tensafefrogs 15y ago
I agree that Flash will remain a major player in online video for a few more years (I also worked at YouTube on the video player team for 4 years). But for everything else it has fallen very much out of favor, hence the strong post title. Even non-Flash online video has made huge strides in the past year, so I expect that to eventually erode away Flash's grip on that as well. The only real question there is how long it will take to sort out all of the codec issues that are holding it back at the moment.

melling 15y ago

No, it's dead. It's about to enter a death spiral. If you want to write anything for the web that appears on any mobile device then you can't use the Flash browser plugin. We're going to have a billion mobile internet devices within 5 years, if not double that. Now, since this greatly diminishes the market, Adobe will invest less in it and more in their HTML5 tools because they want that market too. They're going to follow the money and where is the money going?

sabret00the 15y ago
The money right now is in apps. It's why ideas like Mozilla's B2G will struggle. It's why Adobe has thrown so many resources at AIR. To reiterate; If you ask a user if they prefer an app on their smartphone or a website, you'll be told an app. Flash really isn't a player in that regard. In truth it should've never been and hasn't wanted to be for a while. HTML sites will be and rightfully so, the standard for a long time. But we're living in the age of the app now. It's far more social and measurable than a website can hope to be. It's kinda like "there's web presence and there's PRESENCE" the app provides that in a way where by a website remains simply functional.
- tensafefrogs 15y ago
  I'm curious what you think about the issue of mobile apps and scalability (in terms of having a distinct app for everything you do on your phone). The argument is that users won't want to install a separate app for all the various things they do on their phones (especially not the things that they don't do often) and would perhaps favor a mobile website instead.
  - sabret00the 15y ago
    You have some users who hate the idea of installing loads of things and those are generally users who have the phone for having the phone sake. They're users that have been forced to migrate to smartphones from featurephones. You also have the social users who like being able to talk about their apps with their friends and share via the different services available. For those users, which often overlap the more 'ignorant' users, what they simply want is a reachable recognisable service they can use anywhere. The argument that users don't/won't install lots of apps on their phones is simply wishful thinking. The reality is exactly the opposite of that. Users that have traditionally struggled with various features of the internet in browsers are able to do what they've always wanted in apps with far more ease. Even despite the a lot of the Mozilla community being dead-set against using a native UI, they've pushed on and will eat more market share as a result due to the instantly recognisable interact they'll get as they launch the app rather than waiting for the interface to load on XUL/HTML/JS/XML that just aren't as quick. You also have to take into account that with a website, you have no one to run to. Users generally feel ignored, where as with the social aspect of any app market users feel like they're patt of a community. Anything that currently states users prefer websites over apps is incredibly ignorant of the facts. A prime example is with Twitter. Tweetdeck on desktop and mobile shows far more usage than that of the website. As does Ubersocial and in fact their own apps. There's a firm desire on the parts of many to see people use the web over apps but those are merely desires of a small percentage.
- secretbatcave 15y ago
  Where are the HTML5 web adverts? They don't exsist because: 1)you have to code things 4 times (once for all the browsers + fallback) 2) There are no artist friendly tools (google's flash translator only works for chrome, see above) 3) Everything looks different in each browser 4) JS animation is Sllllloooooowww 5) Animation primitives are missing, those that exsist are from the 1960s 6) there are no mature standard/implementations (in widescale use) with flash's workflow you: 1) create a flash file with the mature tools, test, release 2) create an animated gif as fallback yes its buggy, and the video is slower than decent native support, but it works the same across all browsers (90%)

tensafefrogs 15y ago

I agree that Flash will remain a major player in online video for a few more years (I also worked at YouTube on the video player team for 4 years). But for everything else it has fallen very much out of favor, hence the strong post title. Even non-Flash online video has made huge strides in the past year, so I expect that to eventually erode away Flash's grip on that as well. The only real question there is how long it will take to sort out all of the codec issues that are holding it back at the moment.