5 ms·

The monopoly of an open standard? What's wrong with you?

by erikj 12y ago

CmonDev 12y ago
Call it what you want but the end result is obvious: I cannot use anything but HTML to build a browser-based GUI. It already killed the Flash and Silverlight. It is slowly spreading the metastases into mobile and desktop as well.
- vetinari 12y ago
  > It already killed the Flash and Silverlight. Most people consider that a good thing, considering that both of these technologies were abominations that required proprietary plugins full of security holes, that didn't even run everywhere you needed them.
  - kibibu 12y ago
    > both of these technologies were abominations I'll give you that they were buggy, but Flash enabled a LOT of cool stuff to be delivered on the web that HTML still can't do. Go visit Newgrounds or Kongregate and see what people have been doing, basically unchanged, since the late 90s. I'm not sad that it's gone, but it was pretty great at what it did.
    - bad_user 12y ago
      Yes, Flash has some cool functionality in it, but by not being an open standard, it also held the web back because third parties could not implement it and Adobe's development model did not scale. While Apple refusing to embed Flash on iOS is what killed it, truth be told at that time Adobe wasn't capable of delivering a mobile version that worked well, as they lacked the resources for it, just how they lack the resources to deliver a supported and polished Linux / NPAPI version, which was dropped. The version that was bundled with Android, with all due respect, was horrible. Flash only worked well due to the Windows monopoly, but the approach eventually broke down due to mobile devices. HTML5 may not be so evolved, but at least it works on my Android in both Chrome and Firefox, it works on my MacBook, it works on my Ubuntu Linux, it works on my Windows Phone that I keep around as a paper holder and it works on my iPad. And if portability and instant updates and everything else that makes the browser great are not that important, then you're better off going native.
      - kibibu 12y ago
        Absolutely agree. If Adobe had open-sourced the Flash client (but not the authoring tools) I like to think we would be in a different space technically. Certainly I hope we wouldn't have spent the last 6 years redesigning Flash by committee. Possibly licensing concerns around codecs and other things would have blocked it anyway, but one can dream. I just think Flash deserves respect for filling in the "online multimedia" space so well while others played catch-up. Well, they caught up.
      - ANTSANTS 12y ago
        >HTML5 may not be so evolved, but at least it works on my Android in both Chrome and Firefox, it works on my MacBook, it works on my Ubuntu Linux, it works on my Windows Phone that I keep around as a paper holder and it works on my iPad. I dislike HTML5 for this reason. In the heyday of Flash you could sidestep most of the bloat of the web with a click-to-play plugin setting or by not installing the extension at all, and 99% of the sites that relied on Flash completely for navigation etc. weren't worth browsing in the first place. Now that many of the capabilities of Flash are built into the browser, you don't really have a way to avoid superfluous animations and awkward nonstandard interfaces and whatnot. Every time I have to use a Wikia wiki, my computer and I each shed a single minimalist tear.

The monopoly of an open standard? What's wrong with you?

by erikj 12y ago

The monopoly of an open standard? What's wrong with you?

Call it what you want but the end result is obvious: I cannot use anything but HTML to build a browser-based GUI. It already killed the Flash and Silverlight. It is slowly spreading the metastases into mobile and desktop as well.

vetinari 12y ago
> It already killed the Flash and Silverlight. Most people consider that a good thing, considering that both of these technologies were abominations that required proprietary plugins full of security holes, that didn't even run everywhere you needed them.
- kibibu 12y ago
  > both of these technologies were abominations I'll give you that they were buggy, but Flash enabled a LOT of cool stuff to be delivered on the web that HTML still can't do. Go visit Newgrounds or Kongregate and see what people have been doing, basically unchanged, since the late 90s. I'm not sad that it's gone, but it was pretty great at what it did.
  - bad_user 12y ago
    Yes, Flash has some cool functionality in it, but by not being an open standard, it also held the web back because third parties could not implement it and Adobe's development model did not scale. While Apple refusing to embed Flash on iOS is what killed it, truth be told at that time Adobe wasn't capable of delivering a mobile version that worked well, as they lacked the resources for it, just how they lack the resources to deliver a supported and polished Linux / NPAPI version, which was dropped. The version that was bundled with Android, with all due respect, was horrible. Flash only worked well due to the Windows monopoly, but the approach eventually broke down due to mobile devices. HTML5 may not be so evolved, but at least it works on my Android in both Chrome and Firefox, it works on my MacBook, it works on my Ubuntu Linux, it works on my Windows Phone that I keep around as a paper holder and it works on my iPad. And if portability and instant updates and everything else that makes the browser great are not that important, then you're better off going native.
    - kibibu 12y ago
      Absolutely agree. If Adobe had open-sourced the Flash client (but not the authoring tools) I like to think we would be in a different space technically. Certainly I hope we wouldn't have spent the last 6 years redesigning Flash by committee. Possibly licensing concerns around codecs and other things would have blocked it anyway, but one can dream. I just think Flash deserves respect for filling in the "online multimedia" space so well while others played catch-up. Well, they caught up.
    - ANTSANTS 12y ago
      >HTML5 may not be so evolved, but at least it works on my Android in both Chrome and Firefox, it works on my MacBook, it works on my Ubuntu Linux, it works on my Windows Phone that I keep around as a paper holder and it works on my iPad. I dislike HTML5 for this reason. In the heyday of Flash you could sidestep most of the bloat of the web with a click-to-play plugin setting or by not installing the extension at all, and 99% of the sites that relied on Flash completely for navigation etc. weren't worth browsing in the first place. Now that many of the capabilities of Flash are built into the browser, you don't really have a way to avoid superfluous animations and awkward nonstandard interfaces and whatnot. Every time I have to use a Wikia wiki, my computer and I each shed a single minimalist tear.