HTML 5/Flash Part 1

There's a huge amount of noise about Flash and HTML 5. Apple says one of the reasons that iPad will not support Flash that HTML 5, will do most of those tricks and do them within Web standards.








So what's wrong with these beautiful flash sites and videos?

• Flash is not stable on all browsers. You'll commonly hear about browser crashes that occur when viewing a Flash site or video. Flash isn't viewable on many browsers, even when you don't count iPhone and iPad. Some browsers block flash, since it so often used in ads. And when it actually is viewable, users often get an upgrade message, delaying getting to the site or content.


• Flash content is not searchable. Most sites depend on search to attract viewers and many depend on it for income. Flash is in essence a movie. Just like you can't search a YouTube video for a word that someone says in the video, you can't practically search Flash. And regular HTML sites with Flash content rank low in searches.


• Flash, like any movie, is slow loading. Yet a further inconvenience.


• Flash is an extra expense. You have to build an HTML companion site to make search work. And those who find it through search won't see your Flash version anyway. HTML can be modified in a text editor. The entire Flash site need to be redone just to change one letter.


• Flash is designed for a mouse. One of Steve Jobs contentions against implementing Flash on the iPad is that a mobile device doesn't have a mouse. As this is something Adobe has never addressed as the device market has become more mobile, this is the deal stopper.

In short, it's not just that Flash isn't a web standard, it's that Flash was set up to never be a web standard. As another Adobe file format designed to protect content, it's also designed to protect itself, as a read-only format. The average user can't afford to create Flash files due to Adobe's extravagant software costs.

Everything is stacked against Flash's success as anything more than a specialty video format for the desktop. Adobe took a gamble with PDF and won. They took a gamble with Flash and appear to be losing. Ironically, with Adobe taking out anti-Apple ads, a large part of PDF's success is that OSX adopting it as standard export and printing format.

And another interesting fact: Apple's QuickTime format is actually capable of creating movies that work like websites, but Apple must have decided somewhere along the way that since QuickTime was unlikely to be a web standard, it wasn't worth the gamble.

Next: Demo HTML 5 on your iPad.