from Hacker News

The HTML5 and Flash Debate from a Flash Developer's Perspective

by lancer383 on 5/12/10, 12:57 PM with 45 comments

• by raimondious on 5/12/10, 3:16 PM

  The most important part is when he shows a <canvas> demo running poorly and says something along the lines of "in my day to day work, I can't use this. It won't work as a solution."

  The debate right now is one side saying you should use "HTML5" because it's more open than Flash while Flash is buggy, bloated, and proprietary. The other side is saying "I need Flash to give my clients what they want." Just like people started using CSS over table-based layouts when it was pragmatic, people will stop using Flash when Flash stops being the best tool for the job. There's nothing wrong with that.

• by glhaynes on 5/12/10, 2:26 PM

  Seems humorously apropos that it's in 10 minute long Flashy (errr HTML5y) video format rather than skimmable text as I'd prefer.

• by WiseWeasel on 5/12/10, 6:30 PM

  Useless FUD. Yes, let's compare a 15-year-old mature platform to one in its infancy, and dismiss the latter on grounds of the performance of its more esoteric features. We get it, Flash developers fear change; cry me a river. Considering the relative rates of progress of Adobe, the only company that can advance the Flash platform, and every other tech company in existence currently working on HTML5, I know where the safer bet five years from now is, barring Adobe doing something smart and opening up the Flash runtime. So HTML5 is still rough around the edges, big surprise there.

  The fact is, for video playback, it does just fine today, even on limited mobile devices, and if sites were to only replace Flash with HTML5 for video and audio playback, we're talking about 90% of Flash's popular use right there. As HTML5 matures, including content creation tools and the performance of various browser runtime implementations, it'll eat into Flash's share for other tasks as well. Apple is creating a market demand for HTML5 development tools and expertise, which is the first necessary step in order to bring the platform to maturity. After that happens, Flash developers will jump on board and forget this thing ever happened. Until then, just keep coding your crappy Flash ads and leave the rest of us who actually want some progress for the open web alone.

• by emehrkay on 5/12/10, 4:28 PM

  I'm not going to comment on the subject matter, but this guy is pissed. You can tell by his nervousness -- shows that he is passionate about his tools. Good for him

• by tomlin on 5/12/10, 2:33 PM

  The "vs." crowd won't watch/care for this. It has proof in it.

• by silentium on 5/12/10, 2:48 PM

  wasted 10 min of lifetime. Really useless ...

• by icefox on 5/12/10, 2:44 PM

  so.... flash developers are to 'cool' to write things down? Are the people upvoting this actually watching it???