Tag: Flash

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Web Technology

Brand New Adobe

Adobe is changing. The once-great giant of web and web tools has fallen, and is poised to rise again — albeit in a much different form. What does this mean for us web developers?

For starters, let’s go over some recent news. Adobe made three major announcements in the past six weeks that will have sweeping implications on their image. See if you can spot a trend in these headlines:

What do these press releases have in common? If you caught that all three are about open technology, give yourself a pat on the back. Let’s dig into the facts before discussing the ramifications.

Adobe has seen the light, and open source is sparkling.

Closed formats are dying across the web. The days are numbered for plugins like Silverlight and Flash; they’re simply not necessary anymore for the vast majority of sites and applications. HTML5, on the other hand, is thriving. We’re starting to see open fonts pick up, and even longtime-stalwarts MP3 and MPEG-4 are starting to lose their grasp of the online audio/video markets.

Adobe isn’t blind. They know they need to transition away from closed platforms. Picking up PhoneGap shows their commitment to this cause.

Re-aligning their mobile efforts towards HTML5 is another positive step towards open technology. Adobe still makes some of the web’s best tools, and Javascript development could seriously use an outstanding IDE. This seems like a great match-up.

Finally, releasing Flex to the community is a smart move. There is a very vibrant community around Flex, and there are still niches where RIA will matter for a little while longer. If Adobe can’t support Flex on its own, enabling the community to take control of it’s own future simply makes sense.

Adobe’s intentions are clear. Proprietary formats are out, the open web is in.

What does this mean for web developers?

Three things:

First and foremost: Learn your shit. If you’re a web developer, learn everything you can about Javascript, HTML5, CSS3, and the myriad of related frameworks. These will only become more important following the fall of Flash.

Second: If you’re a Flash/Flex dev, start looking at Sencha. At SenchaCon last month, the number-one answer I got back when I asked people what they worked in before switching to Sencha was Adobe Flex. And I believe it. I’m a Flex guy too, but that market’s shrinking quickly. Sencha is going to be a major player on the web for a while to come, and it’s a relatively smooth transition.

Third: Get into mobile. Adobe didn’t pick up PhoneGap just to gain FOSS-cred. Mobile is huge. Huge! This is where you want to be right now, and you can join in using Javascript and Sencha and many other web technologies.

This is an exciting time to be in web development. Let’s keep on top of the constantly-changing platforms and tools. Let’s keep building wonderful things. Let’s make this an age to be proud of when they talk about the day Adobe changed their ways.

Who’s with me?

Categories
Web Technology

The Present and Future of Flash

Adobe Flash is at an interesting point in its existence. For about a decade, it was the only way to get rich, dynamic content onto the web. If it was the year 2001 and you wanted a really sleek UI, or video, or any kind of animation, Flash was your best bet — it was pretty much a monopoly. Then things started to change:

  • DHTML started to take over some of the really basic use-cases for dynamic events like rollovers and showing/hiding content.
  • AJAX made truly dynamic content easier for the non-flash world.
  • The mobile web started to take off, with most devices not capable of supporting Flash.
  • Microsoft released Silverlight, a competitor to Flash in the rich interface space.
  • Apple started releasing wildly popular devices that intentionally avoided supporting Flash.
  • Browsers started implementing support for HTML5 and CSS3, which are slowly being adopted by designs that would historically require Flash.

Slowly but surely, alternatives to Flash have been picking up speed, and things beyond Adobe’s control have prevented Flash from penetrating certain markets (mobile in particular). What does this mean for Flash as a technology?

Flash isn’t going away anytime soon…

This isn’t one of those posts about how HTML5 or the iPad or global warming is going to spell the end of Flash. Flash is a major player in many areas of the web, most of which won’t change anytime soon. In particular:

Games — There are tons of online Flash games. This is a huge market that Flash has absolutely dominated since day one, and none of the technologies mentioned above can compete with Flash on this level of interactivity.

Video — Like it or not, HTML5 is not yet strong enough to handle cross-browser, web-based video. Even when it is (and it will be sooner than you think) Flash will still be used well into the future because it’s the only solution for legacy browsers, and the vast majority of users don’t update their browsers as often as they should.

On top of that, Adobe has created an entire ecosystem of software and a vibrant community for designing, building, and publishing Flash-based applications. Plenty of people are heavily invested in these tools, and no amount of evangalism is going to convince them that their problems could be better solved by today’s Flash-alternative du jour.

…but Flash will start having a reduced role on the web in general.

It would be unrealistic to pretend that these new technologies aren’t eating into Flash’s market share. For one, even in the most complex cases, some projects are choosing Silverlight over Flash. Not the majority (not even close) but more than none, and Microsoft is a powerful competitor that can compete with Adobe on the development tools and community levels.

Secondly, HTML5 and CSS3 can do some pretty neat things. For cases such as modern, dynamic navigation and simple logo animation, it will soon make much more sense to use features supported by the browser than a heavyweight proprietary plug-in; especially if all you need is a quick piece of eye candy.

Finally, there are the problems caused by Apple. I can think of three:

No iPad/iPhone Support — The longer this keeps up (and I don’t see it changing anytime soon), the more likely it is that someone will create a cool, interesting way to do fancy, Flash-like things in an iFriendly format. And then a general-mobile format. And then a web format. The last thing Flash needs right now is for some brilliant start-up to shake things up even further.

Macbooks are getting popular — Adobe claims that Flash runs on every platform ever, but as Chris Rawson astutely points out in this excellent article, that’s been easy to say while most of the world has been running Windows. With Apple’s laptops gaining popularity, people are starting to realize that Flash doesn’t run as well in OSX. The more Macbooks Apple sells, the more Adobe’s claims of market domination will start to dissolve.

No iPad/iPhone Support: take two — I want this website to be viewable on the iPhone, the iPad, and whatever whimsical hardware Apple comes up with next. That alone means I’m not going to use Flash in my blog’s design, ever. I’m admittedly in a minority here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if today’s kids getting into web design are also going to want to show off their cool, new, standards-compliant sites on their cool, new, iApproved devices. This sort of trend will slowly but surely push Flash out of the cool-new-site space.

Getting along with OSX is something that Adobe is going to have to work towards to keep Flash competitive, especially as new markets evolve out Apple’s hardware.

I’m not anti-Flash.

I’ve been using Flex Builder to build cutting-edge Flash applications for years, and I still believe there are many cases where Flash is a legitimate choice for creating a rich internet experience; there just aren’t as many as there used to be, and this combination of new, exciting technologies and pressure from Apple are making for some exciting times in the world of web design.

2010 is shaping up to be a wild ride for Flash and its competitors, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us. What are your predictions?