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Can Flash Be Saved?

Elledan said:
Flash is needed on the iPad if it's to be useful for browsing websites. Entire websites like Youtube become unusable as well as parts of countless other sites.
Click to expand...

Not true at all, YouTube has been usable on the iPhone since day one and has an HTML5 player for browsers. Vimeo and DailyMotion also support the iPhone OS and HTML5 in the browser as an alternative to Flash. That's three of the largest video sites out there, and they all offer an alternative to Flash and work with the iPhone OS. Several companies I work with offer iPhone specific sites with video that can be viewed on the iPhone, no Flash required. On top of that, gaming websites like Giant Bomb support video like their game reviews on the iPhone through their app.

Hulu is the big one that's missing, and I would bet on them offering a non-Flash solution at some point in the future.
 
IronChef75 said:
Bullshit. Apple don't support Flash because it can be used to create viable applications that would bypass the App Store. Apple want complete control over want you can and can't do with their products for the sole reason of being able to charge for every single damn thing do. They sure as hell aren't going to allow a flash based, cross-platform application to run on their product and disrupt their revenue and control.
Click to expand...

Bullshit, web developers wrote AJAX apps for the iPhone on the web for a full year before the App Store was open. They've only gotten better since then, the best web apps look as good as a native app that is downloaded.

Pushing HTML5 only extends that potential functionality even further, the whole point of it is to create rich web content and applications without the need for a proprietary plug-in like Flash. Why would Apple want to promote HTML5 if they wanted to limit functionality to anything downloaded from the App Store?

Hell, people have been doing crazy stuff for years in Javascript and AJAX, HTML5 just makes it easier.

Your argument makes no sense. The problem isn't limiting the functionality of the iPhone to web apps, its because Flash runs like ass and they want to replace it with HTML5.
 
And before anyone says "you can't create rich content or games in HTML5", here's what a second with Google yielded:

http://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus/
http://www.benjoffe.com/code/tools/functions3d/

Google "HTML5 games", you'll be surprised at what can be done with it. There are lots of simple demos out there from amateur designers similar to what you'd find on sites like Newgrounds. A company with the talent and resources of PopCap could make something great on HTML5 if they wished.

Chrome and Safari also support OpenGL in the browser.

http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/

Here's how to get WebGL running in your browser:

http://khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Getting_a_WebGL_Implementation
 
Please, while I would welcome a quick end to Flash (assuming something better or at least more efficient replaces it), the iPhone won't be the driving force.

They have 2% of the world phone market, that is small potatoes compared to a company like Nokia or Samsung who BTW, both support Flash on their handsets.

It's also small potatoes compared to where Android is likely to wind up. Unless Google manages to sabotage themselves, Android will beat out the iPhone OS both in domestic and international marketshare for the simple reason that they have a heck of a lot more variety in models and pricing.

Windows vs. Mac all over again more or less, except with a lot less illegality.
 
DanNeely said:
That's not entirely true. While HTML5 does contain a <Video> tag, open codecs have been consistently a generation or more behind closed ones in performance (eg the current h.264 situation). Unless someone with deep enough pockets to change that fact steps up Flash/Quicktime/Silverlight/etc based players will always be able to either stream equivalent quality in roughly half the bandwidth; or to stream at higher quality level/resolution than HTML5 video.
Click to expand...

Not entirely true anymore. The recent improvements in Theora have brought it close enough to h.264 in performance that at least for most things, in the same given bandwidth most people wouldn't be able to tell a difference.

Part of this is due to the fact that Vorbis is a more bandwidth efficient codec than MP3, but it remains.

The whole situation with the <audio> codec irks me though, there is really no good reason to not include it as a requirement in the standard.

It's been supported by some very large corporations for years now and is present in quite a few PMPs and videogames so any risk of submarine patents should be fairly small. Additionally it beats out MP3 and matches up very well with the patent-encumbered aac as far as sound quality goes.
 
i hate adobe illustrator and photoshop, they have truly woeful interfaces that have changed very little over the years, and the only reason i think everyone keeps using them is because they don't know any better, sick of getting ai files of clients that can never be imported correctly into anything, i swear they do that on purpose to monopolize the market even more, they should stick to pdf and nothing else, the only reason i have illustrator at work is to open the files correctly
 
Runningflame570 said:
Please, while I would welcome a quick end to Flash (assuming something better or at least more efficient replaces it), the iPhone won't be the driving force.

They have 2% of the world phone market, that is small potatoes compared to a company like Nokia or Samsung who BTW, both support Flash on their handsets.

It's also small potatoes compared to where Android is likely to wind up. Unless Google manages to sabotage themselves, Android will beat out the iPhone OS both in domestic and international marketshare for the simple reason that they have a heck of a lot more variety in models and pricing.

Windows vs. Mac all over again more or less, except with a lot less illegality.
Click to expand...

Although Apple only has 2% marketshare of the phone market at the moment, they have a tremendous amount of influence in the computing industry (mobile or otherwise). With Apple, their influence is far beyond their marketshare.
 
DanNeely said:
That's not entirely true. While HTML5 does contain a <Video> tag, open codecs have been consistently a generation or more behind closed ones in performance (eg the current h.264 situation).
Click to expand...

Its worse than that, Theora is based on the VP3 codec that was abandoned by On2 in 2001 because it was made obsolete by VP4. It is now all the way up to VP8, although VP6 is the main codec aside from h.264 that is used with Flash video these days. VP3 has been iterated past numerous times in the last decade. h.264 looks better at the same bitrate than the far more current and extremely common VP6. With VP3 you are talking about a codec that will either look rotten at smaller file sizes, or have very large file sizes in order to bring image quality up to modern codec standards. I do not see the benefit from going backwards in codec technology.

As for the non-issue of patent encumbrances, h.264 has been adopted on absolutely every conceivable video platform. Its in your satellite dish, your cable provider, your Blu Ray media, and on the web. Patent encumbrances have not halted its spread one bit, and a bunch OSS pushers will do nothing to halt it. OSS is cool and everything but nobody is suffering from h.264 patent enforcement, and it is not a valid argument to block its adoption, especially when comparing it to a codec like Theora. If you want lots of awesome content on the web you're going to need to compress the hell out of it to get it out there, and H.264 is an awesome way to do it.
 
Apple won't let flash die. They are now facing competition from html5,silverlight... they will step up the game or lose influence & revenue

Its just been shit for so long because nothing else existed.


Look at IE how shit was that for soooooooooooooo long
 
What is now Theora hasn't got much in common with VP3, though. The original codec was used as a basis, true, but large sections have been rewritten and many features added to bring it in line with VP6 or even to make it surpass it. Does it mean it's as good as AVC is today? Not in general no, but it's very much usable for a lot of purposes.

At any rate I'm just glad we're not using WMV :p
 
Serpico said:
Bullshit, web developers wrote AJAX apps for the iPhone on the web for a full year before the App Store was open. They've only gotten better since then, the best web apps look as good as a native app that is downloaded.
Click to expand...

Apple could never remove support for Javascript and AJAX. They'd never get away with it because there are no excuses. Flash is a different story. Apple are full of shit and their true motives for not supporting Flash (and numerous other technologies that might circumvent their control) are obvious to anyone. Apple fanboys and apologists might be willing to accept their excuses, but anyone with a small bits of brains should be able to see how they operate. Apple is all about control. Their products are prisons.

I'm so sick of hearing everyone say that HTML5 is going to replace Flash. If all you're talking about is video streaming, then yes. But Flash does a heck of a lot more than just that, and I don't mean just games.

Go back to your shiny Apple products, Serpico. If you have to start getting really creative defending the company you worship, your brain may start to wake up. You don't want Steve Jobs turning up at your house with a sedative to prevent you from wandering off from the other sheep.
 
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/11/adobe-flash-on/

There are so many other articles like this just jumping out of Google that it's impossible to not get the very obvious message.

BTW, I hate Flash. I would love for it to die, but there are at least two reasons that stand out to me that will keep it around for some time longer.

A plug-in like Flash has a single codebase which offers consistent support across all platforms. Different browsers WILL have differing HTML5 features sets/implementations/quirks that will need to be accounted for by content creators. How long after the ratification of HTML4 was there widespread, universal and reliable support from all the major browsers? HTML5 will be the same. It's great that WebKit has great HTML5 support, but not everything is based on it.

There are no decent HTML5 content creation tools. Flash is by FAR superior here. Flash is arguably more feature rich and far easier to develop for.

Flash will eventually die, but please don't start claiming it will be due to Apple being an advocate and champion of open standards. They represent the exact opposite.
 
Web standards in general take ages to get accepted. HTML 4.1 took quite a few years, CSS 2.x (~1999) still is only partially implemented by most browsers (IE being the worst offender as usual). Javascript/AJAX is quite a mess too, with each browser implementing things like the HTML DOM access and the AJAX functionality in just a slightly different way, leading to glue libraries on top of those browsers (like JQuery) to keep us webdevs slightly sane.

How long will it take until IE browsers support HTML5? Maybe IE9 will support it. Maybe its support for it will suck. We'll still have a lot of people using IE6/7/8 the coming 5+ years. Firefox seems to move along faster feature-wise along its userbase thanks to its continuous auto-updates (most people who visit my site seem to use 3.x), ditto for Chrome and Webkit.

So I guess MSFT is evil as usual? :D
 
Elledan said:
Web standards in general take ages to get accepted. HTML 4.1 took quite a few years, CSS 2.x (~1999) still is only partially implemented by most browsers (IE being the worst offender as usual). Javascript/AJAX is quite a mess too, with each browser implementing things like the HTML DOM access and the AJAX functionality in just a slightly different way, leading to glue libraries on top of those browsers (like JQuery) to keep us webdevs slightly sane.

How long will it take until IE browsers support HTML5? Maybe IE9 will support it. Maybe its support for it will suck. We'll still have a lot of people using IE6/7/8 the coming 5+ years. Firefox seems to move along faster feature-wise along its userbase thanks to its continuous auto-updates (most people who visit my site seem to use 3.x), ditto for Chrome and Webkit.

So I guess MSFT is evil as usual? :D
Click to expand...

True, it will be forever before we see widespread HTML5 as the norm. I'm wondering if it were possible to make use of browser pluggins. Just like you have to download the flash pluggin in order to look at flash. Forcing users to get HTML5 even just as some sort of pluggin would be nice. Not sure about how feasible that is though.
 
Parmenides said:
True, it will be forever before we see widespread HTML5 as the norm. I'm wondering if it were possible to make use of browser pluggins. Just like you have to download the flash pluggin in order to look at flash. Forcing users to get HTML5 even just as some sort of pluggin would be nice. Not sure about how feasible that is though.
Click to expand...

Not sure and it'd depend heavily on the browser. The Flash plugin is passed content when the HTML parser of the browser encounters an embedded object which it recognizes as being Flash content. To do such a thing for HTML5 would mean replacing the HTML parser of the browser, basically swapping out its rendering engine.

If only the OBJECT HTML tag had been used for video more often. The VIDEO tag in HTML5 is completely redundant in a lot of aspects, much like how IMG isn't necessary with the OBJECT (general inclusion) tag in place. In that case a plugin system could have been used as it wouldn't have required a new tag which now gets ignored by HTML <5 browsers.

Web development is a horrible area to work in :p
 
I bet Apple is going to come out with its own "Creative Suite" softwares soon to replace Adobe's. :p
 
Serpico said:
OSS is cool and everything but nobody is suffering from h.264 patent enforcement, and it is not a valid argument to block its adoption, especially when comparing it to a codec like Theora.
Click to expand...

You think that won't change if it becomes the video codec of choice for web video? They'd love nothing better than to have millions have to pay them through the nose or risk a lawsuit. At the absolute minimum the risk of lawsuits would stifle many otherwise worthy projects.

Wikimedia video doesn't work if they have to pay millions per year just for the codec. Neither does a lot of the Creative Commons stuff out there.

Oh and as Elledan said, Theora 1.1.x bears very little resemblance to VP3 and additionally I would add it is generally a very competitive codec.

Theora 1.1.0 release
State of Theora
 
blitzkommando said:
Precisely.

Flash is the number one cause of browser crashes for me. In fact, out of all of the browser crashes I've had for the past few years the only other cause was Java. Frankly I would like to see Flash disappear as it is the number one annoyance I have with browsing. That said, it's a bit of a catch 22. I hate it with a passion, but I also realize it is a necessary evil in order to be able to have worthwhile browsing online. In the end, Adobe still gathers my ire and Apple is just making yet another boneheaded move.
Click to expand...

IF you don't install flash, it would disappear on your computer. what's the problem?
 
IronChef75 said:
Apple could never remove support for Javascript and AJAX. They'd never get away with it because there are no excuses. Flash is a different story. Apple are full of shit and their true motives for not supporting Flash (and numerous other technologies that might circumvent their control) are obvious to anyone. Apple fanboys and apologists might be willing to accept their excuses, but anyone with a small bits of brains should be able to see how they operate. Apple is all about control. Their products are prisons.
Click to expand...

Right, which is why Safari 4 was the first browser with support for video tags and HTML5. The thing you miss because of your nerd rage is that as far as software technologies and standards go, Apple had relied upon open standards and non-proprietary technology for over a decade. The engine for Safari is webkit, completely open and shared with Chrome, OS X is based on BSD (its UI engine is the main part that Apple owns), all of their audio and video codecs are non-proprietary standards, etc etc. Just recently Apple developed their own framework for GPU coding, and then instead of keeping it to themselves they released it open as a cross-platform cross-vendor framework called OpenCL.

Considering that nvidia has CUDA to themselves, something like OpenCL is a godsend for ATI users.

Why does Apple do this? Its very logical. Apple are in the business of selling hardware, so it helps them to get developers on board with technologies that can benefit as many vendors as possible, and if useful they can roll back improvements from the outside into their own products (much like Linux in the private sector). Open software standards working with their own hardware, that's how they do things, that's their MO. Linux and hardware manufacturers like ATI are the other beneficiaries of that.

The opposite of this is Microsoft, their business relies on proprietary software standards running on anybody's hardware (well, with the exception of the XBox 360). And why not, Microsoft's business is software. If Microsoft had its way then we wouldn't be seeing rich web content on an open web standard like HTML5 (they can barely follow web standards with IE), it would be on Silverlight. That is never going to happen though, mainly because Flash is way way too entrenched (even HTML5 won't completely replace Flash), and because there is no "killer-app" piece of hardware or webpage that requires Silverlight usage. That is a shame because Silverlight is a significantly better product than Flash. It is also using a third party proprietary runtime, something Apple will not get behind when there is an open standard like HTML5 to choose from.

In any case, you should turn off your frothing nerd rage for a second, use your brain, and think about why certain companies do things certain ways. Apple is a hardware company and Microsoft is a software company, so it make perfect sense why Apple focuses on open software standards running on their own hardware and why Microsoft wants closed-end proprietary software running on anything.
 
Elledan said:
Web standards in general take ages to get accepted. HTML 4.1 took quite a few years, CSS 2.x (~1999) still is only partially implemented by most browsers (IE being the worst offender as usual). Javascript/AJAX is quite a mess too, with each browser implementing things like the HTML DOM access and the AJAX functionality in just a slightly different way, leading to glue libraries on top of those browsers (like JQuery) to keep us webdevs slightly sane.

How long will it take until IE browsers support HTML5? Maybe IE9 will support it. Maybe its support for it will suck. We'll still have a lot of people using IE6/7/8 the coming 5+ years. Firefox seems to move along faster feature-wise along its userbase thanks to its continuous auto-updates (most people who visit my site seem to use 3.x), ditto for Chrome and Webkit.

So I guess MSFT is evil as usual? :D
Click to expand...

Flash isn't going away anytime soon, that's obvious, especially for things like games. It is way too entrenched and it has the advantage of displaying the same output on any browser. The most I'm counting on happening in the next year is that several of Flash's common uses will be made redundant. Its happening faster than most people realize, Vimeo just last month introduced an HTML5 player for video, same with DailyMotion. Between those two and Youtube, that's three of the biggest video sites on the web supporting video playback without a Flash plug-in.

Website design, things like navigation bars that used to be all Flash on fancy looking pages just a few years ago have already been mostly replaced by AJAX. HTML5 will only make this easier. The things Flash is useful for are being made redundant bit by bit, games are the real holdout. No, Flash isn't going away, not by a longshot, but it isn't the absolute necessity that it was five years ago either.
 
Serpico said:
Flash isn't going away anytime soon, that's obvious, especially for things like games. It is way too entrenched and it has the advantage of displaying the same output on any browser. The most I'm counting on happening in the next year is that several of Flash's common uses will be made redundant. Its happening faster than most people realize, Vimeo just last month introduced an HTML5 player for video, same with DailyMotion. Between those two and Youtube, that's three of the biggest video sites on the web supporting video playback without a Flash plug-in.

Website design, things like navigation bars that used to be all Flash on fancy looking pages just a few years ago have already been mostly replaced by AJAX. HTML5 will only make this easier. The things Flash is useful for are being made redundant bit by bit, games are the real holdout. No, Flash isn't going away, not by a longshot, but it isn't the absolute necessity that it was five years ago either.
Click to expand...


How do you access the HTML5 based players for Vimeo/Youtube/DM?
 
Serpico said:
http://vimeo.com/blog:268
http://www.youtube.com/html5
http://www.dailymotion.com/openvideodemo

The one for Vimeo works the best so far, frame by frame scrubbing in the timeline, no waiting for the video to start back up when you jump to a preloaded spot in the timeline, loads are way faster than Flash, no dropped frames during playback, etc etc.
Click to expand...

I tried them in Safari 4.04 for windows.
Daily motions said firefox was required.
You tube stayed spinning on the start, never playing any vid.
Vimeo actually worked, but it was very choppy, like 2 fps. I switched to flash and it was smooth.

Not a very good showing so far.
 
Snowdog said:
I tried them in Safari 4.04 for windows.
Daily motions said firefox was required.
You tube stayed spinning on the start, never playing any vid.
Vimeo actually worked, but it was very choppy, like 2 fps. I switched to flash and it was smooth.

Not a very good showing so far.
Click to expand...

That is... bizarre.

I've been using HTML5 on all three sites in both Windows 7 and OS X using Chrome, Safari, and FF, and all have functioned perfectly. I prefer it mainly because I can scrub through the timeline smoothly and without hitches. Lack of fullscreen is my only real beef but that'll get taken care of.

So yeah, I wonder what the problem on your setup is.
 
I mean, its weird, lots of computers can't handle 720p Flash on Youtube without at least some hitches, while with HTML5 its buttery smooth. Hulu needs this ASAP.

Here's another HTML5 player that's in beta: http://jilion.com/sublime/video

As I tested, it works great in Chrome on Windows and on Safari in OS X. It did not play properly for me in Safari on Windows, and it hitched up periodically in Chrome on OS X. Let's see how performance shakes out once its finished. It also needs the obvious things like volume buttons, FF support, etc, but its a beta and I'd assume its all coming.

Again, love how responsive scrubbing through the clip is compared to Flash players, ditto start up time after rebuffering to another place in the clip. Make sure to click the fullscreen button, very slick effect.
 
Acoustique said:
i hate adobe illustrator and photoshop, they have truly woeful interfaces that have changed very little over the years, and the only reason i think everyone keeps using them is because they don't know any better, sick of getting ai files of clients that can never be imported correctly into anything, i swear they do that on purpose to monopolize the market even more, they should stick to pdf and nothing else, the only reason i have illustrator at work is to open the files correctly
Click to expand...
You must have a lot of dumb clients and besides who in their right mind gives out ai files to clients? Answer : A person who doesn't what repeat business. I don't use illustrator all that much, but I'm know Photoshop inside and out and I have no idea what you are writing about.
 
Is it me but it seems that the Apple Fanboys way of defending the iPad is to trash talk Flash and pretend that they aren't buy have a thread called "Can Flash Be Saved?". Give me a break, I personally can't any one going gaga over Apple Computers. Maybe that's the reason I'm a PC user and have been for a long time.
 
I'm a PC and could give a fuck less. Flash is older now. Old should often giveway to the new. Maybe this is one of those times. Maybe it's not.

Pepster64 said:
Is it me but it seems that the Apple Fanboys way of defending the iPad is to trash talk Flash and pretend that they aren't buy have a thread called "Can Flash Be Saved?". Give me a break, I personally can't any one going gaga over Apple Computers. Maybe that's the reason I'm a PC user and have been for a long time.
Click to expand...

You just did the exact same thing. Seriously. Wow.
 
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