Why "kill flash" talk is short sighted
In recent months there has been an uproar to "kill flash". It appears
this uproar is mostly due to Apple's resistance to allowing Adobe's
Flash plugin to work on the iPad/Phone/Pod. I am standing with a foot
on both sides of this issue. I love Apple products and am a
stockholder. However, I am also a Flash developer. So, I wanted to
make a few points about Flash and how all this talk worries me. Let me first make clear that could care less if the iPad runs Flash or
not. I will get one regardless. My fear is this groundswell of people
jumping on statements from Apple about Flash and making the assumption
it is not needed. Sure, I can agree that when it comes to video H.264
is nice and Adobe even gives some avenues to encoding video this way.
A bigger issue to me is the lack of a real mature way to make vector
based animation. I have seen some samples using HTML5, but nothing
that can touch what I have been able to make in Flash Professional. Right here, right now a designer can be productive and very creative
with Flash. We have created many animations that help explain some
rather technical procedures. I am not talking about relying on Flash
for some funky navigation or being the front end of a website (both of
which I agree is a mistake) but using Flash animations to explain a
process or procedure. I will give one example. We have a client who
wants to show how a water softener works. We made an animation that
shows how it works using Flash's vector based drawing tools. To code such an animation in HTML5 is going to take a lot of coding
and time that some of us cannot invest right now. I am sure there will
come a day when an IDE will allow us to code HTML5 animations as
easily as Flash does now. However, until that day some of us cannot go
"cold turkey" and "kill Flash". So, can we agree there will be a transition to HTML5? Clients and
folks I work with may see buzzing about killing Flash and not see the
bigger picture. Cool the bad mouthing Flash a bit. OK? I, for one,
will welcome a better solution ... as soon as it becomes usable.
this uproar is mostly due to Apple's resistance to allowing Adobe's
Flash plugin to work on the iPad/Phone/Pod. I am standing with a foot
on both sides of this issue. I love Apple products and am a
stockholder. However, I am also a Flash developer. So, I wanted to
make a few points about Flash and how all this talk worries me. Let me first make clear that could care less if the iPad runs Flash or
not. I will get one regardless. My fear is this groundswell of people
jumping on statements from Apple about Flash and making the assumption
it is not needed. Sure, I can agree that when it comes to video H.264
is nice and Adobe even gives some avenues to encoding video this way.
A bigger issue to me is the lack of a real mature way to make vector
based animation. I have seen some samples using HTML5, but nothing
that can touch what I have been able to make in Flash Professional. Right here, right now a designer can be productive and very creative
with Flash. We have created many animations that help explain some
rather technical procedures. I am not talking about relying on Flash
for some funky navigation or being the front end of a website (both of
which I agree is a mistake) but using Flash animations to explain a
process or procedure. I will give one example. We have a client who
wants to show how a water softener works. We made an animation that
shows how it works using Flash's vector based drawing tools. To code such an animation in HTML5 is going to take a lot of coding
and time that some of us cannot invest right now. I am sure there will
come a day when an IDE will allow us to code HTML5 animations as
easily as Flash does now. However, until that day some of us cannot go
"cold turkey" and "kill Flash". So, can we agree there will be a transition to HTML5? Clients and
folks I work with may see buzzing about killing Flash and not see the
bigger picture. Cool the bad mouthing Flash a bit. OK? I, for one,
will welcome a better solution ... as soon as it becomes usable.
