Comments on: Flash runs faster, more efficiently than HTML5 on mobile

By: Czar

Czar — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:43:04 +0000

A what day and year am I writing this? No, the issues haven’t been addressed. I’m still waiting about two years later.

By: Christopher Anderton

Christopher Anderton — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 01:38:00 +0000

The problem with Flash is not Flash. :)
It’s how it’s used. I have no problem on my mac looking at YouTube, Vimeo or playing some online Flash game. However. Many sites are clogged with Flash ads, GPU acceleration or not, your computer is gonna take the weight. And choke. Example:
http://www.aftonbladet.se (Swedish newspaper). Sometimes it has a couple of megs of Flash content (mostly ads).

By: Dane

Dane — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:25:41 +0000

Google has been advising web developers on how to prepare sites and apps for its TV platform, and Google TV’s universal search will present web search results right next to local and cable TV content. Google TV is based on Android, which also uses Webkit as its default browser. html5 training

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:06:35 +0000

Nack, you gonna update the misleading information in this post any time soon? Instead of just including it in small print

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:12:56 +0000

Are you on meds?

By: Jeff Higgins

Jeff Higgins — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:03:42 +0000

What I’m really interested to ascertain is why Adobe is willing to risk the rest of its business solely to push this tired old plugin. As javascript/HTML5 continues to grow, Flash becomes less and less relevant (this is natural, and it can’t be stopped; it’s technological evolution). Conversely, the rest of Adobe’s product suite continues to be relevant and industry-leading. Why not focus on improving Audition or Premiere? Why not continue to press the ubiquity of Photoshop and Illustrator? While Adobe wastes countless hours and immeasurable effort (from the top down and the bottom up) to defend Flash, I worry that their important (revenue generating) products will be forgotten about.

I am surprised that the shareholders allow this dogmatic defence of a plugin that likely barely contributes to Adobe’s bottom line to continue at all. And, I am even more surprised that Adobe would risk its entire reputation by exchanging public vitriol with Apple over Apple’s (entirely sensible) decision not to include Flash on the iPhone.

Concentrate on your core market, Adobe. Flash is becoming irrelevant; you would be wise to make sure the rest of your product suite doesn’t meet the same fate. To that end, you’d be wise to concentrate on HTML5. Adobe could be a leader in HTML5 developer tools, and could create an entire video management platform for content creators like every major movie studio, YouTube, and every news media organization. Wise up, Adobe. Seriously.

By: Jeff Higgins

Jeff Higgins — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:02:57 +0000

I would hardly consider pointing out the practical benefits of avoiding a plugin architecture as trolling. I am merely responding to a biased (and apparently inaccurate) post on an Adobe(R) blog.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:15:19 +0000

You still need a browser to access that content, as when browser renderers change, so will your content. My old HTML websites from the late 90′s all look like complete garbage, some of them barely readable. On the flip side any old Flash content or Flash sites I’ve done look and work the same as they did when I made them. Even my old Shockwave games, a plugin that has become quite niche now, still work properly.

Web browsers have a big problem in backwards compatibility, an major issue that most vendors ignore and ends up resulting in slowing down the rate in people upgrade. As the reason that IE6 continues to have market share, is so many companies rely on web applications that work with IE6 and break when rendered in other browsers.

By: Jim Monaco

Jim Monaco — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:07:09 +0000

Genuinely Wondering how Tony’s example runs @60 fps. 42fps on Moto Droid…58.8fps on a quad-core desktop computer running google’s chrome browser…

By: Greg Geisler

Greg Geisler — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:57:44 +0000

Great post. One of the most objective, well-informed and succinct comments on the issue. We need more of these type of posts-from people who are actually in the trenches testing the technologies.

By: Greg Geisler

Greg Geisler — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:47:58 +0000

Well, it IS about aesthetics for the client who wants a rich interactive experience that can only be accomplished (currently) with Flash. They don’t care about whether this requires a plugin on the user side (mainly because the player is so ubiquitous). It’s their right to choose aesthetics over accessibility and millions of businesses do it very day. I find it incredible that we are having a discussion that had relevance a decade ago but is moot today. Clients want Flash development. Period. If I want to visit a website that requires 5 plugins that’s my prerogative. And if you or anyone else chooses to disable Flash content in their browser that is theirs.

I (and other folks here) don’t troll the purist html/css forums telling people they can’t or shouldn’t use the authoring technology of their choice. That’s because there is a place for both-a point John has stated over and over. I author in both and I don’t waste energy bashing one or the other. I use the tool that most effectively delivers the solution that the client requests.

By: George Wedding

George Wedding — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:43:32 +0000

Adobe lost credibility by posting a Flash-.html5 comparison test that apparently, didn’t use code optimized for .html5.

Instead of focusing so much hype on a mobile platform that hasn’t been released just yet, how about updating Flash 10.x to fix the constant crashes on the Mac? On Snow Leopard, I encounter the dreaded Flash Crash each and every day (the number of crashes limited only by the number of minutes spent using Flash). This experience does not inspire confidence about mobile versions of the product.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:48:12 +0000

@John Smith, I guess the reason for this debate is that one of the reasons Steve Jobs said he kept Flash off of the iOS devices was that it because of performance and battery drain.

Also Flash for Android is no longer in beta and since one of the partners in Adobe’s Open Screen Project is ARM, where Adobe has done a lot of optimization for their chips, which Apple uses in their iOS devices, I imagine it woud only take a few months to get an iOS version of Flash up to speed.

Later the developer Chris Black was looking into a way for good smooth Flash-like experiences on both Android & iPhone and hasn’t been able to find it yet. Things like canvas, SVG, CSS3 run smoothly on one platform but not in the other, or in some cases don’t work at all on one platform.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:37:13 +0000

@Andrew, the Flash version is horribly unoptimized, the developer was just trying to get the exact same code in both platforms for an apples to apples comparison. For the Flash version he even switched off hardware acceleration as he felt that would be giving Flash an advantage. He’s now experimenting with some optimizations on the HTML/JS side of things and will look to optimize the Flash version afterwards as well.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:32:54 +0000

@Terry, that’s only because most of the HTML5 video examples have generally been optimized for mobile. Put a HTML5 video fallback to a Flash HD video, as I’ve seen some suggested and it will slow down to a crawl on an iOS device.

There’s also plenty of cool HTML5 animation examples that are incredibly slow and choppy on iOS devices. Go to any HTML5 showcase, demoing canvas and SVG and see how horribly many of them render on an iPhone or iPad.