As a Flash and Flex developer it is a little disheartening to see the strides in HTML5. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against progress, for me it is just that currently it is easier to write an app in Flash vs AJAX. I love writing in Flash and Flex and think ActionScript is a really great language. But, it appears the strides made in ActionScript or making their way to JavaScript and that video in HTML 5 may make Flash/Flex a thing of the past.
So when do you think (if ever) that HTML will or is a competitor to Flash/Flex for RIA or will browser incompatibility stop this from ever happening?
The reason I am asking is because I don’t know if continuing in Flash/Flex is a good idea career wise if HTML 5 can do more. Just looking for some answers from other developers using the technologies.
There are four things that hold the “modern browser” back from where flash is today.
1) Tools. Animating et al with Flash is obviously much easier to do. Plus JS/SVG don’t have the “direct” animation support that Flash does right now. It can be done, but it’s manual.
2) Performance. JS/SVG/Canvas can not perform as fast, and certainly not as consistently across browsers, as Flash can. Not every application needs the performance, and JS et al are catching up. But at the moment, they still lag behind in total overall performance.
3) Browser adoption. Ye Olde browser wars. Different implementations, different speeds, legacy browers, etc. All the issues the afflict the portable web are in place for the modern browser technologies. So, it’s more work to make a portable artifact, and even then it simply may not work, especially on older browsers.
4) Content protection. Flash is hardly the bastion of content safety in terms of IP control etc, but it’s night and day over JS, HTML, SVG, etc. where it’s all pretty much free for the taking. This will especially confound things like video which right now is mostly bastioned behind Flash players vs simply streaming mp4s to the client.
We’ve already seen some of the more clever “Javascript ads” (those annoying, floating animated panels for example). I’m waiting for more of those, just as simply animated mini ad apps vs flash. The primary reason most users who disable Flash do so, is to disable applications. JS mini ads won’t have that problem.
However, the primary creator of those ads are the creative folks specifically targeted by Flash. It’s easy to use for them without being “real technical”. Until you can do that with Javascript and the rest, Flash will have a large market for it.