HTML5 vs. Flash has lately become the hottest topic within the global web dev community. Recently released Apple iPad which comes without Flash support adds the fuel to the discussion fire. And while the Open Standards evangelists are walking around the walls of Adobe headquarters wearing signs “The end of Flash is near!”, Adobe Flash fans are desperately defending their platform.
Let’s try to stay away from panic and have an unbiased look at what is going on.
What should happen to make HTML 5 the winner over Flash:
HTML5 includes a comprehensive, sophisticated audio, video and animation tool set. Flash is much more than just web apps and video, that’s why HTML5 has to evolve considerable to be a decent competitor to Flash.
HTML5 includes a universally-implementable default codec for the video tag. This could allow developers and customers to save money and efforts they have to put into supporting different players now.
Canvas runtime is as easy in handling as Flash development interface. When Canvas is easier for non-programmers, it will be able to approximate to Flash’s widespread developer support.
A wide variety of developer tools for working with the HTML 5 powered animation frameworks appears. Until that HTML5 only looks promising de facto having rather limited capability.
Internet Explorer 8 supports HTML 5 completely OR Internet Explorer 8 unconditionally surrenders. When HTML 5 beats a Microsoft factor the benefits are obvious.
HTML5 can be installed into older browsers. That will help new standards beat Flash Player which now has better backward compatibility, hence 98% users choose it for their browsers.
Sean “the flex guy” Moore is a highly visible blogger in the Flex Community. He has been developing web applications for 12 years now and it’s no surprise that he was chosen to be a Flex Developer Community Champion by Adobe for his hard work and dedication to the Community. FlachSope decided to interview this prominent Flash Developer, and luckily Sean agreed to answer some of our questions:
FS:Can you share with us a little bit of your history? Was there a turning-point in your life when you decided to cast your lot with web development?
Sean: I got into multimedia and programming in 1997. Lingo was my first programming language, shortly after that I studied HTML, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Perl and ASP. I messed with Java a little back then but never got into it too much. I’ve recently starting learning a lot more about Java. My first job out of college was doing CBT programming with Authorware. This was when Flash was just first coming out and gaining some ground. I started messing around with Flash in my free time and really liked it. My second job was doing web design and development for a mortgage technology company. That’s when I started doing a lot of Flash work, both animation and scripting. I think Flash 3 was just being released at this time. I had a good amount of experience with Director, Lingo, Authorware and Dreamweaver so Flash and ActionScript weren’t too hard to pick up. My next job was for an Learning company where I was a full time Flash developer for over four years. When I started that job we used AS1 and Flash MX. AS2 was released while I was working there so we ended up doing a lot of code migration from AS1 to AS2. In 2006 AS3 was really gaining some attraction so I started getting more serious about learning it and Flex. In 2007 I started doing freelance work for AS3 and Flex based projects. In 2008 I started Kannopy, Inc. and have been running the company and working with various clients ever since. Kannopy was the first company to focus on Adobe AIR development.