Sure, we all love our shiny new iPads, and iPad is certainly the flavour of the month. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would be well aware that iPad does not support Adobe Flash Player. We know that Steve Jobs is pious about open standards, and HTML5 and has said a few nasty things about Flash, but don’t be fooled by this thinly veiled piece of propaganda. This has nothing to do with battery life, processing speed, stability, (or any of those legitimate concerns) it’s about giving the finger to Adobe while the going is good.

(For a quick HTML5 refresher, check out this cute overview)

Don’t get me wrong, I think HTML5 is a great development for the future of the internet, but it’s important to realise it’s promising yet humble place in the technology landscape.

To put HTML5 into perspective, let me try to dispel a few myths…

HTML5 versus Adobe Flash Player Myths

• Myth #1: HTML5 offers the same interactivity, creative freedom and power of Flash Player. HTML5 is at best, a poor cousin to Flash Player for performance and interactivity in any areas outside standard, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all purposes like video players, map viewers etc. Sure, by now you have probably watched online video playing nicely in HTML5 players, but how much more does HTML5 offer for creative, unique offerings and experiences? Adobe (actually Macromedia) spent a solid decade optimising and improving flash player and flash authoring. Sure, they only recently implemented a respectable programming language (AS3), built a (reasonably) stable authoring environment, provided command line compilation and other run-of-the-mill features for a programming language, but they got there in the end. The very thought of authoring animations, bitmap effects, and 3D in javascript gives me goosebumps. Not to mention performance. By all accounts, if you try to do anything vaguely graphically intensive in HTML5 you start to run into trouble pretty quickly.
• Myth #2: HTML5 is coming soon. Actually, it may be coming soon to the bleeding edge, but certainly not to the masses. Adobe also spent that decade building saturation for their plugin and the unique payoff for designers and developers is that you know what to expect regardless of operating system. Now, should we really bet the farm on browsers fully, consistently adopting HTML5 standards any time soon? Usually we need to design for the bulk of users, not just the bleeding edge. You should expect to write off a good chunk of your users if you rely on HTML5 as your only delivery platform within the next year or two. On a side note, I dread a future where we need to code HTML5 browser hacks the same way we need to code CSS browser hacks today. Not only should we consider end users, we also need to consider the time required for a strong Developer and Designer community to grow for HTML5. And even before then, we need the time to develop decent HTML5 development tools to rival Flash Professional. That’s a long road.
• Myth #3: HTML5 is so much better because it’s free and open. Flash Player is much more open than you think. Did you know that you can download “Flash Develop” (www.flashdevelop.org, a fantastic free, open source ActionScript IDE) and the free Flex3SDK (http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK) and compile Adobe Flash projects without even needing to purchase any software at all? As Adobe continues to feel the heat, we might expect this trend towards openness to continue.

Adobe is a big, big company with lots and lots of Money
Do you really think Adobe will go down without a fight? After investing literally billions building browser saturation, building a global developer base, out-innovating wannabe competitors such Silverlight, cementing their place as THE dominant rich media advertising platform, I suspect they will find some creative ways of staying at the top of the pile.

The End Game
With Android devices running Flash just fine, pretty soon iPad owners will start to feel like they’re missing out without flash support. With one cheeky OS update, it’s within Apple’s power to grant them the gift of flash.

Assuming Apple does not rule the free world any time soon, don’t write off any hope of Flash support for iPad just yet…

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 9:22 am and is filed under actionscript, adobe, apple, as3, flash, flex, mac. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.