GoToAndStop(‘Flash’);
Posted on April 23, 2010 by: Andrew
As a web designer and long time user of flash, I’m left with a sour taste in my mouth regarding the future of the flash platform. It’s nothing new that Apple’s iPhone doesn’t support flash technology.
In short, Apple argues that the flash platform is too unstable and inefficient to support on the iphone, and to a certain extent this is true. Flash is somewhat of an unreliable beast for a number of reasons. As a flash designer who has been behind the wheel of flash for ten years or so, I can attest to this…However, in large part this comes as the necessary trade off for such a powerful web platform. Flash revolutionized the web with rich media. So many powerful innovations to web and interactive design are directly attributable to flash. It’s no surprise that along with such a bulk of functionality comes certain trade offs. Especially since we are talking about an OS independent platform.
If you compare flash with Java (THE platform independent programming language), it shares the same downfalls in stability and speed. This, unfortunately, is the price you have to pay for being able to use the same language/platform across all operating systems and environments. If we wish to maintain the level of competition in the market, we need software that works across all spectrums of computing.
So back to the future of flash. Apple’s refusal to support flash on the iphone hasn’t been a deal breaker for flash as of yet. Although, everyday the iPhone’s user base grows significantly, increasing the risk for the demise of flash. It’s annoying when I can’t use a webpage employing flash, but its not the end of the world because I can just wait until I can hop on my computer and do what needs to be done. It’s a hindrance, but it all still works.
If things continued at this pace, eventually flash would have been slowly replaced by other technologies. HTML and CSS are being revamped to handle for design related tasks that would have tied a user to flash a few years ago. The iPhone hasn’t yet become the defacto standard for viewing the web…..yet.
HOWEVER, this is not going to be the only device threatening the flash platform. In fact, as I see it, the problem is about to get MUCH worse. The looming iPad is the real problem here. As much as I am frothing at the mouth to get my hands on the iPad, it scares me a little bit.
I am in the “the iPad is going to change everything faster than anyone ever anticipated camp”. I suspect that it won’t be long before the iPad will start to dominate personal and light business computing. For many people, the iPad will be their only computer, and for good reason, it is brilliant. However, this means that if you are a flying solo with an iPad, you have no way to access flash content online. This might lead to a serious problem with rich media being delivered on the web. Flash is going to die faster than the evolution of media can provide alternative solutions. I think Silverlight is too late to the game to be of much relevance. Let me just grab my Zune and……I’m sure you see where I’m going with that.
This might be good for the market in the end, in fact, I’d bet my shirt that 5 years out, we will have a much better tools at our disposal.
But this is a bit personal problem for me, as it stands I am stuck in a bind with the only tools at my disposal are obsolete (We’ll they aren’t yet, but I see it coming very shortly. So for all intents and purposes, it may as well be obsolete right now). As well, adobe recently revamped the flash scripting language into a new, robust almost-full-featured programming language. I have yet to dive into the world of Actionscript 3. To be honest is terrifies me. After 10 years of doing things relatively the same way, and learning and growing as a rich media developer, they threw me this curve ball.
So this problem with me requiring to learn Actionscript 3 in the face of the potential demise of the flash platform is leaving me a bit stumped. I’m not sure if I should take a risk and just write the flash platform out of my toolset all together, or take a chance and get up to speed with the new scripting language.
Stop();
Andrew
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