Does HTML5 mean the end of FLash? PART 1

Posted 28th July 2011 by Andrew McCracken

Without a doubt this has been a big topic as far as the future of the Web is concerned, many have completely written off Flash, well this blog begs to differ…

During life on the Web today, people want to use whatever will give them the best, quickest and most efficient ways on doing whatever task they want to do. There has been much speculation about the newish release of HTML5 and how that will bring the end to the once totally dominant Flash. Unfortunately as far a simple 50-50 decision goes, things just aren’t as clear cut as they have first appeared to be.

There are many different points on favour of each platform, and I think the best way to dive deeper into this on going war would be to first look at the original platform.

Adobe Flash

So flash, starting in 1996 and having more than 10 versions is the current best platform for many aspects of the web. Not forgetting to mention getting better with every version, adding all sorts of new features (Print quality Text tools, 3D games development made easier, echo cancelation therefore perfect for video conferencing, perfect output for Illustrator and InDesign). After looking into the ‘why’ behind the ‘now’ people today are simply completely rejecting flash, it seems to be a case of taking for granted someone else’s opinion rather than pursuing personal conclusion. Many people have blogged about ‘how bad flash is’ but many cases of this are because they have witnessed it being used for totally the wrong reasons; they have seen a fantastic program used by incompetent users thus bringing about this bad reputation.

Flash is already set in place, established and very easy to use, many people worldwide know what it is and how to use it, and because its recognised its highly popular. Flash simply can combine a user experience far beyond to what HTML5 could produce, combining all aspects of multimedia on the web together and working the same on every platform browser (IE6, Chrome, Firefox etc.) it combines a recipe that is going to be very hard to beat. The experience flash has gained in order to do things more efficiently is astonishing, many years of development have certified that it is the clear leader in the industry when it comes to 3D game development and even when it comes to working with HTML. Many of the tools just seamlessly interact making things much simpler when wanting to get things done on the web. One major set back users have is that Apple do not cater for flash in really any way at all, which in a way is quite harsh and possibly a tad unjust, they claim that flash has no place on mobile web experiences, however the few Android phones that feature flash beg to differ. To this day certain specialists are continually blowing the world away by the new ways they are discovering how to use the platform. All in all flash is a lot of different things to a a lot of different people, people love it, people have loved it and moved on, and some people never loved since it came out.

I hope for you it’s clear to see that this blog is giving a fair opinion and chance to flash, a chance that hasn’t been given in recent times by the general public, tune in tomorrow for Part 2, which will be looking at HTML5 and going on to give a bloggers conclusion to this on going war.

If you want a fast, easy & secure way to store your documents, check out MediaLightBox.com’s file storage where you can use features such as our large file transfer to collaborate on or share your files – get a FREE account today!