The Death of Flash?

The Death of Flash?

Background

The throughput of digital work these days normally requires a level of highly interactive, video or animation elements.  This means that the word flash get banded about during discussions. I think it’s important we distinguish the difference between flash and creating digital offerings that include interaction, animation or video.

History

Over the last 8-10 year or so Flash Technology has enabled us to create web based animation and interactivity that most other technologies cannot offer.  With flash we can create highly stylised and interactive, web pages, banners, games and websites.  However there are a number of problems with Flash that argue it is not always the right technology to use. 

Over the past 2-3 years HTML and its associated technology (JavaScript and CSS3) has evolved (HT ML5) to a point that it can offer most if not all the features that flash offers. 

Current Pro and Cons

Below are some of the pros and cons of each technology:

Flash

Pros

• ·         Re-scalable vector graphics providing resolution & cross-browser independence 
• ·         Excellent multimedia support & high degree of interactivity 

Cons

• ·         Proprietary technology & high cost of development 
• ·         Breaks web fundamentals, prone to design abuse and security vulnerabilities   
• ·         Limited developer community, resulting in expensive resources

HTML5

Pros

• ·         Short learning curve for Web Developers 
• ·         Open Standard defined by W3C & backed by industry heavyweights including Apple, Microsoft, Google and several others 
• ·         Promotes the “Write once, run everywhere” paradigm for web development
• ·         Great advocate for hardware acceleration, provides unmatched power to developers 
• ·         Zero development cost 

Cons

• ·         Still a draft, subject to change 
• ·         Evolving standard, browsers lack full support

Lessons learned and the future

So where does this leave us?  Well I think we need to identify the core issues for most companies which is cost and the ability to find resource for projects and align these with the right technology.  Both of the these issue would point to using HTML5 for new projects as the cost of using HTML will keep going down over using flash and the number of developers for HTML5 is now outstripping flash.

However this is not to say that we should never use flash ever again as we may need to maintain current flash websites and its possible the client will explicitly ask for or need flash.