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[56K warn] FLASH == dead?

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:51 am
by mikeeeeeeey
N.B: I am being rather melodramatic :wink:

Its only in these last few days I've started to realise something...

Flash. Is it slowly dying?

I read the specs for CSS 3 the other day, and the first thing that hit me was the detail of interactivity it's going to place at our fingertips.

But its not just CSS is it? I've only just started compiling everything I know into AJAX, and free scripts like LightBox etc., it's just Flash but without the hassle.

Think about it, no more HTML versions of Flash sites (I know you all just smiled).

Accessibility controls built into the browser rather than programming them into Flash movies (text size, readers etc.)


Its all slowly making sense. I could be completely wrong here, but I haven't seen anything new in Flash for ages.
Even the humble Flash intro seems to be fading away.


so yeah..... is this it? should we all start learning SVG and bathe in Javascript while trying to write some realtime 3D stuff?

I just hope they realise before it's too late and carry on with the software side of Flash. But even then, what the hell are you gonna do in Flash that you can't in Java.

A sad day? or a good day? this I cannot decide...

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:30 am
by superdezign
What? No. The reason Flash is the media form of choice online is because of it's efficiency. People who are familiar with Flash's ins and outs (*ahem*) are aware of methods to optimize filesize and performance using Flash.

In no way is Flash "dead," or will be anytime soon.

Besides, what's the current filetype of choice for streaming video online? Coincidence?

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:35 am
by shiznatix
flash is great because you can do steaming media with it quite easily. I just put a mp3 player on my website that was done in flash and it works really really well.

Flash has its place that I dont think css or ajax will be able to take over very soon.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:44 am
by CoderGoblin
My opinion only...

Things like Flash and AJAX suffer from the same thing on occasion... Being used where it is not necessary to enhance the user experience. If I visit a website with Flash and I see a "loading...." for something other than a movie (trailer or something) I am after, I normally leave the site. I am not sure if this is a common occurance but I suspect it is.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:49 am
by superdezign
Ever since ActionScript could easily interact with PHP, and a large majority of internet users had FlashPlayer installed on their computer, Flash became a medium of choice. Macromedia (Adobe) controls the market without trying to take over anything in particular, and nothing else is trying to take over Flash.

And as for not seeing anything "new" emerge, have you checked Google? Flash websites are created very often and quality ones emerge almost weekly. Just like CSS designers would like for every to upgrade their browser, Flash developers would like for everyone's computer to be fast enough to run flash in high quality, fullscreeen, and not make alternate HTML. Besides, the only people who'd want Flash to "die" would be search engine's because it's not easy to index their material.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:51 am
by superdezign
CoderGoblin wrote:My opinion only...

Things like Flash and AJAX suffer from the same thing on occasion... Being used where it is not necessary to enhance the user experience. If I visit a website with Flash and I see a "loading...." for something other than a movie (trailer or something) I am after, I normally leave the site. I am not sure if this is a common occurance but I suspect it is.
That is true, but not everyonne who makes flash is aware that the whole movie doesn't need to be loaded in order to stream. A method I've used is to check how much was loaded in the matter of one second, and if the connection is fast enough to stream, it gives it a shot. There are methods, but not every developer is familiar with them. Just like any programming language.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:40 am
by jyhm
Flash is starting to get the reputation as being passé. Every where you look web developers are starting to take their elaborate flash sites and replacing them with static xhtml with css/dhtml/ajax. When talking to web dev's the reaction to flash intro's seems to be 'ewwww'!

I have a soft spot for flash but I think the days of entire sites developed exclusively with flash are gone. Certainly flash has its place but in smaller components.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:47 am
by seodevhead
Here is my 'bottom line' on the future of Flash:

I think Flash will always be around... it won't fade like many technologies have in years past, mostly because of its cross-browser compatibility and efficiency.

BUT, Flash is becoming the new "animated-gif" of the design world, and it's overuse for start pages and such have annoyed most of us, much like the days of old gifs with the big 'e' spinning around the mailbox. I don't ever see Flash succeeding in the online video world other than for mass upload sites like YouTube, etc. Reason being, both Quicktime and WM are making HUGE strides of late, especially with the advent of the H.264 codec by Apple/MainConcept. This blows Flash out of the water, and it has been picked up en masse. Flash is about the worst option for any quality video content... and with bandwidth speeds increasing in the years to come, the need for flash will be fairly non-existent. There will be a huge push to get people to move away from dial-up completely, much like how designers are now scoffing at internet users who use 800x600 resolutions. It's time to say screw you, get with the times!

I've always hated actionscript and flash applications. No future there. About the only real good use for Flash is for banner design.

My humple opinion.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:06 am
by Kieran Huggins
jyhm wrote:the days of entire sites developed exclusively with flash are gone
I've been saving a special bottle for just this occasion ;-)
seodevhead wrote:Flash is becoming the new "animated-gif" of the design world ..... for banner design.
As it should be, but only with an appropriate fall-back to a non-plugin-based format, of course.

I also accept little flash apps (for stuff that needs animation) as well as cartoons. Great uses for flash, IMO. And until there's a decent ubiquitous cross-platform alternative to embedded quicktime or WMP, I continue to support flash video players as the lesser of three evils (by far). I hate the other two with a fiery passion!
seodevhead wrote:My humple opinion.
:rofl: I know it's a typo, but it made me temporarily imagine a small dirty-minded dwarf-like species called 'humples'... I'll let your imaginations do the rest :twisted:

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:10 am
by shiznatix
seodevhead wrote: I've always hated actionscript and flash applications. No future there. About the only real good use for Flash is for banner design.
YouTube, Google Video, xspf Player (the mp3 player I just started using). Those kinds of things cant be done with anything else and be reasonable. Also on the video front, the flash movie sites are making it extra easy to play videos online not only because of the smaller size and whatnot but because they are all in the same format and dont require extra codecs and whatnot to play. You have the 1 format and its easy as pie instead of quicktime for macs, windows media for windows, the dreaded realplayer, and whatever a linux user can get their hands on.

Flash is the best solution for these things. It's ridiculous to say 'the only real good use for flash is for banner design' because that is probably the WORST use of flash.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:26 am
by AshrakTheWhite
shiznatix wrote:
seodevhead wrote: I've always hated actionscript and flash applications. No future there. About the only real good use for Flash is for banner design.
YouTube, Google Video, xspf Player (the mp3 player I just started using). Those kinds of things cant be done with anything else and be reasonable. Also on the video front, the flash movie sites are making it extra easy to play videos online not only because of the smaller size and whatnot but because they are all in the same format and dont require extra codecs and whatnot to play. You have the 1 format and its easy as pie instead of quicktime for macs, windows media for windows, the dreaded realplayer, and whatever a linux user can get their hands on.

Flash is the best solution for these things. It's ridiculous to say 'the only real good use for flash is for banner design' because that is probably the WORST use of flash.

and i bellive flash can be coupled with PHP very easy, iv "heard" that flash can be used as an advanced HTML coupled with PHP :)

donk know if its true or not though

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:01 pm
by alvinphp
Flash has had a specific purpose and this hasn't changed in years and I do not see it changing for a while to come. Ajax does not compare to what you can do in flash and browsers are not fully on CSS 2 yet so do not hold your breadth waiting for them to all be on CSS 3.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:56 pm
by seodevhead
As far as flash's importance with YouTube such sites, yes.. it is critical right now to use flash with those sites, but there are huge advancements that are going to be made in video encoding on uploads, such as Sorenson's latest product, which allows H.264 Quicktime to be encoded from any format. I'm not talking about Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite, I am referring to the very latest software they have released in the past month called 'Sorenson Squish'.

I guess I'm a bit bias with my hatred towards flash video. The audio syncs horribly with the video and I don't care what anyone says, it can't shake a stick at H.264 or WMV9HD. Nor will it ever.

And who wants to watch video that isn't full-screen :)

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:14 pm
by wei
For building interanet application, Adobe Flex 2 is also very good, much easier than html + javascript. Within the flex 2 runtime, it supports many functionalities such as CSS for styling the components (buttons, grids, lists), SOAP/RSS/XML response from HTTP requests, animation, etc. Flex 2 is an interesting platform to build interactive applications (many of the functionalities will be impossible with the current state of AJAX) delivered within a browser.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:20 pm
by m3mn0n
Dead? Far from it...

Didn't YouTube sell for $1.6b last year? That site would be literally nothing without flash.

CSS is great, but to compare it to Flash is just wrong, IMO.

Flash is much more than just a way to make text do all sorts of weird things and make layouts all fancy and interactive (and entirely non-accessible :P). It's truly turning into a media platform as well, something which never will happen with CSS for obvious reasons.

If anything Flash has been hanging on since its inception and lately its usage has been on the rise. And that's mainly due to the rise in popularity of streaming video online and everyones migration away from proprietary players that require players people might not have (compared to 95%+ of people with Flash).