Flash sucks balls because it only works well where Adobe wants it to work well, as opposed to openly accepted standards like HTML/CSS that work good enough on nearly every computer in operation.
What don't Adobe get? It's not that Flash is bad "just" because it's not HTML5, it's also bad because it enables crap things. HTML5 or not, that's always going to be the case.
My main complaint about Flash is how it completely breaks the normal web experience.
Want to middle click a link? You can't, it's Flash.
Want to run a spellcheck on that textbox? You can't, it's Flash.
Want to search the text? You can't, it's Flash.
Want to increase the text size (with reflowing)? You can't, it's Flash.
Want to use a screen reader? You can't, it's Flash.
Want to link to a particular page? You can't, it's Flash¹.
(And this is not even talking about more geeky stuff like Greasemonkey, blocking code without blocking text and images, etc)
Sure, there weren't any real alternatives for advanced stuff like animations. But you know what? It would have been better to have no way to do that stuff if it kept all the stuff that could already be done with HTML/CSS in those technologies.
¹ Yes, I know this and probably other issues can be fixed if only developers do such and such. That's irrelevant. I know, you know, and Adobe definitively knows that bad developers are everywhere, and Flash makes it a pain to do basic stuff that comes by default in standard web tech, therefore making sure we would be flooded with broken apps.
The problem with flash (and the upside) is that it lets designers tackle the whole problem of site design, fonts, look and feel, etc in their domain. I would love to see flash replaced by html5 and css, but I think momentum is not on my side.
I think what people take issue with (at least its what I take issue with) is that Adobe is trying to pretend its an open standard of the web, that helps push the web forward when in reality it does the contrary. For starters, its not an open standard, its an executable program (or plugin). It isn't a standard left up to be implemented by whoever is interested, its controlled by the one and only master implementation by Adobe. A lot of websites like to depend on Flash in some way or the other, be it for ads, video, or some functionality, and more often than not it makes the experience unpleasant.
On the other hand HTML5 is an open standard and thats all it is. Its basically an agreement of what the technology takes as input, and puts out as output. If you want to implement the technology, by all means, go ahead. If group A implements it better than group B, then people have the choice of using the group A technology. Group B will then have to improve their implementation if they are interested in staying competitive, and we all win. That to me is key, the option of using a standard, implemented by different people to make it strive, not a binary distributed and leaving you up to the whim of the company behind it.
FYI: You spoke of windows and Mac OS X, but didn't mention Linux (probably because you haven't tried it, the same way I haven't tried it in Mac OS X.) Flash absolutely blows in Linux as well. I'm not talking just on the gnash and open source flash players, I mean the Adobe closed source build. It stutters, the keyboard input detection is abysmal, it leaks memory all the time, and crashes eventually from all the memory leaks.
Adobe sucks at performance, that's a given. But Flash isn't automagically inaccessible, just like HTML/CSS/JS you're given the means to make something accessible, but probably won't (esp for more complicated web apps and interfaces).
I actually think Flash is not entirely bad, it just does not really belong in browsers. As self-contained apps, Flash applications are pretty cool - they are fun and easy to program (at least AS3 - AS2 sucks), and I often use it as tool for rapid-prototyping little algorithms. Trying to put Flash into browsers though is like putting a sandbox inside another sandbox - it just gets in the way and impossible to effectively interface the two.
People dont like flash because it takes long to load, make for slow and unresponsive ui's, consumes lots of cpu, ruins vast amounts of basic usability and is generally a bad player in the web department.
Flash is not required for reliable and interactive interface, it is needed however to deal with multimedia reliably, so when people look down for using flash, just tell them you cant do what you need to with current web standards. Looking to the future I think its pretty unarguable that people should be looking to move to web standards when they are reliably available
I'm not a big fan of Flash. It's great for doing certain things, but it's also used in places where HTML/CSS + JS would have done just as well. I avoid it unless there's no other choice.
>>Flash's main problem is being easy enough for a novice to pick up and create a garbage site.
So is plain HTML, but if someone creates a crappy site in HTML, at least I don't need a proprietary codec to view it. It works in any browser, will deliver everything an informative site needs to, and won't take 5 minutes for it to load.
Flash violates the K.I.S.S. design principle by being unnecessary in 90% of use-cases.
Sadly, Flash still is how you play video on the web and make a lot of rich, interactive presentations on websites b/c only in the last few years has HTML5 started taking off. We're stuck in a proprietary world until we get over the bickering and complacency of open standards.
I'm definitely not trying to discredit the HTML5 work Adobe has done to play catch up but part of me feels like it's too little, too late in some ways.
Adobe has to make money, they obviously have a huge grip in the design community and they're not going away anytime soon so we need to push back as much as possible to make sure they don't continue on with bad practices and listen to the community, which increasingly they are. Sadly, too many of us feel abandoned when some of our favorite software gets left behind (Homesite) or bloated (Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator).
In 2007 flash could run 3d games, do shaders, have multiplayer, run physics manipulation, have 3d sound, do bitmap manipulation, socket programming, and had documentation built into the editor.
Even now html/J's can't do all of the things and most of the things that you can do, are not as fast. While browsers are stuck with legacies to uphold. Flash had no dom to worry about, untyped language (as3) or had css holding it back.
General argument was flash sucks because people make terrible content with it. Which is like saying I hate having hands because I trip things over.. so no limbs = no mess PERFECT.
In turn I think it helped push native apps. Since plain Js/html app just sucked in comparison when it comes to experience and capabilities.
Flash should have been open sourced. Hopefully with webgl and web assembly someone can step in and create something similar
While quiet obvious to some, I think it's worth mentioning that Adobe was never against HTML5, or implicitly worried about Flash because of it.
Adobe always tried to make a case for Flash based on a few points that some refuse to grasp. HTML5 just can't do- or not easily at least -some of the things Flash can (e.g. webcam interaction, RTMP, multi-threaded animation).
This isn't to say that Flash is amazing, just that developers must have some kind of platform to deliver engaging, rich experiences for many reasons. Not all of them are banner ads and movie sites.
While Flash may have had many years as a cheesy intro page engine, more recent development with Flash is often an impromptu petrie dish for future advances in standards and web-based UI.
The real issue is, could implementation of a standards-based Flash variant work? And if so, how?
Certainly Adobe has pondered whether Flash would survive such standardization since we barely see CSS3 and HTML5 specs materialized as necessary.
Hoo, the comments thread on this is still good. It's OK for Flash to suck, because sometimes other apps suck as well.
the Flash plugin on Windows is far more efficient and performs massively better than in the same page on Macintosh.
[jd sez: I haven't tested that, but it's reasonable -- 3D and video tools are often claimed to work better on Windows too.]http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/06/adobe_on_html5.html#commen...
Eh. Flash is great for games or cartoons or grooveshark-style sites. It's awful for restaurant webpages, but who cares? Also, people who haven't worked with flash are probably unaware of how much better actionscript is than javascript.
You're complaining about the development environment, which is considered to be better than JS/HTML5 by many people.
However, the Flash runtime is the reason people complain about Flash. It is slow, it leaks memory, it crashes like crazy and has been a second-class citizen on every platform other than Windows since forever.
JS/HTML5 on the other hand is a mess in terms of development tools. But it is getting more and more reliable. And it's a real standard with multiple implementations that are extremely competitive. Apple was right for excluding Flash from their mobile browser, as for mobile phones HTML5 is currently much better, even though the technology powering it is newer than Flash.
Adobe's current plans are to build development tools for HTML5/JS too. They are even pushing for improvements in the standard, like CSS3 Regions.
And why think flash should be on any platform?. You don't have to please every user, and every platform. Flash has its power features and html5 is handy, but far from getting there.
Flash doesn't make for a nice user experience. Scrolling, copy/paste, font sizing - all broken.
Also javascript is far more widespread than flash, especially on non pc browser devices.
No, people use Flash because of what it can do as a platform. As "development environment" goes, Adobe's own tools are subpar and easily surpassed by third-party environments, many of them free.
Wanting Adobe to create tools that output to HTML5 is like asking Porsche to put their engines in bicycles; it doesn't make any sense. Even if you include all the tentative, beta, untested, -webkit-*, or otherwise suggested features for the spec, HTML5 isn't even close to Flash in terms of complete features.
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