Back in the old days when the Web was young the solution to the problem of rich interaction with an online resource fell to Adobe’s Flash. Thanks to HTML5, however, the browser does all the business and in a way that is open and accessible to all. Case in point: Sketchpad. I can’t embed it here, but feel free to check it out with any major new browser and report back how amazing it is. Go ahead and check it and let me know what you think.
As you see loading is instantaneous and the ability to create rich interfaces all within the browser is amazing. I’m sold.
This isn’t HTML5. Have you looked at the source code? The only HTML tags used are tags, which are of course nothing new. There’s a huge chunk of javascript that is impossible NOT to see. Even if it were HTML5, Firefox doesn’t support HTML5 to a noticeable extent at all yet. The functionality that it does support is very limited, even with the release of 3.6.
Actually , Firefox has some of the best HTML5 support
out there. Alas many people have been confused
by the issues being resolved over open standards
and video CODECS (OGG vs H.264) Firefox supports
only the open standards OGG format.
Currently Google is seeking to purchase the On2
company that originally donated an older VP3 video
CODEC that became OGG video.
The stock holders of On2 will be voting on approving
the sale February, 17th, 2001.
This will allow Google to open-source even VP8 to
the open standards thus resolving a lot of issues
and avoiding standards like h.264 that could at any
time impose a toll both on the Internet.
Google has a history of contributing technology
to the web, whereas h.264 patent pool members
like Microsoft have more of a history of contributing
things like (security leak IE) to the Internet.
As to the sketch tool not being HTML5, one must
understand that in general discussion HTML5
references the entire HTML5 context and all the
standards it encompasses.
HTML5 (the context) means that rich Internet
applications can be developed entirely in the browser
without any plug-ins or expensive authoring tools.
It also means that one avoids all the weird interactions
that can be inflicted upon a browser by mis-behaving
plug-ins (like flash)
I gotta say that flash as a whole is definately not stable and alot of websites problems come from poorly written flash scripts so I would have to agree with him on that and there is no way a Android phone will ever be able to compete with the Iphone I have had both and trust me the android OS has alot of improvement especially with being open source but the ability of the newest versions of Android doesn’t even compare to what the iphone can do now. And there is no flash support for Android either so yah I do believe that Adobe is lazy.
Flash is, and always has been, supported for Android. And Android is better :)
It uses canvas tags which are part of HTML 5. Javascript is then used to draw vector based graphics on this canvas. Supported in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
It did not load at all… COOL! ;)
Get firefox or chrome
If “HTML5″ is so much better than flash, why doesn’t this sketch pad work in all browsers. Get firefox or chrome is not a solution.
I’ll give you a clue, browsers can’t agree on anything, and never will. Plus there are nuances that are different between various browsers. Getting them all to agree with eachother on a set standard with no variance is impossible.
All this HTML5 ideal does is make things even harder for the developer. Javascript is not for developing applications, stop trying to use it for that, there are much better tools for the job.
Wow, how much does Steve Jobs pay you guys?
If Steve Jobs pays someone to support an open standard, so be it.
The question should be how much does Adobe pay you?
Looks great in Chrome! I’m completely amazed that this kind of experience can be created with HTML and JavaScript. I’d go as far as saying forget Photoshop.
ALL I care about is video. If HTML5 had actually decided on a standard, I would be somewhat happy that my iPhone doesn’t do flash. Instead the HTML working group didn’t decide, and there is no “video” tag. Only browser-specific implementations of H.264 and Ogg. Meaning, videos need to be in two formats – sound familiar (Flash and .MP4 Youtube)? And Jobs wants that same fragmentation repeated – pretty idiotic, considering the supposedly “unifying” (read: closed, controlling) force that is Crapple. Yeah, I got an iPhone. I still think Apple is shit. They made one good device with a better ecosystem.
So, in summation, while HTML5 is a step in the right direction, and yes , Flash is not the most streamlined video delivery service, Jobs can still go fuck himself for breaking video for my iPhone and ensuring further fragmentation on the future Internet.
Does not work on the iPhone.
Who cares????
Flash does not work on an iPhone or iPad either,
but at least one can envision HTML5 maturing in
the iPhones/iPads long before the banned Flash.
rendered screen but didn’t function properly on nexus one either. is impressive on desktop chrome though…very clean and fast.
I would not go quite as far as leaving photoshop yet, but it is really awesome. Loaded quickly, and didn’t lag on complex tasks unlike adobe stuff cough* rocket slide cough*.
http://www.sumopaint.com/app/
While obviously way more advanced, this app actually froze up Firefox on my computer while I was just drawing. It’ll be neat to see HTML5/Javascript apps taking on the functionality of Flash apps like this.
http://www.sumopaint.com/app/ I love this application, Seems online version of complete photoshop. I think html5 has long way to go to compete with flash/flex kind of programs.
Calling Flash “irrelevant” is a little ambitious. Becoming irrelevant? Maybe, in 5-10 years, assuming that Flash doesn’t evolve as well. More info:
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/02/my_thoughts_on.html
More to the point, calling Flash ‘irrelevant’ is short-sited and just plain dumb. While the mobile web is growing, the desktop web is still far larger. Also, If Apple wants to continue pretending Flash doesn’t exist, they can – at their own peril. But two things are going to happen:
a) Flash WILL become streamlined at the behest of the mobile/netbook market and,
b) Everyone else in the mobile space is not going to wait for HTML5 while Flash becomes leaner and meaner.
Since this article sucks, read another one. I don’t like Giz since their noses are up Job’s ass, but at least they got the future of HTML5 right, here: http://gizmodo.com/5461711/giz-explains-why-html5-isnt-going-to-save-the-internet
Hi John, that example’s been up since sometime last year.
One thing that may help in evaluating such sites is to look for their “tested browsers” list… what they know it works in, what they know it doesn’t work in, by browser brand, version, and operating system. Sketchpad doesn’t seem to have one (which is odd), but most other sites do, and adding the browser matrix to the article can help relieve aggrieved commenters.
(btw, I enjoyed your series from Shenzhen, thanks!)
(Oh, and I guess it’s a good thing that headline wasn’t used as a tattoo somewhere…. ;-)
jd/adobe
Looks really cool.. but it’s more JAVA than HTML5….
Just a minor correction for you. It’s Javascript, not JAVA.
One of the biggest features being used is the HTML5
tag to do the drawing on.
@FelipeDeezNuts hit it right on the head. +1
Do you people who shout “HTML5 WILL REPLACE FLASH” ever take a second to think that Flash is used for a hell of alot more than just movies and crappy paint apps?
Also can you wrap HTML5 up into a cross-platform desktop application?
I am so tired of people singing the praises of HTML5 over Flash without knowing what the hell they are talking about. HTML5 will certainly greatly enhance our internet experience and the evolution of the internet overall but it will never completely replace Flash, ever.
What gave you the impression that HTML, CSS and Javascript can’t be run locally and not cross platform?
Adobe AIR will never catch on.
Yes. Flash is also used for interactive websites/applications, both of which can also use HTML5/Javascript.
Yes.
Perhaps, we’ll just have to see.
“Adobe AIR will never catch on.”
AIR creates a way for the developer to guarantee that the end user will see what they have made. You also might be unaware that AIR can wrap a webkit window and run straight html/js/css without any flash at all. In this example, AIR can basically be thought of as a web browser that the user can’t accidentally have the wrong version or platform of (eg. Firefox 3.6 vs FF 3.1 or Chrome or Safari, etc)
But no, it’s cool to hate on Programming platforms as if you actually have something to gain from it.
It’s kidn of crappy compared with teh flash equivalents. Sorry.
flash no longer relevant ? perhaps techcrunch is… my infant girl could write something like this in flash, have a look at how much code there is there in your lovely HTML5 example. plus, like some say, it doesn’t run everywhere.
Actually why don’t you try to write one in flash, then let’s compare.
I will give you a bigger challenge to be created in HTML 5, try to do this: https://www.photoshop.com
Pretty impressive.
I would say it’s better than Windows’ default painter app.
That’s not very difficult.
I have to say, this is the first HTML5 example I’ve seen so far that actually comes close to being practical.
But to answer the question as to whether Flash is still relevant or not, one just needs to dive into the code. Thanks to browser inconsistencies, applications like these are very likely a nightmare to develop, test and maintain across the different browsers, versions and platforms.
While they’ve done a good job here, those inconsistencies still do seep through, such as firefox accidentally selecting text when operating some controls. Chrome doesn’t seem to suffer from this, but in doing so won’t allow you to select the HEX color value either. Chrome also has rendering issues, and the text tool doesn’t work either as intended. I haven’t tested it in other browser, but that it doesn’t work in IE goes without saying.
Another thing I noticed in the code (though it hasn’t been activated) is displaying fonts that are not supported by the user. While trivial in Flash, it seems overly complicated in HTML5.
The question is, should HTML5 be used for such things? While I can understand that HTML5 is much needed when it comes the improvement of lay out options of web pages, using it to build applications and games may be stretching it a little bit.
A better approach would have been to, Just like with the tag, create a or tag. Or perhaps even tag and started work on creating a flash rival that’s not only open and cross platform, but also a proper and powerful developing platform for rich media.
The HTML5 context is simply the next evolution
in browser technology. I’ve been developing for the
Internet since before Netscape and have really enjoyed
watching the progression from the original intents of
HTML to share some science papers between scientists to an applications development platform.
The little paint program is simply a concept demo to
highlight the scope of possibilities in HTML5
and is not a product in and of itself. As a demonstrator
of concept it is more than passable, as evidenced
by the fact that people are speaking of fit and finish issues more than the actual abilities.
Flash applications too tend to have a lot of strange fit and finish issues that have lingered for years, that owe
their existence to the fact that they are a plugin and not
truly part of the native browser space, be these issues
of z-index compliance or keyboard/mouse pass through, with some issues happening on all platforms
and some being platform specific.
So on the topic of foibles , both technologies have them but with Flash’s time in service , it has less of an excuse for them.
Flash would seem to make a lot of money off of authoring tools which impose a price of admission
to developing rich content. While there is nothing preventing Flash from adapting those tools to
HTML5 and continuing on making money.
The neat thing about the web is that if you have
but a computer , an Internet connection and the
desire , you can develop just about anything you
want , without paying anyone anything.
HTML5 continues that theme and makes for a couple
of great debates as it struggles to both remove existing and prevent new corporate toll booths
on expression and information, be they in rich application development , or the conveyance of video content.
Flash and Adobe will simply adapt or die as will the
developers that make a living with it.
I used to at one time program in dBase, and other things over my 30 some years in computing , but
things change , and I simply move forward , keep on learning and keep on doing.
“The neat thing about the web is that if you have
but a computer , an Internet connection and the
desire , you can develop just about anything you
want , without paying anyone anything.”
Ok, if it is not your intention to get paid for all those great things you’re going to build, then sure, free software is a great argument.
In the corporate world, things are a bit more complicated than that. I am self employed and I get paid for my work. It also means that I get taxed on my earnings. By paying for my hardware AND software I get to deduct these from my taxes as expenses.
My time however can not be deducted. So paying for a tool that will get my work done faster is actually much cheaper than a free tool that takes longer for me to complete a project. It’s this same reasoning why clients are actually willing to pay me for my services.
So simply hyping the virtues of HTML5 is not enough. Some real serious questions need to be asked like: at what point can I actually start making a living developing HTML5 sites?
If a client asks me to create a paint app, will it be faster to create and maintain in flash or in HTML5? And what about feature set? Does HTML5 really do everything that Flash can? What if the client asks for a feature like accessing the users webcam to take pictures to use in the paint app? And multi-touch? Will I have to wait for HTML6 before it will even be considered? …
Very good Patrik, I was going to say basically the same.
[Ok, if it is not your intention to get paid for all those great things you’re going to build, then sure, free software is a great argument.]
Oddly , I and others get paid just fine for our work, and
don’t pay a dime for those tools we use in in our
development.
I suppose one can claim that tools like
Linux,Apache,MySql,PHP,Inkscape,Mozilla,JQuery etc. are just junk, because we did not have to pay for
them.
I suppose the many cloud computing applications
built out of FREE and making companies
like Google Billions of dollars just don’t count
I suppose one could claim the world is flat and that
the sun revolves around it.
One is free to develop in Flash if they want, and I understand the pride that one will have for whatever they use, as in a way ones tools are a large part of who they are and represent a major investment
be it in time or cash .
I’ve watched drag out fist fights over Ford vs. Chevy
but both rides will get ya there.
Dr. Clue: You’re missing the point. People want the best tools for the job. If it happens to be free, great. And there are plenty of examples of that (ex. server side technologies) And if they have to pay for it, they will. Plenty of examples too (ex. gimp/photoshop).
Or take inkscape. Great app, but I rarely use it. I prefer to pay for Xara because what it does, it does real well. You’re philosophy may be “free”, mine is “efficiency”.
Hi, if you’d like to deploy to varied browsers, but with predictable advanced capability, and prefer to pay for development only in time and not in cash, then check into opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK .
jd/adobe
Anything that is part of the browser space will always suffer from cross compatibility problems.
Something as complex as a 3D application (ie: papervision based apps) should not be done in the browser space, the developer has enough to worry about already and should not have to worry about cross browser compatibility. Also javascript doesn’t make muster.
I need a full blown object oriented language with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, etc. NOT javascript.
It’s even admitted: “For example, Matrices might be used by OpenGL/Direct3D developers, but it’s not very common to use this structure for manipulating the DOM or building AJAX applications.”
If you want to replace flash, it’s fucking important, end of story and developers can’t be worried about cross browser compatibility while writing truly complex applications.
Additionally, javascript doesn’t make muster
It’s funny – in the late 90′s we designed many sites in Flash because it offered consistency across platforms and browsers *because* of the plugin. Making dynamic content with JavaScript was hell because support differed from browser to browser. Now we’re being asked to buy into this again, 10+ years later. Granted, this is a bit different and JavaScript runs more uniformly across browsers (primarily due to libraries like jQuery). However, it’s going to be years before you get consistent support with all major browsers. Worse, in the meantime, you’ll need to design around the lowest common denominator. Snoozers.
It’s too bad people see Flash primarily as a banner ad tool, although Adobe is mostly to blame for that. The platform is used in areas most people don’t even know about: Zumo Drive, Google Voice widget, etc.
The threshold for being impressed on this site is awfully low, too. “Forget Photoshop” and “Better than Window’s default printer app?” Geez. Eastern Europe called and wants their comments back…
“The stock holders of On2 will be voting on approving the sale February, 17th”
No. We’ll likely be voting on NOT approving the sale for the 3rd time now.
Actually , it would be interesting to hear the issues
that On2 stock holders might have against the current Google offer.
It would seem from what the On2 board of directors
has to say, that it would be a good move.
As CODECs go , the possible sale of On2 to Google
has set the H.264 crowd on it’s heels for the time being, but should the sale not go through, On2
will be fighting the likes of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp and unlike Google , News Corp don’t play nice.
Even some of the visible players in the h.264
patent-pool like Microsoft have been known to play a little rough.
None the less , I really would like to hear the stock holder concerns over the sale, as it has got to make for a fascinating thread of conversation.
I don’t understand the logic of this post. It is like saying “you can make a pinhole camera out of a cereal box, which is why Canon is going to go out of business!”
Flash is not even remotely about just being able to draw on a screen. So someone can use HTML5 and a ton of Javascript to make a drawing app, how does that make the Flash authoring environment any less desirable to developers?
I agree, the title and mood of the article is very overambitious. However, I believe the author has a point in implying that HTML5 will help to provide a more consistent and rich experience within the browser.
One comparison I always think about is the tag. HTML5 will add the tag, enabling browsers to display video without third-party plugins. Browsers haven’t always displayed images, but when the did they became a vital part of the web. Browsers also support multiple image formats, so we’ll see what happens with videos.
Doh! Should’ve known it’d strip the and tags… here’s what I MEANT to say:
One comparison I always think about is the “img” tag. HTML5 will add the “video” tag, enabling browsers to display video without third-party plugins. Browsers haven’t always displayed images, but when the did they became a vital part of the web. Browsers also support multiple image formats, so we’ll see what happens with videos.
Holy crap, can’t even get them through with spaces.
*Should’ve known it’d strip the “img” and “video” tags…
I like the verbal crafting [It is like saying “you can make a pinhole camera out of a cereal box, which is
why Canon is going to go out of business!”] , but I
think it misses the point.
Since it has been demonstrated that the web has a desire if not possibly even a need to advance in
rich application development , it makes sense that the
vehicle itself (the browser) be able to address these
common needs.
What if rich applications development were turn
signals on a car? Of course one could indeed get
those turn signals as a kit, string some wire and
attach a switch to the steering column with a hose
clamp , but it will never be as smooth an integration as
the one where the car comes with turn signals designed in.
Of course those who sold the turn signal kits and
those who specialized in the installations would not be happy, but neither were the buggy whip makers happy when the technology of propulsion advanced from
something attached to a harness to something built into the buggy.
But it doesn’t really miss the point. Put a different way, saying HTML 5 supports rich interactive elements, or whatever you choose to call them, therefore you no longer need Flash, is like saying the OS comes with a paint program, so you no longer need Photoshop, or saying HTML supports layout tags so you no longer need programs like InDesign. There is a lot more to Flash, than just a browser plugin capable of displaying rich interactive elements.
Even if the HTML 5 spec included 100% of the functionality of the Flash runtime (which it doesn’t), and all browsers fully and consistently supported 100% of the spec (which they don’t), how long would it be before there was an authoring environment comparable to Flash/Flex? How long after that would it be before there was then something comparable to Air, to allow that HTML 5 code to run on the desktop? How long after that until there was then a client to run that HTML 5 native on a mobile device outside a browser in a sometimes-connected environment?
By my count, even if each item on that list only took a year each (which would be incredibly fast for something like this), you are still looking at 5 years before we are even talking about something that could begin to compete with Flash. It is very easy from a blogger’s perspective to look at a a bunch of hype, a couple of example pages, and say “oh Flash is so dead.” From the perspective of someone trying to develop and deploy a commercial application though, the scene looks quite different. There is a lot Flash can do right now, much of which HTML 5 is years from being able to do, and you can pick up the tools and get to work today, rather than waiting for specs to be finalized, and tools to be developed to tackle the project in HTML 5.
Thus, people will continue to choose Flash for their projects, and thus Flash will continue to grow and evolve, despite whatever happens with HTML 5. Besides, as Adobe has now pointed out several times, if HTML 5 eventually gets to the point where it really is ‘all that’ then they will just add an HTML 5 option to the publish window in Flash.
I certainly agree with you that Flash is not going to die
over night, and that full implementation of HTML5 will
take years.
On the other hand, it’s not going to be nearly that long
before much of the gratuitous flash use on the
web will begin to give way.
Better than 90% of Flash deployments are simply
gratuitous and don’t use even a fraction of the abilities
available in Flash or even existing HTML5 support.
[ "just a bloggers opinion" ] , certainly would be an
inaccurate description of my 16 years developing
for the Internet let alone my 30 years of programming
in general.
Of course the open-source nature of the browser engines supporting HTML5 makes for some interesting surprises, such as there are already tools that allow
web applications to run on the desktop.
There are also a surprising number of stand-alone applications that incorporate open-source browser engines to achieve their goals, even when those goals have nothing to do with the Internet.
I guess because there are no slick corporate
campaigns selling the open-source tools like
there are for selling “Air” (ironic) , it’s easy for those
open-source tools to slip under the radar.
Flash dead? , not just yet.
Years until HTML5 can impact Flash? Delusional.
Ok first off, I was referencing the opinion of the blogger who wrote the very article upon which we are both commenting, not calling you a blogger. To my knowledge, you don’t write for a blog, which would make it odd for me to call you a blogger, but if you want to be all indignant at a perceived insult, feel free.
That out of the way, your weighted language about corporate marketing, the glories of open source, and your willingness to stretch questionable statistics, belies your bias here. Where, specifically, do you come up with the figure that “Better than 90% of Flash deployments are simply gratuitous and don’t use even a fraction of the abilities available in Flash or even existing HTML5 support?”
That is a pretty bold claim, and I don’t see anything to back it up, except a predisposition to minimize the role Flash plays, and a polemic about how open source is better than proprietary systems. If you want to tell yourself that nobody uses Flash for any real reason, then feel free, but in doing so you make the same mistake countless Linux fans have over the years. This is a continuing problem with proponents of open source tools. You act and talk like open source and standards are an end in themselves, and anything they don’t do well is not really important. If Flash has advantages the standards-based open source approach doesn’t, then rather than work to try and catch up with Flash, instead minimize the advantage it has, and try to convince people they don’t need it anyway.
That isn’t how the market works though. Ultimately, the market cares about functionality. If the open source approach provides the tools with the most functionality, then the market loves them, but if they don’t, then the market doesn’t care. I assure you HTML will never replace Flash with the mantra of “almost as good, and that other stuff doesn’t really matter anyway, because Adobe is a big company making closed software.”
That might really get the crowd on their feet at the next W3C conference, but it isn’t going to get companies like Disney to throw away their existing Flash codebase and pipeline, just to hobble along with open source tools that almost work as well.
@dan got it and @FelipeDeezNuts got it too.
DO YOU RESEARCH JOHN. Don’t just jump on the band wagon.
Flash has so many more uses than just banner ads, and annoying graphics. Lets go down the list:
- It’s used to create amazing Adobe Air Apps
- It’s used to provide cross platform compatibility that HTML, JS, CSS combined have never been able to do
- Flash is no longer just a animation engine, it’s one of the leading RIA platforms
Honestly, tell me how you’re gonna do movie sites? Music sites? Artist sites? Promo Sites?
http://www.thefwa.com
Flash is not dead. FTW!
[Honestly, tell me how you’re gonna do movie sites? Music sites? Artist sites? Promo Sites?]
It’s already starting to happen
http://oggtv.com/ Not the prettiest site in the world
but thats not an HTML5 issue.
HTML5 browsers already support OGG video,
although owing to patent issues open-source
browsers do not support the h.264 encoding
The resolution of the codec selection has a decent
chance of being resolved before the month is out,
with the Internet finally having a video format that is
as free to use as other formats like
HTML,PNG,CSS,XML,XSL etc. and substantially
better than patent encumbered formats.
such as VP3 (Flash .flv) and h.264
I’ve already seen several excellent HTML5
cross-browser demos of both audio and video
Scalable, rotatable videos supporting integration
of HTML , SVG and other overlays , alpha channels (green screens) , browser based event handling ,
time synchronized content like sub-titles, and
other overlays. all good stuff.
There will still be Flash for a long time , but
HTML5 is not anything to sneeze at either.
Alright, I’ll ask you, based on all your experience as a developer. Say you have a site with 30 million unique visitors a month, Say you put up several thousand pieces of content every month. Say your entire pipeline is designed around Flash/Flex pulling from a database, and your entire content management system revolves around putting content in the database, and updating Flash templates. You need to be able to track all your users for ad purposes, and you need to be sure it will have compatibility with any browser anyone might reasonably use, and all video needs to stream and be DRM protected.
Now at what point would you pull the trigger on the millions of dollars that would go into redesigning your entire site, redesigning your entire pipeline, restaffing after you laid off all the Flash developers? Also, after all this was done, and all this money and time was spent, and these hundreds of people were laid off, what specific benefit would your shareholders see for this multi-million dollar redesign?
I ask, because when you talk about HTML 5 replacing Flash on movie and entertainment sites, that is exactly what you are proposing.
Well, firstly , I probably would not
have designed a system so heavily
based upon proprietary software,
but often I do indeed get contracted
to come up with solutions to just
such situations.
In such cases I generally do not recommend
the nuclear option as indeed it would be
far too costly, but rather I would recommend
a more subtle combination of mitigation
and incremental corrections in development
policies.
Normally it requires the type of research
and planning I’m not being paid to do in
this forum, but shooting from the hip
these are the type of thoughts I would
be looking at on my first day and refining
as the research and planning process went along.
Generally I would be looking for some sort
of foot hold/beach head in the existing system
from where the old , the mitigated , and the new
could be vectored with the least amount of carnage,
and of course the least amount of cost.
Not being a Flash/Flex type of guy, it would
take some research, but I do seem to recall
that Flex has an XML aspect to it which might
be a good place to start as various
XSL transforms could be applied to that output
to remap the output to support currently excluded
browsers and to aid in migrating gradually to
a more standards based reality without
any violent modifications to the existing system.
Given that the site is template based,
at some level there is likely to be a lot of
object re-use, which would need to be triaged
and decisions made as to what is reasonable
to transform in giving a reasonable
offering to those browsers not currently being
supported and which can cost effectively be remapped.
Again this is shooting from the hip and
in a live situation my opinions would adapt
as the research and planning progressed, but
since there is no DRM built into OGG and
I’m not sure if the browsers that support
H.264 implement DRM, I would probably be
thinking of using an off the shelf
open-source transcoder to insert a
visually disruptive watermark into the
video and an encrypted antidote
that would use the compositing features
in the video tag so that users could only view
the content in their browser and only for the
period authorized. There may be other solutions
but this is all shooting from the hip
At this point , nobody has been laid off
the costs have been kept well under the
millions a nuclear option might entail
and the share holders have both recovered
lost audience share and have a method by which
the site can continue to move forward
with the changing technical issues involved in
supporting the viewers and the revenue they represent.
I didn’t ask you HOW you would make the changes, I asked you WHEN and WHY you would make the changes? See the problem is, I think you would be very hard pressed to argue that
http://www.nick.com/
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/
http://disney.com
http://www.warnerbros.com/
http://www.universalstudios.com/
http://www.sonypictures.com/
http://www.cbs.com/
http://www.nbc.com/
and so on, are currently missing a huge audience.
You talk as though there is some compelling need to dump Flash, but you don’t make much of a business case for it. You say that they would “recover lost audience share” yet they already have tens of millions of users.
You talk about watermarking videos with no DRM, yet a watermark doesn’t insure that the ad, which somebody paid to put in the video, will actually be seen by the user. For that matter, how do you handle ad serving in the video stream, since all the industry systems, even Google’s, are based around Flash? With OGG, how do you track users video watching habits, in a third-party verifiable way, to generate the video metrics needed to set ad pricing, since all the industry systems are based around Flash?
Yes, all of these technical issues are surmountable, given a solid business argument to do so. The problem is, you aren’t making that solid business argument. You are saying not only the site owner, but their advertising partners, their advertising vendors, their content partners, and their independent contractors, all need to completely rework their pipeline because… because what? Because they might grow their audience from 30 million to 32 million by adding the open source geeks who refuse to install Flash on their system? Because they will save the few hundred per employee they are spending on Flash, by using open-source tools that come with little or no support? Because it will enable a greater freedom by loosing them from the shackles of Adobe, who currently bends over backwards to try and get them everything they want? That is a pretty slim ROI when you are talking about re-engineering the pipeline of an entire industry.
Despite your talk of your development experience, you still seem to be coming at it from the user perspective of Flash just being a plugin that displays video and graphics, completely ignoring the, rather serious, amount of functionality behind the scenes that makes Flash valuable to an entire industry. It isn’t just a matter of swapping out an FLV file with an OGG file, and swapping out SWF files with HTML and calling it a day. Someone would need to create the HTML 5 equivalent of Akamai, the HTML 5 equivalent of the various ad serving systems, an authoring environment (not just development environment) that would allow the creative department and the engineering department to work together on projects on tight deadlines, and I defy you to point me to a single one of these little known open source tools that I can deploy tomorrow to the art department, with a good enough UI, and good enough integration with commonly-used creative programs, so that they can work in it like they do with Flash, without expensive retraining.
Will it ever happen? Maybe, someday. However, it will be after HTML 5 brings something to the table that Flash doesn’t, and after several companies have invested millions in replicating the backend services that are already available for Flash. Companies don’t undertake massive pipeline reworks because a few internet geeks have a grudge against commercial software.
[I didn’t ask you HOW you would make the
changes, I asked you WHEN and WHY you
would make the changes?]
Actually , you asked a heavily loaded
question that was more a debate tactic
than an actual question.
It’s sorta like being
asked “have you stopped beating your wife yet”.
As to WHEN I would make changes to move
towards a more standards based
infrastructure, the answer is ASAP.
As to WHY I would move towards standards
based offerings.
It’s pretty simple in that if I’m aiming
towards standards and the browsers are
aiming towards standards , then we are
all headed the same place.
It’s not just the Apple iPhones,iPods,iPads etc.
or that in Mozilla alone, nearly 60,000 people a
week are downloading add-ons to block flash content.
Tying one’s business model to any proprietary
tool is just dangerous. At one time RealVideo
was a major player, with a significant hold
on the market, and now that company is in a
slow death spiral.
It’s a pretty simple question , which approach faces
the greater risk of decline over the coming
years, Flash or the Web Standards?
As new companies coming to the
media scene without a lot of baggage
adopt standards based technologies,
they will have an economic advantage in
that they won’t have to fork over the
money for the proprietary
tools and licenses.
Their staff costs are likely to be less as well,
owing to th laws of supply and demand
as there will be a far larger pool of folks
to draw from who have learned the
standards based ways of doing things as all
it took to get started was curiosity.
As to ad tracking and enforcement, open standards
like proprietary ones still can’t prevent
one from getting up and going to the fridge,
taking a leak etc. but we can make sure that
you fully play one video (advertisement)
prior to viewing another.
We can track second by second everything
you do in interacting with that video.
Fast forward, rewind, pause , volume ,mute,
looking away to another application on the
desktop etc.
All the events are easily recorded and can
be sent back to the same servers that were
receiving the data from flash.
We can inject just about anything we want
into the viewing experience synchronized
to the second, be it sub-titles, side ads
to buy the DVD, various user participation
features, all synchronized to both
the content, user behaviors and other factors.
One does not need to toss out the existing
pipeline, but rather just nudge it here and
there in an incremental fashion so that one
has the lead time to get out ahead of HTML5
in a measured fashion.
In programming it’s considered to be good
practice to have a separation between
data,function, and presentation.
Since Flex uses XML to drive dynamic creation
of content it might even be reasonable to
let the artists in large part continue using
what they already have by way of tools,
while still migrating to a standards
based renderings.
As I’ve repeatedly stated each project
requires it’s own research and planning,
but if I were to start migrating the
creative folks, I can easily see those
artists using something like Inkscape
to craft the presentation art of a
display in SVG, and simply via point
and click marking those elements that
will need data or function, in a
fashion similar to what they
probably do now.
That SVG is actually XML, which even
the Flex tool your using recognizes
as having value.
XSL can easily merge database data,
and scripting elements anywhere there
is XML to be had, and most database
systems have at least some support
for that open standard.
Will there be some changes in the
way things are done? Certainly,
but it is not the total upheaval
you seem to think it would be.
At one time businesses would tell me
that the Internet was just a fad
and it would never have any significance.
These days I try not to mention those
comments of theirs while I cash the checks.
AOL would never be displaced by the Internet.
Today with just as much vigor , I’m hearing
that HTML5 will either never amount to
anything , or that it’s impact is so far
off as not to count.
I don’t mind that opinion at all, and
I’ll be there to cash that check too.
In th last 16 years , the only time
I’ve gotten bit is when I’ve ignored
my own advice.
As to the web sites you mention like
nbc.com and the others. Nobody here
goes to those sites. Not because we can’t
but rather that the presentations are simply
not engaging.
We do have regular users of hulu.com which
does use flash , but in a minimalistic fashion
and most of us don’t mind the commercials.
Perhaps it’s the familiar context of TV hulu emulates,
or perhaps it’s just that hulu fallows the content is king
school of thought.
Either way , I see little reason why a site like hulu
would have a problem in migrating to HTML5
while still maintaining legacy support for Flash.
No, what I asked was in no way loaded, nor a tactic. The cold hard reality is that it costs millions of dollars just to do a redesign and migration from ActionScript2 to ActionScript3, or to change the CMS tools, or to change to a different database backend. I think you fail to appreciate either the scale or complexity of the sites referenced, and how many people are involved in the design, content production and maintenance of these sites.
No matter how carefully and incrementally you think you can make the change, you are still talking about a far more significant change than any of the ones I mentioned, so there is no way you are going to avoid a pricetag in the millions. You aren’t talking about a site with 12 guys hacking code as an idea occurs to them, you are talking about hundreds of employees in multiple countries with servers all over the world, and dozens of partner companies all providing different pieces of the puzzle.
From the ground up, you seem to have a very limited notion of the scale involved here. You actually think that the cost of Adobe products are high enough to give any competitive advantage to a company who doesn’t use them? I hate to break it to you, but getting Adobe Volume Licensing for an entire building costs less than a single camera used in television production. Back when I ran a development house, we spent more on a year-end bonus for a single employee, than our entire yearly cost for Adobe/Macromedia software! By the same token, you think 60,000 people downloading a Flash blocker is a compelling number of lost audience? 60,000 people might send emails swearing to never watch a show again because they made an off-color joke in primetime. You don’t cancel the show because of it! So 240,000 a month download a Flash blocker (which they may or may not use on every site), while 30,000,000 are going to sites like this. In other words, they are potentially losing .8% of their audience which might not like Flash enough to do something about it (assuming those people aren’t like you, who see no value in the content on the largest entertainment company sites on the web, at which point it really doesn’t matter what you think, because you aren’t a potential customer anyway). Spending millions of dollars to get back less than a percent of your audience is not the best business call.
You seem to either not grasp, or refuse to recognize, that this is far from a purely technical challenge. There have been plenty of systems capable of doing what Flash does, long before HTML 5 was the hyped alternative. Hell, if it was just about technical capability, Cold Fusion would have taken over the entertainment industry a decade ago. The reason they didn’t take hold, isn’t because of a technical failing, or that they weren’t blessed by a standards body, it is because there was no compelling reason to take that approach over Flash. You just seem to fail to get that at this level, people don’t make decisions based on whether you want to stick ‘it to the man’ and show Adobe who’s boss.
Entertainment companies are not only used to working with other businesses, they tend to make quite a good living doing it. All your talk about how “dangerous” it is to “[Tie] one’s business model to any proprietary tool” sounds absolutely ridiculous in an industry that has made trillions of dollars shooting shows on proprietary cameras, edited on proprietary systems, to be either distributed on proprietary broadcast networks, projected on proprietary display systems, or sold on proprietary disk formats, as well as sold through proprietary services like Xbox Live and iTunes. Do you see where I’m going here?
In the circles you move, maybe throwing out the word “proprietary” is enough to get a gasp, and make people recoil in horror, and pull out their wallet, but in the entertainment industry, not so much. It is a proprietary industry, based almost entirely on proprietary tools. In fact, what little experience the entertainment industry has with standards-based approaches (FCC regulation, 20 years to roll out an HD spec, Cable Card, open systems like file sharing services), it doesn’t like so much. You aren’t going to get much traction trying to convince them that using a proprietary tool like Flash will be disastrous to their business as they are counting the trillions they are making off of DVD sales, iTunes sales, console games, and cable viewership. There needs to be a compelling business reason to walk away from the established Flash systems already in place, and you would seem to not be touching that with a ten foot pole.
And mostly unrelated, Inkscape, really? You’ve never worked in a creative production environment, have you? Inkscape, The GIMP, POV Ray, the vast majority of open source content creation tools are just a disaster, because they just don’t seem to be able to get their head around the fact that workflow is king, not a list of features and technical accomplishments. Blender is the only open source content creation tool I have seen that is even worth talking about, and even it is kind of like using a professional program from the ’90s.
[No matter how carefully and incrementally you think you can make the change, you are still talking about a far more significant change than any of the ones I mentioned, so there is no way you are going to avoid a pricetag in the millions.]
If you say that your organization is structured such
that it can’t make even minor moves without dumping
millions of dollars on it, I believe it , I really do. :)
Sure beats the governments $450 toilet seats.
Of course the millions of cost is something your
organization must recognize is self inflicted
with little to do with the reasonable costs of
meeting your mandates.
You can ramble on like the guy who sold those $450
toilet seats to the government, but no matter
the clever patter, once the hypnotic utterances
are done , it’s still a $400 toilet seat.
Having on multiple occasions worked with firms
that process far more than 30 million unique visitors
per month , I know their stock holders upon hearing that the changes you described would cost millions
would cause a shortage of rope and available trees
in dealing with those that would allow such a situation.
Feel blessed that the powers that be in your
organization are still looking for the “any key”
Of course the millions of cost is something your
organization must recognize is self inflicted
with little to do with the reasonable costs of
meeting your mandates.
You can ramble on like the guy who sold those $450
toilet seats to the government, but no matter
the clever patter, once the hypnotic utterances
are done , it’s still a $400 toilet seat.
Having on multiple occasions worked with firms
that process far more than 30 million unique visitors
per month , I know their stock holders upon hearing that the changes you described would cost millions
would cause a shortage of rope and available trees
in dealing with those that would allow such a situation.
Feel secure that the powers that be in your
organization must in a relative way still
be looking for the “any key”.
By the way, I should make clear, you keep saying “my organization.” I don’t work for anyone. I have been a self-employed artist for many years now. I don’t even do Flash development anymore, except as an art director. I have no horse in this race, but I know the industry well, and have many friends who do this sort of stuff for a living. Just didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.
I would think that a developer would know that traffic is not the only factor involved in the cost of maintenance of a site. Serving up thousands, or even tens of thousands, of pieces of original video content every month, as well as varying numbers of interactive and in-house generated text content to 30 million people, is a very different story than displaying the WordPress blogs of 30 million people.
Geeze , I’m glad you clarified your role as an artist
who rubs shoulders with folks in the industry, and not a decision maker challenging my point of view as an
analyst and engineer who gets hired to make these
types of decisions.
The conversation makes a lot more sense now brother,
and I can understand how you might have reached your views.
My role in things is to piss everyone off by looking
at things from a long term engineering point of view
taking into account the re-occurring physics of the situation be they technical, political , or philosophical
and map a course that will service the long term goals.
Sometimes I’m even put to the test by being expected to execute my own recommendations.
I piss off the open-source folks by saying we don’t get
to kick flash to the curb , and I piss off the Flash
folks by saying that life is transitional.
Peace brother
I must then since folks might not have read the whole post sequence cite that we are not talking 60,0000
users per year or such blocking flash , but rather 60,000 unique visitors per WEEK.
For those not understanding the math , that is over
2.5 million users per year and it has been happening
for a long while.
Understand , my job is to piss everyone off , both
flash folks and the open source folk by addressing engineering issues as they are and not as I or either side would think they should be.
The conclusion of my latest paid work in this regard is that obviously Flash has been the (RIA) Rich Internet Application training wheels and for some time will
continue to fulfill that role , but the HTML child is indeed growing up and likely sooner than many realize
will outgrow those training wheels.
Will flash be deemed not relevant? That is really up to Adobe. Adobe has a lot of quality authoring tools
and a vast following. If Adobe can simply take the outputs like flex and transition them into evolving standards than their stock is a BUY BUY BUY,
If they dig their heels into the dirt and deny progress then it is a SELL SELL SELL
Adobe needs to give up the dis information campaign
as the fact is that in the near term HTML5 is a serious issue , but it need not be a problem , but rather an opportunity. Some minor tweaks in flex and Adobe
becomes the standards champion, their followers
realize at least another decade or so of value as consultants and employees and the firm can be considered part of the forward progress and
not some kind of Microsoft 666 deamon
The sweet noise of h.264 is the sirens song. Adobe
should and will (if they move correctly ) make their
profits doing what they know well with a well attuned ear to standards born of collective thought and
addressed with their wealth of development.
The days of pushing the market are largely at an end and for the most part suicide.
So make some money . I hav no problem with that.
undermine the citizens of the net , at your own risk.
l
You seem to have misread what I said (again). I said that I am NOW an artist. I also said earlier that I used to own my own development company, and before that I used to be a developer. It is funny how life works. I started out as a developer, moved up from there to management, from there to my own company, and now I can spend my time doing what I want, instead of making products for other people.
I assure you, I have had more discussions with the people at major media companies, who make the very decisions we are discussing, than you have. The difference between me and you isn’t one of training, it is that I listen to what they say, instead of arrogantly assuming they are idiots who need to be educated in the right way to do things. I, it would seem foolishly from your wise words, assume that if a website is generating a billion dollars in revenue, they probably have a thing or two worth listening to.
Quite frankly, I tire of your childish, almost jingoistic, rants about the glory of the collective wisdom of the net, and your egotistic self-promotion. You have yet to elucidate a single business advantage to the massive switch you propose, preferring to instead indulge fantasies that you could do a better job of running the largest media companies on Earth, than their current executive can. At this point I highly doubt half of what you say about your professional expertise is even true, because you don’t seem to have either the people skills, nor communication skills (half of a conversation is listening, and not just to the sound of your own voice), to be as awe-inspiring a corporate Internet god as you claim to be.
However, it is great to know that there are people like you out there, who are absolutely certain they know what is best for an industry, even though they don’t actually know the first thing about the industry they are so eager to advise. It makes it all that much easier to ignore your shrill bleating about the moral imperative of software to be free.
P.S. In your continuing pattern of not being able to correctly parse a sentence, you seem to have missed the part where I tallied up your 60,000 a week to 240,000 a month, pointed out that there was no evidence that 100% of those people then block 100% of the Flash they encounter, and then pointed out that those 240,000 a month still represent less than one percent of the average traffic to the sorts of sites I’m talking about. By hey, why start listening to anyone now? You are obviously quite proud of how far you have made it in life, not listening to anything anyone has ever told you up to now.
What exactly might I be ms-reading.
Either your in charge of the decisions involving millions of dollars or you ain’t and are simply expressing the
views of one whose artistic practice is the subject of debate,
Please , make that point clear ,are you one with but an opinion or you like myself have an opinion that actually
directs the expenditure of those millions of dollars?
A really simple question , fish or cut bait.
Amazing, at the beginning of this conversation you were just a consultant, brought in by companies to advise them, and in the space of one blog comment exchange you have now been promoted to the executive who actually makes the decision? Wow, you really have a career to be proud of! To think you would move that far up the corporate ranks in just a day!
Don’t kid yourself, I have seen dozens of guys like you come and go in the entertainment industry. You come in, thinking you know better than anyone else, make a proposal for sweeping changes, which are them implemented in a smaller scale as a test case, and long after you are gone and have already cashed your check, the systems you recommended turn out not to be able to stand up to the production deadlines, and are never rolled out to the full pipeline. That, of course, doesn’t stop you from crowing from the rooftops about how you “[directed] the expenditure of those millions of dollars” for X or Y company, because you didn’t have to stay to deal with the aftermath of the utter failure of your system. Last year it was guys saying everything should be CSS animation, the year before that it was guys saying it should be .net, the year before that it was JAVA, clearly this year will be the year of blowhard HTML 5 consultants. Meanwhile the content keeps getting actually made and on the web in Flash.
Every major web site gets at least one of you guys every year, and in only about 20% of the cases does anything actually useful to the production pipeline get rolled out. More often than not, all that happens is management spends a ton of money on some useless system that the people actually producing the site either have to work around, or totally ignore because it doesn’t actually help anyone get their job done. Will this perpetually broken consultant clock some day be right? Sure, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Will HTML 5 be the one that is right? Maybe, but not this year, or even next year, or probably even the year after that, and by then the blowhard consultant brigade will probably have moved on to the next open-your-wallet buzzword.
[Amazing, at the beginning of this conversation you were just a consultant, brought in by companies to advise them, and in the space of one blog comment exchange you have now been promoted to the executive who actually makes the decision?]
Yup , as a consultant , I am often given free reign
to choose the technologies involved, as well as
the people involved.
Why would it come as a surprise that executives often hire consultants and delegate authority to them?
emmm?
Deferring to web standards whenever possible
is the foolish policy of Google that poverty ridden
company that only made 5.5 billion dollars last year
running a piddly 450,000+ servers.
Google is putting their money where their mouth
is pursuing a top quality, high performance open standards CODEC for the video aspect of HTML5
and in about a week we should know how one of their approaches to this task is panning out.
I am in agreement with Google’s philosophy
on technology, and not yours.
Why would I put much stock in the opinion
of one who admittedly would cost my clients
millions of dollars and blow off 1% of the audience
here, 1% of the audience there and call that approach
the preferred one?.
Yeah, now I know for a fact you have never worked for a single Fortune 100 company on a public facing project, and haven’t the first clue what business is like at real companies. It all makes sense now. Your colossal ego is the product of being a relatively big fish in your little pond. See, in the big boy world of multinational corporations, not even VPs of technology have the kind of free reign you are claiming to have, much less some lowly consultant.
You are just a small fish puffing yourself up as a big mover and shaker, because you can’t even begin to understand how out of your depth you really are. Your braggadocio and completely unrealistic view of the role consultants play in the business world give you away. If any major company trusted you enough to give you that kind of power, you would be their CTO, not some consultant, and even then you would have to run these sorts of decisions by the VPs of the various business units, and have the approval of all the stake holders.
Yes, we get it, if Viacom, Disney, News Corp, and Time Warner would just be smart enough to hand their business over to you, all their problems would be solved, because you know more about what makes compelling content than Bob Iger, more about how to monetize eyeballs than Summner Redstone, more about how to cut costs than Rupert Murdoch, more about how to turn a profit on a network than Jefferey Bewkes, and more about how to profit from technology that Steve Jobs. We get it, you are the smartest guy in the world, and anyone who doesn’t listen to you is a fool, because some idiot once told you the Internet was a fad, and you told him he was wrong, which makes you infallible.
Five o’clock Charlie returns. We were wondering where
we were going to get are daily chuckle today.
You invoke the name of Steve Jobs in in a
conversation denouncing HTML5 and promoting Flash,
how ironic.
But of course your goal was to drop a bunch of names
to as you would say “puff yourself up”, but in reality
you just gave us all another big laugh.
Actually Steve Jobs has done us all a big favor
with his stance against Flash and championing
HTML5.
The word is out that hulu.com is working on a Flash
free offering and may indeed be implementing HTML5
So I guess your fools list will now include hulu
along with Google , Steve Jobs (oops) , and myself
in believing flash is going to be less relevant.
Mr Lynch (CTO) over there at Warner is still parroting
the Adobe party line “word for word”, but
no matter how many corporate bishops try to
say the world is flat, there are others who will
say it is round, that it is the World Wide Web and not the Adobe Wide Web.
But once again five o’clock Charlie thanks for the chuckles and we’ll be waiting for your next installment
of comical banter. The only downside of which
is it takes an hour for everyone to stop laughing
and get back to work.
[I would think that a developer would know that traffic is not the only factor ]
Are you fucking kidding? Eyeballs is what it is all
about , and if them eye balls disagree even fucking
better , that for lack of a beter word is called talk radio
Be my guest to be the idiot that says talk radio must address things in a non controversial way,
Standards are not in any way about right and wrong
and if if that is your point of view , please , save us all the time
You really can’t read a sentence, can you? The full sentence was “I would think that a developer would know that traffic is not the only factor involved in the cost of maintenance of a site.”
Traffic is how you generate revenue, but getting that traffic by hosting user generated content is a lot cheaper than getting that traffic by hosting original content. Of course I shouldn’t have to explain that to a powerful decider like you, in charge of millions of dollars, and responsible for all the highest traffic sites on the web. By the way, since you don’t seem to be very good at discerning the intent or meaning of a sentence, that last one was dismissive sarcasm.
You can use all the “dismissive sarcasm” you like,
stomp your feet, yell and scream, be my guest.
You “used to be” the owner of a development company? I can certainly see why that would be past
tence.
Your now an ar-teest , perhaps you can take your crayons and scribble your way out of it, because your current line of bull ain’t getting it.
Oh John…
*facepalm*
Folks, why can’t we just get along? I mean this app is slick, hard to argue with that. But one app won’t kill flash as a technology, and why would you want to see Flash dead? Just as javascript/css/html5 has it uses so does Flash. I’ve seen some amazing sites made with javascript and Flash, and I’ve seen plenty terrible sites developed using either technologies. At the end of the day, what matters most is picking the right tool for the job.
*laughs at the children*
It’s all good sport. :)
Why I can’t see any output from my HTML5 code?
I am a developer. HTML and JS is a step backwards in programming. It’s a patch job. I can develop your little editor with Flex 3 / Actionscript Flash in a few lines of sensible code. Flex 3 Editor can be downloaded for free if you want. Its all drag and drop development and compiled code too.
It takes 10 times as long to develop apps with HTML and JS even with all the crazy non-standardized libraries. Why anyone would want to develop in an app with HTML and Javascript is beyond me. I can’t even imagine the maintenance… Sorry, I am not a masochist.
WOW, I was amazed to see that, first of all I didn’t realize that it is developed in html5. This is good to see that browsers started supported this. I’m sure soon it will change the nature of developments. cool guys .. thank you for the post. Keep up good work.
Steve Jobs makes me laugh. How can the creator of Apple Quicktime slag off Flash?
Jobs claims that he believes Flash should be an open standard because it is a “web technology.” Flash isn’t just a web standard, it’s a desktop and executable format as well. Flash is as much a web technology as Quicktime is – and I don’t see that running very smoothly on my system, or being an open standard.
It’s interesting to characterize the discussion as
an Apple vs. Flash thing, as really , aside from the fact
that Apple is championing HTML5, it does not matter
that Apple has some clay feet on the open-source issue.
I’m already developing in HTML5, and achieving a great
deal with just what has already been implemented in the browsers.
With Google expected to open source VP8 next month
we will have but the expected phantom patent law
suits launched by MPEG-LA/H.264 patent pool
members like Microsoft via various straw man
companies, like they tried against Google in the UK a
couple of months ago in trying to fool the EU
into pursuing anti-trust actions against Google
(Anti-trust being an odd word coming from Microsoft)
With the CODEC issue resolved , the next iterations
of the browsers (Including IE9) will have sufficient support for HTML5 to eliminate the need for Flash
in well over 90% of the use cases.
Adobe Flash authors should be urging Adobe to adjust
their CS5 offering to output HTML5 instead of just Flash, so Flash authors can simply continue on doing
what they do, and Flash simply sent to live with “RealVideo” and “IE6″