Flash in the hand: Skyfire has developed a mobile browser that converts Flash videos to HTML5 videos, making them viewable on devices aren’t compatible with Flash.
Skyfire
HTML5 is changing the look of Web video, but can it edge out Flash?
At the end of August, the band Arcade Fire launched an online experiment with Google that allowed fans to build a personalized music video to accompany the new song "We Used to Wait." But the video was more than a normal video: it was a collection of video windows within the Web browser that provided, among other images, aerial and street-level footage of any address a user provided (via Google Maps).
This sort of functionality would be impossible to offer using most online video players--pieces of software that run via a separate browser plug-in--like Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight. But the Arcade Fire video ran directly from the browser and was built with the emerging Web programming language HTML5.
Although the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which governs new Web standards, has yet to sign off on all of the possible features of HTML5 video, a number of websites are charging ahead with the technology. CNN and The Onion, for instance, have used it to build out their video libraries, in part because it offers new design options. "The technology is far more expressive," says Ben Galbraith, director of developer relations at mobile computing company Palm. "It frees up graphic designers and potentially unlocks developers."
The fact that Apple's iPhone, iPod, and iPad products don't run Flash-based videos is also pressuring media companies to look to HTML5 as a way to reach as large an audience as possible.
Currently, however, online video is going through an awkward stage. While HTML5 promises to give programmers more flexibility in the way they present videos, and allow these videos to play on Apple devices, the new Web standard lacks some features of Flash. In addition, there are already millions of videos, including much of YouTube, that can only be played using Flash. And Flash has been around for years, so many developers already know how to incorporate Flash-based videos into websites.
But there's been a flurry of activity to get HTML5 up to speed. Recently, a company called Skyfire announced that it had developed (and submitted for approval to Apple's app store) a mobile Web browser that converts Flash-based video to HTML5 so an iPhone user can watch it. Another company, Sublime Video, launched a player that allows programmers to reproduce the features provided by Flash video using HTML5.
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HTML5 represents a great opportunity to once again make the web browser a credible platform for the type of content being delivered. When the web started we actually wrote web pages in HTML. In recent years HTML has become a shell and is pretty near a joke because nothing that anybody wants to do can actually be written in the native language of the web browser. We should not need Flash, and I do not want Flash. I want an HTML capable enough that I can write content natively in the language of the web.
The argument that Flash is more well established right now and has a deeper support structure is specious - if we really believed that we would never move forward with anything new because the old is always better known and has a better support structure. This is the age of instant technology change. In a few years nobody will even remember what Flash was. It is long past time to move HTML forward, and I see HTML5 as a giant step in that process.
In my opinion, I understood the idea behind the video, but it still seems like HTML5 is not there yet, in fact I think the video wasn't that great.
Here is an example how Flash outperforms HTML5
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/google-logo-balls/
http://rawkes.com/experiments/google-bouncing-balls-canvas/
You cannot use those 2 visualisations as a comparison between Flash and HTML5 canvas. The only difference between them is the frame rate. I could easily speed up the canvas version so it replicates the speed of the Flash one.
Bring it on ;-) Performance is critical when you want to do complex stuff.
HTML5 will overtake some of the market held by Adobe flash. However, this will take time. This should take about 3 years.
By then, we will see API's similar to Google' App Engine that abstract much of HTML5/Javascript features into Java/python/.Net libraries that will make the programmer feel like he is developing an application for an operating system. Then we'll enter the next period of proprietary technology.
Yes it does take time.
We can't forget that Microsoft who are big in the browser department (Hey I made a joke) still haven't released IE9, their first browser which will support HTML5.
And don't forget that even 10 years after it was released, the much loathed IE6 is still a consideration for some when building web apps. I hope we don't see the same kind of time frame for IE7/IE8 to be consigned to the browser museum but unfortunately I believe that would be wishful thinking.
And of course we can't assume that Flash technology has stagnated in development. Who is to say in 5-10 years time when HTML5 is the norm that developers won't be saying "Wow have you seen the new flash stuff that is around - wish HTML5 could do that". Apples recent change in stance on Flash on Apple devices could well keep Adobe happy for the next decade at least.
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randhawp
13 Comments
Flash vs HTML5
When two technologies our compared, it is important to also compare the ecosystems - what 3rd party libraries are available, development environments, enterprise tools, widgets and programmer base. Whilst it is good to have evolution of HTML, but Flash, Flex (now Flash 4) and Action Script are battle proven, can support building complex interfaces that can run on a cell phone and any gizmo's seamlessly. As a developer I have used several tools and languages to express my self, and although I do not take sides, but Flash is just too good at this stage for a company developing interactive media, RIA or any web application to NOT use it. Let not a hardware manufacturers perceptions cloud the understanding of the mass of programmers - HTML5 is a new kid on the block, it got to prove itself and in the big world of the web where security, distribution, device independence and time to market are important Flash is the way to go. Period.
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