Thank your lucky stars

1
Nicholas Scheurich

Right on.
31st Jan 2010
2
Nathan Longbrook

Touché, Apple.
31st Jan 2010
3
Chat Clussman

Heh
31st Jan 2010
4
Paul Davis

Haha, well said!
31st Jan 2010
5
Cesar

spot on!
31st Jan 2010
6
dirk

One more of this gleeful flash basher posts.

Maybe in one year or in two, when apple has gained world domination, you have to explain your clients that the standard-conform site you made for them doesn’t work at all for people who use the very latest browsing software on the very latest browsing devices, because apple has replaced all standards with their own specifications and there is nothing you can do about it.

Better boycott now.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
31st Jan 2010
7
Anthony Short

@dirk Flash was never a standard. It was a workaround.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
31st Jan 2010
8
Nicholas Scheurich

@dirk I fail to see how your proposed scenario could come to pass when Apple’s “specifications” are universal web standards.
31st Jan 2010
9
dirk

@ anthony: I never said that. That’s not my point.

@ Nicholas: Your right. But would you hand over web-standards to the benevolence of one company? What if next time apple not decides to kill a proprietary format but an open one? Dave Winer hast postetd an excellent piece on this at csripting.com

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
31st Jan 2010
10
Simon Banyard

@Dirk: “But would you hand over web-standards to the benevolence of one company?”

That’s not what Apple or any of the so called “Flash bashers” (ooh-err, that sounds dirty!) are trying to say, as well you know. As a matter of fact, that’s almost precisely what you and the “Flash lovers” are actually suggesting! Apple support the *open* HTML5 standard, along with the *open* CSS3 standard. As well as the *open* JavaScript and the myriad different frameworks. Apple do not control *any* of these. They, along with Google, Mozilla and Microsoft to name some of the companies involved with the HTML 5 working group. In fact, HTML 5 is actually how Apple originally intended third party apps to be written for the iPhone OS platform! Apple has simply chosen not to support a closed, non-standard, proprietary system that has been proven time and time again to not work particularly well with their (or other developers) platforms. It’s hardly surprising, is it?
31st Jan 2010
11
dirk

@Simon:

1. I’m no flash lover. I’m pragmatic. In fact I hardly ever met any flash “lover”.

2. Apple supports html5? They do *at the moment*. I don’t trust apple, I don’t trust adobe and I don’trust microsoft. As soon as they are in control they will begin trying to lock you in.

3. We will not be able to build something like floorplanner.com or hobnox the next 5 years in html5, so there simply is a need for flash, period.

4. Regarding openness on the Iphone (and soon iPad)-platform: there is not a single patent-free Audio or Video-Codec running on these machines. Try to install Ogg Theora on your iPhone. So much about opennes (I will not start to rant about this stalinistic institution called appstore, or other browser than safari on the platform).

5. We do need true “open” platforms which let users the freedom to decide which tools to use and which content to access in which way they ever like. The iPhone/IPad plattform is a step backwards into the early eighties in this sense.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
31st Jan 2010
12
Oliver Turner

If you made sites using Flash, pretty soon you’d be explaining to a client why the site you made for them doesn’t work at all for people who use the very latest browsing software on the very latest browsing devices.
No, and this is a false comparison: your site *can* look and function the same - or at least to an acceptable degree - in IE.
It seems to me that you’re letting your dislike of Flash obscure the point that Apple is breaking the web. I didn’t like it when it when Microsoft did it through incompetence; I don’t like it done by design either.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
1st Feb 2010
13
Denis Walker

@Oliver The point is that the web is broken by Flash, not Apple. There have always been people without Flash installed, whether it’s because of the accessibility issues it raises, that they’re in an environment where they can’t install it (not just i[Phone|Pad]s, but at work or on less common operating systems that don’t have support) or simply on principle.

I’m not keen on the approach Apple has taken in locking iPhoneOS down, but the lack of Flash on their products doesn’t break the web. Sites that use Flash are already broken - Apple’s choice just draws more attention to the fact.
1st Feb 2010
14
Andy

At those who don’t like Apple creating locked down platforms - just don’t buy one of those products - they’re not forcing you at knifepoint to remove Flash from your computer. If you want it, you run it.

So far they’ve not removed it from desktop Safari, and I’d imagine that’d be unlikely (especially retrospectively anyway), so even if you are a die-hard Mac user with a insatiable passion for vector plugins, I really don’t see why you need to worry. There are so many things you don’t have direct control over on the web anyway, you should be used to goalposts moving - it’s the very nature of an innovative, evolving medium.

All the major browsers are to some extent now on board and with progressing with HTML5; and old, proprietary and sometimes buggy Flash (as we know it) will suffer as a consequence.

Well, I don’t run it on my desktop anymore anyway. Not missed it yet and everything is so quick!
1st Feb 2010
15
Joggink

@Dirk

1) I can hook you up with some flash lovers if you like
2) Seems like you don’t trust a lot of the major companies. The choices they make are off course always in their own interest, but be sure that they know what their users want.
3) Floorplanner.com and hobnox? Maybe you should take a look at the cappuccino framework (http://cappuccino.org/)

4) I don’t get the point and ranting about the appstore, really. I have had a nokia, couldn’t access my system folders, had some fancy menus for “messages”, “address book”, and so on, nobody ever complained about it. Same with my samsung, and also the same with my iphone. Making a platform for users to create apps for the iphone is a superbe step forward, and I’ve read millions of blogposts ranting about the app store approval process, but I’d rather read about apps not getting in the app store, then reading about apps that send your address book to some obscure company so they can start spamming around, etc…

5) the “we” in the “we need open platforms” only applies on powerusers, my parents, grandparents, they don’t care that they can’t access their system folders, they send emails, type some word documents, browse the web. I’m glad a solution came, because right now, my grandparents are calling me every 2 weeks because some kind of virus affected their PC. And in the end, all they wanted was to be able to surf the web, keep in touch with their friends via email, look at some holiday pictures, etc… As a poweruser we have our macbooks, mac pro’s and imacs, give it a rest, and buy your mom a nice iPad. (http://adactio.com/journal/1644/)
1st Feb 2010
16
Joggink

@Andy The main reason they don’t support flash on their iphone/ipad is because of the “unlimited memory” it uses. Adobe doesn’t limit this in any kind, so rather no flash support on an iphone (which I haven’‘t missed a second, most flash are ads). Imagine that iphones supported flash, and crash when visiting memory absorbing flash websites, in the end, apple would still be the bad guy…
1st Feb 2010
17
Andy

@Joggink that’s right, and I agree.
1st Feb 2010
18
Oliver Turner

@Denis Walker
The point is that the web is broken by Flash, not Apple. There have always been people without Flash installed, whether it’s because of the accessibility issues it raises, that they’re in an environment where they can’t install it (not just i[Phone|Pad]s, but at work or on less common operating systems that don’t have support) or simply on principle.
Again, no. Flash does not break the web for the reasons you give any more than using CSS3 or JavaScript does: if you have it enabled, great: you get all the toys. If not, fine: the site degrades incrementally according to the platforms’ capabilities. No CSS3? No text-stroke, no loss. No JavaScript? No problem: the page reloads rather than making AJAX calls. No images? Bonzer: just read the alt tag content or get JAWS to do it for you. No Flash? Hey ho… the content is rendered in HTML anyway, rinse and repeat.

So what happens when the primary functionality cannot be reproduced *but* by the use of [insert technology of choice, open, closed, Schroedingerian, whatever]... what then? There are many things I want to be able to offer users that HTML5 + JavaScript are simply incapable of.

Bottom line: I think it is disingenuous to frame the argument in terms of Flash vs web standards. Apple - and it pains me to say this as a fully-fledged fanboi - is trying to define and control every aspect of the platform and is happy to throw some of the most interesting work on the web under the bus in order to do so. They can’t own or control web standards, but they *are* making a power-grab on what consitutes web *content*.

My lucky stars remain unthanked.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
1st Feb 2010
19
DAZ

Dirk’s post 11 hits the nail on the head. Keep things open - The Ogg Theora example is a good one. I don’t particularly like Flash at all, it is responsible for some of the most horrendous sites on the web. But it has also solved many problems in the past (no Flash = no Youtube). I want to have the option to be able to access something written in Flash if I want to and the option to ignore it if I want to. What I don’t want is a locked down platform that dictates what I can and can’t access on my system. That’s not open at all.

If Flash is still being used by developers then why not support it? I’m all for supporting open standards, but that would include open video standards too. At the moment, Apple are picking and choosing which open standards suit them, possible at the expense of their end users.
1st Feb 2010
20
Oliver Turner

@Joggink
The main reason they don’t support flash on their iphone/ipad is because of the “unlimited memory” it uses. Adobe doesn’t limit this in any kind [...]
Not true in the upcoming 10.1 release. Not that this will make any difference to Apple.

Imagine that iphones supported flash, and crash when visiting memory absorbing flash websites, in the end, apple would still be the bad guy…
I have yet to see a single commentator on either side of the debate ever blame Apple for the performance of the Flash plugin. The single exception to this is hardware acceleration, where the Adobe devs have explained that Apple does not provide API methods for decoding. In every other case it’s Flash that gets the bad rap.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
1st Feb 2010
21
Andy Clarke

Funny. I didn’t intend this as a Flash vs standards death-match, nor an anti-Adobe, pro-Apple love-in.

What I am genuinely interested in (but didn’t explicitly ask for) is how (if you’re a Flash producer) you might go about explaining the lack of ‘anything’ visible to your clients who may not care about the wider debate nor understand the issues?
1st Feb 2010
22
DAZ

@Joggink, you compare one closed platform with loads of others (Nokia, Samsung etc), hardly a fair argument. What you want is an open platform like Android. Of course, Android also doesn’t support Flash at the moment, but the crucial difference is that Android is not purposefully stopping Flash being on there - it will be eventually. And eventually there will be Android tablets and people will have the choice of what they want to use.
1st Feb 2010
23
DAZ

One reason why we still need Flash that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the Unknown Future.

HTML5 is great, but the spec only really solves current problems of what we want to do on the web. In the past Flash has been used to plug any gaps while Standards catch up. Examples off the top of my head are Youtube (and online video in general) and SiFR image replacement. We didn’t know that we’d use the web for these things when the specs were written, but Flash allowed them to happen.

In the future, we might want to do something else that just isn’t possible with HTML5. Flash would give a possibility of making it happen in the most cross-browser way possible.
1st Feb 2010
24
Oliver Turner

Funny. I didn’t intend this as a Flash vs standards death-match, nor an anti-Adobe, pro-Apple love-in.
Odd… I can’t see how a post telling me to “thank my lucky stars” that I can’t develop anything in Flash and have it render on the most important emerging platform there is could be construed as anything else.

What I am genuinely interested in (but didn’t explicitly ask for) is how (if you’re a Flash producer) you might go about explaining the lack of ‘anything’ visible to your clients who may not care about the wider debate nor understand the issues?
You think there *is* an explanation that would go over well with that breed of client? No… what’ll happen is that I’ll build what they want as far as web standards + jQuery/Raphael/Whatever will allow, and if they ask why they can’t have feature X I’ll explain knowing full well that in the back of their mind it’s an issue of my competence as a developer. Good times.

(This comment was left on For A Beautiful Web)
1st Feb 2010
25
DAZ

“What I am genuinely interested in (but didn’t explicitly ask for) is how (if you’re a Flash producer) you might go about explaining the lack of ‘anything’ visible to your clients who may not care about the wider debate nor understand the issues? “

Get a real computer and it will work.

;)
2nd Feb 2010