In the days since the iPad’s announcement, there’s been an ongoing discussion going on in web circles about what its lack of support for Flash means for that technology, for Adobe, for video on the web, and frankly, for the web as a whole. I’m not really sure why this debate didn’t rear it’s head when the iPhone was introduced, or when Android was introduced, or when Palm’s WebOS was introduced (since all three didn’t include Flash support), but whatever. The iPad is here and we’re talking about it now, so here are some off-the-cuff, not very well-thought-out thoughts on the matter.
Since the iPad announcement, standardistas are coming out of the woodwork to lay the proverbial smaque down on developers and sites who’ve been using Adobe’s Flash technology to serve up video, saying, more or less, “See, we told you so. If you don’t use web standards, you’ll eventually get bitten in the ass.” This is a sentiment I agree with, for the most part. But in this particular care, it’s nothing more than overzealous bullshit.
What would you have them use instead? Web standards have, for years and years, offered no alternative. These developers used Flash for video not because they didn’t care about standards, but because there wasn’t a viable, standards-based alternative. So please, get off your fucking high horse and stop treating these people the same way you treat those who are still writing tag soup, table-based layouts (while you’re at it, stop treating those people that way, too).
Okay, okay. I hear you. HTML5. Yeah, yeah. Fine. Look, I’m as stoked about HTML5’s video support as you are. Really, I am. But it’s not practical today. It works only in the minority browsers, and even those can’t agree on a codec to roll with. If YouTube switched to HTML5/H.264 today, they’d be irrelevant tomorrow. And if you run a video-heavy site, you’re probably in the same boat.
Sorry standardistas, but Flash is still the best way to make video content accessible to the largest number of users. That’s a fact. Flash is more accessible than web standards, when it comes to video. It just is. You can’t deny it. I fully expect and hope for that to change, though. If you haven’t already explored HTML5 video, you should. Is is the future. But it’s not the present.
So what is the present? Frankly, the present, when it comes to video, is a g’damn nightmare. If you want to do it right, you need to use HTML5/H.264 support for Chrome and Safari, HTML5/Ogg support for Firefox, and fallback to Flash for everything else. And you still won’t get your content to everyone, because there are still browsers out there that support neither HTML5 nor Flash. And if you’re a major video content publisher (like, say, a journalism site), I wouldn’t blame you at all if multiple encodings of every video you produce is a non-starter, and you decide to just roll with Flash for now, ignoring the minority of devices (iPhone/Android, etc.) that don’t have Flash installed. I mean, shit, you’ve got deadlines and business goals to meet, as well as user experience ones. I get that. For now, do what works for your organization and don’t let the standardistas get you down.
Flash is really great at three things: video, games, and ads. I’ve addressed video. As far as games go, these mobile device manufacturers with their own app stores are never going to be too keen on Flash games running on their devices, because they’d rather sell you native games. You may not like it, but it’s a fact. Get used to it. As for ads, well, I have no idea. We all know the journalism industry needs to find a new business model, anyway — maybe this is as good a time as any.
Absolutely right about video. But the major standardista arguments that I’ve been reading (Clarke/Zeldman/etc.) have more to do with people still delivering UI/content in flash than people delivering video, don’t they? While we’re all hoping proprietary-plugin-based video is on the way out, I don’t know anyone crazy enough to pretend it isn’t the current reality for all of us - if even only as a fall-back. Point is: don’t pretend you can build a site on flash without considering standards first.
Well said.
That said, every single post on this issue for the last few days seems to revolve around video and ignore the fact that ad agencies are still making monstrously unusable and inaccessible full-Flash sites.
Flash ? video on the web. Yes, video accounts for a very big chunk of Flash on the web, and its probably the main reason the plugin is so ubiquitous nowadays. But it’s really not a huge deal for me, even if you pretend HTML5 doesn’t exist. On my Android phone (not sure about iPhone?) YouTube and Vimeo videos launch in the phone’s native player. Could this be an easy fallback option for these devices? If no Flash or HTML5 then try launch the native player?
I’d love to see some commentary on this issue from someone more eloquent than me that completely disregards video. What does this mean for full-Flash sites (and can the alcohol industry survive without them)?
Cheers Jeff :)
Or Eric could just come along and say exactly what I was thinking in less words…
“I mean, shit, you’ve got deadlines and business goals to meet” <— My exact thoughts… we shouldn’t be left in the position of juggling with formats/plugins, whatever, just because two companies are competing. It’s just like the browser wars again.
You bring up some GREAT points, I always love your bluntness. But I’d have to say my arguement against Flash is basically what Eric Meyer’s wrote in the first comment. I think people bring up HTML 5 video because that is ONE of the arguments Flash lovers like to throw out there. However I think we all (standardistas) want to see the people who are delivering UI/content in flash to be away from the interwebs.
So I just get excited and see this as maybe the first glimpse at the “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Kind of like here recently I think we are finally realizing that the demise of IE6 is close… really close.
I think the decision to leave Flash out of the iPad was grounded, but perhaps not timed right. You make the point that HTML5/H.264 isn’t a realistic alternative now, but I think it soon will be. Youtube’s already taken the plunge, and I expect a lot more support for HTML5 video in the coming years. Video is certainly my biggest reason for supporting Flash, but I don’t care enough to raise a fuss about it. In the long term, I think this is good for web standards, because it will lower the Flash statistics and encourage browser vendors and websites to increase support for standardized rich media such as the HTML5 video.
Good points Jeff. The best solution in my eyes is serving HTML5/h264 based video for Webkit based browsers (Safari, Chrome, Palm Pre, etc) and then falling back to a flash based h264 video player for the rest. That seems to fit most cases but is far from perfect.
Well said, Jeff. It’s hard to find any argument that isn’t laced with self-interest, but this is one of the fairest, most pragmatic rants I’ve read ;) A utopian standards-based web is where we’d all like to be, but - unfortunately - utopias aren’t built on the foundations of competing browser providers and bickering working groups.
Oh, I’ve definitely seen many talking about video, too (see Gruber).
Not really. It’s not enabled by default, and they outwardly say it’s an experiment.
I agree…in the long term.
That’s a pretty good solution for now, I agree. It does ignore the pending h.264 (WebKit) versus Ogg (Mozilla) war, but I guess there’s no reason not to stand on the sidelines and wait to see how that one pans out.
Not beeing able to display flash pages or videos is one of the biggest problems with the iPad as well as with the iPhone. The other big problem is, as already mentioned by a lot of ppl in the last iPad-article, the multi-tasking issue. Actually I cant understand how Apple can build something great like the iPad without solving small problems with big impact. Lets hope that there will be at least some updates/upgrades.
“…standardistas are coming out of the woodwork to lay the proverbial smaque down on developers and sites who’ve been using Adobe’s Flash technology to serve up video, saying, more or less, “See, we told you so. If you don’t use web standards, you’ll eventually get bitten in the ass.””
“Coming out of the woodwork” is a good description for this sort of termite. Rule #1 in web development: don’t listen to people who don’t make websites in the real world. God I miss being a vocal, anti-standardista.
There’s an argument that I’ve yet to hear in this debate. Apple’s hardware is optimized for the media formats it supports. That means the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and the last few generations of iPods that play videos all have hardware decoding of h.264. Flash uses software to decode video.
Apple is all about the overall experience of a device, if you need to start doing a lot of software decoding on device that’s meant to sit on your lap; it’s going to get hot, and it’s going to burn through battery life. But you can’t allow flash without allowing video decoded through flash, so you might as well block it all and encourage people to do it in a way that looks towards the future and tries to pull people out of the past.
Forget standards and formats and and all of the other quasi-religious debates we have every day and think about it from aunt Mary’s perspective; can I watch a movie on this thing with it sitting on my lap or will I need a hot pad to lift it 20 minutes in? Hell, will the battery last long enough to watch a 2-hour movie?
Unless a browser comes out that only supports Ogg, doesn’t support Flash, and has a user base comparable to that of Apple’s mobile ecosystem, I’d have to say h.264 has probably already won this one.
Perhaps, but I don’t expect the Firefox team to give this one up without a fight. Essentially, letting H.264 win will have us (potentially, but not unthinkable) end up with the whole GIF patent nightmare all over again.
Flash on Windows uses hardware acceleration for video, but they can’t on OS X because Apple won’t let them access hardware directly.
That’s the argument Apple’s been making since the iPhone came out, and it’s certainly very valid. I wonder if it’s as valid on the iPad, though. We know the iPhone doesn’t have the processing power for the software decoding, nor does it have a very big battery, but the iPad reportedly has both.
You may be right. h.264 is certainly in the lead, but Firefox has a very significant market share and may be able to pull some weight. There are certainly plenty of developers who will be annoyed if their shiny new HTML5 video plays don’t work in FF without re-encoding the video, first. They’ll raise a stink — who knows if it’ll get them anywhere or not.
It would be interesting if YouTube switches completely to html5 with h.264 and then forces IE users to get the Google Chrome Frame plugin. Then Flash video would really be hurting.
Let’s call a spade a spade - the only reason that there is no direct flash support is that you can deliver applications and I mean full fledge applications by bypassing the app store - period.
Jeff,
“What would you have them use instead?” is indeed the question. I wish I had read this before writing my own, but I think we agree. The present is, unfortunately, a combination of Flash and other methods. But the Future? In the future there is no Flash.
The Withering Away of Flash.
I dream of the day when I can encode my video in one format and with one
Interesting? Sure. But there’s no way they’d ever do that at this point.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. You can deliver full-fledged applications via HTML5 and web standards, too, and they allow that. I definitely think app store revenue is part of it — especially when it comes to games — but I also think there’s a stability issue at play. But mostly, I think Apple wants developers to make one of two choices: either the fully-closed appstore way, or the fully-open web way. No in-between.
I definitely think it’ll come — just not particularly soon.
You forget yourself. There is also Silverlight as a fallback and not just flash, it’s superior video support would be preferable from a cost perspective for organizations vs flash.
You asked why the Flash issue didn’t come up when the iPhone came out (or other mobile devices), and I think it’s because most people with an iPhone or other mobile device have a desktop or laptop at home. When you get a link that you can’t see because its content is in Flash, you just go home and load it up on your computer.
The iPad is going to be marketed to people who don’t really need a full-on home computer, or will hope to replace people’s home PC, so this is an issue. These people will have use cases mobile users don’t have. You don’t really watch a Hulu show on your phone, or shop (shopping sites are huge Flash offenders), and if you play games, they’re native apps.
For this reason, businesses who run Flash products need to start worrying about iPad users in their market (which didn’t really include mobile device users before). So now it’s an issue businesses will have to adapt to. It’s expensive, and a pain, whether the solution is to make an iPad app or find some open source software to replace a currently functional and accessible product. It’s like maintaining two versions for competing browsers all over again, and it sorta sucks.
I work for a company whose product is Flash based (video conferencing in the browser.) iPad markets aren’t a big concern for us, but if webcams become common for iPad users, it would be. I can say (thought I’m not a developer) I don’t think there is any other software alternative that we could switch to for our app at this time. There’s a lot of talk about video players, but what about interactive applications that incorporate live video? I think it’s still pretty far off in the future, but it will soon be time to start thinking about it and preparing.
Flash based websites which are coded and programmed pretty bad are slowing browsers down, especially when it comes to mobile devices. The iPad is an mobile device as well. A step into the right direction is HTML5 and hopefully everything will be fine with it.
Sarah, I wish you were right about this, but I don’t think you are. The iPad is a device that must sync with iTunes (for example, to install updates and to activate the wireless), just like the iPhone. If it must sync with iTunes, then clearly Apple expects it to be a secondary device to people’s PCs/Macs.
As said in my piece on the iPad, I wish Apple had set it up as a replacement for your computer, not a device you have alongside your computer, but it doesn’t seem like they have.
Aside from that little bit, I totally agree with your post. It’s time for people to start looking to the future, absolutely. Even if it’s not really possible to put together a video solution without Flash today they need to start exploring it (just as YouTube and Vimeo have done).
And you’re right — I can’t think of an alternative to Flash for web-based video conferencing applications. As far as I know, JS doesn’t have access to that hardware like Flash does.
Everything will be fine — eventually. But not today. Like I said, and like Sarah has pointed out, there are Flash-based applications you simply can’t re-create with HTML5 today
Check out the latest scoop on Flash CS5 (still currently in private beta). I haven’t personally gotten my hands on it, hopefully that will happen soon, but according to what I’ve read it’s gonna support Flash apps compiled to native iPhone, iPad, and iPod apps.
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplat…
Patrick-
I have seen that, and while it’s interesting, I don’t think it helps anyone much. The problem isn’t that people can’t build native apps for the iPhone/iPad (they can!), the probably is that they can’t make Flash components of their web app work on the iPhone/iPad.
There may be a handful of game developers who take advantage of Flash’s iPhone OS packager, but for people writing other native apps, it makes far more sense to just use the Cocoa APIs.
Plus, I wonder if apps built with Flash’s packager will even qualify for the AppStore, given that there’s a no-runtime clause.
But it’s definitely interesting. :)
Flash based websites which are coded and programmed pretty bad are slowing browsers down, especially when it comes to mobile devices. The iPad is an mobile device as well. A step into the right direction is HTML5 and hopefully everything will be fine with it.
Bit of a straw man here… Standardistas don’t deride Flash video. Like Real Media, Windows Media Player, or BitTorrent, Flash video is just a transfer of bits that happens to occur while you are surfing HTML content.
If the blue lego of death undoes your value proposition, you have worse problems than getting Flash on the iPad.