Flash vs HTML5 (vs Silverlight, vs AJAX…)
People who want HTML5 to replace Flash have no heart.
People who want to get rid of Flash have no brain.
As little as two years ago, very few people would have questioned the dominance of Flash as a solution to rich user experiences. In fact, it had an adoption rate so far ahead of its perceived competitor Silverlight, and had an entry level so much lower than its predecessor Java that Adobe could be forgiven for feeling pretty good about their platform.
That was until Apple declared war on Adobe. HTML 5 has now replaced Silverlight in its challenge against Flash, and circles everywhere see this as a showdown between two technologies that appear to do similar things.
Apple has banned Flash on its mobile platforms, claiming that it's a memory-hog, and that Flash is unsuitable for mobile browsing. Instead, Apple is banking on HTML5 - the next incarnation of HTML that, with the help of Javascript, will be able to create animations, rich user experiences and other previously Flash-exclusive content. Considering that Apple has become a leader in the smartphone market - this has caused more than a little bit of panic among Flash developers.
Adobe has long suggested that they will create mobile-friendly Flash environment, but sadly this looks like a broken promise.
The only catch with HTML 5 is it will not become a W3C recommendation for years to come. To put this into perspective, all this talk about HTML5 becoming a new standard won't be standard until at least we've gone through several 2-year iPhone contracts. In fact, the existing HTML 5 showcases on the Apple website can only be viewed with the latest version of Safari (which has a very un-standard user penetration rate of around 3.4%), so if you created a fully-featured HTML 5 site, you would be shutting out more users than you gain from Apple's iPhone and iPad products.
As a developer who uses Flash as my favoured platform, I don't feel that HTML 5 will affect our work any time soon, but it doesn't mean that Flash will stay around forever - after all, it is only natural for newer, better technologies to come and go. This is a fact of our industry and completely investing yourself in one technology is close-minded and risky.
Where I work at The White Agency, there are no 'Flash developers', but we are known as Rich Internet Application (RIA) developers. The team understands that though Flash has its benefits today, tomorrow things may change and we shouldn't try to shoe-horn projects into the Flash platform if it could be done better in HTML 5 (or Silverlight, or AJAX).
The smart developer would realise that actively adapting to, or at least understanding new technologies is the key to having a long and prosperous career, while those who are stubbornly holding onto any technology are setting themselves up for a very nasty surprise at the end.
