Why is Flash still around?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fudzy
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Fudzy

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Going through this site's ad banners (I'm a sucker for competitions) I see there quite a few Flash animations. I thought this was being phased out? Google's animated/interactive doodles don't use Flash anymore, what are they using now to develop those types of animations? I would like to like to get into that. Also is there yet an equivalent container file to the Flash .SWF?
 
Because there are no viable alternatives for some situations. Eg playing an encrypted video
 
Flash must fscking die, I can't stand it!

Then again we still also have IE6 crap around...
 
Why so many people hating on flash? Was the next best thing since sliced bread once upon a time. Has a huge developer community and is still widely used by many companies. Some are ready to even claiming HTML5 with Javascript or Silverlight have taken over Flash. Partially true, but not completely. Flash might be in decline, but will be around for sometime to come.
 
Well, it's mostly bundled and works on every computer.
The only viable alternative to flash is HTML5, which isn't widely as supported as flash is.

It will die out, just like XP... it's just going to take a long time.
 
A very common use case is playing drm protected content in a browser.

You cannot do this with a <video> tag out of the box. Encrypted Media Extensions does look promising though
 
Last edited:
Never learnt flash, never needed to, never found a use, never wasted my time.

The effort/payoff not anything near worthwhile
 
Some use cases:

1. Banners - to achieve certain animations, embedded fonts etc via browser, you'd need custom CSS and js, along with a bunch of html markup. Then you'd have to calculate the minified size to ensure it was permissible. Much easier to just be given a single file. Flash compresses vectors like nothing else, and does font subsetting natively.
2. Things like 3d work well in legacy flash versions, but not in css2 and non-canvas browsers.
3. If you're developing a browser game, or browser app, it's much easier to hide your source by compiling it to swf.
4. Flash plays well with media, and networks, allowing you to use sockets, av streaming and get webcam & mic input in all browsers.
5. Some IT policies don't allow modern browsers but do allow flash.
6. Flash source can be compiled for cross platform desktop use really easily.
7. Some animation effects are supported out the box in flash, eg grayscaling images, raster overlay effects etc. Flash vector animation masking has no canvas peer afaik.

I'm sure there are ways to now achieve much of what flash does via Ajax, js and css3 in modern browsers. But it's not necessarily preferable in all applications, or achievable in all environments.
 
murraybiscuit said:
Some use cases:

1. Banners - to achieve certain animations, embedded fonts etc via browser, you'd need custom CSS and js, along with a bunch of html markup. Then you'd have to calculate the minified size to ensure it was permissible. Much easier to just be given a single file. Flash compresses vectors like nothing else, and does font subsetting natively.
2. Things like 3d work well in legacy flash versions, but not in css2 and non-canvas browsers.
3. If you're developing a browser game, or browser app, it's much easier to hide your source by compiling it to swf.
4. Flash plays well with media, and networks, allowing you to use sockets, av streaming and get webcam & mic input in all browsers.
5. Some IT policies don't allow modern browsers but do allow flash.
6. Flash source can be compiled for cross platform desktop use really easily.
7. Some animation effects are supported out the box in flash, eg grayscaling images, raster overlay effects etc. Flash vector animation masking has no canvas peer afaik.

I'm sure there are ways to now achieve much of what flash does via Ajax, js and css3 in modern browsers. But it's not necessarily preferable in all applications, or achievable in all environments.
Click to expand...

https://www.google.com/webdesigner/ :)
 
Meh, very ad creation orientated but it's a good start I hope it develops quickly (excuse the pun).
 
aigle2am said:
Why so many people hating on flash? Was the next best thing since sliced bread once upon a time. Has a huge developer community and is still widely used by many companies. Some are ready to even claiming HTML5 with Javascript or Silverlight have taken over Flash. Partially true, but not completely. Flash might be in decline, but will be around for sometime to come.
Click to expand...

Silverlight is dead. Development has stopped.
 
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