The War on Flash

April 17th, 2010 · , ,

I think you might already know who started it..

Just in case you didn’t know, there’s a war on Flash. Yup, I’m referring to that Flash: that Adobe plugin in your web browser that lets you watch YouTube videos and view flashy movie websites like Iron Man 2 and Avatar.

Flash is about 10 years old, and thanks to video and music sites, it’s become the ubiquitous plugin to use whenever you want to have some cool multimedia on your site. Unfortunately, though, it’s under attack, and one company in particular is hoping to kill it off for good.

The Web has changed a lot since Flash was born. Web browsers have changed, competition on the web has changed, and the way we use the Web has changed.

Apple isn’t allowing Flash development on any of its mobile products. In fact, Apple is discouraging people from using Flash and trying to convince people to stop using it altogether.

Well, since there’s a war going on, it might be nice to know why it’s going on and what it means for you as a Web user.

So, roll up your sleeves and dig in! I’ll try to be as neutral as I can, and I’ll try to make it easy to digest. :)

What is Flash?

Flash is a plugin in your web browser. Web pages (especially back in the day), couldn’t do a whole lot. So, plugins were used to handle all the special effects for websites. Java used to be big with applets. Then Flash took over, and it exploded when sites like YouTube came about.

Here are some examples of Flash you may recognize:

Why is Flash so popular?

There are probably many different ways of looking at this and answering why we all use Flash and why it became popular, so here’s simply my take on it.

Back before the days of Web 2.0 and Ajax, we had a limited technology set on the Internet. Plugins like Flash allowed us to do more, allowed us to play games and make cool flashy effects on our websites. Flash initially became popular for those reasons.

Back in the day, we also had a problem with playing videos and songs on websites. Remember the days where you had to choose whether to view a video in RealPlayer, Quicktime, or Windows Media Player? You had to download the right video that was in the right format your computer supported. We want websites to work nicely, no matter what computer or web browser you use. So naturally, we moved away from that and tried to find some common ground for displaying video. Enter Flash. Since it was already a very popular format, websites began using Flash for playing videos. And the rest is history.

So essentially, Flash is popular because it does things basic web technologies can’t do, and it gives us an easy way for watching videos on the Web.

Why does Apple hate Flash?

Steve Jobs says that Flash is buggy and outdated. Regardless of how buggy or old Flash may be, there’s a more practical reason for Apple’s opposition to Flash: Flash is something that Apple doesn’t control. Apple is able to provide a good user experience on their devices because they’re able to control every aspect of them. It’s just good business sense for Apple to protect themselves. Installing the Flash plugin on top of the iPhone’s or the iPad’s web browsers means that there’s an extra layer that Apple can’t control, which can affect battery life, can cause bugs that they can’t control, and even worse, could bypass their app store, which means loss in profit. As everyone is pointing out, John Gruber explains this, and supposedly, Steve Jobs agrees with his assessment.

Is Flash bad?

No; it’s just like any other technology. It’s something you install on your computer that does stuff, and just like everything else, it might have bugs or might not work the way you want it. In terms of the Web, its mere existence on the Web means that it’s another possible security exploit for hackers and malicious users.

What happens if the Internet stopped using Flash?

If everyone decided to give up using Flash, the world wouldn’t end; the Web would just suck for a bit, and then we’d move on.

Flash lets us do flashy effects and display videos in a common format; that’s why we use it. If we didn’t have Flash, we’d just use something else. Right now, the only equivalents to Flash are other plugins: Silverlight and Java. There’s HTML5, which offers us a new way to display audio and video in a browser, but other than that, we currently don’t have a non-plugin way to mimic all of Flash’s capabilities in every major browser.

What is HTML5?

HTML is what you’re looking at right now; it’s how webpages are made. It’s one of the web standards made up by an international standards body, and web browsers and developers all agree to follow those standards. HTML5 is the newest version of HTML that’s being proposed. It’ll have new features like built-in stuff for audio, video, and stuff for helping web developers write web applications.

Will HTML5 replace Flash? Is Flash going to die?

No. Well, maybe in 6 or 7 years or so, but right now, no. HTML5 and Flash are two completely different beasts, and while they are some things that both of them can do, neither of them is a replacement for the other.

I won’t go into the details of which one has which feature. Instead, I’ll go into a more important difference between them: One is a standard, and the other is a plugin controlled by a single company.

The Web is built on web standards. If everyone didn’t agree to follow the standards, there’d be no common thread for us to communicate on the Internet. Unfortunately, however, web standards aren’t that simple.

Standards bodies like the W3C make web standards. They have no authority other than to define the standards, and they put them out there for people to follow. Companies build web browsers that follow the standards, and people write web pages that follow the standards. That way, we have that common thread. However, note that I said that the W3C has no authority, even though they’re the ones who write the standard. People write web pages that follow the standard, but they don’t have authority either. So… who does? Web browsers. And that’s the problem.

Web browsers are our vehicle to the Web, so really, the only thing that matters is that every web browser speaks the same language so they can read the same webpage. If they all follow the web standards, that’s no problem. But they don’t all follow the standards. That’s why some websites have “Best viewed in Internet Explorer” on them. Because companies want their web browser to be the most popular, some companies either alter the standard or add non-standard features to their web browser. This happened a lot in the early days of the Internet, but as companies started realizing the benefits of having a common Web, there’s been more of an effort to make every web browser follow a common standard.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is this:

  • HTML5 is new, and the standards bodies (W3C and WHATWG) haven’t finished writing it yet.
  • We have to wait for all the web browsers to support HTML5.
  • Web browsers are built by companies who want to compete, so they may “support” the standard differently.
  • Flash is controlled by one company, and therefore we don’t have the problem of competing web browsers affecting it.
  • Flash does what we want it to do right now. HTML5 needs years of maturity and adoption.
  • We’ll be using both HTML5 and Flash for many years to come.

If you want to learn more about what HTML5 is and how it compares to Flash, Gizmodo has a good article on it.

What’s your take on this?

Personally, I would love if the Web didn’t require plugins, and it’d be awesome if people could make amazing webpages that are viewable in any browser and didn’t require any proprietary technology controlled by a single company.

But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

I’ve been a fan of web standards for a long time. I used to read up on all the different W3C specifications, and I used to get excited when specifications were updated or released. But in the few years that I’ve been playing with the Web, I know just how hard it is for standards to get adopted and decided upon. The standards bodies can only say what the Web should be like. The Web is really at the mercy of popular web browsers, and it’s this popularity contest that defines the web.

HTML5 wasn’t the W3C’s idea. The W3C had a different vision for the Web. Most of the Web was using HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0. The W3C was trying to move the Web towards XHTML 2.0. But many people didn’t agree with that vision, and more importantly, web browsers didn’t want to follow it. Web browsers never really fully adopted XHTML 1.0 (due to MIME type stuff and other technicalities I won’t bore you with), and they never really found a good reason to. Then, the WHATWG came along and created the HTML5 specification. People were more receptive to this standard, and the W3C eventually caved in, and now the W3C and WHATWG are jointly working together on this new HTML5 standard. As you know, everyone knows about HTML5 now because companies like Google and Apple are championing its use. All the talk and hype on HTML5 will help accelerate its adoption, but it’s still a long way from becoming the new wave of HTML that people believe it will be.

Just to give you some more insight into what we’re dealing with here. (Warning: It’s tech-speak):

  • HTML 4.01 was created in 1999, and it’s still the primary HTML spec we use.
  • XHTML 1.0 was created in 2000, and we don’t really use it. We “pretend” to use it, e.g., by writing HTML 4.01 and then labeling it with an XHTML 1.0 DOCTYPE.
  • Internet Explorer never supported XHTML. It will eventually, in IE9. (And most likely, it won’t be full support.)
  • Ajax became a standard because Internet Explorer created it. Then all the other web browsers followed, and the W3C had no other choice but to try to standardize it.
  • The CSS2 specification was created in 1998. 12 years later, there still is not a single browser with full CSS2 support.
  • Internet Explorer is the most popular web browser in the world, and it is also the only major web browser that doesn’t follow the latest web standards.

So, the HTML5 specification isn’t done yet, and we still have to wait for browsers to support it. I’m happy that thanks to Apple, people are getting excited about web standard specifications, but history tells me that it’s going to be a while before HTML5 becomes the technology we want it to become.

Web browsers and web developers will happily experiment with new technologies, but as long as there exists a need for a common platform for conveying a particular web experience for users, and as long as there isn’t a standards-based technology that readily meets that need, Flash is going to stick around to fill that gap.

So, that’s my take on this technology war. I’m excited about HTML5, but we shouldn’t try to kill off technologies that we still need. When it comes down to it, people who make websites don’t care what technology they use; they just want to reach as many people as possible and give them all the same awesome Web experience. Web browsers, whether it be Internet Explorer, or the iPad-version of Safari, will always dictate what technologies we’re allowed to use, and when they can’t agree on common standards, it makes the web less awesome for everyone else.

Photo by SeenyaRita.

View Comments to “The War on Flash”

  1. Kyle Stangel says:
    September 3, 2010 at 9:52 pm

    cool

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