// Commented Out

There are a num­ber of unset­tling trends in the world of web devel­op­ment, and one of them is not HTML5.  One major one is the num­ber of for­merly “cred­i­ble” web news enti­ties tout­ing HTML5 as the sole and right­eous assas­sin of Flash. Since Google I/O, a devel­op­ers con­fer­ence aimed at pro­mot­ing and demon­strat­ing new Google tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts, there have been a flurry of mis­in­formed, thinly researched arti­cles pro­claim­ing that we should go ahead and start mak­ing bur­ial arrange­ments for the Flash Plat­form. I’ve already touched on this once, before Google I/O, but since the web infor­ma­tion giant has openly encour­aged the adop­tion and stan­dard­iza­tion of HTML5, tech media sites and oth­ers who seem­ingly have been wish­ing for some­thing like this, have decided to post some of the most uncred­i­ble, bla­tantly one-sided, and down­right wrong pieces of “jour­nal­ism” I’ve seen since the 9th grade. Need evi­dence?

http://cjedaudio.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/apple-webkithtml5-end-of-flash-and-gears/
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39655473,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3515_22-199508.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/demo-firefox-35-treats-videos-like-web-pages-why-cant-flash-do-that/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/15/the-missing-link-for-flash-on-the-iphone/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/html-5-could-it-kill-flash-and-silverlight-291
http://www.reelseo.com/flash-obsolete/10219/

These are just exam­ples from the the first two pages of Google Search results for the search terms ‘html5’ +  ‘flash’. It’s get­ting out of hand. Media com­pa­nies aren’t research­ing any­more. If they were, they wouldn’t talk about prod­ucts like “Flash 4″ in the same sen­tence as “Flex 4″ (both of which do not exist), and they wouldn’t try to com­pare a browser to a browser plu­gin. When did this start hap­pen­ing? Why are com­pa­nies all of a sud­den OK with not fact-checking or not respond­ing when the Flash Com­mu­nity and Adobe call them out on their lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and unabashed antics?

To me, a big part of why this upsets me is that Google and Mozilla are com­pa­nies that have worked with Adobe, even to this day, to help pro­mote and build on the strong foun­da­tion Flash already has (SEO, Tamarin). With a glimpse of a tech­nol­ogy that is indeed very cool, and after at least 6 years of devel­op­ment and still  no con­crete timetable for stan­dard­iza­tion,  these same com­pa­nies are telling us it’s time for Flash to write it’s will? I don’t think so. And as it stands now,  there are still things like NSFW tags being sug­gested. Even more dis­heart­en­ing to me is the fact that some of the biggest names in the JavaScript com­mu­nity are sud­denly openly herald­ing Flash’s demise. Why weren’t they tak­ing such a hard stance before Google pushed HTML5 and Apple didn’t put the Flash Player on the iPhone? Do they feel threat­ened some­how? They shouldn’t. I don’t work for Adobe and I don’t hate JavaScript or it’s devel­op­ers. I’m a Flash/Flex devel­oper who loves jQuery and all of the other awe­some libraries that are hep­ing to shape the mod­ern web. I love see­ing sites that are built with just plain sexy JavaScript, like Twit­ter, Deli­cious, and Read­er­naut. It’s fan­tas­tic to see that kind of engi­neer­ing in action! I’m espe­cially ecsta­tic about the inno­va­tion and par­a­digm shift that con­cepts like Google Wave will bring because of HTML5.

Adobe has attempted to put their thoughts into the mix, even by show­ing how the two tech­nolo­gies can work together, but these arti­cles some­how never really get syn­di­cated the way the sen­sa­tion­al­ized HTML5 pieces do. A rather dis­ap­point­ing sup­port­ing point can be found by look­ing closely at any of these ‘HTML5 > Flash’ posts. Does a sin­gle one of those arti­cles have an inter­view or com­ment from any­one who is pro-Flash or works for Adobe? I rest my case. It’s just sad to see the web’s news sources for tech­nol­ogy an inno­va­tion fall so short. Tele­vi­sion and print media lost what lit­tle cred­i­bil­ity they had decades ago (regard­less of which polit­i­cal party you belong to), but now we’re see­ing the same sen­sa­tion­al­ism and bla­tant one-sidedness from our tech-oriented news sources. In this case, it’s not about pol­i­tics or agen­das, but for the life of me, I can’t fig­ure out exactly what it is about.  I’m just try­ing to under­stand, because it doesn’t make any sense why news media sites would push a cer­tain tech­nol­ogy and call for another’s deprecation.

A ques­tion I would love an answer to is: ‘what did Flash ever do to any­one that gen­er­ated such blind hatred?’ Now, think for a sec­ond before you answer this. If your argu­ments have any­thing to do with “splash pages” or “ban­ner ads”, they’re auto­mat­i­cally can­celled out by “pop-up win­dows” and “pop-under win­dows.” I don’t think those doors even need to be opened. Both sides’ argu­ments are moot. Now, argue either sides’ case with­out using any of the afore­men­tioned top­ics. You can’t do it. Both are AWESOME tech­nolo­gies that came from the same ECMAScript stan­dard. This is a point peo­ple love to con­ve­niently for­get when tak­ing sides. It’s a fact. Maybe the paths sep­a­rated when that stan­dard was split. Project Har­mony may have been the cru­cial fac­tor that recre­ated the divide between the two parts of the devel­op­ment com­mu­nity, but this wasn’t Adobe’s deci­sion. Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Google, and Yahoo were the decid­ing par­ties. The same com­pa­nies that are now singing the praises of the Can­vas and Video tags that will sup­pos­edly erad­i­cate Flash. It should be noted that there was even hes­i­ta­tion to rush into any­thing from Yahoo JavaScript guru Dou­glas Crock­ford, who stated that the only thing we have to fear is pre­ma­ture adop­tion. The Oslo Meet­ing, as it now referred to, was sup­posed to help bring a uni­fied stan­dard­iza­tion that would assist in Action­Script becom­ing more open and com­pat­i­ble with work­ing imple­men­ta­tions. The result was quite the oppo­site, as Adobe was now the odd man out, though some said that it didn’t affect Flash at all.

On the oppo­site side of the coin, it’s great to see  that there are still peo­ple who are objec­tive about devel­op­ment, even if  that means using Flash when you nor­mally use JavaScript and vice versa. A per­fect exam­ple is my JavaScript hero Jeremy Keith, who is renowned for being an expert in sev­eral web devel­op­ment tech­nolo­gies. He cre­ated the pod­cast site Huff­Duf­fer and chose to build the play­ers in Flash.  When I asked him about why he didn’t use JavaScript to build the play­ers, he said he was “just using the right tool for the job.” There need to be more atti­tudes like this in the devel­op­ment com­mu­nity. Fur­ther to the point, Adobe embraces JavaScript in sev­eral ways, even after the Project Har­mony inci­dent. First, Adobe didn’t force devel­op­ers to use Flash or Flex when deploy­ing AIR appli­ca­tions. They are free and encour­aged to use other web lan­guages, includ­ing their own Spry frame­work. Also, SWFOb­ject is now the pack­aged JavaScript stan­dard for embed­ding Flash objects in Dreamweaver CS4, Flash Builder 4, and even as a plu­gin for Web Gal­leries in Photoshop.

Speak­ing of plu­g­ins, a new ide­al­ist group has recently emerged push­ing the need for a “browser with­out plu­g­ins.” This really seems to me like a con­cept that was men­tioned in a brain­storm­ing meet­ing and was never meant to go any­where, but peo­ple ran with it. If that isn’t the case, then why shouldn’t we add a <flash> tag in HTML5 if we get rid Flash and all other non-Flash plu­g­ins? This is just the list in my copy of Fire­fox 3.0.11. I can hear you ask­ing “where are you going with this?,“Well, HTML5 was partly born out of the neces­sity of a more seman­tic, mean­ing­ful web, and the dis­agree­ments on how Micro­For­mats should be han­dled. Tags like <arti­cle>, <header>, and <nav> were designed with acces­si­bil­ity and struc­tured con­tent in mind. To that point comes the ques­tion, ‘if we rid the browser of plu­g­ins, how will Flash be han­dled in the browser waste­land of of this post-plugin apoc­a­lypse’? I hate to break some hearts out there, but Flash will not just die the day HTML5 is made a W3C stan­dard (if it ever does hap­pen), and it’s silly to even sug­gest such an occur­rence.  What would hap­pen to the count­less sites built in Flash and the oth­ers that use Flash and HTML together? Users just wouldn’t be able to see them? Think about that for a sec­ond. It’s not going to happen.

But, hon­or­ing the wishes of Google and oth­ers, I’ll state this.  If we’re all about a browser sans-plugins, mak­ing a more seman­tic web, and know that Flash is not going any­where any­time soon:

I am sug­gest­ing that the Flash com­mu­nity make a for­mal request to the W3C and Adobe to imple­ment a <flash> tag in the HTML5 specification.

If you are in any posi­tion of influ­ence at the W3C, Adobe, or any other entity, I urge you to help the Flash com­mu­nity and the future of the web by bring­ing atten­tion to this mat­ter. HTML5 is com­ing, but Flash isn’t going any­where.  Spread the word.

[Adden­dum] — To head off any ques­tions like “what about a ‘Java’ or ‘Sil­verlight’ tag?”, I have some answers for that as well. Short answer, <java> yes, <sil­verlight> no. Now, I’m not say­ing that just because I’m a Flash devel­oper. I have solid objec­tive rea­son­ing behind it. I think the sug­gested tags need to be jus­ti­fied before they can be added to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion. Here are some cri­te­ria for nomination:

• What is the world-wide per­cent­age of total com­put­ers that the sug­gested tech­nol­ogy is installed on?
• How long has the sug­gested tech­nol­ogy been around and what are the long term adop­tion rates (that don’t include forced Win­dows Update)?
• Does the sug­gested tech­nol­ogy work seam­lessly across all major browsers?
• Does the sug­gested tech­nol­ogy work on Win­dows, Mac and Linux oper­at­ing systems?

These are just off of the top of my head, but I think it’s a good bench­mark to start with.

Let’s try to keep the flame wars out of the com­ments.  Please be pro­fes­sional, objec­tive and sup­port your thoughts with research.

—————————————————————————————————————————–
Update: David Tucker has done a much bet­ter job of con­vey­ing most of what I was try­ing to say here.
—————————————————————————————————————————–