By now you have probably seen Apple’s surprisingly lacklustre HTML5 showcase (or not if you don’t want to install Safari). The demo’s have drawn criticism for the use of browser sniffing, vendor specific prefixes, reverting to the quicktime plugin on the iPhone and the use of the patent-backed H.264 video codec (part owned by Apple). Which would be fine if this was presented a tech demo, but its being promoted as a wholesale, standards compliant replacement to Flash that you can use today.

In response, Antonio Holguin has put together an alternative Flash showcase that of course, works on all browsers. While its exciting to have a competitor to Flash (Adobe really needed an accurately placed kick) Apple’s own demos show Flash is not a “old” technology and for the foreseeable future HTML5 is simply not ready for real world deployment.

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Breaking News.. pot calls kettle black

Its strange to hear Steve Jobs profess concern about a open web when everything else his company does is so militantly closed. This is the company that first put DRM into music, that won’t let your change your own battery, will tie to you to one phone carrier and will only let you install software from their store.

OK, but we are talking about the open web, not Apple’s OS…

People tend to associate Flash content with two things; video and games. Fortunately Jobs provides alternatives for both, for video he cites the H.264 codec. Which is fine, but isn’t H.264 a licensed, closed technology? so much so that the Firefox developers want nothing to do with it. Apple are also the company that have their own propriety, closed video plugin – quicktime, something Jobs appears to have forgotten all about.

As for games, Jobs mentions the 50,000 games in the App store, you know the same marketplace where you have to buy a Mac, pay a yearly license fee and pray Apple deems it worthy and does not pull it for some arbitrary reason. Ironically, a lot of those App store games are Flash ports, which otherwise could have been universally viewable on nearly every device with a internet connection.

Flash is not closed as you might think

The ActionScript 3 runtime (Tamarin) was open sourced, as was RTMP. The SWF file format has had its specification published so anyone can build a tool to output SWFs. AS3 is based on EMCAScript, XML parsing uses E4X – both open standards. The Flash IDE is easily extendible and the Flex SDK is 100% open source. Using Flex Builder, built on top of the open source Eclipse engine you can create Flash content created with open sourced tools. The plugin itself can never be 100% open sourced as it relies on licensed technologies like H.264 (Steve’s replacement to Flash video). However, as the xbox & PS3 have demonstrated its open enough to allow 3rd party companies to develop their own version of the plug-in.

There is also a huge community of Flash developers who for many years have been sharing code and helping each other out. The are many open sourced code projects (tween engines, utility classes etc ). I’m not saying that Flash is open is the strictest sense, but its not a closed as Jobs is making out and its a hell of a lot more open than the App store alternative.

A truly open web is not the preserve of one company

Any sensible vision of a open web, inludes the option to download applications made by anyone and install any plugin you want. Jobs appears to be heralding HTML5 as an exciting replacement to the “outdated”, “pc era” Flash, but really he knows its in such early development that for now its a non-starter. What he is actually saying to developers is please use our closed, tightly controlled App ecosystem so we can make money either by taking a cut of the sales price or through our iAd advertising platform.

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Apple CEO, Steve jobs has posted a extraordinary, lengthy article about his feelings towards Flash. It’s surprising that Jobs feels the need to attack another companies product this publicly. If you are a Flash developer it’s pretty grim reading, with Jobs claiming Flash is not a “modern” technology and has no place on mobile devices:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

While he provides a number of plausible sounding reasons, it is important to note that he does not reveal his business motivations. Adobe’s Flash exporter would have meant it would have been very easy to target multiple mobile devices thus losening the Apple developer stranglehold. Flash and Air would have also posed a significant threat to the lucrative App store. Finally the fact the he throws around words like “propriety” and “openness” around with no sense of irony, means his reality distortion field is clearly cranked up to 11.

View Steve’s thoughts on Flash

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It’s no secret that some people view Flash as major annoyance, labelling it a CPU hog, security risk and ultimately, an unnecessary part of the web. This has lead to inventions like Flash Block and a general animosity towards the technology. Fortunately, its not too late for Adobe to change some opinions. Here are 5 things that we think could greatly improve the day to day usage of the Flash Plugin.

1) Flash should be invisible to the viewer

The custom right click menu, the strange cursors, the incompatibility with browser extensions; Flash content often sticks out like a sore thumb. Adobe should make Flash feel like the integral part of the web it has become.

2) Properly support all operating systems

The killer feature of Flash has always been its build once, deploy everywhere philosophy. Unfortunately the reality is far from perfect as any OSX user with a burning CPU knows only too well. 64bit operating systems have been left out in the cold and Linux development is frustratingly slow. There are also noticeable performance differences and behaviours, between differnet browsers on the same platform.

Adobe needs to ensure consistent experiences across all platforms & browsers or they will continue to be criticised by some of the most vocal people on the web.

3) Hardware accelerate everything

The video hardware acceleration 10.1 brings, is a welcome step in the right direction, but still falls far short of what is needed. Hardware Accelerated HTML 5 is coming in Internet Explorer 9, so Adobe can’t afford to ignore this for much longer.

4) Transparently & remotely update the Plug-in

Delivering invisible, rapid updates would make the Flash Player more secure and would provide a huge development head start over traditional web technologies with long update cycles. Google’s chrome team thinks this is a good idea too, with plans to integrate the plug-in into the browser.

5) Make deeplinking, bookmarking & SEO core features

Its an old argument, but sadly still a relvelent one. Flash breaks some of the most useful features of the web and its damn annoying that we are still discussing this in 2010. Adobe need to make these features almost impossible to avoid when developing any multi-state application.

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The popular Flash stock site Flashden, has been ordered to remove Flash from their url and branding by the Adobe legal team (which I hope are not reading this blog). They have decided upon the rather awkward sounding Activeden.

Adobe have something of a tradition of aggressively protecting their apparent trademarks, even if the words are as common as “air” or “flash”. James Whittaker (freshAIRApps), Kelvin Luck (shAIR) and Geoff Stearns (flashObject) can all attest to this. Clearly the Adobe legal team has enough sway to make these sites change names – without much resistance.

Some of you will argue that Adobe has to do this, that is the only way to ensure the brand is not diluted. Its just a legal question that any large company would pursue. The problem is what all of these sites have in common is they were actively promoting Adobe brands. Flashden in particular is one of Adobe’s biggest evangelists, introducing more people to the Flash platform than any Adobe owned site could ever dream of.

Legal questions aside, these kind of actions do nothing for the goodwill of the very people who are looking to promote the technology. If Adobe can`t be more creative in enforcing these trademarks, many will soon become disillusioned with the company. Adobe must realise these seemingly ridiculous law suits are starting to make them look like the 800lb gorilla in the room.

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