Why people hate Flash.
Friday 4 September 2009 - Filed under Flash
John Dowdell recently twittered about doing a twitter search for “hate flash”. It got me thinking, having recently tried in vain to handle some protests about Flash.
My personal feeling about it is that when someone hates something – really HATES it – it has generally gone beyond a rational argument. It’s no longer about the technology or standards or accessibility or anything else. It’s more like religion. They hate it, it’s evil, it sucks, it should die in a fire, and if you disagree, you are F’ing ignorant. STFU NOOB!
So attempting to explain the open screen project, or recent advances in search indexing or back button handling, etc. really doesn’t get you too far.
But it really makes me wonder, why do people REALLY hate it in the first place? What gets them to the point where they become so livid about it? I mean, I’m pretty sure I use the same Internet as other people do. If Flash sites are really that bad, shouldn’t I be throwing my computer through the window too? Sure, I see abuses here and there. I see bad Flash stuff and good Flash stuff. And I see bad HTML and good HTML. Yeah, I see the occasional really bad site that is obviously so poorly done that it’s not even worth staying on. But it’s not always or even mostly Flash sites that fall into this category. There are plenty of really awful HTML sites. But neither type have ever got me seething with rage the way some people are about Flash.
So, seriously, I’m really curious why so much passion and emotion. So I did a google search for “I hate Flash” and “Flash sucks”, looked through the first couple of pages of results for each, and compiled what I think is a fairly complete list of the major objections. This included the points from the original articles, as well as many comments to various posts.
Now, many, MANY, of the comments really didn’t shed any light on why people hate Flash. Stuff like: “Flash sucks”, “I hate Flash”, “I vehemently hate Flash”, “I hate Flash with a passion”, “I detest flash”, “Flash sucks a big floppy donkey dick” (I’m not making this up). One has to wonder if these people were beaten with a Flash product box when they were young.
But some people did list actual reasons why Flash sucks a … why it’s so bad. Here’s what it comes down to, in no particular order, but numbered for later reference:
- intros
- search engine visibility
- openness
- standards
- proprietary
- no linux version
- accessibility
- ads
- takes long to load
- cpu hog
- crashes browser
- cant bookmark pages / back button
- not on mobile/iphone
So, since this is my blog, and nobody is foaming at the mouth just yet, let me try to rationally address these.
First of all, let me acknowledge that problems can and do exist in some instances. I don’t like it when my CPU peaks out, I don’t like waiting forever for sites to load, I’m not particularly fond of my browser crashes. And yes, I’ve seen Flash sites that do this.
But let me say this:
For #1, 2, and 7-12, this is wholly the responsibility of the developer who makes the Flash site.
1. There is no rule or requirement in Flash that says you have to create an intro. To be honest, I think anyone brining this up is a bit stuck in the past. I can’t actually remember the last time I encountered a real old school Flash intro.
2. I’m not particularly familiar with the search engine stuff in Flash, but I do know that this has largely been solved. Google can search and index SWFs now. If you want to argue about the specifics of how this is done and the pros and cons of it, I’m out of my league, but don’t just flat out say that SWFs are not visible to search engines.
7. There are ways to make SWFs accessible. Another area where I’m not anywhere near an expert, but I know that if you really wanted to make your Flash stuff accessible, there are ways. Again, I can’t argue if they are perfect or even great, but if a site has no accessibility at all, it’s just because no effort was made to give it any.
8. Ads. Sure, ads suck in general. And Flash ads can have animation, sound, video, and lots of other ways to get in your face and suck more than non-Flash ads. So does that mean Flash is bad? By that reasoning, TV commercials are worse than print ads, so TV should be banned. 3D ads would be worse than 2D ads, so all 3D is bad.
9. Flash takes too long to load? No, bytes take too long to load. There’s nothing special about Flash bytes that make them go slowly through the tubes. A 500k SWF will take the same amount of time to load as a 500k JPG, given the same connection, unless I’m missing something very fundamental. So the real complaint is that Flash sites are bigger than HTML sites. True? Maybe. I’m sure there are some big sites. Here’s where I get to make a dig about Flex. 
A simple hello world app in Flex will be something like 400k. Of course, as the Flex app gets more complex, its size increases at a much slower rate. So Flex is good for larger, more complex apps, but IMHO not appropriate for simpler stuff. Now I know a lot of you are going to start chanting, “Framework Caching! Framework Caching!” And before, this one always shut me down, but after talking to some people the other night, I’m more skeptical about this. Or, I’m just as skeptical, but have some data to back it up with. But I digress. If a Flash site is huge it’s because some designer/developer made a Flash site without any regard for size. I could easily make an HTML site and give it a 800k uncompressed background image and have the same effect.
10. Flash is a CPU hog. Again, this falls squarely on the shoulders of the developer. If a site is destroying the CPU its because a. there’s too much happening on each frame / timer interval, or b. there’s too much animation going on. This is because someone did this without ever checking what it was doing to the CPU.
11. Flash crashes the browser. Again, shoddy programming, no QA. Of course, there is an argument to be made that even if a bad SWF crashes, it shouldn’t crash the browser. I’ll buy that, but also say that part of that is the browser manufacturer’s responsibility for how it handles plugins, tabs, etc. Supposedly Chrome is tackling this kind of thing.
12. Can’t bookmark / use back button. Solutions have existed for this for quite a while now. Not everyone uses them. So again, on the shoulders of the developer / designer.
So for all of these items, none of them HAVE to be a problem. A well designed and well programmed Flash site / application should not suffer from any of these defects. But I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and say that problems in many of these areas aren’t rampant. But the problem is going to be solved by education and a demand for quality, not by accusing Flash of unnatural acts with farm animals. Perhaps the problem is that Flash is so accessible that every kid who can torrent a copy and is lucky enough to find a crack that doesn’t wipe his hard drive, can start puking up Flash sites all over the web.
So what about the rest? Flash is proprietary, not open, not standard, and is not on all flavors of Linux or mobile phones or the iPhone.
First of all, I’m probably not qualified to answer most of these. Secondly, my intention here is not to white wash every objection to Flash. As for most of the points I did answer, I really believe in what I wrote. There probably are some valid concerns in these other areas. But things like open source, standards, and platforms are where people REALLY start sounding like religious zealots. Open source is great, but some people go way overboard on it and try to force it down everyone’s throats. Web standards were not handed down from above on stone tablets, they aren’t going to solve everything, and anything that does not follow them is not automatically evil. And yes, we know that whatever platform YOU are using is the best and every other platform is for losers, and any program that doesn’t support your platform, even if it’s only 1% of the market, is committing crimes against humanity.
Anyway, I admit be being biased. I like Flash and think it can do some great things. I also acknowledge that it can, and often all too often is abused. Welcoming feedback.
2009-09-04 » keith
4 September 2009 @ 11:28 pm
I have heavily invested the last 6 years of my career into Flash and I love it to death, but I have to listen when it seems the majority of people these days are screaming against it. I do my best to reduce file size, CPU usage, and keep my apps from crashing. Lately I have been learning CSS and JavaScript in the unfortunate case that Flash becomes so taboo that nobody wants to hire an Actionscripter anymore :’(
In the meantime let’s try to keep up the “good flash” that enriches the User Experience on the Internet like it should.
4 September 2009 @ 11:40 pm
I’m not sure it’s “the majority of people” complaining about Flash. Could be a vocal minority. Right or wrong, I doubt that many people really care about open source, standards, or Linux.
4 September 2009 @ 11:42 pm
One interesting side effect of Flash’s newly found indexability is that you can now search for flash intros. Try this on Google…
skip intro filetype:swf
Enjoy
( They’re so bad they’re funny, but too many will give you flying-text-indigestion )
5 September 2009 @ 12:43 am
What’s funny is that this animosity typically goes one way. It’s HTML zealots who call for the death of Flash and can’t stop criticizing anything whatsoever made with Flash. But you don’t hear Flash developers and supporters talking about how shitty HTML is. Sure, maybe we’ll talk about how much browser inconsistencies suck (but EVERYONE bitches about that), but you aren’t likely to hear someone say “Jesus, why the hell did you make that with AJAX? AJAX sux0rs hard!” It reminds me of the difference between living in LA versus San Francisco. In the bay area (which I call home and love dearly) you hear people all the time talking about how it’s better than LA. But in LA nobody even talks about SF, it’s like it doesn’t exist.
I hope the HTML 5 stuff knocks my socks off, god bless everyone invested in the advancement of HTML, I’ve just chosen a different technology to play with. But you won’t find me sitting there screaming “HTML is awful”. I’m just hoping we eventually get past the “Flash sucks” phase and can actually have intelligent discussions about technology across camps.
5 September 2009 @ 1:28 am
Thanks Keith. This cheered my up after listening to Gina Trapani rant mindlessly against Flash on This Week in Google episode 2 (an otherwise decent show). http://twit.tv/twig2
“Wah! I hate Flash it always crashes my browser! Wah! HTML 5! SVG!”
I’m sorry, I’ve been hearing people sing the praises of SVG for almost a decade. Face it. It may be open, but it’s going nowhere.
And HTML 5? Does anyone really think Microsoft is ever going to support that? The other day I was looking at the travesty that is IE8, and it hit home that the current browser stalemate IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE in the next 5 years. Everyone that was prone to switch from IE has already done it. Those who are too lazy or ignorant or helpless to switch are never going to. And unfortunately that’s a large percentage of web users. Google Chrome can be the greatest browser in all of creation, but it’s going to steal users away from FF and Safari more than IE.
Another thing: AJAX is just not going to be able to perform like Flash is any time in the near future. Has anyone tried to do serious benchmarks comparing JS in browsers and AS3? It’s just no contest. Does anyone seriously think the next Prezi, VectorMagic, SlideRocket, Club Penguin or Farmtown is going to be built in AJAX?
You know what else? I think people are a little jealous of what Flash can do. And they can’t quite wrap their minds around it because it’s kind of arty but it’s also kind of techy. It’s easier to just dismiss it.
Sorry for ranting, but I’m feeling grumpy tonight, and at least your post cheered me up a little bit.
5 September 2009 @ 1:38 am
Oh, and one more thing, on the #$%@ing back button:
99% of the time, it doesn’t make sense to support the back button on a Flash site anyway. It just creates usability confusion. The back button is for going back to a previous page, not for restoring some arbitrary state in an RIA. And this applies to AJAX too!
And if you really need to support the back button, just create a re-loadable SWF that can update its state across different pages via XML data or whatever. It’s just a bit of backend code. It’s really not that big a deal!
5 September 2009 @ 2:08 am
I love Flash but in addition to what you listed–my biggest gripe is the text legibility. Sure, a good developer (and designer for that matter) can make it look nice… but I do Ctrl+ or Ctrl- to resize text in the browser all the time. Not only does this have no impact on Flash, it is the Flash text that I find needs it the most. Sure, the new Text layout framework will help(along with a forthcoming better way to use it–now it requires some pretty gnarly programming skills).
But, just add Text to the list.
5 September 2009 @ 2:16 am
I think you’re targeting too much the developer. Let’s face it, flash developers in general are not software developers. They’re hackers. They’re hackers because this is what the industry wants : “Hey, hum, we’re really tight on budget and time, so we tough you could make this monstrous multiplayer 3D RPG interactive game/website international marketing campaign in 2 weeks. KTHXBYE” Heard that too many times. I feel like clients (from my experience, marketing agencies) are not conscious that their incrementing demand of features also increments the amount of works that needs to be done. Turns out that mixing external data, internalization, database connection, webservice, facebook, twitter, myspace, 3d, custom UI and funky animation is quite hard. Flash developers started as hackers (designer: “hey what’s that AS1 thing…”) and now they’re stuck with that label.
5 September 2009 @ 2:41 am
As Classic Flash goes I don’t have much experience, though I’m developing on Flex and AS3 for the past 2 years, and I gotta tell you that all these issues you mentioned can be easily dealt with the right programming techniques. If a developer is a bad one, he will do poorly in Flash as well as in any other language…
Besides Flex and Flash nowadays turn to a new style of web content, which is more like a desktop application than a web-page, and thus the client doesn’t really care about size or indexing since he (company) will be using it exclusively. Flash has great potential, and I would strongly advice people that “hate it” to uninstall it from their browsers, and try watch some youtube video…
5 September 2009 @ 3:40 am
Hey Keith,
Now, I have been reading about this hatred for Flash for a long time. Personally, I agree with you on 80% of those points. Flash does have issues that can be solved with HTML. As far as I remember, Flash did not come out as a platform to replace HTML or the “text” based internet. It came out as an interactive platform to “extend” the possibilities of interaction. Developers that use flash surely need to be aware of the problems that arise from bad programming or use of flash but this growing “insane and unreasonable” hatred for flash requires change from companies like Adobe as well. Things like what Phillip Kerman suggested. Here’s what I mean:
- Internet was text.
- HTML extended text.
- CSS extended HTML.
- Images helped CSS and HTML put beauty and burden. (People were against use of non optimized GIFs all along).
- JavaScript extended HTML.
- AJAX, jQuery etc also extended the capabilities of HTML and existing text based programming.
The problem is that there is no mention of interactive external object based tools in the history of that extension. When something is practiced for a long time, people make it a taboo. If Flash extended the existing technologies of the internet without being an external object, it would have seen a better welcome. But I do say all this for the websites only. Apart from that, Flash is a much bigger platform and there is no challenging its strengths. There are tools like Processing etc that fall into that domain (which is awesome as well) that have the least to do with the web.
Flash is not going anywhere in the near future but Adobe and the companies that change Flash need to look into bonding Flash with the web in a better way.
5 September 2009 @ 4:38 am
This is a very half thought out article. I have no particular beef with Flash, I’ve developed flash and non-flash web-sites. What is blatantly obvious is things like “Flash crashes the browser” can have nothing to do with the developer, and everything to do with the Flash plug-in. Same for performance, like any application flash can have its performance bottle-necks, hard to predict between different platforms (where the concept of a platform is complicated by browser and OS).
There is no doubt in my mind that the 3rd party nature of flash introduces challenges that are not there when it’s just the OS and the browser. Of course, there are things that you can’t do without Javascript (and an ever decreasing set of things you just can’t do full stop). So is Flash a refuge for differing javascript performance? Now, yes.
The killer should, and I hope will, be is that Apple can’t make Flash faster, neither can Microsoft, or Google, or Opera. Only Adobe can. The same is not true for Javascript. Eventually, platforms like Webkit with a broader base of contributors will out.
In the mean time, Flash fills gaps as well as anyone could expect.
5 September 2009 @ 4:39 am
I use Flash for art works and for occasional commercial works and I still reall like it, but I actually agree with many of the negative points that users complain of when they say they hate Flash. As a developer, my frustration is growing with Adobe’s neglect of the technical ecosystem into which swfs are placed, specifically:
Adobe steadfastly refusing to provide any real help on the server side when it comes to accessing databases. I think they should provide code templates to make sure that database-driven Flash sites are not left insecure by inexperienced coders.
The increasingly complex code generated/required to embed Flash content in HTML. In large development teams using content management systems (CMS) finding the best solution to this can become an impediment to the project.
Both of the these problems, like bookmarking and back buttons, have been solved over and over again so some habitual – hopefully best – practice has emerged, but it is still galling in the early stages of Flash development that what should be routine tasks require so much research to find the optimal solution.
5 September 2009 @ 4:47 am
I have just graduated with a degree in Interactive Media. It was a career move from being a musician. In the music world so many people are vehemently passionate about “their” music be it, “country” or “sludgecore!”. The point is, with so many different genres there will always be rivalry (for want of a better word). Web technology, or any other product/service area, will produce loyalty and rivalry. The smart people, and probably the ones who will be employed more consistently, are the ones that are aware of all the options, their pro’s and cons, and the best implementation or delivery of the product/service. I love Flash, I love its flexibility and its not just a web tool either. I’ve seen some fantastic art installations run in Flash, Multitouch packages etc. etc. But I’m making damn sure I know as much as I can about as many other web technologies as I can.
Except Silverlight!
(just kidding)
5 September 2009 @ 4:55 am
Linux users are not people. You want to use an basic OS? Fine, but do not complain on missing vendor support.
5 September 2009 @ 6:10 am
I guess when it comes to multimedia presentations, Flash still is a little step ahead of HTML5 – even with the new video tag. It’s just that Flash was made to do more than displaying basic text. Take a flash site and rebuild it with HTML+JS, do all the animation and transparency stuff, use filters like blur and shadows, play some videos… and your HTML+JS version of that website will most likely eat as much CPU power as its flashy counterpart.
It’s nothing inherently bad with the technology – it’s just about how people use it.
Remember the days when JS was the reincarnation of everything evil? I happened to come across an online store selling computer parts – and their menu was all JS. Turning off JS would leave you with no means to navigate the site. People have learned from these mistakes, and nowadays AJAX is the hype.
Putting up a link in HTML will automatically make that thing available to the browser’s bookmarks and back-buttons. Linking content in Flash won’t automatically give you that. You’ll have to digg deeper and use SWFAdress or similar. Maybe it’s a fault of the developer – or maybe even of Flash. But it’s more work to do – and more work needs to be paid by the client.
I hate flash banners. But I happen to do some of them for a living now. I don’t get money for hating flash banners, that is. The project manager and creative director won’t neccessarily care about CPU usage. They have their shiny Macbook Pros and things will run smoothly on those. If the client doesn’t mention choppy playback you won’t get extra time to rework your stuff just to save some percent of CPU usage. So… if I work overtime to smooth things out -because I think 60% CPU usage on my 2GHz Core2Duo is a little too much- that’s solely my personal commitment to a certain quality level I’d (personally!) like to achieve. I don’t get paid for it. But yes, I do care. Sometimes.
5 September 2009 @ 6:42 am
As someone who has like others devoted years to flash, I’m totally singing from the same song sheet, I hear a lot of criticism about flash and its future due to the impressive advancements with html5 , jquery , css3 etc.. ( which is awesome! ) Most the time this is from a select few but sometimes they do have valid points. I like others fight against the stereotypical problem with flash eg 12,9,2 and not using 1 (yuck!). My overall feeling is that the flash community/adobe knows these problems and is fighting hard to fix them but I think people overall forget that a good majority of the people visiting sites often don’t care what platform it is as long as it solves its purpose, as any platform can build a horrible site.
A html/jquery site for a photography studio, a data visualization heavy stock market application in flex or an immersive video/papervison flash site are all solving the problems they set out too, which is the main thing. At least its exciting times no matter what platform you develop for, I mean regardless of which camp your in ( html/flash/silverlight ) there is some pretty awesome stuff out there on all platforms which I hope like me people appreciate the skill involved in building it. Even if your a “flash for the win” kind of person
5 September 2009 @ 7:38 am
@keith & @jeff : you’re right, who cares about people which only represent 1% of the market, who cares about blind, deaf and mute people, who cares about having the choice in which software/platform use, who cares about security, transparency, data persistence, etc… That’s all the point of standards and openess…
I fully agree with most of your arguments. But that one… it’s just bullshit !
I don’t care if Flash isn’t a standard, or if it’s not open source. But when a society claims that its technology is cross platform, at least they should support all the platforms. That the meaning of being cross-platform.
And concerning the 1% bullshit. I don’t want to start a Win/OsX/Linux war, but I don’t get the point of systematically release your product on a platform which hardly represent 5% of the market and don’t release it on a platform which represent 1%, when these platforms have more similarities than differences (both are based on UNIX and OsX get closer to linux at each new version, see the story with CUPS drivers on Snow Leopard).
I used to really like the way you talk about technologies, not being partisan in any situations. But I can’t agree with that specific argument. Might makes NOT right ! I don’t want every people to have linux, I just want people to not try to force me to use something because they are the most numerous. Again, that’s the point of being “open”.
5 September 2009 @ 8:06 am
re 2: search engine indexing.
thus far google is able to detect static content inside an swf, and indeed blocks of html inside the swf, it is not able to detect anything inside actionscript blocks or anything remotely pulled in, and in most situations that makes it pretty redundant unless your just using “flash” to create a standard swf with limited functionality.
the one use it does have is for abusing search engines, allowing you to embed a load of unrelated but keyword heavy content in an swf which is totally invisible to the user, all adds to the ranking.
general response:
flash fills a hole, parts of that hole are being filled better by other plugins, but in general flash is widely adopted and a good all-rounder; so who gives a shit what people say, use it or don’t, use it wrong and as you mentioned, your just a bad developer/designer so expect people to hate your stuff and complain.
nice post, been following this series and think you’re really getting to the base of it now. Still won’t make a difference to anything but your own sanity though :p
regards!
5 September 2009 @ 9:18 am
Cedric, I didn’t say “who cares about the 1%”. My point was that if you CHOOSE to use an OS that has a tiny market share, don’t act like the world is out to get you because some program is not available on it. If you choose to live on a desert island, don’t complain that there is no Walmart there. This is quite different than being blind, deaf or disabled.
The fact is that Flash 10 player IS available for Linux. And there’s even an alpha version of a 64-bit version. So the real complaint is not that Adobe is ignoring Linux, but that it lags behind the other platforms. Unfortunately, Adobe is a company and has employees and schedules and budgets. As such, they are going to release to 99% of their user base first, rather than delaying until the final 1% is done. That only makes sense. Anything else would be insane.
Furthermore, when you are talking about Windows, you are talking about Vista and XP, maybe NT or 2000, maybe maybe 95/98/ME. I’m not sure how many Windows OS versions they test against, but at any rate, it’s 90% of their user base. When you are talking about Mac, you’re talking about Leopard and Tiger probably. Not sure if they support anything before that. Now Snow Leopard of course. At any rate, for Mac and Win, all those flavors are at least produced by the same companies. When you talk about Linux, how many different flavors are there? All created by different groups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions How many of those do you support and test against?
Finally, almost routinely when Linux people are complaining about Flash, they’ll complain about how much it sucks because it’s not open, and blah blah blah, and how much they hate it and it’s evil etc. and THEN they cry because it’s not available for their platform. I don’t get it.
5 September 2009 @ 9:36 am
It’s the ads. I’ve been a Flash developer for more than ten years, and even I use the Flashblock plug-in for Firefox. Web browsing is much more pleasant when you’re not being distracted by some annoying animation running next to the content you’re trying to read.
And whoever came up with that technique of overlaying a Flash ad on top of a page’s content did not help the cause.
5 September 2009 @ 9:46 am
More seriously though: although intros are the dead horse everyone likes to beat on, and although there are potential solutions to the top 10 issues listed, there are legitimate reasons why otherwise sane people hate Flash. The thing is that that Flash breaks many of the usability features of HTML + the browser environment that many users are accustomed to. I’m thinking especially of keyboard shortcuts, such as ctrl+ for text size, ctrl-K for search ctrl-B for bookmark, back, ctrl-tab for switch tab, etc, etc. Although its possible to solve *some* of these with additional effort on the part of the developer, the problem is that a) developers may be too lazy to implement if the client doesn’t require these things b) clients may not be aware, or care, or be prepared to pay extra for developers to implement them, c) flash IDE users may not have the coding foo to implement them. So they very seldom actually get done, and users are left frustrated. These are all things that you get ‘for free’ by using HTML. SO I think we need to think carefully about whether Flash is an appropriate solution where these usability issues are important, and really address them properly.
5 September 2009 @ 10:15 am
GOOD SAY!!! im not so good in english but have read the article! i have in the past the same war with other peoples! cant tell him the true. so many blind and tubed human! first time find your blog but in the future i come back every time!
GOOD WORKS! GOOD MIND! GOOD DAY! =D
a flash (mid)beginner
5 September 2009 @ 10:17 am
tv ads are worse than print, and they should be banned. If you make your fortunes off ads, prepare to be disliked.
UIComponents are total pigs, which is a shame, because it encourages the thinking that 400k is pretty good, which it isn’t.
I don’t think you can just blame the devs, without a lot of experience, and doing a lot of things counter to what Adobe says, you will quickly have a pig site.
That said I like flash : ).
5 September 2009 @ 11:37 am
@keith
I used Linux as my primary OS for the ~3 years before flash player 10 came out, and it’s very easy to build an irrational hate for Flash when almost every site uses it and you can’t get it to work in a stable manner. nspluginwrapper, crazy install procedures, wacky bugs, slow performance – it all adds up. It was kind of amusing for a time because Adobe didn’t really have a great flash player version on Linux, and the Mono guys were working really hard to get Silverlight running well on Linux, so I spent some time following Mono development, hoping that they might build a 64-bit plugin that I could use. Now, Flash has a stable 64-bit and 32-bit plugin that, as far as I can tell, works quite well, but for a long time Linux was screwed over by Adobe. And yes, that is exactly what I felt, even though I’m sure they had their reasons. I hope that most of the Linux users who can stop hating Flash do, now that Adobe has put some effort into supporting Linux well, but you really have hit the nail on the head – the hate is irrational, and there’s very little we, as flash developers/evangelists, can do to stop it because of that.
5 September 2009 @ 12:54 pm
Flash has less restrictions than HTML – this is both its great strength and weakness.
The problem is that its easier to make a terrible, almost unusable website in Flash than HTML. Even when an HTML website is poorly made you can generally reach the content that you’re looking for reasonably quickly. A poor Flash website has the possibility of access to content being slowed by animations, transitions etc – frustrating when you’re in a hurry. But when crafted with skill a Flash website can provide a uniquely great web experience.
“With great power comes great responsibility!”
5 September 2009 @ 1:49 pm
re: “flash hate is irrational” — belief systems in general are irrational — for example sports fans will persist in believing that their team is “The best!” despite a multi-decade drought in World Series or Stanley Cup wins. And when you get to a question like pro / anti Flash, after a while you get down to belief systems.
The conflict between the belief system that software should be free and its source code should be available to all, and the belief system that businesses who create and sell software have a right to do so is a longstanding one & it’s not going away any time soon. My pet theory why this particular conflict generates so much heat is because FOSS-fan developers get annoyed when they see a pile of code they cannot get their hands on. So since they cannot get their hands on it, they find reasons to attack it. End result, a big pile-on.
Flash is not the only piece of software out there subject to this treatment but it is an easy and frequent target because it’s so visible, and because it does have some issues (as noted above).
(obligatory disclaimer: I am Adobe employee and this is my personal opinion only)
5 September 2009 @ 4:12 pm
I think Flash is easier to target than other web technologies for general public (non-developers). I don’t think that a lot of people know about HTML and JavaScript, but when something moves on a web page, they know it’s probably Flash. A right-click can confirm their thinking. So it’s pretty easy to target something that you can describe. “This web site sucks!” is targeted only at a specific web page, although the problem might be with the browser (IE…). With flash, it’s more like “flash sucks” rather then “this web site sucks”, because they can go “deeper” when they search for the source of the problem (by right-clicking), even if the cause is probably the actual website.
5 September 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Nice to see a well-reasoned, non-flame analysis. In general I agree with you, except on point #11: Flash is native code like all plugins, and it is SOLELY Adobe’s responsibility to make it not crash, ever. Not the browser vendors, and certainly not the developers who create the SWFs. There is no excuse.
(And I do like Flash and in fact I am a former Adobe employee, so please no accusations of bias from the peanut gallery.)
5 September 2009 @ 11:51 pm
As a Flash dev this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about. Sure Flash has it’s problems, so does everything. The only thing getting under my skin as of late, is all the HTML5 talk, and how it’s the new “Flash Killer”. I look at it this way, Flash has been around for years, it’s pushed the boundaries on things like animation, interactivity, and media across the internet. Without Flash, where would all these Javascript developers get ideas for there newly acquired tools? I can’t even tell you how many HTML5 canvas experiments I’ve seen that are rips of Flash experiments from back in the day.
I think the reason the mud is only being slung from one side of the fence, is that for the most part, no Flash Developer/Designer starts out as such, but instead are born from the HTML/CSS/JS world. This gives us a special perspective on the issues at hand.
Also for the list, not being able to middle click open links in a new tab drives me nuts. Maybe some day adobe can hook that up, or how about native scroll wheel support for both PC & Mac.
Loved the post, insightful and hilarious at the same time. Id love to see a list that outlines, what Flash can do that other platforms can not.
6 September 2009 @ 12:38 am
Good discussion. My take is that the vast majority of web users don’t care about Flash or even know what it is. The people who hate flash are typically non-Flash web engineers.
Part of the issue is the time invested in learning a particular technology. Non-Flash engineers typically have no idea how it works and therefore find it intimidating.
Also, engineers like to look down on Flash since they consider it not ‘real programming’. They dismiss anything that is design related, since they don’t understand design. This is interesting as well designed UIs become more and more important on the web.
I don’t disagree that are many problems with Flash, especially all-Flash sites. But for the right applications it’s currently unbeatable (youtube, picnik etc).
6 September 2009 @ 10:52 am
Flash hatred, like all hatred, is based in fear.
Usually, it comes from HTML professionals who are unwilling or unable to learn Actionscript and they are afraid for their jobs.
The proprietary nature of Flash is actually a HUGE advantage.
Flash looks the same across browsers and platforms – BECAUSE it is proprietary.
Flash will always be light years ahead in terms of cutting edge features – BECAUSE it is proprietary.
Flash’s Actionscript will always be far ahead of Javascript – BECAUSE it is proprietary.
Flash will always perform better – BECAUSE it is proprietary.
6 September 2009 @ 12:21 pm
Joel, funny, but people who say blog that Flash is dead, and then get a flood of angry protests also say that the protests against Flash being dead are based in fear – that Flasher’s know deep down inside that Flash is dead and if anyone dares voice the truth, they react violently. Not sure if either case is particularly true, but it’s always a good tactic to make your “enemy” out to be weak and fearful.
But felix, I think you hit it on the head when you say that those who hate Flash are generally non-Flash web engineers. I really doubt the average user hates Flash. For the most part they don’t really know what it is, other than they need it to watch videos and play games. It’s just there and occasionally needs to be updated. So whether it’s fear or not, I think it’s definitely a “my technology is better than yours” kind of thing going on.
7 September 2009 @ 3:30 am
To complement pt 2: it’s the development matter. To back this, please see my post Flash SEO package released for backbone CMS. It’s a rock-solid evidence of how Flash can be visible even without discussing the latest Google technology that indexes SWF and XML that many Flash sites rely on.
And openness? I’m sorry, but anyone claiming anything in this area, should look at Flex on Adobe Labs more thoroughly. I’m using open source Eclipse framework with Flex SDK to develop my Flex projects for free.
So all in all I believe most of the arguments in this Flash hatred are not backed and flourish on ignorance. It’s not 1999, when the local search engine maintainer refused to link to my 1st Flash site with “I don’t know what that is, we are not indexing it”. Time to acknowledge.
7 September 2009 @ 5:37 am
I agree with Richards comment:
“With great power comes great responsibility!â€
I believe that Flash is in a bit of an identity crisis. The transition to AS3
was expected however it left alot of designers that I know by the wayside, designers whom created experiences that made flash what it is.
In my opinion there ar too many coders and not enough designers involved in flash development today.
As Joel pointed out :
Flash hatred, like all hatred, is based in fear.
I think that this fear has risen from the identity crisis I mentioned above. The position of flash on the web was pretty well established
but since things such as swf address I see flash being used more often for what I would consider html experiences.
7 September 2009 @ 6:31 am
Its the developers fault? Thats like stating: “The one who made the problem was the fault”: You could say: Because adobe providing no proper tools for making not-powerconsumptive advertisings its adobe’s fault that advertising consumes that much CPU. Any good developer (JavaScript, AS3 or Java) can create software that works wonderfully and is a pleasure to deal with. Once you create a software platform like Adobe does: Thats not enough. IF you want your platform to be anticipated you have to make it difficult for people to make applications that ruin your name.
About URIs and the back button:
URIs are made to identify the location of a certain content in the internet. The URI should point to a resource and thats it. The hash mark was introduced to point to a named area on the current page you focus to. For one: Without scripting its not possible jump to parts of the resource in Flash: The initial requirement of knowledge of how to archive some simple flash working for common things like URI’s might not be the best approach to integrate in the web-experience. Beside that: Ajax applications are also just applications and thus have the same problems as flash applications have: Their state is not persistable; Some parts of the website are never about to be the same or are not reproducable after some event. Which is why the Back button can not work for them. You don’t serve content, you serve functionality. Does that mean that the back button shouldn’t work for them: No. It should state what happens and why it doesn’t work. From a user experience point of view: Pushing the back button is sometimes a risky game: Will I be able to come back to the comment I just entered in the flash application? Further more: Many “web agencies” use flash to provide content. Something for which flash not entirely unusable for but which is not easy to get done properly(that costs time&knowledge – both things common web agencies lack).
Flash crashes the browser
There are two pheonomenons which let the browser crash: One of course is the famous endless loop which adobe can’t be made responsible for. The other thing are random instabilities, caused by: Its not debugable from my perspective. How should I find out what just made the browser crash(or to be precise: in many cases flash crashed and took the browser with it). In many statements Adobe said that they are working with the browser developers to make the situation better. Chrome was the only browser who could make it better(without adobe’s help?): by putting flash in a own thread so the browser keeps staying alive even if the player crashes. And that should be the Solution? Aside from the problem with debugability and responsibility by adobe for that one: I recognized a change in my personal browsing habit to not open any new link while typing anything in the net: In case the link contains a flash page which lets my browser crash I would be pissed, so I avoid it (since it happens more often recently). Uhm: Of course this might not be all adobes fault – but I can see some connection.
Speed of flash
Javascript, css files and images are used in HTML in the manner of: The browser has to deal with how to cache it. In many cases opening another “resource” (see my URI section) is very fast because all the parts that make the homepage work together can be cached by the browser while a good developer is able to provide a only few html that contains most of the important data that differs from this URI to another. In Flash, especially with videos, I am annoyed that a refresh(or a browser crash) requires me to load this .flv again – from the beginning – even if it has be downloaded completly before. So the subjective feeling is: Flash stays at its initial speed when browsing a webpage while html is getting faster.
Searchability
Google searches for identifyable resources. I think even meanwhile it doesn’t support anchors, but if Flash developers want to make a application fast: They will not put all their content in that one URI/swf in order to make it slick and fast. When doing that: the .swf changes from content to application which comes with the same problem as AJAX: its not possible to reproduce the state and therefore not properly searchable. Imho thats still a serious problem which I am not sure how to deal with.
ADS
for sure making ads is annoying. But there is something about it which is far more annoying: Disable Flash and you have no advertisings -> yeah but you suddenly don’t have many other content which is not distinguishable from Ads. I think this point is pretty much invalid (joining your opinion) but it makes me think: Might there be a easier way for browser publishers to distinguish if the flash is content. (btw.: I have seen flash pages that include other .swfs from adservers crash with Adblock active).
7 September 2009 @ 9:43 am
@ Phillip Kerman
“but I do Ctrl+ or Ctrl- to resize text in the browser all the time. Not only does this have no impact on Flash, it is the Flash text that I find needs it the most.”
This is a dev issue again mate. Right so code to handle the key presses and increase the size of your text.
7 September 2009 @ 9:57 am
Martin, not sure I agree with your first point. You code in C or C++ or even Objective-C, and it’s incredibly easy to create memory leaks and crashes. The lower level a language is, the more power you have, and the more you have to take responsibility for not writing bad code.
How do you propose Adobe change Flash to make it difficult to write programs that hog the CPU without also creating problems for developers who know what they are doing?
7 September 2009 @ 11:33 am
Developers that know what they do don’t mind to use more complex approaches if they are consistant if they enable them. I try to approach the other way around: How could Adobe create a platform of at least same power as Flash has now avoiding some of the current negative karma, because thats what the real aim: Don’t annoy the user
*) Make Flash look good when some error or exceptional case occurs, or when the CPU usage is high.
– Trackback (as Firefox has it) if flash crashes
– Don’t let the browser crash with Flash( run the code at least in a seperate thread )
– Show beautiful error messages (see failwhale@twitter) if some error occurs at the place the error occured
– Specify which error occured (if known) and if it might be fixed (IOError) by refreshing or some other user interaction.
– Have more options for the too-long-execution time dialog and name them better (the german translation is terrible) like reduce playback speed, run as background task, stop execution or things like that.
– Allow developers to write their own implementation of what-happens-when-uncatched-exception-occurs: Like a email form pops up or automatical sending of exception to developers mail account.
– Let users restrict the CPU offered to the Flash player.
*) Offer powerful features (that come with responsiblity) additionally instead by default.
– Delay scripts that run for more than 1 second/ for some time by default in order to have other processes continue their work.
– Make developers have to enter a email adress if a exception or error occurs in order to let them know that a error occurs if a error occurs.
– Don’t do anything if no error handlers for ErrorEvents is added – just ignore the errors. Offer to listen to them and offer to throw errors on this behalf somehow. (might be most important one, maybe log it in a error console – somewhere)
*) Give less reason to use power and encourage programmers to delegate responsibility & offer tools for easy error prevention (do marketing for both)
– Offer neat API’s for data connection (like HTML – where you can load/size/place a image resource(from a url) in one line of code, with error handling (image that shows if image was not found), accessibility and like.
– Integrate libraries of well known open source projects and support them for better quality. (in order for new users to trust flash open source teams)
– Offer tools to identify the CPU, Memory & load time of the swf or file requests (like firebug) (without having to integrate it in the .swf by hand).
– Offer automatic unit testing in the compiler
– Offer all trace statements of the application in the exception stacktrace.
– Offer trace as silent process or as loud process (for direct debugging or after-error debugging)
– Prepare “Advertising” technology which is performance or power consumptive.
– Offer statistic tools that let you see with how many fps/memory your application runs on various computers (out of the box)
*) Make Flash crash less
– Fix bugs (even if you want to be backwards compatible…)
– Test harder
– Do it both with better tools (preferably more automatic)
– Implement features that require less workarounds which are often CPU & developer intense. Those are usually the questions most often asked in forums(example for advertising: having more than one screen updated for one .swf – that runs synchronized – currently done by expensive ExternalInterface calls or things alike )
And as a personal request: Hire someone like Joa that understands how compiler should work and encourage the person to do some great work.
7 September 2009 @ 11:39 am
Uh: Long statement, many mistakes: some improtant errors I found in my text: of course it meant “- Prepare Advertising technology which is not performance or power consumptive”. and “- Delay scripts that run for more than 1sec/framerate …”
7 September 2009 @ 11:45 am
@Tink
same with URL is @ Phillip Kerman refering to something which can be workarounded by flash but not dealt with in a native way: For example: Ctrl + and Ctrl – are easy to be found but Both can be changed within the menu as well…
Other examples for this: Text is not handled in the browsers way (copy&paste works but all the rest? Plugins?) Images cant be made drag&dropable to the harddisc (as it works with all major browsers). The “search” dialog of the browser doesn’t work in flash. Website-styles don’t work System’s print doesn’t integrate with flash print. No system like scrollbars, etc. etc.
7 September 2009 @ 11:53 am
Okay, sure, a developer can write code to support Ctrl+/Ctrl- however that’s not really my point. In HTML the browser handles this with no developer input. Plus, what if the user already has their text set really big? I don’t think Flash has access to it. Besides it’s a HUGE chore. I don’t think it’s fair to say “well, the developer should just code for that”. I’m simply pointing out that barely any do because it’s such a pain.
Also, text flow is all but non-existent as is the ability to “right click and choose open in new window”. Yes, I know there’s a feature in recent Flash Players–but a) no one uses that and b) it doesn’t really work the same as the native browser feature.
I’m not saying you can’t make good Flash content; just that this is an issue that is not exactly new and likely will never be addressed fully.
7 September 2009 @ 1:00 pm
“This is a dev issue again mate. Right so code to handle the key presses and increase the size of your text.”
Sorry, ‘excuse Fail’ : ). There is a standard in the browser, Flash may choose not to follow it for valid reasons, but then it will be something people don’t like about Flash. Saying it is the responsibility of all flash sites to do that is like saying people on the titanic should have brought their own canoes.
7 September 2009 @ 1:52 pm
- HTML 5 has audio, video, and canvas tags
- Browsers have blazingly fast Javascript engines
- Processing.js is great for animations and interactivity
Flex for RIA development is still strong.
Games? Although Adobe’s been thinking seriously about developing a game API and getting hardware acceleration, Unity is a pretty slick alternative.
Flash Studio is probably Adobe’s biggest asset but I’m sure someone out there is hard at work on an equivalent that publishes Processing.js code instead of SWFs.
What if you used AIR to build a Flash Studio clone that outputs processing.js code. Ooo…the irony =P
7 September 2009 @ 2:27 pm
@Phillip
One of the beauties of ActionScript and OOP is you can write a class to handle your CTL+ / CTL- concerns. Same with the context menu (right-click).
Create a class and throw that baby in every time you need it.
We have to start thinking like bad-ass programmers. This ain’t markup – it’s software development.
7 September 2009 @ 2:50 pm
@ash
HTML5 and faster javascript engines don’t address Flash’s HUGE advantage:
It looks the same cross-browser and cross-platform.
In our daily scrums where I work, most of the conversation goes like this – referring to javascript / HTML:
“looks good in ie7 – but not in FF3.”
or
“works correctly in IE8 – but not at all in Safari”
etc.
7 September 2009 @ 5:26 pm
@Joel I think you totally don’t get my point. One of the beauties of cars in the 50s was you could put in your OWN SEATBELTS! All I’m pointing out is what I don’t like about Flash. For example, developers who don’t bother using updateAfterEvent() for mouseMove stuff… oh, like the Flex Framework–and that stop watch icon… looks so amateur.
No offense Joel–but the website linked to your name has no such Ctrl+/- support… let along keyboard navigation. I will give you props for right-click on links–but I tend to avoid that for other reasons.
The point is that it’s either a huge chore or impossible to do basic UI stuff that leads to people “hating” Flash.
7 September 2009 @ 5:39 pm
@Philip
None taken.
That website (http://sympleton.com) was coded 5 years ago to teach myself Flash and get a job. I’m currently writing its vastly improved successor which will contain the items you seek.
Maybe we’re saying the same thing. That to move to the next level, Flashers need to take responsibility and make our systems at least as usable as HTML pages.
7 September 2009 @ 6:00 pm
@Joel… yeah, it’s our responsibility but… two things: it’s a BIG pain sometimes. That’s why it rarely gets done and is why people hate Flash.
7 September 2009 @ 6:20 pm
joel and phillip, this is one of the big reasons why I said in my earlier post (http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2375) that Flash is almost never the best choice for a web site. When people go to a website, they expect it to work in a certain way – back button, bookmarking, text size changing, text flow, many other things people have mentioned here. If you are going to make a web site with Flash, and you don’t take the time to handle all those features, you are going to upset some people.
But for applications, games, etc., many of these things often do not apply. A back button in an application usually doesn’t even make sense. Nor does bookmarking a particular part of an application. Changing the text size might but you can probably get away with it, because you can’t do that in a desktop app the same way you can with a web page (sure, you can, but it’s not a standard shortcut).
8 September 2009 @ 3:17 am
Well actually you can’t really call Flash a application platform neighter. It doesn’t offer many things a good application requires – some of it can be done with workarounds.
Same for games: Still miss proper 3D engine and device support (like joystick).
But people use it for homepages, applications and games & advertisings for various reasons – and thats how it arrives at other users web browsers. So: While it might not be usable, its beeing used for that and it creates reactions around the world.
About the initial topic: I would differ between anger, disguistment & hate. I was terribly angry about Internet Explorer a lot of times. Not because I feared it. Because I had to change the way I had to work-reduce some features which I could offer without supporting IE. Being disguisted about a way things work (like: believing in different methodologies) also leads to the comments mentioned above.
8 September 2009 @ 6:48 am
Wow – there seems to be a lot of fear in the Flash community at the moment. I guess people are worried about their flash skills becoming irrelevant. I honestly dont think people need to be concerned – Flash is still the best solution for a whole bunch of things (games, graphical apps. etc)
Admittedly Adobe seems slower than Macromedia were in responding to criticisms – remember when Jakob Neilsen said flash was 99% bad and all the html zealots cheered, and then Macromedia bought him as a consultant and the criticism of flash kind of went silent.
Like others have said, flash was going to be replaced by Java (actually early versions of flash had an export as Java option). And then it was going to be killed by Active X and then by SVG and now html5 is going to kill it – Im not holding my breath.
One point I would like to make – I just did a search for hate and Unity – could find a single relevant post – which is interesting given Unity crashes my browser about a 100 times more often than flash.
8 September 2009 @ 7:39 am
“Hate is a very exciting emotion. Haven’t you noticed?” Rita Hayworth in Gilda
A quick search and you can still find people talking about how much they hate the Microsoft Paperclip assistant, which was last in software in 2003. There may be an element of hating flash which is just people venting ’cause it’s fun to vent. And flash ads that pop up over the content your trying to read arent that far removed from that much maligned Microsoft Character.
8 September 2009 @ 7:44 am
All your pro flash arguments leave a bad taste in my mouth. The parallel to The National Rifle Association (NRA) is painfully obvious: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people” or the shorter: “Guns don’t kill people, people do”. In the reality we all know the fact: “Both guns and people kill; guns make it easier.”
This fact applies to Flash aswell. I agree that flash as technology does indeed not kill websites but the framework seems to make it hard to produce good stuff (or easy to produce bad stuff). So pick your flavour: either the framework is bad (lack of assistance to produce good stuff) OR the flash community at whole is made up of ignorant n00bs that call them self ‘developers’.
The web community has even adopted this quote in different shapes: “flash doesn’t kill websites, …”
* Designers who use Flash kill websites.
* people kill websites
* Over-Designers kill websites
* bad designers do
Or the hilarious: “Flash doesn’t kill websites; People kill people”. Or any other illogical combination.
Maybe start NFA and rant at meetings. In the meantime my firefox will still be loaded with addons like NoScript, AdBlock and NoFlash.
For future purposes: “jQuery doesn´t kill websites; ‘developers’ that try to use jQuery do” (remember where you first read it).
8 September 2009 @ 7:56 am
Anders, I like, “If Flash is outlawed, only outlaws will have Flash”.
Or, “You’ll get my Flash when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
8 September 2009 @ 9:33 am
Moan moan moan… It doesn’t matter how much Adobe improve Flash for its intended purpose (building entire web sites isn’t one of them), people will always have something to complain about…
8 September 2009 @ 9:47 am
This is a discussion somehow similar to “guns don’t kill people”…
I notice that the hatred is actually towards developer incompetence and marketing idiocy rather than a platform.
Let’s suppose we go back in time and murder the futuresplash team. People today would hate html5, svg and whatever else instead; the patterns that lead to mediocre content delivery would remain the same.
8 September 2009 @ 10:07 am
I don’t agree with the NRA “guns don’t kill people” analogy totally, though it’s an obvious, easy one to make.
But guns are basically MADE for killing. That is their express purpose and their only real use. Killing, injuring, or destroying people, animals, or property. You can say you just use it for target practice, but what are you practicing for?
Flash, on the other hand, is more like a big hammer. Sure, it’s an effective killing weapon, but it has other valid uses. There is a way to use a hammer to make something nice. Flash can be used to make a crappy web site / application, etc. or a great one.
Also, the better you get with a gun, basically, the more efficient you are at killing people. The more you learn about Flash and how to use it, and the more experience you get, ideally, the less crappy stuff you will make.
8 September 2009 @ 10:29 am
It’s true when we defend Flash it sounds like we’re worried about Flash’s demise and the loss of our meal ticket.
I will continue though, because I think it’s important for those new to Flash to understand the reality; Flash usage (and therefore Flash programmer demand) is already VERY strong and poised to explode.
One word: TV.
TVs are already being sold that can access the web. This means Joe six-pack is about to start accessing the Web. In my hood in Baltimore, very few of my neighbors are connected to the Web. But they all have 2 TVs and they all have cable. The current Internet is a speck compared to what it’s going to be when every TV can access it.
Flashers – start thinking about how your work is going to look on a TV. The Big Show is about to start and we’re leading the way.
8 September 2009 @ 12:22 pm
This whole gun analogy isn’t that far off. Its going to be very hard to make this all not sound political at this point, but here goes nothing.
Guns are a tool that help you accomplish something. That something is a human’s choice. Say for example, controlling the overpopulation of deer in a given area (arguably good or bad). Flash/Flex/ActionScript/Frameworks are tools that help you accomplish something. Say for example, making a totally sweet RIA or website to promote a product or idea (arguably good or bad).
Does the tool mean anything in either case? No. Its not about the tool, its about the reasoning and decisions made to accomplish the task at hand. How do we make our decisions? I make decisions based on all my life experiences, my education, my cultural upbringing.
Its more so a cultural thing if you ask me. The Flash development community and culture has matured immensely over the years due to developers taking it upon themselves to make good with what they have. This has, as it seems to me, encouraged advancements in the technology. As the technology matures old arguments definitely fall out of the dialog. However, those questions only relate to the technology itself, not what the technology is being used for.
It all comes down to the people and how they use the tools they have available. Flash, just like guns, are just a tool. The bigger question should be focused on why people want to kill or destroy things or why people chose to promote a certain product or idea.
8 September 2009 @ 2:05 pm
Great post Keith. It’s refreshing when another long time Flasher can see through the muck and emotion and not become either a hater or a fanboy. I have said myself many times as well that people are indeed stuck in the past and become religious over it. It’s nice that you didn’t just rant about them, but made a constructive post about the complaints; something that can be read and pondered.
9 September 2009 @ 10:43 am
vlakken comes closest to my feelings about Flash. I’m an artist and animator who likes the idea of interactive animation. I’ve tech edited code books on Flash. I used to moderate at were-here. I used to love to experiment with Flash. I’ve written my own chatbot. I understand regular expressions.
But AS3 is where I jump off the wagon. I’ve bought the books, I’ve struggled to put together some interactives with classes, but it’s… TOO HARD! And I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who just jumps in with the current version of ActionScript. Yes I know you can still use the earlier code but where do you learn it? To me AS 3 created a split between artists and developers, and where’s the fun anymore, the shared code and experiments? I try to get artist friends to play with coding and they throw up their hands.
Also it’s still hard to take an animated piece from Flash into a format that can work with film, as in movie titles for example.
9 September 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Let’s not forget to bash on Windows for not being open-source .. (although I am not bashing on Flash here, it works great on 64-bit Linux nonetheless)
9 September 2009 @ 5:34 pm
A while back I wrote a blog about “How I Overcame My Fear of Flash”:
http://www.jamesward.com/blog/2007/02/21/how-i-overcame-my-fear-of-flash/
It covers similar topics. Ultimately it’s important to choose technology not for dogmatic reasons but for what works best given the requirements. Sometimes Flash is the right choice, other times HTML is the right choice, sometimes the two should be combined together. But ultimately neither are perfect.
-James
9 September 2009 @ 6:32 pm
Uhm…I have seen javascript “experts” try to pull off effects that are normally best done in Flash. You know, -rollovers, accordion navigation structures, alpha layering, animations and the like. They did this with pure javascript just because they hate Flash and I can tell you that, in every instance of this buffoonery, even the most powerful desktop processors came to a grinding halt. And I don’t even have to mention that it behaved differently in all browsers; -if it worked at all.
Morale of the story: You can make a movie with a still camera too, if you take enough pictures that is. However, a camera designed to make movies might be a better/faster/more elegant option.
The right tool for the right job…simple.
10 September 2009 @ 8:35 am
Oh, BTW, I am a flash developer, and a Linux user, and there -IS- a flash 10 player for linux, and it’s working pretty good, at the very least it’s doing as well as the mac os version
http://www.adobe.com/fr/shockwave/download/alternates/
10 September 2009 @ 9:39 am
I’m glad you’re taking this topic on now. I think Flash has a lot of competition these days that it didn’t have before and I’m not talking about Silverlight either. Read on: http://www.lemieux-design.net/blog/blogger.html
11 September 2009 @ 12:14 am
if you set debug mode false and use RSL, your hello world app should be less than 10k ,rather than 400k,
but I agree with your most points. you are right,
11 September 2009 @ 5:52 am
My God, many of your arguments are -frankly spoken- crap.
Lets look at it:
1, no, there is no rule to have intros, and they are few nowadays. But people didnt get born today, now were they? And not everyone suffers from amnesia either.
8, Is this a joke? TV ads should be BANNED because they are annoying? You are completely deflecting from the actual argument here. The fact is that most annoying ads are flash ads, and that gives flash a bad image. You wouldn’t like/buy/like to buy a car that is mostly driven and used by pimps either, and possibly detest them on sight. And yes, TV commercials are more annoying than text ads, how hard is that to realize?
Your argument against “flash file size” at 9 is also very superficial. Have you honestly never visited a flash site and screamed at how long it took to load? No, its not only the designers fault. Flash doesnt show individual images or texts as soon as they are loaded, instead the whole swf has to be 100% loaded in order to see anything. => user nightmare, im staring at a loading bar for possibly 60 seconds, only to see that the site doesn’t interest me after all. Wasted time, I never bother to wait for flash shops or sites to load unless I know its going to be a teaser site anyway.
10, Well there is some weight on the developer here, but anyone will admit that flash is far from being fast. Just look at the Unity3D Engine. For the user, its as much as a plugin into the webbrowser as Flash, and performs much much much more.
14 September 2009 @ 10:37 am
I think there’s a number of issues at work here.
#1 I don’t think most folks actually keep up on what the story is with Flash.. I think they judge Flash, not on what the platform is capable of, but based on the Flash work they see.
#2 There is a culture, in the Flash world, of being insulated from a number of issues folks in css, xhtml, DOM world have to deal with.
#3 I go and look at Flash sites that won all kinds of awards from the Flash community.. and from a strategy point of view.. while they may be awesome and inspiring, at least 90% are horrible.. strategically speaking… which I think tells you something about the culture of Flash-ers
#4 While it is surely possible for Flash work to overcome all, or at least most, of the issues people have with Flash.. if you look how much it takes just to get competent with Flash in the first place, and then at doing things right.. from a strategy point of view.. it’s a whole other level.. as a result, most of the Flash stuff most people see doesn’t overcome this issue… Most of the people I bump into who do flash don’t actually know too much about how to do it right.. I remember being at a BFUG meeting a year or two ago when the issue of progressive enhancement came up.. and in a room of 30 or so people, 2 people had heard of it.. and right there was an seo solution.
I think the problem is.. folks in the Flash world need to start talking more about best practices relative to seo, usability, accessibility, etc. This and I think Adobe has to make all this stuff easier. Just the fact that Dreamweaver’s WYWIG editor doesn’t produce standards compliant code out of the box is a serious issue.. or that there Ajax framework is not unobtrusive? I mean it boggles my mind.. no wonder most people I know don’t like Dreamweaver!
I talk to super smart people.. internet strategists folks and they all have all the Flash misconceptions… clearly the Flash world would be in a much better place if not for that.
16 September 2009 @ 7:15 am
I agree on “the right tool for the right job” argument, but I’m having serious issues when people want to tell me what “the right tool” is! It makes me kind of curious: Who’s mandate is it to define what IS appropriate use of one technology over the other?
A big part of my job is selling technical solutions to our customers. Personally, I would never sell them a Flash solution, if I didn’t believe it was the right tool for the job. Problem is, the customers often trust their “technical advisors” more than they trust me, and let me tell you – the advice rarely goes in favor of Flash. In fact, often just by telling them it’s Flash, they don’t even have to see the solution to dismiss it.
So, noticing a lot of Flash developers promoting “the right tool for the right job” argument, really worries me. Yes, I know exactly what they mean, but I do think we need to be more careful, or we risk painting Flash into a very narrow corner!
-Øystein
16 September 2009 @ 11:57 am
This is sort of a subject that keeps me up nights. I would like to see more of a “working together” of the web standards and flash communities. I’d like to see the flash community take on more personal responsibility to provide alternatives to flash content, or deliver better flash work. I’d like to see the same effort on the web standards side of things.
I’ve been working on developing my flash skills, but every time I come up with an idea, I can think of a more direct way to build the project using web standards. Frustrating. I really do want to develop the skillset, because when I see some of the amazing flash work out there, I want to learn how to do it, too. But the production time to develop some of the solutions, versus the time to develop web standards solutions, and then the time to update… I wind up resorting to web standards. It’s just not as directly intuitive.
Flash and Actionscript training needs to be more about developing real-world solutions, instead of wonky samples that have no viability. For example, the actionscript training on lynda.com, a snowboarder image goes up & down, spins around. Huh? Let’s do something from scratch! Start with a New Document, choose the size for a reason, etc.
Venting… I hope it wasn’t useless. I’d really like to find a working middle ground between the communities. I see Flash as the unregulated wild frontier, and maybe that’s what Flash magicians like. It certainly has fostered wild creativity and moneymaking.
17 September 2009 @ 1:25 pm
I’d also remind people that Flash can be used for non-web applications like television-quality cartoon animation, animatics, and illustration. What other program can do that, haters?
18 September 2009 @ 7:19 am
Speed in web is essential. That’s why I think #9 and #10 are the worst problems. Flash ads are annoying also because of these two: they increase loading times and hog your cpu.
Many times Flash is used in places it wasn’t meant to be used. Delivering basic text w/ images content with Flash is slower than with pure HTML, and if there’s no apparent bonus from using Flash it will make people mad.
Take for example Gina Tricot (http://www.ginatricot.com), a nordic clothes retailer. Their site is basically a web shop with pictures of clothes and their prices. Using Flash makes the site cool, but it’s also frickin slow.
Accessibility should mean that people with 3-5 year old computers should also be able to access the content without losing their nerves. Sure you could have developers optimize their ActionScript, but with finite budgets the result would still be slower.
The key is to find the balance where the Flash “experience” is worth slowing down access to your content.
29 September 2009 @ 9:45 pm
My frustration with flash is that it no longer seems relevant. Sure it’s always great to have a project that involves ton of video and animation. Looks beautiful, great for your book, but the bottom line is this. There is a reason why the fwa is crammed full of luxury, cosmetic, fashion and car sites. Flash is pigeon holed into being sexy, expensive and ultimately superficial.
And once every other web monkey learned how to do image rotations on homepages and landing pages, a lot of what used to be done in flash is now done in ajax.
Web 2 has changed a lot. People are remembering more and more that content is king. And when youtube, vimeo and a host of other video serving options became available, and with flash being perceived as impossible to maintain, and utilize around CMSs, man we’re all hurting… and for this reason yes flash does suck.
But what we interactive designers have over others is that innately we always saw site design as a dynamic thing.
We’ve got to start doing more projects involving visualizing data, providing a context to consume content. with this flash will be on the rise again.
I mean really if you think about it, isn’t something written in for the iphone in cocoa practically the same things that we’re doing? Why don’t people complain about the iphone sucking?
30 September 2009 @ 8:17 pm
FLASH HATERS. That’s how I call them.
Very good article. My congrats! I believe it express every rational people’s mind.
No my friend. I believe they DO know!
They aren’t morons. The most of them are web-experienced developers.
If you wonder how comes web-experienced developers to write those things,
you have to sit on their chair facing their own fears for a while:
Adobe introduced something really new and strange to their work.
Flash structure ways of work has nothing to do with the working paths as they used to do.
So the perspective of this “flash thing” is stealing their work, their experience, and their background.
Flash has becoming the ENEMY because they “hate” to sit back, study and reinvest
in order to claim all over again their already claimed position.
That’s where the rage is and has nothing to do with the rest.
I believe the guy comment at 10th position is partially admitting it.
Their problem is that flash hasn’t used their background.
In order to follow, they have to go all over from start.
They will never admit that html has becoming a dead-end,
because this is their specialty and they will never give up supporting it.
They don’t pay a dime if flash works for the better. The only “better” they understand, is their own.
You did well you mention few rational things in this article.
That’s what I also do from time to time, in order to protect people they don’t know.
Following this practice let me also mention few more things:
-ABOUT 9: flash takes long to load-
Let’s say that have to load 100KB, what is the fastest way to do it?
Load 100 files sized 1KB each (100KB total) or 1 file sized 100KB?
Almost everybody knows that the right answer is the second.
Html is the worst loading failure I’ve ever met.
They load separately every single element contained in the page,
even the few bytes small curve corner of a square shape of the page.
As a developer you have absolutely NO loading option to do,
because this is how html initially work!
How about flash sites?
You can load all the content before site starts in ONE single file.
Or, you can load parts of the site, whenever you want, joined or separated.
YOU decide, not the protocol.
-ABOUT 4: Standards-
“What kind of standard flash follows?”. This is REAL joke!
Flash, thank God, is very far and over them!
Flash site is working AND looking the same way ALWAYS. There is no such need as standard
to make my site look the same in all browsers.
You want another joke? My site is going to work the same
even on browsers are not yet released!!!
Why? Because it is based on flash add-on not on browser’s disposal!
13 October 2009 @ 3:52 pm
I’m not sure it’s that people hate Flash on its own. I think people have issues with Adobe’s might and monopoly on top of the issues that Flash has. Part of it is that people hate Flash developers/designers who dogmatically rave about how great it is – and by inference how great they are to be great at Flash – the same as people hate any other acolyte of a particular flavour (Windows/Mac, Manchester/Arsenal, Evangelical preacher, Bono, etc., etc.). I see a lot of insecurity in much of the heated responses I read about criticisms of Flash, whether it’s Jonathan Harris or Wired. Anyone in any industry that stakes their entire career on being proficient in a single tool is asking for trouble. It’s the thinking that counts. Much of the Flash stuff and people that people hate is not very well thought-through or, rather, unthoughtful.
There’s lots of good stuff too – you don’t necessarily need to defend the bad, it can still be much improved. Flash’s biggest contribution, ironically, is in linear media. It has made video on the Web a pretty universal experience, which was a total surprise given Flash’s early poor handling of it. I’m very glad Real Video is almost in the dustbin of the past.
By the way, I think Joel up in comment 58 there is totally wrong about Flash and TV in the same way the everyone has been wrong about interactive TV for years. Hulu desktop is a pretty good example of why. Joe six-pack has already been surfing the web for years, when he sits down in front of the TV, it isn’t to be (inter)active. But I’ll be happy to be wrong when Joel rocks up to me in his Ferrari in a few years.
16 December 2009 @ 3:06 pm
My biggest complaint with Flash is the video aspect. The primary codec is a complete piece of shit in regards to quality, you might as well use Real Media [which is not dead yet, sigh.....]. H.264 is good, but when it comes to the streaming aspect I have seen so many poor implementations and so few good examples that I have to wonder if it is more than just the developer, that maybe it is the flash technology itself.
10 January 2010 @ 8:25 pm
I hate Flash. I hate going to a site to find,..I must update my flash,…again. Seems ,(if some of you can remember,) quicktime was once like this too….and macromedia. I don’t think flash is here to stay. Sorry, I still hate flash.
27 January 2010 @ 5:41 pm
[...] Flash. Let me for the record repeat my oft-said phrase, “I HATE Flash.” But the interwebs is full of pernicious Flash animation, so I have to deal with that, and [...]
3 February 2010 @ 6:39 am
concerning the mobile market, not if Google has anything to do with it. Apple’s stronghold on the mobile market will slip with 2010 being a great year for Android.
No access to these slick tools (just a few):
http://www.aviary.com/
http://www.sumopaint.com/
http://www.prezi.com/
http://www.picnik.com/
http://labs.digg.com/arc/
Apple is helping take the web back to ‘The Dark Ages’ by restricting flash.
And all supposed crashing? It’s specific to those machines! Fix your computers people! Most people don’t experience this. All these RIA’s wouldn’t exist if the platform was that unstable!
As far as the iPad?
I find it disturbing that Apple would dictate what information I receive on the web from it’s OS and not allow the user to make this decision. There is something inherently wrong with that and it grinds at the very core of my belief system. It’s ridiculous that Apple fanboys are willing to accept this! What a bunch of pussies!
EVERYONE WATCH THIS : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr4pPAn-m5g&feature=player_embedded#
19 February 2010 @ 8:37 pm
Let’s organize something ‘plain and simple open source’ format to replace notorious ADOBE ‘Flash’ once for all. The Flash is not just hogging cpu but memories resource as well as GPU power. In total, your need of power increase, shorten your battery life and suck more energy bills. Apple chief Steve Job is correct, Adobe programmer has becoming lazy, but he forgotten to point out Adobe management’s equally lazy. Let’s come up with a Flash replacement standard.
8 March 2010 @ 5:42 pm
I salute you my friend, I think that all this Flash hate is only pure irrationality based on misleading if not false things that people hear about Flash, blaming Flash instead of the developer. Flash is an excellent platform for making amazing things, there is many examples about this, and you have refuted everything perfectly; people need to chill in that Flash-hate nonsense. Don’t hate flash people and instead work together with it to make the web better.
28 March 2010 @ 4:36 pm
i hate flash. maybe i hate it because there are so many crappy flash developers out there. maybe i hate it because it adds very little of use to a site. maybe i hate it when i accidentally move my mouse over an ad and annoying noises issue from my otherwise quiet and well behaved machine. maybe i just don’t see the point. if all it adds, (as the name implies), is flash, then who the hell needs it?
3 April 2010 @ 10:45 pm
Flash is great, it’s html (whatever flavor) that sucks. I bailed out of html a long time ago and don’t use it if I can avoid it. With Flash I don’t have to care about what browser (and what browser version!) the viewer is using, I can put ANY content WHEREVER I want it on the page and I can animate stuff. It’s great unless you are a fearful person.
12 April 2010 @ 3:02 am
Hey Joe, I hope you’re not a professional web designer, because you’ll be out of a job soon with that mentality. Apple is going to ANNIHILATE Adobe. You should learn to accept change.
22 April 2010 @ 7:46 am
I’m not a developer, don’t care what language websites (mine or any others) are designed in.
I am a business owner, potential customer and I know what I like …and don’t like.
I don’t like annoying websites, poorly designed adverts or popups. If a site annoys me, I don’t return. If an advert annoys me, I don’t click on it. I have pop-up software installed and I have flash turned off on my Firefox browser.
If you’re a developer (and most of the responders here seem to be …and some also seem to have issues with ‘normal’ people, i.e., consumers who spend money by clicking on their poorly designed ads …or rather by not clicking on them) you seem to forget that the end user is the person who spends money who makes it possible for you to have a job or get paid.
Superiority about Flash or not, if people aren’t buying it doesn’t matter how good something is and telling yourself that it is better is a way to self justify yourself to the unemployment line.
23 April 2010 @ 10:12 pm
Most flash haters are short-sighted.
In a few years, if they are right, if a great combination of html5 and magical open source sweetness can actually do everything flash does, well… we’ll have the same ad banners, cpu hogs on slower computers and bad usage from bad developpers.
Don’t blame the technology for the content it serves. It’s just a toolbox.
30 April 2010 @ 1:52 am
This is a sneak preview of the next update on Apple’s site whit a special section for Adobe Flash, The funny side of the history
http://bit.ly/b9AbfC
13 May 2010 @ 1:37 pm
How in the heck can you list the complaints and not include SECURITY? Did you not notice the two biggest hacks this year were done with flash, and acrobat reader.
That is the reason it is not allowed in sensitive corporate areas… It has a track record of instability and insecurity.
Aside from that, until it can be viewed on phones, the fastest growing medium for viewing the Internet, it doesn’t make sense to worry about it. It will be gone in four years anyway.
16 May 2010 @ 2:01 pm
No matter what you do to try to improve your Flash, I have a hard time believing that it will be better than well written HTML + Javascript. And you completely ignore the fact that HTML is just a markup language which allows my browser to display things how I want. Flash craps all over that idea. Futhermore, they put things in Flash that try to go around the browser, like LSOs, making it even harder for me to keep track of what’s going on with my own computer.
Flash is garbage. Web devs, do your job and learn how to develop with real tools. I don’t use Flash and if your site has it, I’ll go somewhere else. It’s a big Internet.
24 May 2010 @ 12:34 pm
[...] a comment Go to comments BIT-101 compiled a list of reasons why people are so critical of flash. http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2381 It’s unfortunate that Flash gets such a bad rep, when in this case the ball falls squarely in [...]
2 June 2010 @ 11:50 am
Its not so much that I hate Flash, but that I hate not being able to turn it off! Its an aggro to turn off in Explorer (should be a single click button to toggle on / off), and then when I do turn it off, I keep getting messages on websites saying that I need to upgrade my Flask player!
This is just plain bad.
5 June 2010 @ 2:36 am
My only answer is Flash was created for Desktop and Mobiles and Netbooks need touch based and not click based. The fundamental difference lies in the user interaction and nothing else.
5 June 2010 @ 7:19 am
Balaji, you’re drinking too much of Steve’s koolaid. Flash works fine with touch.
6 June 2010 @ 6:29 pm
I f**n hate Flash!! I have a new powerful computer but f**nk flash makes computer scream like “Help me, close this web site!!) I sometimes open winamp to overcome noise! It crashes IE, Firefox, Safari, all browsers have problems with it. I hope one day a new technology comes out like HTML5 and webmasters will no longer need to program in Flash, until then we’ll have to suffer from this technology from 90s.. I’m with Steve Jobs, he knews what we need for future internet, kill the FLASH!
6 June 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Peter. You got some issues and Flash is the least of them. Seek help, bro.
13 June 2010 @ 11:58 am
I have been using Flash for websites since version 4 but since the past 6 months I am giving up on actionscript. Flash is going the way of it’s predecessor, Director (remember Lingo?) After spending the last year learning CSS3 and HTML5, I am convinced they make for much better web experience. The Flash player is my reason for disliking Flash, you know why? Security issues!!! I still cannot believe that they are at version 10 and still there is a serious security issue with Flash saving cookies from third party to your computer and storing files that you can’t get rid of unless you manually remove them.
24 June 2010 @ 12:14 pm
The number one thing to realize about Flash, is that Actionscript is one of the best languages you can write in for the web. This is why it is “hackable” and this is why there are soooo many Flash developers. There are hundreds of Flash games making millions of dollars a year. Flash is an amazing platform that puts a lot of power in one persons hands. One talented Flash developer can easily design, animate, and code an entire game inside of a single application. NO other technology does that…
Now with Flash Builder there is a whole new world of application development taking place.
Point is, Flash isn’t just a plug-in, its a development pipeline that makes sense. That is what its true power is.
Ultimately that doesn’t matter though, what matters is that HTML5/JS/CSS are free and open technologies that get 90% of what Flash can do. Nevermind that knowing cross-browser CSS is a black art as opposed to a science. Nevermind that CSS/JS are indistinct now. Nevermind that HTML5 does not let you get into the nitty gritty of streaming videos.
It doesn’t matter, what HTML5 is, is free and easy for 90% of the crap you see on the web.
The elites will continue to write hotness in Flash, but we’ll be overwhelmed and forced to move over to JS soon as the hordes latch on to their latest collective fascination.