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I only still need Flash for my favorite pron site. I don't see anything else useful being done with it.
 
flash is not going away anytime soon.
designers like to use flash because it gives them more freedom

Hulu, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN all still use flash for there sites and there "invested" in the technology so there not going to re-invest.

sites are going to have to write new CSS and Java scripts in the head tags to detect itouchs and ipods,
 
flash is not going away anytime soon.
designers like to use flash because it gives them more freedom

Hulu, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN all still use flash for there sites and there "invested" in the technology so there not going to re-invest.

sites are going to have to write new CSS and Java scripts in the head tags to detect itouchs and ipods,

I remember when people said that about SNA as well.
 
actually
firefox works better....
some airline sites, and parts of disney.com dont have the same functions in Safari. If your using Safari you dont even know its not working...!!

Thats why i have to do all my banking using Firefox!
 
Haha whoa . . The tension, the tension. Why are so many hateful of flash tech. ? I think its beautiful. It offers a nicer user experience. It's nice to move your mouse over something, or click on something and watch it move or do whatever action is applied. :cool:
 
I hate to tell you all but Safari is not really tested for use on the web.
Companies that write code for web browsers write off Safari and the Iphone because it only makes up 2.2% of users. (see link below)

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

you are incorrect. sites not working properly in safari are the exception, not the rule.

most professional web developers are die-hard standards supporters because standards make their jobs easier. safari and opera have the best standards support amongst browser vendors, followed very closely by firefox. internet explorer is a distant and pathetic third.

where you find incompatibility these days are in small to medium sized businesses that hire or have on staff hobbiest developers. people who "design" sites in their spare time. these people are the internet equivalent of all the "graphic designers" that appeared in the mid 80's when the mac and desktop publishing became affordable.

most developers i know write out a standards compliant site and then retro-actively add in all the ugly IE hacks and/or alt stylesheets.

in my experience writing a standards compliant site there's about a 1-3% variance between how FF/SF/OP interpret html/css directives and another small amount of missing feature (e.g. last-child). IE 7 tacks on another 5-15% depending how tricky your layout/functionality is, IE6 tacks an additional 10-15% beyond that (for a total of 15-30% more work) IE5 and 5.5. which i don't know anybody supporting anymore, but it could often take up to 50% more work.
 
actually
firefox works better....
some airline sites, and parts of disney.com dont have the same functions in Safari. If your using Safari you dont even know its not working...!!

Thats why i have to do all my banking using Firefox!

"better" is a very subjective term... and no evidence to back it up! Mind you, I've been a happy Firefox user for many years, but to say it's better, period, isn't the slightest bit accurate. One of the major issues to me and many others is browser speed, not just the ability to display all the gimmicky bells and whistles on a few sites. When it comes to speed, Firefox is painfully slow, compared to Safari. Not my opinion, but tested fact.
 
I think talk of it being a Flash replacement is a bit overstated... but more showing where Apple is making their investments.
arn

Yes, I think it is definitely overstated. You probably should have clarified this a lot better in the article, especially since AI has really embellished it.
I'm sure ~50% of your readers unfamiliar with web development technologies will now think that this javascript framework has the capabilities of and will replace Flash.


so is this saying you could run flash in the iphone withhout actually using flash?

I guess this means that we will not see Flash in the iPhone (atleast from Apple) as it looks like they are moving to a better solution.
My guess is this new framework looks and feels like flash without a plugin and is probably more efficient then flash.

Javascript has come a long way in recent years, especially with the ability to callback to the web server and receive information asynchronously. Client-side Javascript has become the foundation for modern web applications, and is powerful enough to enable rich internet applications that can rival the features and functionality of many desktop applications. it is also starting to become capable of basic animated graphics, especially for enhancing user interfaces with graphical effects.

That said, to say that a javascript framework will be a practical Flash replacement is laughable. I'm no fanboy of Flash, and I quit using it years ago, but there are many things that Flash can do that any amount of javascript, HTML, and CSS just can't do (at the present time)

#) No-headache, cross-platform video playback
Before the widespread use of flash video, most video on the internet was accessed through binary browser plugins like Quicktime, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer :)eek:), etc. This was a pain-in-the-*** at best, and could be a total nightmare. You had many different competing video plugins, with different functionality and capabilities depending on version number, platform, browser, browser version, etc. They had different control systems, different streaming video protocols, and worst of all, different codecs. They were inefficient, buggy, and crashed all the time.

#) Creating large, high-resolution, rich media presentations that mix bitmaps, vector graphics, and even video streams for product or service marketing.
These take advantage of Flash's highly-optimized, animated vector/bitmap graphics engine. In addition to complex animation, Flash scenes can seamlessly integrate and transform video.

#) Creating rich media banner advertisements
Flash is great for creating and deploying rich media advertisements that use video and animated graphics. First of all, for the website owner, embedding self-contained, binary Flash movies is MUCH easier than attempting to embed a html/javascript/css advertisement without screwing up the website code and layout. Secondly, for the client, much like the rational for the PDF format with documents, using Flash will insure that the advertisement is seen exactly as intended.

It's good to see that Apple, Opera, Mozilla, Google, and other companies are helping to increase the functionality and popularity of open web standards, including vastly speeding up javascript. As the technology evolves and browsers build in advanced new functionality, open web standards will no doubt overtake all binary plugins, including Flash. In the near future, HTML 5 should provide a simple way to embed video into the browser without needing flash, although there is current infighting over the codecs to be used and other issues. On the graphics animation front, animated SVG (scalable vector graphics) can provide similar vector animation as Flash, although the ability to seamlessly combine animated graphics with video is currently out of reach. As for my third "bullet" above, I am unaware of any solution in the works for pre-packaged rich media advertisments that don't affect the parent website.

With the introduction of GPU hardware acceleration in the new Flash plugins, I'm sure we will see advanced applications running in the browser that is able to powerfully manipulate image and video data, such as online versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. I don't want to see Flash become even more embedded because of this new capability, and I hope that all players interested in a robust, open web standards environment will work hard to push the technology forward, including new functionality in javascript, animated SVG, CSS animations/transformations, HTML 5+, etc.
I remind everyone that a good portion of web users are still using IE 6.0 (windows), and some are still on IE 5.0/5.5. Remember, it takes seemingly forever to get everyone to upgrade their browser, so even when a new technology rolls out on the newest browser, it takes many months and even years for the technology to trickle down to the greater market, which means a big delay before large websites will use the technology.



If by Flash enabled you mean for videos as stated above, all the website has to do it use regular old HTML and throw the Flash code out. It's just a couple of lines of code in HTML 5.0 and you don't need the Flash video plug-in anymore. The sites that *don't* do this are just foolish and don't deserve your business IMO.
The very fact that the millions of new iPhone users won't be able to see Flash videos will force websites to use HTML instead..

First of all, It's very naive to assume that iPhone users alone will have any effect on the greater web market for Flash video. Secondly, yes it is true that HTML 5.0 should have native video playback, but Apple/Nokia/Mozilla/Opera/Microsoft are still fighting over how to implement it and especially which video codec(s) are going to be used. Even when updated browsers are finally ready that implement HTML 5.0, it will take a long time for a critical mass to form since browser updates happen slowly over time. For god sakes, some people are still using IE 5.0!!


I guess this is Apples answer to Microsoft's "SilverLight" (flash wanna be) as well as Adobe's "Air" platform (which is extremely capable, IMO). Here we go with yet another *-war (format war, os war, mac vs. pc war, iraq war).
I'll need silverlight to open MSN.com
SproutCore to get to Apple.com
and Flash to get to every thing else.

Great.

Actually not really. Sproutcore is just a javascript framework, it's not really competing with Flash or Silverlight (rich media, video). All you need is a browser with Javascript to use Sproutcore.
 
That site is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. HORRIBLE user experience! Wait 30-45 seconds (on a DSL connection) for something to load, annoying music, no indication as to what the site is about or why I would want to stay around and wait for it to finish loading. After the screen captures, I closed it without waiting any more, so I still have no idea what the site is about. If they were wanting to do business with me, or educate me or solicit any kind of support from me, they lost their chance! A perfect example of technology not being used to benefit the consumer!

Because you CAN do something with a technology, doesn't mean you SHOULD!

Ha, took the words out of my mouth.
 
A few points:

1) This isn't adding any new functionality anywhere. Apple is just using standard JavaScript to write applications instead of using a plugin (like Flash).

2) Flash should die. For 90% of flash sites, there is nothing done by Flash that couldn't be done by standard, non-proprietary technologies like JavaScript. Flash isn't and shouldn't be a part of "the web". It's not a standard, its a plugin. Anyone who builds a site with flash should assume that not everyone can see it. Flash broke the web, not the iPhone.

3) A big exception to #2 is video and audio - these were a pain until flash came along. However, it should be simple to have your site detect flash and revert back to standard html if it isn't there. And guess what - Safari supports the standard way of including video. So this isn't a matter of including a special hack just for the iPhone - its just good web design practice.

Flash allows designers to include truly amazing dynamic design onto the web. period. you can't do that with javascript, simply because adobe as figured out all these years since director maybe, how to optimize vector animation on the fly. Actionscript e javascript have different scopes.
 
Flash allows designers to include truly amazing dynamic design onto the web.

Designers love Flash. Most users hate it.

The problems with most flash based content are
  1. You have to wait for the damn animation to end before you can get to the information you want
  2. The anamations are not designed to take into acount the size of the window, so you have either scroll bars or wasted space.
Yes I know some designers include a "skip" button that's a decent conpromise

The best web designs simply tag the data for content and let the browser decide on presentation.
 
The iPhone doesn't do Java either. Does this SproutCore has something similar to Javabeans? BeanSprouts maybe? :D
 
Designers love Flash. Most users hate it.

The problems with most flash based content are
  1. You have to wait for the damn animation to end before you can get to the information you want
  2. The anamations are not designed to take into acount the size of the window, so you have either scroll bars or wasted space.
Yes I know some designers include a "skip" button that's a decent conpromise

The best web designs simply tag the data for content and let the browser decide on presentation.

none of your points are inherent flaws of flash rather poor designers/developers. to borrow a cliche: flash doesn't create bad web sites, people create bad web sites.

flash is a tool, nothing more nothing less. the ease of entry in terms of learning curve makes it far easier for a novice/negligent designer to create poorly conceived ideas that piss off users, but it's just as possible to make a plain HTML web site perform just as poorly.
 
It is pretty safe to assume that the majority of people commenting on this SproutCore announcement are not web application developers, due to the rampant ignorance of statements made.

SproutCore is just a javascript library. That's it. It is nothing more than something along the lines of Dojo or Prototype.

Flash will still be used by web developers to provide users with not only video and audio content, but also cross-domain socket connections, snappy animations, and many other features that the HTML/JS/CSS stack can't provide.

The best web applications will use a mix of Javascript, HTML, CSS, Flash, and whatever server-side technologies they've decided upon to provide their users with a nice responsive interface that is compatible with the major web browsers, indexable by web crawlers, and provides a service that is in demand.

For everyone commenting on HTML5, please remember that while there are a number of exciting advancements, this is many years from being a standard.

Flash, on the other hand, is installed by the vast majority of users on the web, so it is safe to say that is can be considered a part of the web standard. The last I checked it was somewhere around 98% penetration.

Honestly, if you're even close to familiar with the technologies at hand, you'd look at this announcement, shrug your shoulders, and wonder what everyone is getting so excited about.
 
you can't do that with javascript, simply because adobe as figured out all these years since director maybe, how to optimize vector animation on the fly. Actionscript e javascript have different scopes.

Woah wait a minute.

Adobe did not create flash.

Macromedia did (and director too)

The facilities in San Jose (Adobe) and San Francisco (Macromedia).

Lets not blame adobe for "ruining the web", because without them, I know alot of photographers who would be stuck with less than great photo editing tools and whatever else.

Yes, now its (adobe's) problem, which sucks the big one, but lets not get it twisted.

BTW not talking to you on the last part, that was for everyone else.
 
Designers love Flash. Most users hate it.

The problems with most flash based content are
  1. You have to wait for the damn animation to end before you can get to the information you want
  2. The anamations are not designed to take into acount the size of the window, so you have either scroll bars or wasted space.
Yes I know some designers include a "skip" button that's a decent conpromise

The best web designs simply tag the data for content and let the browser decide on presentation.

williamcotton has responded with the right knowledge.
for the "problems" remember that sites without huges intros
don't have that problem, and those with huge anims can entretain you
with some game first; at last you have the skip button or the anim isn't reproduced at the next visit.
so, don't expect that web apps explode in snappy-forms (i don't like google docs yet) since they are developed by humans too.

also flash can be use only to certains parts of a webpage.
as user i like it, as a developer love it.
 
As for the other guys
Shouldn't a combo of Java and Cocoa be called Mocca.

Some really interesting ideas there.

Wonder how easy it would be to have either of these tied to a native coca app, and the built in web server.
So you could have thin client collaboration hosted by the main application.
 
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