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Hulu Sticking With Flash For Now, Says HTML5 Not Ready Yet
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The rest of the world is "smart" enough, and yet you just mentioned that two of the most successful tech companies are doing it differently. Which part of that is "smart" again?
That would completely defeat the purpose of HTML5 video, because it would again create a dependency on a closed source player. Might as well use Flash or a quicktime plugin then.
I don't have to make a point when I'm asking a question.
Your point escapes me, though. Not sure about the label or the linkage to cancer - bit silly to be honest and completely off topic.
Perhaps you could shed some light on your position on this topic, which is Hulu sticking with Flash for now.
My position is that it probably makes a lot of sense to stick with Flash. At the same time they should create an iPhone/iPad app (which they charge for - which they can use to fund their migration off of Flash onto open standards).
Flash is here, there's no point denying it. I hate Flash, because I hate proprietary standards on the web (which is about openness). Does that mean Flash should be dumped today? Absolutely. Is that realistic? Absolutely not.
A logical migration off of Flash as a tool websites use is pragmatic. And if they can get iPhone and iPad users to help pay for this migration, I as an iPhone user and future (as I am not in the US) iPad user am happy to pay for this.
What's your position?
I also pointed out that both of those companies have a history of making breaking changes without caring what it does to their user base. In both cases they have shown that they are willing to make their customers adapt to them, not adapt to their customers needs.
There is a reason that IT shops that have to support 100+ machines per full time staff member are likely to better support Windows than Mac. Apple makes too dang many breaking changes from version to version. It keeps things cleaner than keeping around legacy tech, but it is not an option in most big shops. I work for a university and we have some departments that are still using software that was last updated 10 years ago. You cannot do that if your platform has breaking changes every 9 to 18 months.
A large part of that is the way Apple has locked down access to the video hardware. On a PC flash can pass off a lot of the rendering work to the GPU and not hit the CPU so dang hard. It is only in the latest SDKs that Apple has allowed that on OS X, and they still have it locked down so much that only certain decoding functions are available. Apple wants everyone to use QuickTime, if you don't use QT, they would rather you went somewhere else.
Click2Flash was out long before Apple and Adobe began their little spat. Many people have been upset with flash for a long time. It's only now that its being mentioned in public.
There is no such thing as HTML5 video. Video codecs are not part of the spec. That was my point.
The point of the HTML5 video tag is to allow the browser to play video natively without requiring a plugin. The browser can decode the video however it wants. Including using addons or plugins.
There is nothing wrong with using closed source software to access open standards.
Bingo. They could easily port their videos to an HTML standard (not necessarily HTML5), but they need to wrap their content in DRM and charge.
I'll just say this:
If your business model absolutely requires that you use only a specific tool available only from a single vendor, you haven't thought out your business very well. Especially in the computer industry where companies are often bought out and the software they produced discontinued. It's not a good place to be.
(my highlighting)
As I said, requiring an addon or plugin defeats the purpose of the HTML5 video tag.
You might as well call embedded Quicktime or Flash plugins an open standard then, because the <embed> tag is undoubtedly part of the open HTML4 standard.
I agree with you, but people are acting like flash was never useful. It served its purpose, and to some extent still does. For Hulu's web site, they need flash until html5 can fulfill their business needs. That isn't so bad.
Yeah, but I'd be OK with that... the problem, I feel, is that most of the people on the anti-Adobe-bandwagon are ignorant end users/consumers who have absolutely no clue about content creation and technology from a provider/producer perspective, they're just sitting on their lazy asses yelling "feed me!" with zero appreciation for what's going on in the kitchen. And for some peculiar reason they also think Flash and Adobe are interchangeable words.
"Just switch to HTML5/Canvas already, what's the holdup??"
"Ummmmm... the absence of dedicated production tools? Missing features? The spotty support on the browser end of things? Insufficient test data? Hard to find and employ people with skills and experience in HTML5, dead easy to find Flash developers/designers/animators? And a thousand other legitimate 'holdups'?"
"Waaaaaah cry me a river just do it already!"
"OK, here you go."
"But this sucks!"
"Yup."
It doesn't require a plugin. It is an option. Browsers are not required to support every video codec as part of the HTML5 spec. That would be crazy. Safari currently requires a plugin to play ogg. Firefox requires a plugin to play h.264.
I'll say it again. HTML5 does not specify a video codec. So a video codec (including one that supports DRM) cannot defeat the purpose of HTML5.
You are confusing things. The open standards that I referred to are HTML5, javascript, and the other open standards that the web consists of. Closed source software such as IE or Safari (not Webkit) or Quicktime or Flash support open standards, but they are not open standards themselves.
Anyone saying Hulu isn't important is a blatant Apple shill. Hulu is awesome. Was hoping to get an app for my wife's iPad, but unfortunately now that doesn't appear likely in the near future.
As smarter folks have already said in this thread, Apple should support flash. Especially on the iPad. To not do so continues to show their own idiocy and their disregard for the wants and needs of customers.
As smarter folks have already said in this thread, Apple should support flash. Especially on the iPad. To not do so continues to show their own idiocy and their disregard for the wants and needs of customers.
Flash is a low-rez resource hog anymore. At the time it was put out in the market it was better than what we had. But it is old now. It is bloated and needs an overhaul or it needs to be replaced.
Hulu does not want a majority of the populace to use it ( hulu not flash). It would be bad for the cable/satalite companies which is where (at least at this point in time) the money is at for programming. Hulu was a stab at curtailing the losses from people downloading programming on the Internet. Look at who the main shareholders for Hulu are. DRM is what is important, as well as being able to show advertising clients how many hits their ad has gotten. If they can't do that then their business model is for naught. What is respectable about Hulu is that they outright admit it.
Someone asked elsewhere in this thread about if the DRM is server side what is to stop the client side from downloading the file. As far as I know you can't download the file but with software you can 'record' it to the harddrive.
Hulu does not want a majority of the populace to use it ( hulu not flash). It would be bad for the cable/satalite companies which is where (at least at this point in time) the money is at for programming. Hulu was a stab at curtailing the losses from people downloading programming on the Internet. Look at who the main shareholders for Hulu are. DRM is what is important, as well as being able to show advertising clients how many hits their ad has gotten. If they can't do that then their business model is for naught. What is respectable about Hulu is that they outright admit it.
Someone asked elsewhere in this thread about if the DRM is server side what is to stop the client side from downloading the file. As far as I know you can't download the file but with software you can 'record' it to the harddrive.
It may be bloated for mobile devices but it runs just fine on computers and macs, I still use it for youtube,newgrounds, and other flash games and videos.
Adobe is lazy. And it isn't hatred for adobe, just flash. Adobe has other very good products out there on the market. Flash is no longer one of them. Not to say they couldn't fix it if they made any kind of effort to do so.
It is bloated. Same media in flash and h.264 the h.264 will run better on a machine optimized for video playback of all kinds.