Flash! Now you see it, now you don’t

Does Flash only have 36 months left before it is relegated to the graveyard of Internet history – a relic of a earlier digital era?

I, like many have discussed the future of Flash recently in light of Apple’s position on it. Apple’s position was initially passive, they simply refused to explain the lack of support for it on the iPhone OS – now it appears to be open hostility, in light of some recent comments made by Apple founder Steve Jobs to Executives at the Wall Street Journal.

For my part, my discussion with friends and colleagues has ranged across the merits of Flash vs HTML5 or AJAX. For those who argue for it, their strongest point has been that there are simply things you can do with Flash that cannot be done with these other internet technologies. At first blush this sounds like a solid position, except for one thing – I have heard this before.

Back in the 90′s when CDs were king and all the world was nuts for Seinfield and the Simpsons, at this time another Adobe product was a dominate player in the world of interactive multimedia content – it was called Macromedia Director (Macromedia was aquired by Adobe in 2005). The internet was still young and new and awash with the experimental; but it was very slow – internet time was bookmarked by the connect button and that wonderful sound of the dial-up modem interfacing with a cyber landscape that was still fresh. Multimedia, video, fluid animation and sophisticated interactivity on the web was limited or crude – at best a pipe-dream – then along came Flash; and all that changed.

W3C technologies don’t require a plugin – to be installed – they are there built into the Browser model – ready to go and ready to work – a nice paradigm I would add for the coming age of internet appliances (iPad anyone)

The clever product, initially an Animation tool, was rapidly embraced by designers and quickly grew to encompass the world of developers. It revolutionised the experience of interactive content on the Web and as it did this, the throne of Interactive CDs dominated by the world of the Director software tool was quickly threatened. At the time, the very arguments that are being made today for why Flash will remain king or at least relevant, were made a decade ago for Director.

But Director is not relevant anymore – you can still get it but like Vinyl records it is relegated to a niche space – for the curious or the nostalgic. It was deposed by its baby brother because it did something that Director didn’t, it played well with the Internet. In contrast to Director, it produced small files, that were easy to deploy and distribute, a build once put anywhere on the web methodology. Director was none of this – it created large files and required compiling for different Operating Systems and needed to be distributed by CD.

The same change is happening again, AJAX and HTML5 and CSS3 – web standards – are a packaged set that allow developers and designers to produce the same results that can be done with Flash – but not everything…

But not everything for now!

Flash originally didn’t have Video support and for a long period this still gave Director a leg-up for a set of needs in the market and then Macromedia added it. This was the death knell for Director. The death knell for Flash will be in similar fashion – one possible scenario could be that unlike Flash – the these W3C technologies don’t require a plugin – to be installed – they are there built into the Browser model – ready to go and ready to work – a nice paradigm I would add for the coming age of internet appliances (iPad anyone). Such a development allows one to fit better then the other and this is where the apple cart is tipped.

There is concern about Apple’s stance on Flash – feelings that they will do it damage. Apple does have influence and weight as a corporate entity but they won’t be the ones to kill Flash – Flash isn’t on the iPhone and won’t be on the iPad either – who cares – Android and Blackberry and Nokia and Palm support Flash – and Android is growing rapidly as a mobile platform – it won’t be long, I suspect, before it will overtake Apple’s iPhone/iPad OS as dominate mobile device OS – but this probably won’t save Flash either.

I think Adobe has left it too late to change a shift in perception. They have squandered the Macromedia legacy and grown fat and lazy on their acquired product line – they are in danger of repeating Quark’s mistake of arrogant complacency by holding a dominate position in the market only to be dethroned by a younger more agile and hungrier player – in this case a new HTML standard (the irony of this would be heavy).

The biggest use of Flash is Video playback (amusing given the points about Director) – but HTLM5 does this just as well if not better then Flash. Adobe should have been pushing Flash in new directions – like Macromedia did when it was still in charge – like introducing Video or creating Actionscript. Adobe should have moved Flash forward by making it mobile device friendly much earlier. They didn’t, they haven’t.

Flash hasn’t evolved quick enough for this new world of the mobile device or angled itself high enough above what can now be achieve with W3C standards. I think they may have left it too long to fix this – in which case it will be process of watching its slow decline into internet history where it can meet up again with its older brother Director.