The company Adobe, well-known for products such as Photoshop and Flash, has shown full support of the HTML5 specification in the past. Adobe also has a web development suite, Dreamweaver, in its arsenal of products, so there's a good reason for it to be supporting of future web technologies. Whilst there are the reasons for Adobe to support HTML5, there are also some which are the opposite – namely, the aforementioned Flash.
Flash, as you'll know, is the leader in providing Internet video and games, and is the technology that Steve Jobs aims to bring down a peg by essentially ignoring it on mobile devices. Jobs has been somewhat promoting lately HTML5 (a specification which can also provide easily embedded video) by apparently stating that it's the future of web video, and that Adobe is lazy with its Flash support, especially on the Mac. This is possibly worrying to Adobe, as Apple is a big player in the computing world, especially with the media market, so they would want to do what they can to keep Flash on top for as long as possible. In a private W3C mailing list, Adobe made an objection to the current specification being published, and has yet to make the objection public (despite promising to do so), according to Hixie's Natural Log. John Gruber of Daring Fireball noted that Adobe is attempting to block the API specification for the canvas element of HTML5 – an element which features 2D graphics, thus competing with Flash – as best as it can.
Larry Masinter of Adobe stated, "Do I need to repeat objections?", according to the minutes of a weekly phone status report. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, now that the objection is gaining attention, though hopefully it'll get cleared up soon.
Comments (64)
ReplyI hate flash videos and would love them to disappear, H.264 would be a great replacement if only it was open source.
I hate flash videos and would love them to disappear, H.264 would be a great replacement if only it was open source.
Why does h.264 need to be open source exactly? They've made it free for internet use, devices for playback still have to pay. So again, why? ffdshow is open iirc and it can playback h.264 just fine if you have a fast enough CPU.
I don't ge this massive need for everything to be open source.
I hate flash videos and would love them to disappear, H.264 would be a great replacement if only it was open source.
It is already open source - what you seem to be wanting is it for to be royalty free because it is already an open standard and there are already open source implementations which include playback provided by ffmpeg and encoding by x264.
Free now, yes, but the free license will expire and then everyone will have to pay $$$$$$
95% of the time flash runs on my computer is to play a video....if most video sites I go to switch to HTML5 I would consider removing flash from my computer
Don't forget rendering annoying ads
id have to say 99% of flash on my computer is to render ads, as all the video i watch is using Silverlight
Don't forget rendering annoying ads
Don't forget rendering annoying ads
What Web do you go to? LOL
HTML 5 = Competition. It's like how MS doesn't want Flash. Or that Google/Mozilla doesn't want Silverlight.
Adobe is the bad guys here though, in my opinion. With HTML 5, which is an open standard, browser vendors can compete for the best performance. If Google would write some awesome implementation for the HTML 5 Canvas element (which is the most significant Flash competitor), there's more pressure on Microsoft to do the same for IE 9 or whatever. And vice versa. This is much harder to do with Flash, where you have to rely on a third party for everything. It kills competition, hence performance and features.
Sure, there are third party implementations of Flash, but Adobe constantly pulls the strings there as for features behind a closed source code, and it's almost impossible to maintain good performance. No wonder why open source implementations of Flash on Linux sucks.
Letting go of Flash will be hard for Adobe. I'm not so sure this makes them 'bad guys', but financially they need a new way forward so that HTML5 doesn't cripple their profits. (I am not a big fan of Adobe or Flash, just stating the business side of this, whether they are good or evil.)
Adobe has missed several opportunities in the past by clinging to Flash and the old dynamics of Flash that are dated now, for example the entire scripting engine structure that is the result of slapping together new features and technologies instead of starting with a clean platform that was designed to grow as needed. (This isn't Adobe's fault specifically, as this was a problem when they bought out Flash.)
In contrast Microsoft is taking a different road with HTML5 and even though people could say Silverlight is a direct competitor to HTML5, Microsoft doesn't see it that way, as they have bigger plans for Silverlight with a richer set of features and portability that isn't offered in HTML5.
However, Microsoft is willing to let Silverlight die and put their effort behind something better if the two cannot exist. And even though this seems counterintuitive to people, it is what MS has done many times, and even tried to do when it ended up failing and having to go back and start their own specifications like when OpenGL wouldn't move to supporting more features for gaming that pushed MS to created DirectX.
Letting go of Flash will be hard for Adobe. I'm not so sure this makes them 'bad guys'
Using deception and sabotage instead of honest competition is rather "evil." HTML5 is an open standard and Adobe is trying to poison it. Just like MS once tried to do with IE. When are these corporations going to learn that if people don't want their standards they can't force anyone to use them? Why is anyone obligated to use Flash or IE just because some huge corporation says so?
OpenGL was not the reason for creating DirectX. MS needed a graphics API for Windows that would encourage game developers to develop for Windows instead of DOS. OpenGL stagnated in recent years thanks to the selfish bickering of ATI and Nvidia over the spec. You can't really even compare the two since DirectX isn't just a 3D API like OpenGL is.
HTML 5 = Competition. It's like how MS doesn't want Flash. Or that Google/Mozilla doesn't want Silverlight.
Adobe is the bad guys here though, in my opinion. With HTML 5, which is an open standard, browser vendors can compete for the best performance. If Google would write some awesome implementation for the HTML 5 Canvas element (which is the most significant Flash competitor), there's more pressure on Microsoft to do the same for IE 9 or whatever. And vice versa. This is much harder to do with Flash, where you have to rely on a third party for everything. It kills competition, hence performance and features.
Sure, there are third party implementations of Flash, but Adobe constantly pulls the strings there as for features behind a closed source code, and it's almost impossible to maintain good performance. No wonder why open source implementations of Flash on Linux sucks.
All evidence so far from Microsoft is that they don't see HTML5 as a threat given that there is a place for both Silverlight and HTML5 in the future - when you consider the great development tools provided by Microsoft for Silverlight about the only disappointing aspect is the lack of Silverlight development tools for Mac. As for Flash, the problem with Flash is that it doesn't integrate into the larger .NET framework; if Flash didn't exist - Silverlight would have still come into existence - the two are completely unrelated.
Regarding talk about OpenGL by thenetavenger, OpenGL when DirectX was develop was not addressing at the speed Microsoft needed the technology - it has only been in the last 2 years under the leadership of The Khronos Group when things have started to move forward at a pace that is more than which glaciers move. DirectX was a response to a deficiency int eh marketplace.
With the fiasco over HTML5 you can see why sometimes Microsoft in the past took the standards in their own hand and created their own when organisations such as Adobe can sabotage the whole standards process when ever it happens to invade their territory of vested interests.
My CPU wouldn't know how to reach 100% without flash!
That is so true. Many say Flash 10.1 will improve on this, but we will have to wait and see.
100% CPU is not neccessairly a bad thing. If you are doing nothing else, and the task involved required considerable processing then 100% CPU usage simply means its doing it as fast as it can, if I was waiting for my CPU to calculate something and it was running at 50% I would be more annoyed.
Of course its unlikely any modern processor should be "used up" by anything being done in flash, but other tasks are perfectly reasonable to use it, if your CPU never gets close to 100% you simply have a CPU that is excessive and have wasted money.
Its the same with people commenting that RAM is being used up by a program... if that RAM is not needed elsewhere it is just making that program carry out its tasks quicker. The only issue is when its using more than it needs and another program needs it more so, but it wont release it.
100% CPU is not neccessairly a bad thing. If you are doing nothing else, and the task involved required considerable processing then 100% CPU usage simply means its doing it as fast as it can, if I was waiting for my CPU to calculate something and it was running at 50% I would be more annoyed.
Of course its unlikely any modern processor should be "used up" by anything being done in flash, but other tasks are perfectly reasonable to use it, if your CPU never gets close to 100% you simply have a CPU that is excessive and have wasted money.
Its the same with people commenting that RAM is being used up by a program... if that RAM is not needed elsewhere it is just making that program carry out its tasks quicker. The only issue is when its using more than it needs and another program needs it more so, but it wont release it.
I agree with lt8480.
+1 LOL ^^
Why do you think that? The logic is quite straightforward and correct if, like he says, the CPU isn't doing anything else considerable. Why would you not want the CPU running at it's optimum rate and maximising efficiency?
Why do you think that? The logic is quite straightforward and correct if, like he says, the CPU isn't doing anything else considerable. Why would you not want the CPU running at it's optimum rate and maximising efficiency?
*sigh* The idea is that Flash SHOULDN'T take up 100% of the cpu. Programs don't need to take up 100% cpu to run optimally.
never had a problem with flash... and right now a friends main complaint with the iphone is it doesn't support flash and since most websites use it in some form or another, most sites don't work on the iphone. I have had problems with this so called H.264. Runs really slow or not at all. If this is the future, some of us without big rigs are gonna be in a lot of trouble. Silverlight runs better than that.
100% CPU is not neccessairly a bad thing. If you are doing nothing else, and the task involved required considerable processing then 100% CPU usage simply means its doing it as fast as it can, if I was waiting for my CPU to calculate something and it was running at 50% I would be more annoyed.
man, most of the complaints about flash sucking up cpu usage come from people using it to watch video and display ads. It's not that they are doing renderings or scientific calculations with it.
Should I be grateful if my cpu goes 100% while doing flash video decoding? It's not that I'm getting 48 fps instead of 24...
My macbook pro invariably goes really hot while playing flash video. Cpu and gpu => 70° celsius.
This never happens while playing mpeg4, h264, OGG or whatever with VLC or Quicktime.
Since most of flash video is encoded in h264, it's not out of this world to ask for Flash to play it without organizing a barbecue.
Why do you think that? The logic is quite straightforward and correct if, like he says, the CPU isn't doing anything else considerable. Why would you not want the CPU running at it's optimum rate and maximising efficiency?
Wow...
Here is the point that seems to be missed:
No single process like Flash that is NOT doing very much should consume 100% of the CPU, or even a large chunk. Especially when you see Flash eating 50% of the CPU on a i7 Quad core computer.
If it was 'necessary' for the process to take 100% of the CPU then the logic is fine, however, what flash is doing can be done on computers from 10 years ago and not take 100% of the CPU, and to see it suck 100% of the CPU of the latest processors is just outright insane.
Flash has been doing animations and crap on computers for a long long time, back when people were seeing Flash content and games on a 200mhz Pentium even. The features that are in Flash today are NOT worthy of an exponential increase in CPU cycles that it is consuming.
Bottow line, Flash has issues and Adobe doesn't seem to care.
Just to illustrate how insane the difference is, take a simple scripted application in Flash running that is consuming 30% of a CPU and then in another Windows open up a similar Silverlight application and see that it sucks 5% of the CPU.
Or even open up a HD video in Silverlight and notice is it using less CPU cycles than Flash decoding a Standard Definition video (Both using CPU decoding only.)
Heck Silverlight can CPU decode SD and sometimes HD Video with less CPU cycles used than Flash uses displaying basic Ads that are just showing some silly scripted animation.
So sure the CPU is there to use, but using it for NOTHING is annoying and is also a drain on batteries. The extra CPU cycles are NOT benefiting anything, and just demonstrates how poorly written the Flash process is.
Why do you think that? The logic is quite straightforward and correct if, like he says, the CPU isn't doing anything else considerable. Why would you not want the CPU running at it's optimum rate and maximising efficiency?
Because running at 100% isn't very efficient for a number of reasons:
1. Slow user interface response
2. Excess heat generation
3. For laptops it means crappy battery
Why do you think that? The logic is quite straightforward and correct if, like he says, the CPU isn't doing anything else considerable. Why would you not want the CPU running at it's optimum rate and maximising efficiency?
its not that simple, '100%' cpu utilization is quite subjective when you think about all the different buffers and timings going on, not just in the cpu but in the overall system bus as well... like something could be tying up a certain pathway for execution and it slows down all other programs (including the OS) which need that pathway... or it could be taking up alot of your RAM bandwidth and that would not show up as cpu time, but it would slow everything down nonetheless
100% CPU is not neccessairly a bad thing. If you are doing nothing else, and the task involved required considerable processing then 100% CPU usage simply means its doing it as fast as it can, if I was waiting for my CPU to calculate something and it was running at 50% I would be more annoyed.
Of course its unlikely any modern processor should be "used up" by anything being done in flash, but other tasks are perfectly reasonable to use it, if your CPU never gets close to 100% you simply have a CPU that is excessive and have wasted money.
Its the same with people commenting that RAM is being used up by a program... if that RAM is not needed elsewhere it is just making that program carry out its tasks quicker. The only issue is when its using more than it needs and another program needs it more so, but it wont release it.
It is a bad thing when you try to make a video on your Mac laptop using Quicktime (video and audio uncompressed) and the fan fires up because the browser in the background is pushing up the clock rate and thus making it hotter thus making the fan go faster thus the sound of the fan comes through on the video. That is why 100% cpu sucks.
As long as Internet Explorer doesn't support HTML5 and all browsers start supporting all video codecs Flash/Silverlight is going nowhere anyway.
Open standards are best for consumers and devs.
IE8 supports a few basic parts of HTML5 already, and IE9 will support more. Flash aside, HTML5 video tag support doesn't mean Silverlight is dead. MS is turning silverlight into more than just a plug-in to stream videos with.
HTML5 ftw, screw Adobe. They need to abandon Flash for video and work on updating it for gaming. I doubt HTML5 will really become a standard for web gaming. They can at least remain top dog in that arena. If they stop trying to do everything they should be able to make something that does specific tasks, and does them well.
I think this is getting reported wrong in some places - the objection (AFAIK) is whether certain documents belong in the HTML5 spec, which will potentially hold up the final version. Adobe's objection serves to get HTML5 published quicker if certain documents aren't part of the spec. Yes, the 2D context stuff is part of that, but in all seriousness it will never "replace" Flash in it's current form - anyone who thinks otherwise is either not a developer or is deluded.
Flash itself is a very rich programming language, there's no way, that HTML, which can not handle web animation as good as flash does can go anywhere.
The difference between these two, is that Flash is 75% used in the web to playback videos, HTML5 is far way better to do this. But, since Adobe has released 10.1 things may be different.
The difference between these two, is that Flash is 75% used in the web to playback videos, HTML5 is far way better to do this. But, since Adobe has released 10.1 things may be different.
Sorry to say, don't expect too much from 10.1. We are running it with full GPU acceleration and the CPU usage is less, but not drastically, and sometimes not at all. It also doesn't fix the 'threading' issues that were introduced in Flash 9.x, so on HT enabled computers Flash performance is still crazy inconsistent.
Just offloading video decoding to the GPU is NOT going to help Flash in the long run unless they address the basic performance of the Flash client and general rendering.
It is really just this simple, any Browser doing HTML5 can in theory offload the decoding to support GPUs as well, just like Silverlight or anything else competing with Flash with regard to displaying Video. So Flash needs some core optimizations beyond just shoving cycles over to the GPU, as pretty much everyone can support shoving decoding to modern GPUs that are designed to inherently decode these codecs.
I tried the HTML5 beta on youtube, videos looked like ****.
In what way? Smoothness of playback or video quality?
Video quality should be identical as chrome uses built-in h264 codec which is what flash also uses. I haven't tested performance yet but i played 720p fine on my quad core desktop and it played perfectly, perfectly smooth, no jerks.
Stop spreading FUD.
In what way? Smoothness of playback or video quality?
Video quality should be identical as chrome uses built-in h264 codec which is what flash also uses. I haven't tested performance yet but i played 720p fine on my quad core desktop and it played perfectly, perfectly smooth, no jerks.
+1
Stop spreading FUD.
+1
Flash: http://img705.imageshack.us/i/windowclipping9.png/
HTML5: http://img16.imageshack.us/i/windowclipping8.png/
Screenshots from Chrome. Firefox tells me the Video format is not supported.
Stop spreading FUD.
I stopped using it because of that and I'm waiting until they add the option to select the video quality into the player.
Yes, I has nothing to do with html5, but the videos still look horribly pixelated.
adobe can go screw themselves! There's no reason to remove Canvas from HTML5, we could have canvas banner ads instead of crappy flash ads. Flash in terms of video streaming will pretty much be dead 1.5yrs from now as IE9 and all other browsers will support HTML5. Just like how realplayer died and how quicktime isn't far off from being dead.
IMO realplayer is already dead. Quicktime is pretty much dead on the PC platform.
You're right about Quicktime - now it is just a framework for iTunes which raises the question when are we going to see Quicktime the application itself (not framework) removed from the download.
I don't really care much about Flash. It's useless and obtrusive to me except for Flash games and YouTube pretty much. With YouTube supporting HTML5's video element, I'm more interested in the Theora v. H.264 issue. Is this single issue going to cause the browser wars of the 2010s? We had Internet Explorer v. Netscape Navigator in the 1990s and then Internet Explorer v. Firefox in the 2000s. The way things are going, the patent issue is going to cause a major rift. Since video files tend to take up a lot of room, I doubt people will be interested in providing their videos in both Theora AND H.264 formats. Flash will still have its place for a while longer because of that, and as nice as Mario Kart using the HTML5 canvas API was, I'm sure it could have been better in Flash. Why is Adobe worried anyway? Did they forget about Sun Java? Surely they should have been worried long ago because of that, not because of canvas and/or video...
As a member of the HTML WG. this is rubbish. we have done just fine holding back HTMl5 on our own.
Gold :)
http://www.osnews.com/story/22874/Teacup_Meet_Storm_pt_IV_Adobe_Blocking_HTML5_
"So, to get back to Hixie's original complaint, two aspects of it appear to be untrue. First, Adobe's complaint is not a secret at all - it's a procedural thing that was posted to a public mailing list February 5. Second, this complaint is not blocking HTML5."
"So, to get back to Hixie's original complaint, two aspects of it appear to be untrue. First, Adobe's complaint is not a secret at all - it's a procedural thing that was posted to a public mailing list February 5. Second, this complaint is not blocking HTML5."
I think Adobe are backtracking due to bad press.
Adobe said "we won't approve the FPWDs until the FO is resolved". "FO" meaning "Formal Objection" that they lodged against the Canvas 2D context.
As a web developer, I despise Flash and I refuse to work with it. It's time for Adobe to realize that no one needs or wants it anymore.
As a web developer, I realize there's nothing inherently wrong with Flash and that it can serve as a great tool when the time comes along.
What HTML 5 will do is make Flash technologies open, but in exchange flexibility will be lost. To think that an HTML canvas is not going to hog up as much CPU, animating the exact same thing is ridiculous. To think that an HTML canvas with stuff flying around will be anymore accessible than a proper Flash page is also ridiculous.
When HTML 5 matures, please knock again.
As a web developer, I realize there's nothing inherently wrong with Flash and that it can serve as a great tool when the time comes along.
What HTML 5 will do is make Flash technologies open, but in exchange flexibility will be lost. To think that an HTML canvas is not going to hog up as much CPU, animating the exact same thing is ridiculous. To think that an HTML canvas with stuff flying around will be anymore accessible than a proper Flash page is also ridiculous.
When HTML 5 matures, please knock again.
Historically, I think Flash has been a godsend to web content authors. I started working in 1999, and for a very long time there was just a lot of presentational and interaction stuff that you simply couldn't even dare thinking of doing without Flash. So thanks a lot Flash.
Now we have AJAX, better DOM, better CSS, loads of JS libraries, so there's much less need for flash for a lot of things. Every time I see simple widgets like a drop down menu, a newsticker, a slideshow, a slider box, an interactive form done in flash in 2010 I'm perplexed.
There's no need to employ a proprietary resource heavy plugin with usability and accessibility issues for that.
Same thing with video, when Flash made web video mainstream there was no other way to implement a decent video player in a browser.
Now html5 is finally addressing that so there will be no need to use Flash for that since it's a much worse optimized video decoder compared to the h264 and ogg decoders that the various OS offers.
So thanks a lot Flash again, and let's move on.
Then there are the core Flash use cases, interactive animated graphics and multimedia heavy rich internet presentation and applications. This is what Flash still excels at and this is were the standard browsers tool are still a mile behind, so thank you Flash for that too and please stay with us.
Simple as that.
A couple of problems with this article. First, Apple is NOT a major player in the computer industry. While their recent strengthening in the US market in noticeable they have completely failed to even dent the world's largest computer markets such as China, India, etc. Globally they are slightly above 2% market share, nearly 10% behind Acer and 20% behind HP and Dell. That makes them a minor player, not major.
Second, HTML5 requires that about 70% of the Internet will need to be rewritten. I certainly won't order the rewriting of any of my websites just to keep Steve Jobs happy. Will IE10 support Flash? Course it will. So why would anyone change just because some anaonymous standards agency tells us to? Maybe in 10 years. However, the iPad will be dead in 2-3 years and nobody will remeber it by 2020.
W3C is not "an anonymous standards agency", they are THE standard agency for the web. The iPad is not the centre of this story, and it is in fact hardly even relevant.
Market share is irrelevant. It's profit that matters most. Have a look at these links and you will see why Apple is a major player in the computer industry (even compared to Dell and HP)...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+vs+hp
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+vs+dell
Just wish Adobe would release a 64-bit version of flash.
That would be great. Flash could then use more than 2 Gig of RAM! :D
if js+canvas+svg wins then i bet it will be harder to kill ads because you cant just block it like you can flash. and this future dependancy on js makes it hard for people like me who want to avoid flash to do so.
Adobe needs to stfu.
Insightful.
Adobe have a point and uneducated hicks are like "OMG die Flash" when this has nothing to do with Flash.
Insightful.
Adobe have a point and uneducated hicks are like "OMG die Flash" when this has nothing to do with Flash.
The FO was about the <canvas> 2D context. Hard to see how it [i]isn't[/i] related to Flash :P
Why HTML5 won't kill Flash for video playback:
There is currently not a single codec that works across all browsers. Mozilla doesn't want to use H.264, Apple doesn't want to use that other thing (Forgot the name, some kind of ogg codec?).
And even if they agree on one codec, there is still the pseudo streaming feature: you can jump to the end of video on youtube, although it hasn't loaded that far. It just starts downloading at the end only the part that is needed. I never saw mentioned that HTML5 video can support that, too.
So HTML5 video might be a nice fallback for some, but you will lose features.
There is currently not a single codec that works across all browsers. Mozilla doesn't want to use H.264, Apple doesn't want to use that other thing (Forgot the name, some kind of ogg codec?).
And even if they agree on one codec, there is still the pseudo streaming feature: you can jump to the end of video on youtube, although it hasn't loaded that far. It just starts downloading at the end only the part that is needed. I never saw mentioned that HTML5 video can support that, too.
So HTML5 video might be a nice fallback for some, but you will lose features.
No worries, no fallback: http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/Add_HTML5_pseudo_streaming_%28Manakin%29
You can pseudo stream with HTML5...
If flash became an open standard, adobe has to give up the exclusiveness and allow other companies that make there own version of the players (as long as it just confirms to the public standard).
It all comes down to Video Acceleration. A software level H.264 codec is legacy.
How does flash make adobe any cash? I think they sell flash editor software, but is that it? Couldn't they develop a html5 video editor?