Links about Flash vs others

Since the event that Flash is not supported by Apple’s latest “magical” gadget – the iPad, there came a lot of debates with Flash platform against others, from HTML5 (the biggest), to it’s poor performance on MAC/iPhone OS and even to user experiences in touch devices,…

This post of mine is to bookmark any interesting read related to or address those debates, especially, the so-called “The Great Flash vs HTML5 Debate of 2010”. I admit that I’m bias so maybe most of the links here are pro-Flash. Anyway, you can read the comments for counter-arguments but I’ve seen a lot of *bullshit* yell-outs against Flash with no proof or reasonable points at all.

I’ll update this post regularly whenever I come across any read-worthy articles (and sort them in chronological order).

• Kevin Lynch’s Open Access to Content and Applications – 2010-02-02
  “The Flash team will drive innovation over the coming years as they have over the past decade to enable experiences that aren't otherwise possible. With the ability to update the majority of Web clients in less than a year, Flash can make this innovation available to our customers much more quickly than HTML across a variety of browsers.”
  Follow up the post, Kevin has a comment reveal Flash team effort to prevent crash:
  “Before we release a new version of Flash Player we run more than 100,000 test cases and have built an automated system that has scanned over 1 million SWFs that we use for testing from across the web. Our QA lab has a very large variety of machines to represent the machines in real use on the web.”
• **** Grant Skinner’s thought on the future of Flash – 2010-02-03
  ”This skill set is applicable to so many things: WPF on Windows, Cocoa development on Mac / iPhone (ex. Core Animation), Silverlight, mobile development, and of course the emerging HTML 5 standard. Languages are easy to learn - mental models, process, and the experience gained from years of working with rich interactive are a whole lot harder.”
• ** Jeremy Allaire on TechCrunch’s The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps – 20010-02-05
  “…Likewise, and more important, whatever standards and models deliver the broadest reach will ultimately drive what is adopted by publishers, developers and ISVs.”
• Tinic Uro’s Core Animation – 2010-02-11 (Flash Player technical)
  “Flash Player 10.1 implements the Core Animation drawing model to fix [issue of sharing performance with HTML renderer], among others.”
• Mike Chamber’s Flash Player content, Mouse Events, and Touch input – 2010-02-22 – in response to Daniel Eran Dilger’s An Adobe Flash developer on why the iPad can’t use Flash
  “Hover events do work in Flash content on touch devices. Any issues with mouse input on a touch device are not specific to Flash, but affect all content, including HTML based content.”
• ** Matt Kenefick’s Strictly Democratic Tools Build Boredom and Disinterest – 2010-04-20
  “There are situations where Javascript is more suitable, there are situations where Flash is better, and there are also situations where Silverlight shines. *pun* To say that you're strictly an "X Developer," is just limiting your own abilities and forgoing your complete potential as a developer.”
• Mike Chamber’s On Adobe, Flash CS5 and iPhone Applications – 2010-04-20
  “Essentially, [Apple’s iPhone SDK 4.0 license – section 3.3.1 ] has the effect of restricting applications built with a number of technologies, including Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5. […]
  We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”
• *** Branden Hall’s Little Boxes in the Browsers… – 2010-04-21
  “Like it or not, the web, for many, many people, is just an entertainment medium. HTML still has ways to go to match the kind of entertainment you can build with Flash.”
• Serge Jespers’s Flash is as open as HTML 5 – 2010-04-22
  “[HTML5, CSS and JavaScript] are open, right? Well yeah. The specs are open meaning that everyone can download those specs and build an application around it to display that language. […] That sounds a lot like Flash! The specs for [FLV, SWF, AMF and RTMP] are all published and can be downloaded by anyone.”
• Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash – 2010-04-29
  (Apple’s official explanation why Flash is not available on iDevices)
  “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
• Jesse Warden’s Steve Jobs on Flash: Correcting the Lies– 2010-04-29
  “Apple has posted Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash“. There are a lot of lies and half truths. No one will care. The article has enough valid points that people won’t check up on them.”
  Another post addressing Steve Jobs’ letter is: Steve McDonald’s Apple Steve Jobs Letter Rebuttal (2010-05-02).

[Updated 2010-05-09]