Thoughts on HTML5 vs. Flash

The latest web language, HTML5, has introduced significant changes to the core and construction of web content. Its new vector-based rendering and video play-back capabilities have been put into place to rival Adobe Flash. Most developers are leaning towards replacing Flash with HTML5, even though benchmarks do show that HTML5 is much slower at the tasks that Flash is commonly used for.  HTML5 is free to use and it does provide some easy and simple APIs that help in creating any sort of website without the use of external plug-ins. However, Adobe Flash does have a more user-friendly interface and a simpler action script. In the end, a developer would save a lot of time when using Flash, since the interface is similar to Photoshop and Illustrator’s and it does provide a few of the simpler tools used in these programs. The smoothest animations can be created in Flash with the push of a few buttons. However, in HTML5, there’s a lot of code to be written and more experience is required. The use of JavaScript or a similar scripting language is also required to properly animate objects in HTML5.

The main concerns floating around when it comes to Flash are CPU usage and multi-platform development. However, CPU usage can be ruled out since it has already been proven by benchmarks that Flash runs most things at much higher frame rates than HTML5, proving most of Apple’s excuses for not allowing Flash support in iOS to be lies. The only problem with Flash performance is when it is used for large amounts of text. In situations like these, HTML5 scores higher. It is perfectly possible that HTML5 still has not had enough updates to run as smoothly as Flash. Flash has been around since 1996, so it has had a lot of work done on it and several big changes in every update.

I may be biased in this argument, since I have been using Flash since I was 10 and it was what gave me a better outlook into learning more complex things about software in general. Losing it for me would be much like imagining your favorite childhood cartoon or video game not existing. It’s something I’d want kids to learn to get themselves introduced to simple scripting combined with graphics work. It does make sense that companies wouldn’t want Adobe to have all the power in choosing what platforms to support and how much to charge for that Flash support, but the death of Flash does not solve anything, nor does it make web content in any way better. I would prefer that Flash become open source and gain community support. There are some speculations as to how Adobe will create something to empower HTML5 and I am one of the people waiting to see what Adobe is capable of. On the consumer’s side, it does not make a difference what the web page uses, but it does matter how visually appealing and smooth a web page is to enhance the entertainment one gets from web surfing without taking a drop in CPU or GPU performance.

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References:

- Sean Christmann, "GUIMark 2: The rise of HTML5," CraftyMind, 2009; http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2/

- Sean Christmann, "GUIMark 3 – Mobile Showdown," CraftyMind, 2011; http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/