HTML5 to be the Flash Killer?

We all know that Steve Jobs slapped Adobe Flash right in the face. This is however not a personal belief. The true fact is that since the announcement of HTML 5, people have been debating whether it would be the Flash killer. In this article, I will share something about this.

Backgrounds on Flash

For many years, Flash has been the de facto standard of creating webpages with animations, games, videos and other interactive multimedia elements. With a small browser plugin that is completely free of charge, users are able to view Flash content of the web. Although Flash player is free, Flash itself is a proprietary standard. The official authoring tool – Adobe Flash Professional – is sold at a handsome price of US$699. What this means is that while users can view Flash for free, web designers may find it costly to develop something in Flash. Although there exist freeware that can create Flash content, its functionality and performance is not comparable with the official tool, possibly due to the fact that the Flash player is also written by the same company.

The Rise of HTML5 and its Threats

The proprietary nature of Flash has called for the development of HTML 5 – which allows web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, animations, videos and effects that are not supported in previous versions of HTML.

There are many reasons why HTML 5 is a threat to Adobe Flash. First, it introduces the ‘video’ tag. For the first time, a Flash player will no longer be a prerequisite for consuming video contents on the web. Since most videos currently on the web are encoded in Flash, the newly introduced HTML 5 standard has the potential to drive out all these Flash videos.

Second, other than videos, the HTML 5 also supports other functionalities that are threats to Flash. The CSS animation, WebSocket and SVG are some examples. In addition, we have been talking about the semantic web. Programs parse web documents to retrieve meaning of a website. On the other hand, there are no efficient programs that can parse a Flash content. This violates the concept of semantic web and people will eventually find it more beneficial to use alternative formats, which is very likely to be HTML 5.

Third, Flash is proprietary by nature. “They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc.” (Steve Jobs, 2010). When compared with open standards like the HTML 5, which is always free, carefully planned and controlled by a group of committees, Flash does not appear to be a promising investment for many web designers and developers, relatively speaking.

Fourth, Flash on mobile devices is banned by Apple. This reason may sound too straightforward, lacking deductive logic. But in fact it is not. We all know that the iPhone, iPod and the iPad were a big hit. In particular, the iPhone enjoys the leading market share (beside BlackBerry) in the U.S. smartphone market. What’s interesting is that all these Apple mobile devices use the Mobile Safari as the browser, which cannot play Flash. What this means is that a large portion of mobile users aren’t able to play Flash on their mobile devices. If I were a web developer and I were to develop a mobile version of my website, will I choose Flash or HTML? The answer is obvious – HTML. I won’t want a large portion of potential customers being not able to read my website. What’s more, nowadays more and more people access the Internet via devices other than their desktop computers, so Apple’s decision to ban Flash on their devices has a great impact.

Will Flash be killed?

Having mentioned so many threats to Adobe Flash, one might think that Flash will be killed by HTML 5. My personal opinion is no. I will explain in two perspectives why I think so, namely, the short run and the long run.

Flash is well established. It also has a very strong installed user base. To these users, it is indifferent to them whether the content is in Flash or not. So an average user will continue to consume Flash content as he always does. On the other hand, the HTML 5 is still pending. It still needs to go through stages in W3C standardization. Currently, not all major browsers are supporting all capabilities of HTML 5. Furthermore, currently there are many existing contents – videos in particular – that are only available in Flash but not in other formats. In other words, users must install Flash player to watch these videos. A good local example is the myTV which I always fail to watch with my iPad. Another more international example is the Restaurant City on Facebook which I cannot play on my iPhone. In the short run, HTML 5 is not going to kill Flash.

In the long run, though, it is expected that more contents will be available in HTML 5 – at least a HTML 5 version will be an option to choose. However, Flash still has its benefits – it is a great tool for creating interactive multimedia elements in an efficient manner. It is also expected that many games will continue to be developed in Flash, as game companies rely much on existing libraries and codes. On the other hand, although it is still unlikely that Apple will allow Flash in the long run, more and more tweaks and hacks are expected to be released such that they can bring a Flash world to Apple devices. By all these, Flash is still likely to survive in the long run.

Associated Blog Topic: Why is HTML 5 a threat to Adobe Flash? Will HTML 5 kill Flash? What is your view?