In the whole Flash vs HTML5 “debate” which is really Flash video vs the HTML5 video tag, Flash never stood a chance. Why? Because any smart developer would rather just throw in a <video> than what we have to do now. But while Flash is currently the the most popular way to deliver video content, that’s not all it can do and that’s not was it’s future should be. Adobe needs to look into Flash’s past and make that it’s future. I’m not talking about ActionScript 1.0, I’m talking about animation and I’m not talking about simple tweens and animated buttons, I’m talking about fully animated projects.
Anyone who’s used Flash’s animation tools knows they’re pretty good and easy to learn. How good is Flash’s animation? Well, in here in Canada, the cartoon channel Teletoon makes about half their own programing with Flash. And Adobe seems to realize that animation is still a big part of Flash, with the introduction of the bones tool in CS4 and some interesting spring tools in CS5. Perhaps taking the animation tools in Flash to the next level and appealing to the more professional level of animator would increase Flash’s use in traditional animation. In school, I looked forward to the times I was able to create animation in Flash, they were some of the best and most interesting projects I worked on.
Adobe can do one smart thing with Flash and that’s add an Export for Canvas tag option. I’ve seen it demoed and heard rumors that it was supposed to be in Flash CS5, same with the Smart Paste feature in Dreamweaver CS5, which would allow you to paste your Flash animation into an HTML5 document that would play it in the canvas tag. But for one reason or another Adobe didn’t include these options with the current release, but Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has stated that Adobe will try to make the best HTML5 tools and turning Flash into a quick and easy way to create HTML5 animates would definitely help.
Flash might lose the video “war”, although I don’t really see why it matters if they do. But I think that AIR is going to lead to some interesting desktop programs being made, stuff like Avatar’s interactive movie trailer. And for sites like the ones featured on thefwa.com, sites that take 25 people and 8 months to build are still going to be the domain of Flash for the next few years at least. Nothing I’ve seen with HTML5 tells me it will be able to handle the type of sites that companies like Ford and Nike like to make to showcase their products.
In the end, I think Adobe would be smart to embrace Flash’s roots and maybe even create an animator version of Flash. They’ve been spending a lot of resources on the coding side, maybe it’s time to get back to what brought Flash to the game in the first place?
Pingback: Tweets that mention Atomic Robot Design Blog | Is Flash’s future it’s past? « Atomic Robot Design -- Topsy.com
The reality was that Flash was never meant for video. It was more the most convenient technology at the time online video exploded. The market penetration was almost ill gotten by them. Animation should have always been the focus of the app. Video was just a byproduct. Flash is definitely good at it, so there’s nothing out there that will take that away from them, they just lost focus.