One of the reasons Flash is so popular is because it’s so easy to make things using the Flash IDE. And I think this is one of the main reasons there’s so much bad stuff made in Flash out on the web. I wasn’t involved in web development back when Flash first started becoming popular, but I’m pretty sure most of the cutting edge things people were making were pretty sweet. Just like a lot of the HTML5 stuff we’re seeing now.
A lot of the HTML5 examples I’ve seen are being made by top level developers and the result is some amazing stuff that’s getting everyone excited. But the same thing that happened to Flash will probably happen the HTML5.
A lot of Flash content out on the web is bad because it’s made by people that don’t really know what they’re doing. In some ways it’s like the horrible JavaScript generated by Dreamweaver. Now imagine a program, it might be by Adobe but it might not, that let’s create HTML5 animations using a Flash like IDE. I fear for how bad the code would be that that program would create.
There’s no stopping this. There’s bad Flash, bad Silverlight, bad PHP, bad Python, bad anything. But the idea that HTML5 is going to be amazing and everything made with it is going to be great is getting a bit annoying. Yes, it’s going to be nice to not need a plug-in for things like video and I think the canvas tag is going to lead to some interesting design ideas but we all know one day canvas intros will start popping up and they’ll get the same response that Flash intros got. Cool at first and then one of the most annoying things on the web.
Hopefully, developers don’t use HTML5 for things that Flash can still do better. I think forcing HTML5 to do something that it’s not mature enough to do is going to be a mistake a lot of developers make just so they can claim to be making things in HTML5.
None of this will be news to experienced web developers but I’ve seen such a large amount of hype around how HTML5 is going to change the web that I wonder how much people are looking through rose colored glasses. And it might be even worse because there isn’t an IDE to use to and a company pushing education of how to use their product. To learn HTML5, especially right now, you have to go search for what you want to learn and piece it together. If we’re lucky, someone will put out a Moock style book about how to make HTML5 apps and websites so that people at least have the chance to make good stuff.
Whilst you’re generally right and that there is indeed “bad anything,” what you’re forgetting is that we’re already dealing with that on the Web with standards: bad HTML, bad CSS, bad JavaScript.
A big issue that a lot of people have with Flash is that it enjoys such ubiquity and platform-support, but is still proprietary. Adobe still essentially owns it, and controls what happens with it. That’s very antithetical to the nature of the Web, which is very fundamentally not own or controlled by any single one corporation (ICANN somewhat excepted).
What HTML5 and CSS3 bring us is the good things from Flash, without the lock-in to a proprietary format and a single vendor for realistically usable tools. It frees the web again.
Bad stuff will indeed always be made, regardless of the technology, but there’s a whole lot more at play here than just the quality of the creations.
You seem to be forgetting the HUGE difference between open standards and closed proprietary software.
The fact that “there isn’t an IDE to use to and a company pushing education of how to use their product” is not “worse”, it’s the key to understand that HTML5 is a lot better.
(Having said this, of course there will be HTML5 sites that suck, I think no one ever denied that.)
While I agree that there’s definitely going to be some bad HTML 5 and plenty of sites that don’t run well on mobile devices or other poorly constructed or inefficient HTML 5 sites and apps, there’s at least one major difference. The solution (and where we’ll end up) seems fairly obvious, because it exists today: competing IDEs and frameworks, based on the HTML 5 standards. If one IDE or framework doesn’t fit the need of a project, there should be a good alternative. If there’s not, there’s an opportunity to roll your own or pay someone to build something for you.
That’s different to Flash, where you’re stuck with Adobe’s IDE, no matter what.
These comments seem to be forgetting all the open source options available to the Flash community. Flash has several open source compilers, open source IDEs (FlashDevelop, Eclipse, really any text editor…), alternative options to Flash + FlashBuilder (IntelliJ, FDT, SWFMill), and many open source projects from Adobe (Flex, TLF, etc).
Realistically, Flash not being a “standard web tech” means it is actually more standard across browsers, since it’s fairly independent from browsers.
HTML 5 will fail to breach Flash is several key areas, such as games and complex/secure RIAs. Simply because it will stagnate, just like HTML 4 did, and CSS2 did. (5-10 years between updates? Are you kidding??)
You can develop Flash on 100% free tools. And you only have to code once. Not once for IE, once for webkit and once for Mozilla (which will still happen in HTML5, don’t kid yourself).
Unlike ‘open’ HTML, Adobe has innovated in a timely manner. And their Flash player enabled massive new web industries such as streaming video and social games. HTML 5 looks like its eating Flash’s lunch but it’s actually just having Adobe’s left-overs for breakfast.
Adobe’s Flash IDE is god-awful however, we can all agree on that!