Can you argue with Flash’s market share?
Market share is not a good way to advocate bad design practices. Adobe claims a 99% market share, although John Gruber points out that their survey was a bit misleading:
Adobe’s own statistics on Flash’s market penetration claim 99 percent penetration as of last month. That’s because, according to their survey methodology, they’re only counting “PCs” — which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.
If you wanted to build an application to reach the masses, which of these options would you pick?
About Josh Walsh
Josh Walsh is a Managing Partner at Designing Interactive. He's also an award winning designer, author and speaker on the topics of User Experience Design, User Interface Design and Usability Research. You can follow him on twitter at: @joshwalsh
15 Comments »
Search
Popular Posts
- 50 Tips To A User Friendly Website
- My Favorite Pomodoro Timers
- How to build a Gantt Chart with the Google Charts API
- Why Flash is Mostly Bad
- Sharing the Grid
- Why You Should Outsource Usability Testing
- 10 Tips to Better Google Wave Conversations
- The difference between User Research and Usability Testing?
- How to Label Submit Buttons
- Our New Development Process
Joe Fiorini
Let’s break that down a little.
HTML as it exists on 100% of platforms lacks much of what makes Flash useful (video, gaming, etc). HTML5 adds features could kill Flash entirely, however it does not have 100% market share yet (key word: yet).
Please note that I’m not advocating Flash. However, it won’t be feasible to go the HTML route until 100% of HTML5 features are supported on 100% of platforms.
April 29, 2010
Josh Walsh
Joe – Totally right. HTML5/CSS3 are new technologies and not adopted by everyone. Generally speaking, browsers are pushing quickly towards support of these new technologies.
Some are moving faster than others.
Although, even the 900lb gorilla in the room has chosen to adopt these in IE9, whenever that becomes mainstream…
April 29, 2010
Joe Fiorini
The other thing that’s going to keep HTML5 from being globally adopted is the encoder war. If you want to do HTML5 video right now you need:
This is a maintenance nightmare.
Google recently announced they’re open sourcing the VP8 codec which, if adopted by Apple, could be the solution we’re waiting for. Until then developers of video-heavy sites will likely continue using Flash as their video player.
April 29, 2010
Jonathan Knapp
Josh – Interesting take on the numbers. I think it’s funny that companies always try to spin it in their direction. Remember though, all of the iDevices in the world don’t add up to much when compared to the number of laptops and PCs. It would be interesting to see a breakdown by different device categories.
Joe – I’m pretty sure that HTML5 is mostly a collection of new tags to aid in making websites semantically nicer to play with, and most of the heavy lifting is going to be done by JavaScript (or extra functionality added to each browser as is the case for the video tag).
I kind of find it hard to swallow that HTML5+JavaScript could kill off Flash, though it has enabled developers to use different tools when they used to be locked into using Flash or a lot of JS/CSS hacks. Remember when we used to use images for rounded corners?
The “kill” statement doesn’t really have any bearing until the tools become available for a robust drawing API, integration with hardware, GUIs to assist in drawing, profiling tools, debuggers, etc. There is also quite a bit of a performance hurdler to overcome: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/
April 29, 2010
Josh Walsh
Jonathan – The estimated number is fuzzy. I believe Adobe’s measurement. It’s a valuable number for Adobe to know. But, that doesn’t make it a great number to use as marketing.
I estimated 96% based on my trust of the Adobe figure, and my own analytics show about a 5% mobile share.
I do think HTML/CSS/JS is ultimately a flash killer. Unfortunately, that’s going to be a slow and painful death.
The people who benefit the most from Flash right now are the developers. They have a very reliable and mature development environment at their hands. Web standards does not have a peer yet.
April 29, 2010
Jonathan Knapp
Sorry Josh, still can’t stomach the statement.
Maybe if you said that it will replace Flash on standard websites (even light to medium interactive ones) I could agree with you. But to replace a technology across the board that doesn’t really have a counterpart is a larger statement than many realize.
April 29, 2010
Josh Walsh
Jonathan – You don’t think that HTML5/CSS3/Javascript as a technology can replace flash?
From my analysis, the playing field looks pretty even to me. I’m curious to hear what value Flash adds to your arsenal that web standards can’t accomplish (except the IDE that I mentioned earlier).
April 29, 2010
Jonathan Knapp
I think that they definitely could replace Flash where it makes sense. Just like the rounded corners statement I made earlier, I would much rather have a CSS statement that does the heavy lifting a bunch of hacks used to do before.
However, I could not replace the Flash/Flex client work that I do now with JavaScript and I doubt that will happen within the next two to three years.
That said, I do look at projects with both sets of eyes and pick the one for the job.
April 29, 2010
Josh Walsh
Jonathan – Thanks for commenting, I appreciate it.
April 29, 2010
Jonathan Knapp
Thanks for having me, keep up the good work.
April 29, 2010
Nate Klaiber
These comments read like a radio interview. ha.
I am with you, Josh, in that I think it will be a slow and painful death. Truth is, there are many Flash developers out there who don’t welcome the reality that their tool simply isn’t useful. For some, it’s their lifeblood – so they want to defend it no matter what (I’ve met ColdFusion developers like this, too).
Jonathan – Quantity doesn’t equate to quality. I want to see living examples of things done in Flash/Flex that couldn’t be replaced with the stack of HTML/CSS/JS. If they can’t be reproduced because they are ‘too complex’ – then my point still stands.
April 29, 2010
Eric B.
Nate,
I’m very late to this party, but as far as ‘living examples’, I would suggest looking at several areas not typically part of the HTML5 vs Flash discussions. People focus on ‘Flash websites’, which is a fallacy, because even full time Flash/AS developers would agree that your typical Flash website is unnecessary and bad practice (and has been for about a decade). But, look at other applications, a big one is gaming. There are many Flash/Flex based games and engines, some of them extremely profitable. There are engines and libraries like Papervision pulling in native 3d files and letting you work with and display them, in addition to rich interactivity like webcam/microphone support (see aug. reality examples). Add in multiplayer socket support, the ability to edit bitmap data directly, and physics libraries – and you have a tool that is in significant ways far ahead of what any HTML/CSS/JS solution can provide at this time, or in the foreseeable future. Regardless of whether or not its the popular choice, it’s tough to make a case that ‘their tool simply isn’t useful’.
My biggest problem with the discussions is that so many people want to eliminate Flash/Flex or any plugin entirely, based essentially on principle. That’s a short-sighted, misguided goal in my opinion – sure we should replace things with standards-compliant open options, and sure RIA plugins are abused in many cases, but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful tools in certain applications.
May 26, 2010
Nate Klaiber
I am arguing against the superfluous use of Flash. I agree completely that it’s the best solution for games, 3d, etc. I would not argue against that.
We are talking about the context of the web – a very distributed web. When you start embedding things in your plugin, you remove the control and the openness of the web. You require people to do it your way: learn your new UI (even though it’s inside of the browser which has a common UI) and learn your new functionality (while removing the functionality of the browser to do what it does natively). To top this off, it’s not consistent from one Flash/Flex app to the next – so it’s an even bigger learning curve.
Then, throw in the fact of the open web that it’s not just the browser on a desktop, and now you have even more problems.
When I ask for living examples, I really am searching for good examples here that are open, consistent, and usable. I have failed to find that anywhere.
May 26, 2010
Josh Walsh
While the flash/flex technology does inhibit an open web, I would argue that there are plenty of html/css/javascript websites that also break common UI patterns. You seem to be arguing more FOR web standards, than AGAINST Flash.
May 27, 2010
encoder
if standard’s implementation has to be the correct implementation then the HTML penetration/market share is at average 0-30%.
consistency is a very important factor and by that html is hardly an adopted standard.
June 4, 2010