There's more to flash than video. The company I work for uses flash extensively for interactive multi-touch kiosks. Like those big maps in shopping malls.
As a Rails developer I was very opinionated when I came here. But seeing the incredible performance they get using flash while running stunningly complex animations and interactions, I quickly changed my mind. While I still think there's no place for flash as a replacement for websites it's still incredibly powerful for rich interactive multimedia - especially off the web.
As an OS X user, I literally cannot remember a Flash site (other than a video wrapper) that felt completely fluid. You never get 60fps because Flash mostly always insists on doing things on the CPU.
Dunno what things look like on Windows, but I'm hoping WebGL takes off - it really seems to be best positioned to do complex things without sacrificing performance.
I'm not sure it's entirely relevant, but here's something the very-very senior flash dev at work said about that recent Dart port of the Flash API (which he thought was neat).
>> "This little game was developed with Flash and later ported to HTML5 in only 6 hours. The new HTML5 version runs with smooth 60fps, which is almost impossible to achieve with the Flash plugin!"
> This is the kind of sentiment that shits me. Flash is measured by the worst of its developers.
> Flash is capped at 60fps in the browser so as to limit the carnage, but can run at 120+ on the desktop. If the dude can't get his example game running at 60 fps in flash it's because he sucks, not the plugin. /rant
Similarly, be prepared for a slew of super slow "HTML5" apps.
> I'm not sure it's entirely relevant, but here's something the very-very senior flash dev at work said about that recent Dart port of the Flash API (which he thought was neat).
>>> "This little game was developed with Flash and later ported to HTML5 in only 6 hours. The new HTML5 version runs with smooth 60fps, which is almost impossible to achieve
with the Flash plugin!"
>> This is the kind of sentiment that shits me. Flash is measured by the worst of its developers.
>> Flash is capped at 60fps in the browser so as to limit the carnage, but can run at 120+ on the desktop. If the dude can't get his example game running at 60 fps in flash it's because he sucks, not the plugin. /rant
As far as I understand it, the API[0] author highlighted that the HTML5 port was consistently over 60fps (or constantly at 60fps if capped), whereas the Flash version was consistently under 60fps, and not even reaching the limit, hence no 60fps capping could be coming into play.
> Similarly, be prepared for a slew of super slow "HTML5" apps.
Inevitably, bad code will come. Flash on the web had one advantage: it was dead easy to block.
Just wait until the ad industry has caught up on to HTML5 and when they'll produce massively CPU intensive banners and other crap with HTML5. Its for the same reasons the the Flash player CPU utilization was capped in browsers, the same thing will happen for HTML5.
As a Rails developer I was very opinionated when I came here. But seeing the incredible performance they get using flash while running stunningly complex animations and interactions, I quickly changed my mind. While I still think there's no place for flash as a replacement for websites it's still incredibly powerful for rich interactive multimedia - especially off the web.