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billbenson
11-09-2011, 03:41 PM
According to this article Adobe is going to stop supporting flash.

Adobe abandons mobile Flash development, report says - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/09/tech/mobile/adobe-mobile-flash-wired/index.html?hpt=hp_t3)

vangogh
11-09-2011, 05:20 PM
Only on mobile browsers for now. They'll still be supporting it on desktop browsers. However most suspect this means designers and developers will use it less and less since mobile browsing will likely surpass desktop browsing before too long.

Technically it's just the death of Flash on mobile, but it likely heralds the death of Flash in general. Works for me. Flash was a great solution to a problem when it was introduced and for years after. That's no longer true with the rise of html5. Adobe itself has developed a new program called Edge, which is essentially Flash, but produces html5 code instead of Flash files.

billbenson
11-09-2011, 09:10 PM
It does sound like its a planned beginning of the end though. "This is the end, the very end my friend" To toss a quote out there :)

It makes you wonder what will happen to all the flash web sites out there...

vangogh
11-10-2011, 01:16 AM
When did Jim Morrison join the forum? :)

I think it is a planned beginning of the end. Here's another article I found from a design site. With Adobe decision to stop work on mobile Flash, HTML5 emerges as the victor (http://designfestival.com/with-adobe-decision-to-stop-work-on-mobile-flash-html5-emerges-as-the-victor/).

Adobe started offering a Flash to html5 converter several months ago. More recently they released a beta version of Edge as I mentioned above.

I'm sure it'll be supported on the desktop for quite some time and it's not like all the Flash sites just go away because Adobe stops supporting it. That means no new versions, but existing versions will still work like they have. Flash is a browser plugin and so unless we all remove the plugin Flash video will still play.

What I think will happen though is less designers will continue using. Much of the design community has been off Flash for awhile anyway. We've seen that it was going to go away in time. html5 and css3 offer a lot of tools to create animation and play video. html5 has built in support for both video and audio so the plugin isn't necessary. The issue now is different browsers support different codecs and you need to have a couple versions of your media to cover all browsers. Flash is still used as a fallback, but as browser support gets better the fallback will fall out of use.

The animation tools aren't quite there yet either in terms of browser support, but again it's coming. As browser support for html5 and css3 grows the support from the design community for Flash will shrink.

billbenson
11-10-2011, 04:13 PM
Is wordpress or are there themes that are html5? I want to start a hobby site to put myself abreast of the technologies out there. Its been quite a while since I've tried to write a web site. I still do a lot of php stuff but that's it.

KMcVey
11-10-2011, 05:00 PM
My fiancee has this t-shirt. It's one of my favorites.
Apple Killed Flash (http://laughingsquid.com/apple-killed-flash/)
(Hopefully the link will go through)

vangogh
11-11-2011, 02:53 AM
Funny t-shirt. :)

Bill the thing with html5 is there are so many different aspects to it. It's a group of different modules that do different things. It's also backwards compatible so all the stuff you do now in html4 is still part of html5. Here's how you get you get started.


<!doctype html>

That's the html5 doctype. If you use it you're using html5. After that it depends what you want to do.

Here's a post I wrote on html5 semantic elements (http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/html5-semantic-elements/) and here's a post with a demo (http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/html5-semantic-demo/) I created based on that post. Part 2 of the demo post is linked to at the top.

html5 semantics are things like the new nav element. When you're creating main navigation you'll now wrap it in nav tags. There are tags for header and footer and some other common elements we use.

There are also new ways to add audio or video into pages without needing a plugin like Flash.

The html5 spec isn't expected to be completely approved for another 10 years, but many W3C standards are in use long before it's officially approved. Browsers are already supporting quite a bit of html5 and much of it can be used right now.

technowonder
02-01-2012, 05:04 PM
I always meant to learn Flash development but never got around it it. I guess now, I don't have to bother, result!

vangogh
02-01-2012, 05:26 PM
I think you made the right decision in not getting around to it. Flash isn't going away anytime soon, outside of on mobile platforms. Still it's a dated technology that's going to be go away sooner rather than later. Adobe is already working on the tool that will replace it. Check out Adobe Edge (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/). Similar to Flash, but the output is html5, css3, and javascript. Even better learn to work with those 3 technologies. They can't yet do everything Flash can do, but they're developing quickly and browsers are moving quicker to support the latest and greatest.

billbenson
02-02-2012, 10:41 AM
Flash support was also lousy on Linux. I wonder if it will get any support at all now.

My only Flash experience was to write a Valentines day card for my wife and put it online 9 years ago. I never used it again :)

vangogh
02-02-2012, 11:22 AM
When I was first learning how to build websites, Flash was something you needed to learn. I purchased a copy and through the entire interface more complicated than it needed to be and in general didn't care much for the results. I quickly moved in another direction.

Most of the videos you've watched over the years have been Flash or worked through a Flash player. That's changing though and the writing is on the wall for Flash. It can still do things you can't yet do with html5/css3/javascript, but it won't be too long before that's no longer true.