I’m ALL for solid HTML5 standards — and I’m ready to start using HTML5 in all my development as soon as its a standard that is implemented faithfully across all browsers.

Sadly, that golden day is a LONG way away… despite the self-serving fantasies put out by Steve Jobs in trying to explain his two front war on Adobe and Google.

Great post. As a person who’s primary job is doing RIA’s, and has made a great living doing hard core actionscript, I work right along side some of the best javascript+HTML etc developers, as well have done some of that I can contrast.

When it comes to Web Standards…what standards? The point of a standard is to make life easier. I originally got into flash because of losing my sanity with cross browser compatibility back in 2000. Instead of developing features, I was spending most time in the rubicks cube hell trying to get every browser to play nicely on the same code. Fast forward 10 years later, tnstead of getting better it seems to be getting worse, now there are many mobile apps and people choosing what subsets they want to implement, like Apple who break the momentum of the web. Most development projects still burn 30% of time dealing with cross browser compatibility, issues and that’s not even attemping to deal with mobile interfaces. Despite all the open standards and committed teams, browser releases can be still be have stinkers (FireFox 3.6).

The web is about extending knowledge, and letting users customize their experiences. the plugin nature of the browsers is at the core of this. This plugable architecture to me has been in use so long it feels like a standard.

Mac and Flash can suck but it’s here it’s naive to think that opening the standard will make huge advances. Flash is not built right on top of bare metal, like any other app, it relies upon other pacakages to do it’s job it has no control over in a largely one-size-must-fit-all. There is a whole stack of layers to try and push performance, most are not under Adobe’s control. Like multitouch on mac in a browser isn’t there, it’s because of missing hooks in the browser OS, they like any vendor call up who they can but must wait like every other feature.

You touched on one of the biggest areas. Content is not created in a vacuum, most any rich experience project requires a team with specialized tools. When it comes to content creation, while other tools do exist, most content production pipelines have standardized on Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterFx, Fireworks and Flash. People spend their entire week in just one subset of these very complex tools. There is a huge body of training and culture surrouding these tools, and I believe that Adobe does a good job of understanding the very differnet temperments of those and respecting that they are who push the edge. Contrast this to Apple which dictates at it’s whim what can go in to the store a. I’m blown away how nazi like Apple is and yet how much people love and pay them for being so.

Another issue from an IXD perspective. There is not yet a switch to go from I’m working in a browser, to I’m working in an appplication. Thus contextual behavior, right clicks, drag and drop, copy and paste….the basics of the web as a content creation all end up degrading to semi-proprietary browser hooks. Flash gives tighter control which is why the types of experiences that can be created are so much more engaging.

I generally am okay with a phone not running flash, they frequently can’t run much of the more advanced web content anyway, especially given the screen size, CPU limitation. This is why I don’t care so much about the iphone, as it’s largely casual use. Tablets though start to be perceived as a ‘real’ machine, thus my suspicion is that people will be less tolerant of why stuff doesn’t work.

stream.play(”mp4:name_of_h.264_mp4.ext”); // include the extension

HTH.

Is this supposed to be a line that connects to your rtmp streaming server? I’m using Amazon Cloudfront, and trying to stream an mp4, so I have:
conn.connect(”rtmp://somxxxxxxxx.cloudfront.net/cfx/st”);
Then following the comment:
//Play the FLV file
you have:
stream. play(” flight_of_apollo_11_SQZ_VP6_512K_
➥CBR_Cues”);

Is this a file that’s being hosted on an rtmp streaming server?

Also, if it’s an mp4 file, would you need to add the .mp4 extension in the stream.play address?

additionally, If it’s an mp4 file would you need to conn.connect(”rtmp://somxxxxxxxx.cloudfront.net/cfx/st/mp4″);

Thanks!

…or why HTML 5 will fail as replacement for Flash (at least for the next years).
But first let me make clear that I am not a fan of closed standards and closed source. I love Open Source and I use Open Source software wherever possible. However someti

However, to say flash has performance issues on the Mac is a huge understatement imho. Flash is the only application I use on my Mac that causes me to have to reboot regularly. It also regularly pushes my Macbook Air to over 80% CPU utilization. Flash video even appears to cause the fans on my Mabook to turn on regularly.

I’m not saying Adobe is to be blame. I’m sure Apple could help more. But in any case Flash on the Mac (as well as its brethren Adobe Air) is a complete nightmare.

Bill