| People who say "Flash is dying!" don't know what Flash can actually do. Flash is active technology. If you think Flash is obsolete and outdated, STOP USING ALL OF THESE IMMEDIATELY. - Most PC browser games
HTML5 is not ready to handle rich games for many practical reasons. You may not have an interest to games, but browser games have a big market and very lucrative. - Quite a lot of iOS/Android apps
Using AIR to develop crossplatform applications. Currently HTML5 solutions such as PhoneGap have a major performance issue because of the lack of iOS JIT. AIR compiles ActionScript codes to LLVM and compiled code runs relatively fast (and I think it's a clever and balanced way to develop applications on low perforamnce smartphones. C++ is inefficient to develop, and JavaScript is too slow). - AAA console games on Xbox360/PS3/PC
Using Scaleform to redner 2D user interfaces. Do you know the title screen, game menues, HUDs and so on are actually SWF? Game artists author them with Adobe Flash CS! - Streaming video sites
Hulu never exists without Flash DRM streaming. - Many kiosk terminals
Using Flash for their UIs. Both Flash runtime and the authoring tool (Flash CS) are needed. Indeed HTML5 is coming but HTML5 can only replace runtimes. Certainly Flash has many problems but it's not so bad technology overall. And it will used for relative long time (I guess 5-10 years or so). Flash has many reasons to be used widely. And you must admit that HTML5 is improving rapidly because it is trying to overcome plugins like Flash. Flash is a very good stimulation for browser vendors. Because of this, I can say so-called "plug-in free" is not a good idea. Copmpetiton is healthy (WebGL developer also is saying so!). Actually, there is a great demand for Flash animators to develop recent social games. Currently Japanese major social game company GREE forcuses Unity and AIR and they are saying HTML5 doesn't meet their needs for now. Of course that will change in coming 2 or 3 years though (looks like iOS 6 has some important improvements. Web Audio API, requestAnimationFrame and multitouch bug fix). By the way, this author Scott Handsaker made this Flash grave picture? Soft of obsessive. I look down on the guys like this. They don't have respect for important technologies. Sorry for my poor English, but I can't stop saying something for the current situation. Flash is a poor and underestimated technology. |