Mozilla Developer Praises Apple, Trashes Flash

[flexengineer]

I think Apple has a second agenda, to make the browser commercially useless in order to protect AppStore and iTunes sales. Banning Flash and faking its replacement with HTML5 did the trick. If I am right Apple's conduct would be not only unfair and anti-competition but also a violation of anti-trust laws in both US and Europe.

I wrote an extensive article on the topic:
http://applesucks.squarespace.com/blog/screw-you-apple-there-will-be-a-quarter-billion-flash-enable.html

 

[psiboy]

At least flash lets you turn off your webcam to stop websites spying on you... Silverlight does not! Why do microsoft need to see and hear your webcam?

 

[psiboy]

2010 Internet Explorer Firefox Chrome Safari Opera
December 27.5 % 43.5% 22.4% 3.8% 2.2%

@ Otacon72 "..and people wonder why FF will never come close to overtaking IE."

get your facts straight mate!

 

[mitch074]

Flash is a great format, because it allows one to use vector graphics, precompiled high-performance scripts, audio/video playback, with only one source for any browser. Its specifications are also open, meaning that you don't NEED an Adobe plugin nor an Adobe design suite to create and use it - there actually are non-Adobe plugins and design software out there.

Its decade-long success is, however, based on one simple fact: the baseline browser for many websites was Internet Explorer 6, which had:
- lousy HTML support,
- atrocious CSS support,
- brain-dead Javascript support,
- convoluted audio/video support.

However, since Vista and Win7 came out, and mobiles started getting smarter, this baseline went 'boom': the share of people that just couldn't run IE 6 (I mean, on XP, even if you install Firefox, you still have IE 6 hidden away somewhere on your hard drive) went from a few percents to 45% of your potential customers - raising the baseline from "IE 6 only" to "IE 8 + W3C" - and suddenly, alternatives for several things that were until then "Flash only" on the baseline got murkier:
- vector graphics could be done through SVG and VML (see: Google Maps)
- Javascript went from bloody slow to rather fast
- at that time, several browsers had started tinkering with audio and video in HTML.
That left hardware acceleration, but even then Flash was a bit of a sad mix: depending on your display driver and/or OS of choice, Flash would disable said acceleration and revert to a VERY SLOW software rendering. And now, next-gen browsers are doing hardware acceleration, JIT Javascript compiling, animated SVG support...

So, where does it leave Flash?
- uneven support on platforms
- requires frequent out-of-band updates for performance and security reasons
- no special features, apart from the capability to playback h.264 and AAC content on browsers that don't subscribe to the MPEG-LA racket (Opera, Firefox).

 

[Guest]

In a Utopia this might be possible. But in a world of big business I don't see proprietary players like Flash completely going away. What I would like to see is the Browser developer becoming more involved in making sure these Plugin's like Flash work better. Google's Chrome for example did not just shun Flash but embedded it directly into their Browser. Personally I think Mozilla has real issues because Apple's reasoning for dumping Flash was more performance oriented then anything else. HTML5 will eventually become a standard. But it will never be the only one.

 

[cjl]

[citation][nom]psiboy[/nom]2010 Internet Explorer Firefox Chrome Safari OperaDecember 27.5 % 43.5% 22.4% 3.8% 2.2%@ Otacon72 "..and people wonder why FF will never come close to overtaking IE."get your facts straight mate![/citation]

Where are you getting those numbers?

Here are the right ones:

IE: 57.08%
FF: 22.81%
Chrome: 9.98%
Safari: 5.89%
Opera: 2.23%
Other: 2.01%

(Numbers from Dec. 2010)

 

[bhaberle]

To be honest I could care less what this nobody "Rob Sayre" has to say. Who cares if he works for Mozilla. That does not make him newsworthy.

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]cjl[/nom]Where are you getting those numbers?Here are the right ones:IE: 57.08%FF: 22.81%Chrome: 9.98%Safari: 5.89%Opera: 2.23%Other: 2.01%(Numbers from Dec. 2010)[/citation]
I don't know where you got your numbers but worldwide firefox has a share of about 30%
http://w3counter.com/globalstats.php
http://gs.statcounter.com/
http://www.getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/

 

[Guest]

I love apple products, and have been on the platform since I can remember... Ironically, for many years, Flash solved huge display products in early browsers. It was literally the only way to get a website to appear the same in every browser on all platforms without doing backflips in coding. Today it's not necessary to use it for that, but it still has capabilities that html5 and other emerging standards can't duplicate. I wouldn't invest in an Iphone personally, because I want access to the entire internet, not just websites that code to an emerging standard. Life is too short.

 

[cookoy]

hate all those video ads on all websites.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]K2N hater[/nom]I must agree that Flash was a great thing in the past (being nowadays nothing but junk that allows huge pop-up adverts and spying supercookies) but that guy is clearly asking for a job at Apple.[/citation]
ok buddy, what is a super-cookie?

 

[Guest]

HTML 5 is just standards catching up with commercial. Standards don't innovate, they socialize a platform. Innovators will always be pushing the envelope, while the standards nazis will be trying to put everyone back in their box, while slowly (very slowly) making the box a little bigger so it takes in some of the innovation.

No reason all cannot co-exist - people use technology to get things done - not follow a standard. If the standard cannot do what they need - they find some other technology to do it. Problem with the web today as I see it is that every one tries to do their thing with the 'web' when in many cases, it should have never been a web app to begin with. The web's for reading and light data entry. You know - stupid stuff like twitter.

 

[razor512]

try talking about the end of flash to the millions of website owners who each spent a ton of money having a developer create flash content for their websites

The latest HTML currently does not offer the same functionality as flash. Flash may be considered to be the very example of inefficient but we don't really have anything that can match it's functionality.

Also many people, learning web design, learn flash. It may suck overall but so many people have learned it and so many web sites use it that is is nearly impossible to get rid of.

 

[eklipz330]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]..and people wonder why FF will never come close to overtaking IE. Sayre is praising Apple...what a moron.[/citation]
are you living under a rock?

firefox has been gaining market share, and ie has been losing market share for MONTHS

MANY MANY MONTHS.

 

[K2N hater]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]ok buddy, what is a super-cookie?[/citation]
http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/new-breed-super-cookie-defies-removal-almost