Sketchpad & Aviary, HTML5 & Flash
February 1st, 2010 by admin
Since the UX world exploded into activity following Steve Jobs rant at the expense of Google & Adobe it has been interesting, and a little sad, to follow the ‘debates’, (if one may dignify much of the vitriol with such a name). Several well considered and informative posts on the subject were submitted over the next few days by people who have a good understanding of both worlds, such as this from Richard Leggett. However, the arguments still raged.
Posts such as this one from Crunchgear go to show that misinformation can come from the most seemingly authoritative sources. The writer is referencing Sketchpad, a very good piece of work developed with HTML5. It goes to show just how far HTML has come, and provides a glimpse of it’s future. It’s impressive. However, it is not “the death of Flash” and to suggest as much is to show a genuinely surprising lack of awareness of the whole subject matter. Yes, Sketchpad is impressive and should be lauded as a benchmark for where HTML5 currently is, and as a signpost to it’s future. Hopefully you’ve had a look at Sketchpad now. So now have a look at Aviary. That’s Flash, and it’s Creative Suite 4 to Sketchpad’s MS Paint. It was developed mostly in 2007 and released in early 2008, so it’s not even particularly recent. Now don’t get me wrong here, I am not having a go at HTML5 or Sketchpad, I am merely trying to put them both in context. HTML5 is on a journey. It currently allows a developer to do things he was able to do with Flash a couple years ago, but it’s getting there and it will gradually become the best practice means of deploying a lot of things which are developed with Flash purely because there’s no better option. That’s progress.
Right now tho, and looking at Sketchpad as “the Flash-killer” – well, Sketchpad doesn’t run on the majority of users’ machines, due to browser compatibility, and lastly – take a look at the code. Is that how you see a multi-developer team writing complex applications?
Celebrate the HTML5 achievement, but do some research before making very hasty proclamations about Flash.
- 1 Comment »
- Posted in Adobe, Apple, Future of UX, Open standards
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:21 am
I’m going to join the Flash vs HTML debate by first pointing out that ‘amend’ is a
verb, not a noun. You can’t say “I found a sing” or “find me a jump”, so neither
can you say “this implementation needs an amend”. Unless you’re American I suppose
(Sorry; I don’t know how to do that in Flash)
Secondly, there is much talk of “Flash killer” or “Flash is dead”, but the reasoning
that follows is usually not proper critical reasoning, but actually a rationalisation
driven by the desire for it to be so. My question would be; why should Flash die, and
the answer is very likely to reveal an emotional preference rooted in the geek need
for purity and order, or more simply that Flash wasn’t the first UX tool encountered.
Thirdly, in a similar vein there has been many attempts to replace C++. I’ve lost count of
the amount of times I’ve read about C++ Killers and how C++ is dead over the last 20
years, bit mostly these attempts were made by paradigm purists who couldn’t get over the
“impureness” of C++. And I have yet to see (in software) a case where the purist agenda
coincided with the commercial/business agenda.
Fourthly, When a thing is being targeted as the thing to beat it is usually because
it represents the upper limit of the metric. People trying to beat Flash are confirming
for many others its position at the top.
I have never seen any Flash code and my exposure to HTML managed the heady heights
of using some CSS once. I don’t design/create/give birth to UX. All of which I think
makes me uniquely qualified to comment,… IMHO… and I look forward to all the
corrections to my grama