The Fate of Flash
The fate of Flash is in the making. Here are my compilation from the best sources:
Flash’s Decline on Lifehacker, From 2006 to 2010:
Because its readership represents a mixed group of both Mac and Windows users — albeit more tech-savvy ones than your average internet surfer — I ran the numbers for Lifehacker, which currently gets about 39 million visitors a month. As you can see in the chart above, the number of Lifehacker visitors without Flash installed nearly tripled from 2.32% in 2006, to 6.07% in 2009.
Famous blogger Robet Scoble also gets it right:
Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.
But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.
What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.
The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.
And Zeldman put it right:
Flash won’t die tomorrow, but plug-in technology is on its way out.
Dave Winer suggests:
Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple’s court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.
Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes? John Gruber brilliantly summarized it all:
1. Adobe can’t. They can’t put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.2. Apple could, but they won’t.
3. Users could make Apple change its mind by refusing to buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads because they don’t support Flash. That does not seem to be happening. In fact, iPhone sales are accelerating.
4. Web site producers could do it, by replacing or providing an alternative to the Flash content on their sites.
The most famous website that promotes Flash, YouTube, has already tried to introduces HTML5 video, but no full screen support. However, Jilion, recently introduced a new HTML5 video player (yeah without Flash) that support full screen with beautiful control.
So what’s your fate, Flash?
Note: many credit from John Gruber blog.
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