In defense of Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash made a small revolution in its time. Cross-browser technologies are already now, 3d graphics, when even the games were not yet so colorful - not slogans for advertising. It is unlikely that recent attacks will stop the development of this platform.

The main audience of the latest articles on Habré can be divided into the following categories:

• Haters - those who have Flash Player constantly freezes at any time of the day, and for which it appears only in the form of banners, intro on sites and browser crashes.
• Idealists are those who believe in the power of HTML5, but have not yet seen it themselves in actual use.

Such approaches are emotional, here we will try to change the situation a little and to approach the issue more pragmatically.

Modern Flash Player

Flash has recently been developing faster than other technologies. And despite the fact that he has no actual competitors, there are only blanks. Programmers were provided with convenient tools for developing cross-browser web applications (Adobe Flex), which at the beginning of their appearance showed miracles that were only available in the future in HTML 5. The same principle appeared Adobe AIR, which allows you to create cross-platform applications pretty colorful and interesting looking.
No matter how they scolded Flash Player, it has an advantage that it will be difficult to reverse in the near future - it costs 99% of computers connected to the Internet. Java, for comparison, only 77%, Adobe AIR on more than 100 million computers, Silverlight installed on only 45% of computers. Do not forget about the ease of installing AIR-applications through the browser. In fact, the end user will not even notice that something has been added to it additionally.
How long do we have to wait for HTML5 support? Come on support, how long to wait when at least IE6 goes out of fashion? By writing to the Flash application, you can get the entire audience now. There is a new version of Flash - instantly almost all computers are updated and get new features.

Modern internet

Most of the videos on the Internet are viewed using a Flash player. I wonder if critics wondered what the Internet would look like without it? Youtube, Vimeo - no one would have heard about them, the whole industry would be absent. The same with familiar to us mp3-players in the browser. In general, when people talk about the need to replace Flash, it is a bit surprising. How much time did different manufacturers have to create an analog? And maybe even get ahead of Adobe. Nevertheless, the audio / video tag has appeared only now, when real money is spinning around multimedia, moreover, time has already been largely lost and, personally, I strongly doubt that Flash positions will be very strongly pressed. Another point is the actual approval by the H.264 standard. We will be asked, at last, what is needed and who needs it, such a bloat that you can forget about the mythical freedom on the Internet.
The technology introduced recently by Stratus, which allows you to create p2p connections via the Flash player, made it possible for a teenager to earn millions on her ChatRoulette service. How much more would he have to wait for it to appear in HTML5 ... Probably, he would have grown old.
A market has been formed, the industry, including workers and employers, which will be difficult to change, and the benefit, other than mitigation of criticism of Steve Jobs, is not obvious here at the moment.
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Future of the internet

In the near future, Adobe is preparing for a new leap in its technology. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will introduce new features on multiple platforms at once. The computer version will provide us with hardware acceleration, including when processing audio and video. Mouse gestures, multi-touch, new Webkit with support for HTML5 / CSS3, working with native functions of the operating system is already Adobe AIR 2.
In addition, in the development of an optimized version of Mobile Flash, which will provide AIR capabilities for creating applications for the main mobile platforms. More recently, developers suffered with JavaME, which provided only a formal cross-platform. Now imagine JavaME, which will be much more cross-platform, will run on today's powerful mobile devices, with the ability to manage files, databases, etc. Isn't it a pragmatic programmer’s dream? You need to prepare now.

Section "Humor" (frivolous arguments)

• The closed nature of technology (we have communism?)
• Adobe and Apple relationship history (these are business guys)
• Banners (cheers for the new HTML5 banner maker;)

Wishes

I think that 2 main camps (which are already being formed) will win the dispute - Apple and competing companies in the mobile market of Nokia, Google, Microsoft, etc., separately. Adobe will win, but not in PR, but in monetary terms. It is unfortunate that in some blogs, podcasts form one-sided opinion about Adobe Flash. A frank attack on Adobe, the interests of the attackers of which are not at all in convenience, but in the formation of public relations and an increase in turnover. Still, a player that has gone through such a long history and has changed over time even before the mass introduction of innovations does not give real reasons for such criticism, and even, no matter how loud it was said, it is worthy of respect and I would like to wish him all kinds of benefits and further development .