Why HTML5 isn’t a replacement for Flash (and isn’t likely to be any time soon)

In some ways the content of this post is related to the recent Flash / Mobile snafu. Specifically because Adobe have made a big point of throwing their weight behind HTML5 in place of Flash on mobile platforms. This post is derived in part from personal experience and in part from a lively (and occasionally heated) debate with a colleague. In short it deals with my concerns over the dropping Flash support in favour of HTML5 and the common perception that anything Flash can do HTML5 can do (better).

Adobe’s killing of mobile Flash – a CF developers take

Firstly I’d like to make clear that I am in no way affiliated with Adobe either in the Flash or CF sense – I am a user of both products and, like so many others, work for a company who has based its business on the Adobe development stack.

I have no idea what prompted Adobe’s rather rapid dumping of Flash on mobile devices but the immediate impact on me and my employers should be minimal. That said, I wanted to take a look at how Adobe managed this announcement and the wider impact it could have on the community.

Scotch on the Rocks 2011 – Day 2 – Building a Video Platform: ColdFusion, HTTP Dynamic Streaming and OSMF – David Collie

Another very relevant session and one which I was a little worried about given my lack of ActionScript experience.

I need not have worried. David and Andy Wallace*… the other guy (terribly sorry but I missed the intro’s as the session started on time … come on, this is SOTR! You’re not meant to start on time!) ran through the OSMF and the Dynamic Streaming Module by way of a demo video portal built in flex.

The software demo’d was really impressive when you consider that Flash Media Server would have been needed to do a lot of this in the past.

Basically the “Packager” (a command line tool) takes Flash video(s) and chunks them for dynamic streaming.

The OSMF player SDK allows you to build a video player which supports all of the features of the chunked video including manifests (playlists), enforceable “no scrub” vids for advertisements etc. as well as supporting auto bandwidth switching based on available network capacity – assuming you’ve encoded multiple band width versions of the video.

Considering the breadth of the topic the session was concise and the demo’s intuitive. It was more of an introductory overview of the different apps and products but, to someone who’s looking seriously at video and the best way to process it from within the Adobe tool set, is was well worth the hour spent.

Scores (out of 10)
Direct Professional Value: 9
Ongoing General Value: 10
Contention / Debate: 4
Style: 7
Overall: 7.5 (weighted to 8.5)

* apologies to Andy Wallace for not a) remembering your name or b) actually looking it up and thanks to both David and Andy for a great presentation!