Comments on: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Flash

By: mikeduguid

mikeduguid — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:45:09 +0000

Just sampled a basic animation done in css3 on macheist. Awful, just awful.

locks cpu at 100% for something that wouldn’t raise more than couple percent in flash, and is tacky and completely pointless.

And this is progress? HTML5 religious fanboys are going to spew this sort of crap animation all over the web in a few years time, crashing and locking browsers left right and centre while conveniently forgetting their totem of how ‘flash is used for pointless animations’.

By: sidonaldson

sidonaldson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:59:27 +0000

does anyone else think this is laughable that people are arguing and getting offended over something that isn’t even standardised yet?

We are still in a world of html4 / css2 and of course IE6. Html5 video will be great in the future. Until then flash is still the best online video solution…

…and of course it will be better than flash. If and when they agree a specification. Anything created specifically for a task will beat a competition which is a good all rounder.

I’m more worried that browsers are implementing html5 technologies differently. This is what standardisation is meant to stop!

By: JustinCarter

JustinCarter — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:05:23 +0000

@Jagged: Yes, Flash 10.1 supports hardware acceleration…
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Seriously, I don’t know why people think Flash performance should/could be any different to anything the browser can do “natively” (except for Apple holding APIs to ransom, ugh).
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Re: the Steve Jobs comments – he’s a spoilt little school boy who doesn’t want Flash to hurt his precious app store sales figures, and if Apple keeps on down this path then they will get burnt IMO. It’s all politics and it’s stirring people up for no reason at all. It’s a case of “waahhhh, I don’t wanna”. It’s old, it’s tiresome, and it’s boring.

By: patitdude

patitdude — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:03:43 +0000

I don’t work for Adobe, but I would like to defend Flash for its position on the internet. First, no language or platform is perfect and changes over time. Look at the some of the crap tag in HTML ( blink) and you will notice that a good idea yesterday is a stupid idea today. Look at the insults that JavaScript got over the year and even today, that it is not a real language, But without JavaScript, the web is just a bunch of ‘dumb’ static pages. Without IE creating XMLHTTP in IE 5, this AJAX (I hate that term), we do just a buch of total pages refreshes. Microsoft is supposed to be the ‘evil’ empire and Mozilla is ‘pure’. Give me a break, it is M$ which created AJAX and no one else. At least give it its due.

In the same regard, with Flash/Flex since Flash 5, we don’t have the changes that make good video or applications on the web. We have all seen videos using QuickTime, RealPlayer, M$ and Flash and that a video on Youtube loads faster than those other formats. It is that speed which makes for a good users experience. It is the developer’s talent which makes a good web site. Flash didn’t create those dumb skip intro page, it is the silly person who is being paid that creates crap. One needs to be honest that Macromedia first created the best video/animation on the internet and it continues to evolve. It is not perfect and it need to be friendlier to the usage of the CPU. But, I can create a Flex application in combination will HTML/JavaScript which will give faster response than a typical AJAX site. Also, until every browser supports HTML5 in the same regard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(HTML_5) ) then we will have to see what is the best solution in the future. I try not get ‘religious’ about a language unless I’m convinced that its performance is the best. I can see that Adobe in the future will make Flash use less CPU in time because of the market place just like every company. Let us not worship the house of Apple and think it is the perfect company.

By: Veej

Veej — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:18:55 +0000

I cannot believe people’s opinions are still mixed about this. On a tech-oriented site at that. We need to stop repeating the same mistakes.

The problem with Flash is pretty simple : it’s proprietary and as such, it is doomed to impeded innovation. Look at Steve Jobs’ comments on it and it’s pretty clear that Flash is nowhere near being lean enough. What we need right now is to collectively push behind free and open technologies so that everyone can hack the code and make it better, faster, stronger.

Props to Thomas for heading in the right direction.

By: Jagged

Jagged — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:55:15 +0000

I was actually at this Webstock presentation, so I can give some context to this. Thomas made it quite clear that these CPU figures where based on Safari on his Mac Book Pro. I believe the video show was actually 1080P, but I could be wrong on that.

His point was that video embedded with the HTML 5 tag already takes advantage of hardware acceleration, where as flash is yet to support it (will it ever able too?).

Much more time was spent discussing the browser render pipeline, webkit transformations, canvas, SVG and WebGL

@mikechambers it is pretty poor form to pick parts for an argument from slides devoid of there original context. Also, I don’t think you where one of the few Adobe employees present.

By: jamienk

jamienk — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:15:34 +0000

Why doesn’t Adobe Open Source the Flash player and assign some people to integrate it into Gecko and WebKit? And submit Flash as a standard format? Wouldn’t this potentially

* solve many of the cpu/crashing issues on those browsers

* better integrate it with the browsers

* potentially get it onto the iPhone

* slow the move away from Flash

Doesn’t Adobe make money from the Flash program, not the player? What are they scared of? What are the drawbacks for them?

By: Joeri

Joeri — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:01:08 +0000

@smoofles: this _was_ a windows app, and there was an explicit requirement to make a web version of it. Specifically, it is a CAD app, where the full editor is a windows application, and a reduced functionality web version had to be made to allow broad access to the same underlying visualization tools without having to do a local install.
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I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to believe that there is stuff you have to use a plugin for, especially when you take development cost into account.

By: smoofles

smoofles — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:46:58 +0000

@Joeri: The thing with “complicated” apps like that is that most often, the development teams would be better off to just build the app natively, with either .Net or Cocoa or GTK. Limiting “complicated” apps by putting them inside a browser is really not the best solution…

By: Joeri

Joeri — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:49:36 +0000

@imakowski: i’ve heard of more developers that hate javascript than hate flash, so by your metric, this very site should close up shop. Have you developed a flash app, and can talk from personal experience? I don’t think so. I’ve built a flash app that was impossible to build in anything else except for java (this was before silverlight). Even today, browsers still aren’t powerful enough to support that app natively.

By: mjuhl

mjuhl — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:16:46 +0000

I ran the sublime player simultaneously in FF6 and Chrome on an iMac 2ith a 2.8GHz processor, and the video and audio ran smoothly, even with FF in full screen mode. Flash has been so useful because there was no good way to do certain things within browsers. Video was (and still is) one of those things. But, soon, browsers will have those capabilities, and a plugin won’t be necessary for them. And if you remove the plugin from between the browser and the video, OBVIOUSLY your going to be using less processing power. Flash has been a great solution to many browser flaws, but I’m looking forward to it disappearing.

By: bugme

bugme — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:28:35 +0000

I can’t believe it IS still Flash. The slideshow, that is. Why on earth use Flash for a simple slideshow that could have been done in DHTML fifteen years ago? And when will Ajaxian fix this stupid CSS bug? I’m sick of having to dewidthify the middle column every fucking time.

By: imakowski

imakowski — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:33:56 +0000

mike chambers: who cares, it is not 100%. Flash sucks – it’s CPU consuming monster. Nobody loves it. Developers hates it, Users hates it. I hope HTML5 will successfully replace it.

By: smoofles

smoofles — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:14:07 +0000

The talk was not about HTML5/Flash video only, actually. I’m pretty sure that both will even out in the end, moving to GPU-assisted rendering and using less CPU than they do now.

What’s more interesting, to me personally, is that with all the “open” technologies discussed by Thomas will be exposed to the developers in several different ways. This means that there _will_ be APIs and Frameworks (actually JS libraries, but hey…) that will be well thought out and fun to use.

Flash took a turn to Retardoland with what they did with ActionScript 3 (in itself okay-ish) and Java-fying the APIs. The whole “Hey, this Java idea of cross platform apps is great — lets sandbox it in a browser!” idea led Flash — and Flex — lose any potential advantages they would have had as a platform. Adobe probably can’t fix all of that quicker than the HTML alternatives can catch up, if not more because they commited to poorly thought out APIs (with ugly ass themes) that they will have to keep supporting now.

Adobe wants Flash to be everything for everyone and that’s hurting it. Instead of a fresh new vision, they just spent shitloads of resources to make a “platform” that relied too much on buzzwords and not enough on value.

By: AngusC

AngusC — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:25:29 +0000

Competition is healthy – no need for folks to get hot under the collar.
If developers didn’t have issues with Flash then the anti-Flash bandwagon would never have built up steam. Conversely if Flash weren’t a huge part of our internet culture than folks would not be getting, lets say, over-creative in their pro-HTML5 rhetoric.

Flash will be around for years. HTML5 (in its many forms) will be huge and will hit Flash hard. Its the most excited I’ve been about the web since google suggest.

By: travisalmand

travisalmand — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:05:58 +0000

@smfoushee – I also create projects in Flash and personally I would have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the idea of HTML5 taking over some parts of the web from Flash. In fact, it would make my usual project work as a web designer much easier. My problem is the distortion that takes place in these discussions, on both sides! Plus the added problem of one side complaining when the other points out the distortion. As I stated, I don’t think anyone has ever disputed that using a dedicated decoder for video playback through the video tag uses less CPU cycles than doing the same with Flash. My problem is the constant distortion of how bad Flash supposedly is as compared to things that is not a proper comparison. This type of distortion always leads to fanboys making comments such as “Suck it, Adobe!” which is childish and does not promote the discussion in any way. It seems to me the group that should be getting a grip is the HTML5 fanboys who constantly whine about how much Flash sucks. HTML5 people need to be the ones to broaden their horizons and realize they should be using the best tool for the job, be it HTML5 or Flash. Fanboys, regardless of the reason for their fanboyism, should get a grip and grow up.

By: smfoushee

smfoushee — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:06:35 +0000

So those of you upset over Fuchs’ presentation have boiled down the argument to, “hey that HTML5 example uses more CPU resources than Thomas claims, I mean its still less than Flash, but his numbers are all wrong.”

Keep shooting the messenger.

I have no problems with Flash, being as I am a Flash developer, but seriously guys get a grip. Flash is a TOOL it’s not the web, and those of you getting your feelings hurt can go play with those in the community still holding onto hope that Director or Hypercard will make a comeback. Go broaden your horizons, learn new tools and techniques to put into your development “bag” and when one tool remains you’ll still have work.

By: travisalmand

travisalmand — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:43:41 +0000

I find this whole thing laughable. He doesn’t include near enough info to determine whether we can reproduce his results and someone even defends this by saying there shouldn’t be clutter. I want the clutter so that we can see the whole truth and not the snapshot he wants to present. At least tell us the platform and browser. Did he give that?
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Does Flash use more CPU than HTML5 video? Of course it does! I’ve never seen anyone dispute this. But when HTML5 video does all the things Flash does while maintaining backwards comparability with 9 previous versions then we can compare. Besides, as pointed out, HTML5 video doesn’t actually do anything, the video codec in use does.
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Which leads me to my experience with the sublime player. With Windows7 on dual Xenons I get the 10% number with Chrome after a few tries. It didn’t work on Safari for some reason. With Firefox I got 25-30%. Between the two it would be different codecs, notice the difference that I get? Went to Youtube and loaded up the 720p Buck Bunny video in Flash 10, less than 20% with the occasional peak. I’m guessing people claiming 100% on Flash video is on a Mac which is a whole different debate.
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@contreforme – I’m sorry but you need to read up on the current state of HTML5 before making such a claim. Right now there is no set video codec for HTML5 so you would have to make at least two copies of your video to support webkit vs gecko. But at least you wouldn’t have to do a third video for Flash fallback, just use the h.264 video you encoded for webkit.
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@rodoneill – if a scrub bar in a Flash player did not work right for you it most likely the fault of the programmer who coded the player and not Flash, but your mileage may vary
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Personally, I am a web designer and use the right tool for the job. I just cannot wait until the day I can use when starting my new page. But I’m willing to bet I’ll still be coding Flash projects at the same time. HTML5 will not kill Flash and the Flash haters need to just get over it.
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And as toem correctly points out, don’t try to sell HTML5 by claiming Flash sucks. Tell me why HTML5 is cool. It’s like the difference between the major Apple ads for OSX and iPhone. The iPhone commercials tell you how cool the iPhone is and why you would want one. The OS X commercials just point out the flaws in Windows instead of telling me how cool OS X is or why I would want it. I would consider getting an iPhone or at least an iPod Touch but I have no desire whatsoever to ever have OS X.

By: nkm

nkm — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:19:45 +0000

I’ve taken 2 screenshots showing the CPU usage of HTML5 and Flash video playback in my 2007 iMac.

Sublimevideo HTML5 “fullwindow” playback:
http://twitpic.com/144la7

Vimeo Flash normal playback:
http://twitpic.com/144lcr

- I took the exact same video at the same resolution (720p) in both cases.
- In the second case, the video isn’t playing fullscreen just because in that mode Flash player doesn’t allow me to do access the menu bar. Also, since Leopard, Safari browser plugins runs sandboxed, so you should count WebKitPluginHost and Safari CPU usage.

In brief, HTML5 fullwindow video playback uses less than 50% CPU than Flash normal size video playback.

By: JustinCarter

JustinCarter — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:13:04 +0000

@ThomasHansen Have you even watched the HTML5 video linked above?

In Chrome on Windows the performance is fairly appalling IMO. My Core 2 Duo system is showing 65-75% CPU usage when playing that video, with dropped frames. This will easily get your computer “warm”.

Similarly, other “low motion” HD videos delivered using Flash use 35-50% CPU usage on my system without dropped frames. Unfortunately, there is no link to the same video delivered in Flash so a direct comparison isn’t possible in this specific instance.

But in any case, this ridiculous “Flash 100% CPU usage” crap has got to stop. Are people totally oblivious to how video codecs actually work? I thought developers were supposed to be smart…