JD on EP

Not sure I get the contrast between Internet Explorer and FLASH?

FLASH has is ingrained into many PC's true, and if you ask the average joe on the street to compare Internet Explorer and FLASH Player? what would the response be?

If you asked the average joe on the street to furthermore compare FLASH against HTML what would the discussion be?

I'm confused?

How will Windows Vista adoptions change these stats? (ie as its not officially released as yet).

Flash will continue to be popular simply becase sites like YouTube expect you to have it. Does this change the context? i'd argue yeah.

hmm, what is this autoupdate all about? cant seem to find any indepth articles about it?

I am really scratching my head trying to get what you're saying "Flash is better than IE?" How does Flash adoption compare to people getting flu shots this year? Why is this site even using HTML? You should be using .swf for everything obviously.

Flash and HTML can be compared as they both are content deployment platforms, while flash leverages additional features, including video, sound, interactivity, usability (yes, that too), and powerful client-side scripting all in one package - HTML has to cope with cross-platform compatibility issues, rely on additional languages and techniques and to deal with the inflexibility (and should I say AGE?) of the language model itself.

Additional explanation to *some* people that will make comments - by saying HTML i meant IE7 platform capabilities. Browsers cannot deploy any other content than the one based on HTML without the use of additional plugins and languages.

To be sure, I'm all for Flash. It's my main gig. But... let's get back on earth please: you can't compare .swf to .html.

I'm even more perplexed by your comments Paulius. When I deploy my Flash apps I have to make sure the html works for all browsers. Sure, if I built the whole thing in HTML then it'd be more of a headache --but that is such an odd comparison as I'd NEVER do what I'm doing in Flash in HTML instead. It's like I start with a project objective... if Flash is a suitable solution then nearly by definition HTML is not even worth considering. Conversely, if HTML is suitable then it likely makes no sense to use Flash.

By the way, Flash does get ported to the different platforms via different vesrions of the player that, while developers don't have to deal with it directly, it IS created custom for each platform--and each browser/plugin technology for that matter. The point is that while you are insulated from that work, deep inside it's a port.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy but someone told me once analogies aren't good for arguments--they're good for explaining a concept.

The thing is that Flash is great at what it can do... it's not great because it's quickly deployed. I do think the argument against Flash because it's a plugin are way in our past.

I agree with Phillip. I buy and celebrate the FLASH adoption, kudous. I also buy into the IE7 adoption and will celebrate that.

I just don't buy the notion that Plugins are evil. Everything now days is a plugin?

For what it's worth, I'm not sure what might be confusing here. It's pretty simple.

When you want something to run on your own personal machine, then you can choose what to install. The general adoption rates don't matter, when it's running on your own machine.

But when you want something to run on Other Peoples Machines, then you have to choose among what actual capabilities they have on their own machines, and what you might be able to persuade them to install or update on those machines they control.

When the general Adobe Flash Player is used as the clientside engine, then new abilities engineered in 2006 are available for practical business deployment in 2007... the evolutionary pace is swift. New stuff can be done here fastest.

Example: E4X (efficient manipulation of XML) is on many browsers' wishlists, but it's in Adobe Flash Player 9 today, and which is already on the majority of consumers' machines today, right now, this instant. The engineering was pretty forward-looking, true, but it's the actual current capability on the audience's machines which is the remarkable point with Flash.

Adobe Flash Player gets desktop footprint freakin' fast. New things can be done first here.

Example: Suppose someone says to you "Oh, man, it's gonna rock, next version of Badubla Browser we're going to have PXML and dynamic interfrazzlies, your Flash is toast!" then the argument is inherently illogical, because Adobe Flash Player is adopted onto client machines at a rate far surpassing any one WWW browser, much less all WWW browsers your audience may use. If a new ability arrives, then odds are that it will be first be practically usable on a "single implementation" type of engine, rather than the full set of "single spec, multiple implementation" engines. Look at how slowly practical HTML/JS capabilities have evolved, for instace.

"Bottom line: If you want to run interactivity on Other Peoples Machines, then SWF has wider reach, demonstrably faster evolution."

jd/adobe

PS: Scott, your sig should always disclose your affiliation now, thanks. Hmm... [re-checking]... also, it's better to use accurate tradenames as the conversational tenor permits... when you write misnomers such as "FLASH" now, then that carries a very different flavor than it would for others, thanks... hmm... Vista adoption, as with all OS adoption, is usually seen as far, far slower than browser adoption... frequently tied to hardware cycles, in fact. (btw, still luv ya. ;-)

Oooh... I think I get it. I guess I've never had an opportunity to do a project that required IE7. Do people do that? Sort of nuts for a public type of project. I'm sure if there was a compelling thing that was otherwise impossible... and if the target audience was small then I suppose it's possible. Take the new NetFlix downloadble movies thing... it requires Windows. So, you take it or leave it I suppose. One would think there was some compelling reason they went that route because no one would WANT to limit their audience.

As far as E4X... awesome stuff. But, it's not exactly something that will make my clients want to make users upgrade. Video alpha channels, sure... video quality--yeah, pretty much. Flash player 9 speed, yep... in fact, bevel filters was sole reason this jigsaw project I just did requires Flash 8. Faster development time is not exactly something that I can use to require my clients' projects use Flash 9 though.

Anyway, back to this battle between Flash and IE7... I would be interested if any one is facing this dilemma where they're trying to decide between IE7 or Flash.

Disclosure: I'm an independent developer, writer, teacher... have worked for Macromedia and MSN... and will generally argue any point.

Eventually IE7 will be fully deployed to Internet connected MS users, and MS Vista will be a new OS for us to deal with.

It's more of a moot point when Apollo is born. The developer will not be tied to the OS or browser.

I think this is where we want to be -- cross platform -- full reach. I don't want to care "what OS I'm on", or "what browser I use"--I want it to work regardless of the OS wars or the browser wars. Give me neutral ground to develop in the middle and I'll develop with maximum efficiency / reach.

Thanks to Adobe for bridging the gap. By the way, IE7 renders Style Sheets differently than the previous. I don't have specifics right now, but my clients (HTML) website rendered differently between versions. What A headache.

I don't see the adoption of IE7 and the ActiveX Flash Player connection--other than they're both being widely adopted.

Presently, the Flash Player is browser dependant(excluding mobile apps). Like Phillip said, I either develop for Flash Player, or HTML. Best practices warrant 1 or the other. But if I can develop 1 HTML application and have full reach across browsers, I like it. We need a browser neutral HTML renderer--develop once with full reach.

Frankly, Its about time that Adobe/Macromedia decided to port Flash to the desktop. We've had to utilize hacks, ScreenWeaver, Director, and other swfToEXE applications in order to access the FileSystem.

After spending much, much, very much time learning Flash and best practices, I don't want to have to learn VB or C++ to access the FileSystem.

Disclosure: I'm an ordinary guy who spends countless hours pushing pixels and communicating with a stupid metallic box to get it to do exactly what I want.

I'm as interested in getting going doing Apollo apps as anyone else. However, if this is a discussion of IE vs. Apollo, then (and depending on how the unannounced security model plays out) IE will nearly certainly be more secure.

Plus, there are tons of projects that require desktop access, but somehow we've all kept pretty busy the last several years building web only apps. I can't remember ever a client saying... if only we could distribute a desktop app. Sure, if the distrubution mechanism was a bit easier (like Apollo will be) it would remove some resistance but you have to realize that alone is not going to mean people all of a sudden want desktop apps.

I finally thought I understood the point of this comparsion (IE to Flash) and that it was really WPF vs. Flash (that makes sense). If it's Apollo vs. IE then I think there's two things to mention:
--Adobe has said they're not trying to make "yet another browser" with Apollo (and I believe it).
--More than a few people may think that's what they ARE trying to do.

[jd sez: "Bottom line: If you want to run interactivity on Other Peoples Machines, then SWF has wider reach, demonstrably faster evolution." It's about adoption rates, evolutionary pace, fastest access to new clientside abilities.]

Disclosure 2: I'm getting a bit of cabin fever with the second snow day in Portland in full swing.

JD, you're only correct if you're talking about equivalent technologies. Are you equating all "interactivity"? Let's say QuickTime was on more machines than Flash--I'd still use Flash because the interactive capabilities (as well as the development environment) for QuickTime is lacking. The thing is, there's nothing that has wider reach than .swf--I suppose maybe plain text. But... back when Flash wasn't so well adopted, the reasons for using it were the same: it could do useful stuff.

Not once has someone said "hey, let's use Flash, it's the best adopted technology". What you've got here is an old argument AGAINST Flash (it's not adopted) and, now that it's no longer valid you've turned it into an argument FOR it. Sure, when you've got two nearly equivalents: say, BetaMax and VHS... then the better adoption will win out. But we're still back at the apple orange stage.

Hey, that's a great argument: oranges from California are going to be expensive or non-existant this year... but apples from Washington are going to have better adoption. Surely they'll start making gran marnier out of apples--better adoption after all.

All I'm saying is that I know that I'll never be in a discussion with a client about "hey, what's the best way to distribute this thing". They're always wanting to talk about objectives and capabilities first. Again, using your argument we should all be distributing documents as FlashPaper, not PDF... That's got terrible adoption in comparision. Of course (like most people) I realize Acrobat has some benefits over FlashPaper which is why it does better--and that has little or nothing to do with adoption.

Disclosure, I don't know what I'm talking about

:In Summary:

JD Sez: For interactivity, swf has wider reach than IE7.

Wider reach is less important than the features that it provides.

-----

Disclosure 2: I have a mole on my back.

Ok,
I'm hoping there is more to Apollo then I've seen through the public demos etc. As if that's it, I'm
sceptical it will deliver on the promises and hype that Adobe are spinning. If it does, great, lets get
started and I'll shut up for a while :)

The reason I am sceptical is basically the question of having an application X-Platform in my 9 years
of playing with these subset technologies it really never has come up as a pre-requisite. In fact
when I have put products like Multidmedia.com's Zinc (or whatever its previous name) into the
solution delivery with catch phrases "Look it works on a Mac" the response was generally "That's
nice, care?".

It's also a great point to make. Zinc exists here today; you can deploy FLEX housed inside it using a
really small run-time. It has an API that allows you to reach into ODBC and what not and can reach
into the operating system and manipulate files?
So by rights these guys should be making hand over fist? I'd wager they make a tidy sum, but not
really all that much.

I also presented at last year's WebDU on "Taming the FLEX UI" and in my presentation I showed
JavaWeb Start housing FLEX inside it. I even emailed Lucian and Mesh (Actually can't 100% say for
sure I emailed Mesh) and illustrated to them it's doable. We had people come up and go "So is that
Apollo?" (Which shows there is a gadget-gimmick interest), our response was no, it's home-grown
but that was it? I and the guy who wrote it really didn't get much more "I want that now" emails
going back and forth?

Point is, Apollo may bring brand loyalty, which is great and it may get more doors opened then
Zinc/Java WebStart (easy runtime deployment option) would simply because it has the Logo of Adobe next to it. Yet, once that is
overcome there needs to be more?

Ted indicated that it's in Alpha, so I'm guessing it's too early to pass judgement over it but Adobe
folks are treading a dangerous line here. You can build up the hype, but if you can't deliver it and
will end up being another "really good idea, but no follow through". If it does the things Adobe say
and more, then ok, it will get very exciting for the Web 2.0 style generation and everyone really
needs to start thinking more deeply about RSS and what other ways it can be used other then
blogs (games etc).

Adobe Flash penetration vs. Internet Explorer 7 in any contrast is like saying "Adobe Flash Player is
up by 3 pts today, so therefore your kittens are going to die". Replace kittens with Opera, FireFox,
Internet Explorer etc and you start going "What is the connection here?"

Adoption is driven by context. I could seriously argue that Adobe Flash Player's surge in adoption
arise from sites like YouTube.com existing? The context isn't about the technology or the solution
being delivered, its more about the context - "I want to see that crazy fat kid miming to opera"
was the reason?

Flash Player is a secondary item on the objective list and is treated as such.
Internet Explorer is a primary item on the objective list. "I want to visit YouTube...hmmm..Where's
that browser Icon? - not - where's that Flash Icon or maybe even my Apollo icons on my HDD??"

Most people also have access to two PC's a day (work and home) logistics of having both in-sync
becomes a hassle. So bad developers can de-value the Apollo suggestion Adobe is pitching?

j/d
I noticed that lately more and more Adobe folks are requesting for me to declare my employer,
role and rank. I don't subscribe to this thought as it can easily end in brand politics instead of reader
of JD's blog has a comment (not so much as Adobe.com space) (oh and works for Microsoft, does that change the opinion? Certainly adjusts the motivation behind the points (arguably, but the opinion still remains whether I work for Google or Microsoft? So brands aside, discussion can continue to flow?)

(Always a fan).

Scott Barnes,
Developer Evangelist.
Microsoft Australia.