With so much work being put into JavaScript Engines and competition building up between the big three(TraceMonkey, V8, and SquirrelFish) running a full blown Cappuccino, SproutCore, or any AJAX intensive app will be very light on memory usage and efficient on your resources. This JS engine competition will mostly affect the closed source Adobe’s Flex, AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight since they can’t seem to get enough of your memory and keep crashing your browser. Closed and proprietary web frameworks have only one place in the world, and that is in the cemetery.
Why Flash is Doomed! 5
Posted by Jonathan Tarud
on September 20, 2008
Trackbacks
Trackbacks are closed.
Uhm… Flash doomed? It seems to be doing quite well for a doomed technology. Javascript, is javascript, and the upcoming versions are just as clunky as the current Javascript model. Things are moving away from the browser and towards the desktop, ala.. Air and Chrome. Yes, chrome is a browser but it gives Google a desktop platform. PS - Flash runs in all the browsers, write once run anywhere. Not js.
My thoughts exactly! It’s fun to work in but the overhead of using it on any website is almost always too high. That said, is there a better way to handle video or music?
@A Moving away from the browser dosen’t mean flash. You could have a Cappuccino app running on Prisim or Fluid app which would render a much superior experience than AIR which is simply awkward. The write once, run anywhere is pure BS. Yes you can do it, but the user experience will be sacrificed. That is why I don’t like it. I’d rather use a Mac OS X native app over a Java or AIR one.
@Steven Flash has a lot of overhead to the user, unlike something like Rails with overheard for the developer(in terms of deployment). I think that until HTML 5 hits the scene flash might be the best way for video/music. But not for full blown Flex apps. Those are clunky and not very fun. The loading bar is simply annoying, and the usability will never be as good as something like Google Docs or 280slides.com.
@Jonathan I know they’re clunky, that’s why I don’t use Flash anymore. I don’t know why your saying rails is overhead to the developer like it’s in contrast to a Flash app. Their both a ton of work to the developer. Rails is totally different though. I don’t even know why you’re contrasting the two. What I think is best is to avoid Flash unless it’s absolutely necessary and then only use it in the smallest doses. Javascript will do lots of the same stuff Flash does but without having to be compiled. Javascript is found on all browsers without having to install anything. Both of those things give it an edge. Oh and the loader bar in Flash is just something people program in, it doesn’t have to be there. What’s ironic is that programmers put it their to be helpful.
@steven What i meant by the “rails has overhead to the developer and compared it to flash” i meant it in terms of resources needed to run the app in the server(i.e. memory usage, server power) while flash pushes this into the end user. I completely agree that flash should only be used when absolutely necessary. Javascript when used in a full blown framework competes nicely with rich apps made in flash/flex or air and renders a more usable experience. I don’t have to convince you about rails, you are an advocate to from the looks of your site. Right on! I just don’t like flash.