There have been some major announcements on interactive web development recently. Agencies have been given a lot to think about, especially regarding Flash and HTML. It’s important to take note of what’s happening, and what it means for agencies and marketers.
The Adobe blog started the chatter, announcing that it will cease development of the Flash plugin for mobile devices. The response from the community was a mix of panic, joy and confusion.
What did this mean? Did abandoning development on the mobile plug-in for Flash spell the beginning of the end for the Flash platform? To make matters a bit more complicated, Adobe also revealed that part of the development team for the authoring tool Flash Professional had been laid off or relocated.
With everything else that's been happening lately, large parts of the industry became almost united in the stance that the end of Flash is near.
So is it? There's absolutely no doubt that the role of Flash is changing, and throughout the industry everyone can feel it.
However the immediate ramifications of that particular announcement from Adobe are small at best. Mobile space was something the Flash plugin never had a focus around. After a minor war between Adobe and Apple, the mobile player always felt like an afterthought.
Even for people like myself, with devices adept at displaying Flash content on mobile, it was just not a good solution. The nature of touch devices meant you couldn't just use 'normal' Flash content, but you'd have to develop content specifically for the mobile space, which ultimately goes directly against the ubiquitous platform nature that spawned Flash in the first place.
Adobe most likely realised that Flash would never reach the same kind of ubiquity in the smartphone space that it enjoys on PCs.
As an effect of this, Adobe’s "mobile space" focus has instead shifted to AIR apps on phones (put simply, packaging up Flash applications into native apps that you download from the Market/App Store). Can they pull it off? Too early to tell. It's got potential, but they have created a massive dark cloud over their own mobile future already.
Working in web development, I think it's pretty much impossible to not have heard the phrase "HTML5 is the future" at least a handful times now from various authors, and it's quite hard to argue with from a web point of view. The days of making entire websites as a Flash experience with a soundtrack are long gone. Information is the focal point of a lot of web positioning now, not the experience.
There will always be a place for a content ‘experience’ however, be it 3D walkthroughs of a house, interactive games and such. HTML5 is simply not geared up for that type of content, and there will be a long period of time before it can be. Suggestions like "porting" games to HTML5 are as awkward as they are false. Adobe has made it quite clear with Flash Player 11 that they assuming a pretty strong focus around re-positioning Flash towards web gaming. It's a huge part of the web still, and gaming is most likely where Flash will continue to be the best choice of platform.
What we can’t forget is technology is meant to help drive the ideas. It's not meant to be something you build an idea around. Ultimately, the work we're doing should look at providing the best solution for our clients first, using the right technology to deliver.
Getting too caught up in the execution of an idea is a terrible path to go down. It's impossible to argue that any choice doesn't have its strengths and weaknesses. For avid readers on community based content, I think long-time tutorial contributor and forum administrator Kirupa Chinnathambi put it best with his Be Water post: “Adapt your technical skills as needed.” As Bruce Lee said, be water – take the shape of whatever surrounds you, or in this case, adapt to the technology that surrounds you. Both from an agency point of view, and for interactive developers trying to gauge the future, I think this is spot on.
Digital agencies and developers, collectively, have evolved through so many iterations of web technology. This is just another step along the way, and we are all here to determine the best option for our clients. Be it HTML5 or Flash Games or Unity solutions, you have to maintain the primary goal of making smart choices around your ideas and demographics.
When Macromedia created Flash, it created something unique in being able to unite browsers and walk straight past the inconsistencies between them. For a long time it's been the only way to present interactive and animated content for the web.
That exclusivity is over, and mobile delivery of information is now playing a significant role in interactive development. HTML5 and all the new stuff is getting everyone, us at Visual Jazz included, tremendously excited about the future, but it can't come at the cost of the solution. Nothing is the "be all, end all" approach to the problems we try to solve for our clients. Making smart choices, evolving and adapting is what this and next year are all about.
Erik Hallander
Interactive Director
Visual Jazz
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