Comments for Thudfactor

Comment on People are dropping Flash like a bad habit by Richk

Richk — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:36:05 +0000

Thanks for the reply. Please understand, my intention is not to bash HTML5 stack, nor is it to champion Flash as the” be all end all”. Both are viable approaches depending on what you are trying to achieve. To suggest that Adobe is backing away from Flash is not accurate. They are shifting away from the Flash runtime, especially on mobile. I think this is a good thing. Using Flash, specifically AS3 to build content, is much more robust than JavaScript and its primitive prototype inheritance model. Although both are based off of ECMA script, AS3 is closer to a real language and IMO is easier to maintain. To be honest, if I were able to use a language like AS3 or C# for creating HTML5 content, than I wouldn’t even care that much about the Flash runtime.

As far as the desktop browser, Flash really is still king for complex games. This is what my company produces, and switching to HTML5 is not even an option for some of these titles, unless we were willing to dumb them down considerably. Even you admitted that for some projects you would have to sacrifice some immersive qualities in order to make the transition.

“It does no good to resolve the task at hand using tools that will be obsolete in relatively short order.”

C’mon, this is conjecture. Besides, the Flash IDE is just one of many tools available. There is IntelliJ, FDT, Flash Develop, Adobe Flash Builder. Also, I stand behind the proposition to choose a tool/platform by the task at hand. If I am given a project that requires an immersive 3D experience with physics, such as a first person shooter with many levels, I am going to evaluate building it in Unity3D or maybe even Flash. Or better yet, build it in Unity and publish to Flash molehill. There are growing options out there today to use a single codebase (in theory) and publish natively or to Flash runtime.

The point is HTML5 is not always going to cut it for all projects and while many believe Flash will be dead very soon, I just don’t see this happening. The focus is changing, but it is not dying. While HTML5 has many pros, like anything it has its fair share of cons.

Thanks!

Comment on People are dropping Flash like a bad habit by thudfactor

thudfactor — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:26:00 +0000

I have at least two projects myself that would be very difficult to achieve in HTML5 right now; others have had to sacrifice some immersive qualities in order to make the transition. But, as I said, the list of kinds of projects where Flash is an appropriate solution has been dramatically narrowed, and that is not good for the platform.

You do have to think about more than the “task at hand” when developing for the web world. Flash is not just the production tool but also the player and the code maintenance tool. So you have to think both about the skill set of the people who will be maintaining the code as well as the future of the platform. It does no good to resolve the task at hand using tools that will be obsolete in relatively short order.

This concern has become more pressing since I wrote this — Adobe seems to be backing away from Flash pretty rapidly themselves.

HTML5 will be a standard once it is finalized. That will take some years. I think you may have conflated differing definitions of “standard.”

Comment on People are dropping Flash like a bad habit by Richk

Richk — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:55:01 +0000

The tool used should be determined by the task at hand. That said, I welcome HTML5 as a replacement for fluff animations, slideshows and basic bell and whistles. However I am sorry to say, if you think HTML5 is ready to replace Flash across the board when the goal is a complex game or app, you are being a bit naive or you’re simply inexperienced at creating complex, scalable interactive content in AS3. Not to mention, I have seen some benchmarks where HTML5 used more CPU than the equivalent in Flash! you have to be careful about what is being said out there, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Furthermore, HTML5 is not a “standard”, it is merely a specification. No more, no less. What can make it a standard is uniform implementation on behalf of the major browsers. Looking at history, this is where the failure usually takes place. Browsers notoriously support things differently, and there is no compelling reason or evidence to suggest this won’t be the case with HTML5. There are tools out there which allow you to evaluate HTML5 feature support on a per browser level, and it is quite pitiful at this time. Will it change in the near future? Possibly. Look at some of the elaborate HTML5 experiments Google has created in the past, most of them did not work outside of Chrome. How is this a viable replacement?

I oversee development efforts for a fairly large game provider in the casino/gaming space and I can tell you that this debate comes often, usually presented by upper level management who are reacting to buzz and hype they hear in their inner circles. We always come back to the same place – Flash is still the best option for deploying complex interactive gaming content to the browser, HTML5 is no where close. The technical challenges that HTML5 would present to our model would be a deal breaker. In summary, you have to look beyond video, slideshows and fun interactive widgets. There are MANY uses for Flash which are far more complex than the average Flash fluff you see littered all over the web.

Where it gets complicated is mobile. Still, HTML5 is not advanced enough to deliver the type of gaming experience on a mobile device that my customers are used to in a desktop browser. The quality of HTML5 mobile games out there is quite primitive, and simply won’t cut it. This presents a challenge. Do we go native? Well, at this time we choose the tech based on the game itself. In many cases we have gone native for iOS and Android. Adobe AIR for mobile seems promising, but it isn’t there yet. Unity for mobile is also another great solution, and it allows you to push out natively to iOS and Android.

Comment on Flossing prevents heart disease? by thudfactor

thudfactor — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:08:27 +0000

That still looks like mere correlation to me Dave. It seems like you ought to be able to draw a line between those two with evidence like that, but it’s a small sample size and there’s a lot of other stuff that happens in a year that might affect heart disease.

Furthermore, saying “curing periodontal disease reduces arterial plaque” is a much more narrow statement than “flossing helps prevent heart disease.” AFAIK no one has done a medical trial to show that.

Comment on Flossing prevents heart disease? by Dave

Dave — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:41:18 +0000

Actually, there is a causation link between the bacteria that cause gum disease and inflamed, thickened arteries.

The scientists examined the carotid arteries — an artery that supplies the head and neck with oxygenated blood — of 35 otherwise healthy people with a median age of 46 with mild to moderate periodontal disease before and after having their periodontal disease treated.

The study, published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal, found that one year after treatment, the scientists observed a reduction in oral bacteria, immune inflammation and the thickening of the blood vessels associated with atherosclerosis.

In other words, after treating the gum disease, arteries were healthier.

Comment on This is why I shop online by thudfactor

thudfactor — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:02:21 +0000

I do remember somewhat; I remember it was expensive and very hit-or-miss. In college listening booths made something of a comeback in a few stores I prowled through, and that made it easier. But it was never an easy experience.

Comment on This is why I shop online by gls

gls — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:12:38 +0000

Remember what it was like to go to the store to browse CDs to find something new? Yeah, me either…

Comment on Why I left Facebook by Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:01:39 +0000

I have made the decision to leave as well. The introduction of timeline has really soured my experience – I do not like it at all. I was never a very active person on FB and with timeline my profile looks like a sad case with few photos and rarely any status updates or comments. People come across as totally superficial and it is something that no one really NEEDS to have, there are many more personal forms of communication. Personally I am quite happy to use email and phone, and lets face it, email is here to stay and for good reason too. The fakeness of facebook is a real turn off, and it is depressing to see what people are really like when they are hiding behind a computer screen instead of out there enjoying life, and interacting with new people in the real world.

Comment on Let’s hear it for traditional media by Malice

Malice — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:18:39 +0000

I’d love to have an iPad, but I have no real reason to get one. I prefer dead-tree magazines to digital. The accumulation you refer to is the only disadvantage is see. By buried, I meant backlogged, as in “Holy cow, I’m never going to have time to read all those.”

Comment on Let’s hear it for traditional media by Fred

Fred — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:40:25 +0000

I don’t read any magazines with great regularity. I’ve subscribed (and still do, actually) to the New Yorker, but I find it tough to find the time to read them. Especially with all the blogs and Twitter feeds, etc., that I also enjoy reading.