Flash alternatives already

Flash (“Adobe Flash” formerly Macromedia Flash, and even longer ago as FutureSplash), has in recent years finally gotten some serious competition. Oddly this hasn’t really happened often yet in Flash’s fifteen years of existence.

Although for years the Flash player reigned supreme in certain area’s of rich internet development, such as animation and multimedia delivery, some serious alternative technologies that serve the same purposes have finally started making their appearance on the web.

Although at the time of this writing most would agree today the Flash player is still the best and safest choice for a lot of multimedia solutions on the web, it’s obviously a good thing for any technology to have some competitors.

In contrast with JavaScript CSS and HTML5 – Flash, Flex and ActionScript based applications still require expensive authoring software, and Adobe doesn’t seem keen on opening up to the open source / open standards community on this point any time soon. This is a point often overlooked by Flash enthusiasts, but it does imply that Adobe feels Flash/ActionScript development should be only for those who can afford its overpriced software.

Although browser support will remain a conservative force for a while to come, HTML5 and CSS3 offer a lot of new multimedia possibilities making RIA development a lot easier and more readily available to anyone willing to learn. The new  <audio>,<video> and <canvas> tags will make multimedia publishing independent of Adobe.

Also there’s an ever growing abundance of Javascript libraries making the animations and effects that Flash provides available without any type of proprietary plugins or players needed.

Adobe has been accused of laziness in patching bugs and development in the recent past, and not just by Apple. The arrogance spawned by monopoly is never a favorable condition for developers to work under.

Recent times have also seen a vicious clash between Apple and Adobe. Apple’s popular I-gadgets have for years now refused to offer any type of support for Adobe’s Flash Player, and more recently Adobe’s attempts to bridge the gap by creating authoring tools for Apple’s mobile apps in it’s CS5 Creative Suite software have been shot down by Apple before they could be released.

Although Microsoft also sports it’s own Flash-killer software know as Silverlight the real alternatives for Flash appear to come mainly from the open Standards corner.

Tags: ActionScript, Flash, html5