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0 pointsalister13y ago0 comments

What's the problem with Flash?

1. Ceaselessly the biggest security hole on desktop computers.

2. Proprietary.

3. The need to install it in the first place and keep updating it. (And, no, I don't want it to auto-update.)

4. Can't cut and paste text from it. It's ridiculous to have to manually write down an address or phone number from a Flash-based site.

5. Search engines don't properly index it.

6. A Flash developer can hold you hostage by not giving you the "source" (the FLA master file).

7. It's allegedly a major source of browser crashes (or so I've read though I can't prove this).

8. It's slow. A website is insanely bloated to use Flash when text and pictures could have communicated the same information.

9. It imposes DRM even when the content owner didn't intend it. Think of all the subterfuge and trickery necessary to download a Flash video even when the website owner wouldn't have minded.

0 comments

calinet613y ago

10. Blatant inconsistency and poor design across the board.

This is the single most important reason. I say this as a 5-year veteran of Flash and Flex app development. Adobe has a poor compiler and VM with inconsistent specs and behavior, a poor set of libraries with myriad inconsistencies, a poorly designed UI library that's internally inconsistent, poor consulting that attempts to apply business logic on top of an inconsistent platform, and poor security that tries to patch holes at the wrong layer without thinking about them in any depth.

Computers and computer systems thrive on consistency and provability. Each layer depends on the ability of the layer under it to mathematically prove that it works. Without that, everything topples.

Adobe is built on an ethos of inconsistency.

That is the root of the problem.

nkohari13y ago

You should leave #6 out of your list. Your argument would be much more compelling for it. (Compilation/obfuscation is the norm, not the exception.)

noduerme13y ago

I was about to say that. Rights to source is determined by the contract. To my ear, someone who hates Flash because their devs won't cough up source is someone who (1) doesn't code (2) doesn't understand the law, and (3) made a bad contract and blamed the flash dev, and now is taking out his bitterness about the experience on Flash as a platform. Which is ridiculous.

As a coder who doesn't, and never will, sign works-for-hire agreements, I'm the model of a dev who won't give you the source if you fire me or treat me like shit. In one incident, a customer who paid $100k for me to develop a flash app, then sold it to News Corp without mentioning to them that they didn't actually own the source for it. News Corp had, legally, every right to reverse-engineer that app; moreover I actually gave them the source because I'm a nice guy, but I stipulated that they couldn't repackage it without my assent, and that the classes which had been developed outside the project at hand (some of which had been coded on other customers' dime) were not for resale at all; and that in no way could they claim ownership and try to prevent me from reusing any of it for my own purposes. News Corp then hired a team of coders, paid them in excess of $300k to try and reverse-engineer my code. When that failed, they called me and offered me $50 an hour, half my regular wage, to help them, if I would just sign their NDA, which happened to include handing them eternal rights to everything I'd ever done. I told them to fuck off, and the project died a week later.

But more importantly, anyone who knew what they were talking about and who wasn't just a frat boy shilling for HTML5 because that'as what douchebags talk about at Q's on Fridays would know that technically, there are 101 decompilers for Flash, and legally, you can decompile code you paid for and have someone else edit it as long as you aren't reselling it, even if you didn't have the coder under a works-for-hire agreement; and morally, if your coder is telling you to piss off and not giving you the source then you're probably an asshole who deserves it.

alisterOP13y ago

You're quite right. I was thinking of an unsophisticated site owner with simple requirements (like a restaurant site) who hires a designer. He wouldn't know to put into the contract that all source code must be delivered. In such a case, he'd be better off if the designer used straight HTML. At least then there's a chance that someone else could edit it or maintain it.

talmand13y ago

Although I agree with the problem of the developer not handing over the source files, the same problem potentially exists if the designer doesn't hand over the source Photoshop and/or Illustrator files. Granted, that's not as big a deal as withholding Flash files, but it's there.

ido13y ago

As I said I have no love for flash for websites, I am only talking about flash as platform for web-games.

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