agile-ajax

Can’t we all just get along?

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, June 5, 2008 @ 5:22 pm

I've came across an interesting article titled The Next-Gen Web: HTML5 - Will We Ever See A Real Standard? by Nik Cubrilovic that gives a nice overview of the history of web standards while focusing on the current HTML5 draft specification and its potential.

Web standards are not something particularly interesting to me as an Adobe Flex developer. After all, one of the reasons I've chosen this technology is that I can develop web applications without those standards limiting my imagination.

Adobe Flash technology is in part setting the standards of what Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0) really mean. Web experiences made using it are on the high end of what's available today and that's where I want to be.

One major lacking of this technology is that it is not utilizing web standards which makes some tasks harder, like making sites and apps search engine friendly, for example. I personally decided that its benefits significantly outweigh the problems.

Whatever one's perspective, I think that lack of full implementation of web standards causes a huge waste of time for people developing content for the web. Until that happens, I choose to ignore them altogether and use a medium that gives the same results on all platforms. To the best of my knowledge, content developed in Flash years ago still looks and acts the same in all browsers and operation systems.

You can find some great insight on what might be the future of web standards in Nik's article. In the meantime, my money stays with Flex.

Topics: , ,

agile ajax Agile Ajax

Comments: 3 so far

  1. Hey Sasha, Flex is actually pretty cool. The only bug that I have with both Adobe and Microsoft (Silverlight) is the proprietary runtime. Adobe has gone a long way to releasing large parts of Flex as open source, but I still believe that we need a new, or next, Ajax that will be open but also able to comete with Flex and Silverlight.

    Comment by Nik Cubrilovic, Thursday, June 5, 2008 @ 8:41 pm

  2. I really dislike Flash (and would defiantly not bother to install Silverlight on any of my computers: Mac or Linux). Other then for media players (until HTML5 makes embedding media easier) and games, there no real need for Flash on text-centric sites. Text renders perfectly well with HTML, and forcing it into Flash (e.g. Scribd) simply locks you out (try scrolling the documents in Scribd using the mouse to see what I mean - it’s painful).
    Also, I can’t access Flash content on my iPhone (which seems to become a very essential tool for me). Still, I don’t blame Apple for not supporting Flash really. Other then the performance issues, Flash seems to encourage developer/designers to create fluff, hide content and frustrate users. There are enough Web 2.0 sites not using Flash and looking quite cool, useful and accessible.

    Comment by Uri Sharf, Saturday, July 12, 2008 @ 4:18 am

  3. Hi Uri,
    I fully agree with you that Flash is not for text centric sites and I’m just sad about the lack of support for iPhone (single tear falling).

    Flash is about user experience, and you don’t need advanced experience to read text.

    I disagree that Flash seems to encourage developer/designers to create fluff, etc. Fluff exists in any technology, just name one. It’s not the technology, it’s the developers, like I mentioned in this post:
    http://www.pathf.com/blogs/2008/05/flash-technolog/

    That flash is not the only option for rich experience is a fact now. As far as I’m concerned, that’s great because it makes Adobe work around the clock on new features to stay ahead of the curve, just check out Flash Player 10 features.

    Flash does have the best interaction and multimedia functionality available today, but that doesn’t mean that people
    oint.

    Comment by Sasha Dzeletovic, Friday, July 18, 2008 @ 11:41 am

Leave a comment

Powered by WP Hashcash

Who is Pathfinder?

Categories

Topics

Blogroll

Search

WordPress

Comments about this site: info@pathf.com