There are serious problems with Flash. It is a closed platform. It is owned and controlled by a single company and they produce the only toolset for it. That said, their toolset is powerful, solid, and it has given artists the capacity to create their own content without worrying about complex code manipulation. It has made content production easy.
This part of the argument always seems to be left out of the Flash s. HTML5 debate. You can have the superior technology. It can perform better, be more open, and even run safer than its competition; and yet, if it doesn’t come with a rich set of tools that make content creation relatively easy and fun, your technology isn’t going to see the penetration you would like. Let’s remember what technology really is: technology is knowledge and application. A television is not technology nor is a computer technology. They are the products of technology. They are, at best, tools. HTML5 may indeed be a better way of doing things. This is knowledge side of the equation. Application, though, requires tools. Without tools the knowledge lies impotent, unrealized, and is, eventually, forgotten. As far as the tools go, Flash wins. There is nothing to compete in the HTML5 camp and as far as I have seen there are no plans to create something to compete.
I hope this isn’t case. I love the products Adobe makes but competition is a good thing here and they have held the space for a long time. New ideas and new tools might actually open up content creation even more. I hope to see some competing products developed that really push the envelope. To be fair, some of the Javascript libraries out there are doing that but they are still very early in their development. Of course, so is HTML5 which isn’t even finalized as of yet.
On the plus side, this is an exciting time to be in the content business. The models have changed and it really is anyone’s game. There is something really exciting about that.
If I have missed HTML5 tools or are ignorant of some (scary but possible) please let me know below. I would love to check them out!
