You can’t make this stuff up. Someone sent me a couple of great graphics supporting my assertion. So please respond with anything that supports the contrary.

Update:

After getting a little splashback from some of my friends and colleagues, I thought that I’d add a little supporting evidence to my assertions.

“Moving” to HTML5 at this point is senseless gambling.

I’m not just blowing smoke up your pipe here either. Open your browsers to HTML5test.com and see for yourself. Come on… go ahead and do it!

The HTML5 support score on latest Windows 7 browsers that I have: IE 138; FF 330; Chrome 400. And then on the Mac OSX 10.6 that I have; Safari 319; FF 340; Chrome 400. That makes Chrome our top student with a whopping 80%. And I’m what many would call an “Advanced User.” Expect less from the general public.

Last I checked, 80% was a low “B-”. And with over 50% of the browser usage coming from browsers that have failing scores, you can see why I would not recommend HTML5 except in specific edge cases. And you thought IE6 was bad! (Browser stats from w3schools.com)

As a mobile or web developer, adding HTML5 to your list of skills is imperative. But with the severe lack of consistent support, moving an enterprise development project to HTML5 now is purely experimental or an exercise in ego.

If you think I’m wrong, please provide supporting evidence and I’ll gladly educate myself.

Original Post:

The fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is being slung around by profiteers like folding chairs at a WWE event. The haters are still being haters. Nothing new there. But now I see JavaScript companies’ desperate pleas for Flex developers to start using their HTML5 software.
The context is all wrong here.  Very, very few Flex developers have shifted, moved, changed over, or whatever you want to call it… to HTML5 (or anything else JS-based.)

There is not a move to HTML5

I will go as far as to say that there is not a move to HTML5. The simple fact is that, developers are being developers. No matter the background, we are always trying to broadening our skill sets. This includes HTML5 since it started showing up a few years ago. For anyone to imply, or state outright, that there is some mass exodus from Flex is completely false!

The reality is still the same, Flash Player is still the most consistent cross-browser, cross-OS, and cross-device platform for software development.

It doesn’t matter if you are building business software or games, with one technology you are able to build for the desktop, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Android, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Internet TVs.

What most haters fail to realize is how nice it is to go through your bug list and not find ANY bugs that are browser/platform specific. The only bugs I have, are actual bugs that I can fix. Not browser support related issues that you have no control over. For the first time in years I had to deal with browser specific issue when our On3 client embedded the application in a JSF, JSTL, ADF container. It reminded me of how good I have it. I don’t have to deal with this headache on a daily basis. In fact, it was one of the complete joys that drove me from building DHMTL development to Flex development.

So, the next time someone says, “Flex is dead” or “Everyone is moving to <insert tech here>,” take it with a grain of salt. In all likely hood, they have a hidden agenda.

Thank you Moai for this great graphic on the HTML5 Hype vs. Reality.

If you don’t know what these features are, this announcement does not effect you.

It’s funny to me how a simple statement gets construed when passed on to even one person. This phenomenon is called  Chinese Whispers. Unfortunately, in our fast paced world, we don’t actually pay attention enough to prevent this from happening nor the erroneous blow back regarding the Chinese Whispers. As many of you know, I work with several Adobe products. So I follow them closely and hopefully understand their direction better than most. So let’s clear this up.

Yesterday, Adobe announced that they are adding a licensing component to 2 specific features of Flash Player for developers.

This does not effect you if:

This only effects you if:

The licencing is very clear that it is for two (2) specific features used in combination that are most likely to be used by game developers. The features are domain memory and hardware accelerated Stage3D.

It is important to note that games and applications using either hardware-accelerated Stage3d OR domain memory individually do not require a license.

Game developers, before you get all WoW on Adobe, be sure to read the whole announcement and make sure that it does apply to you. And if it does apply to you… congratulations of creating a successful game!

That is until the other day.

Adobe announced that they were donating the Flex SDK to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It’s about effen time!

I give the Adobe Flex team a lot of credit for creating a really great product, but in the end… they could only put so many resources on it for it to make financial sense. Going ASF is the right thing to do.

Adobe, go make more great tools for us… so that we can continue to inspire and engage our customers with great software.

Oh, and I’m hiring Flex developers. Just thought I’d throw that out there in case you happened to have been recently laid off.

But with a poorly handled announcement by Adobe regarding the Flash Player plug-in for “mobile browsers” it really caused quite a stir. Unfortunately, the intent of the communication was not clear enough for most people. Including most of us in the community. Adobe can only blame themselves for this.

What was lost in the message is that, although they will not be actively adding new features to the mobile browser Flash Player, they are continuing to support the mobile plug-in.

So what does this change? Nothing.

The Flash Player for mobile is already NOT on iOS devices. That is not changing that we know of. Flash Player 11 for mobile is already on Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and others.

So again, what has changed? Nothing.

What made Flash Player dominate the desktop was its ubiquity. You could count on it being there. Unfortunately, that isn’t that case for mobile.

And for all the haters, this is by no means throwing in the towel or admitting defeat. Flash Player for mobile is already on 80% of mobile devices. iOS market share is still dropping. Just say’n.

But the key thing for Adobe was that without the ubiquity that Flash Player has on the desktop, it’s hard to make the same claims of rich interface consistency across platforms. Without the consistency across platforms, you might as well use HTML 5 which is supported as best as possible by all smart phone browsers. And as a tools provider, there resources are better spent where they will make the biggest impact.

You do have to take this decision with a grain of salt. HTML5 is still a specification that is being worked on for a couple of more years. Yes, YEARS before it will become a standard. See some of my points regarding HTML5. We, developers, will have to live through browser compatibility hell again as we did for a decade with JavaScript. yeah.    Since HTML 5 still needs work to get to its promise (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5), it makes sense for Adobe to put more resources into HTML 5.

Flash Player is not going anywhere, for now. Flash Player for the browser and AIR for Mobile and Desktop at still the easiest and most consistent way to put consistent cross platform engaging experiences in front of users.

As an aside, I still think that it is a huge mistake by Apple to not allow users to install Flash Player on their tablet. I can care less about phone browsers, they are simply too small. But I am always using the “full site” option when browsing on my tablet. And because I’m on a Galaxy Tab, I get to enjoy all sites as they were meant to be. I do give Apple credit for their impact on the mobile phone world, but I don’t think it will carryover as well on tablets. The competition in the space has already caught and passed them from a quality product perspective. They may have the tablet market share currently, but just like the PC and the phone, they will eventually be swallowed up by the flood of less expensive options that are as good as or even better.

The core of Flash Player is the Tamarin Virtual Machine, which is an open source project under Mozilla. While the SWF file format is not fully open, it is documented by the community on osflash.org. Additionally, there are numerous open source products that read and write SWF files.

The Flash Player’s product direction has traditionally been heavily influenced by the community and their needs. The core language for Flash Player is an implementation of ECMAScript 262, which is the same specification for JavaScript. Flex also uses CSS for styling of components/applications.

There are also several libraries included with Flash Player that are licensed through other parties (i.e. h.264) that are not open. Thus, preventing Adobe from making the whole thing open source if they wanted to. Not sure that they would, but this definitely kills the idea.

Come save us HTML5 in 2022 AD

HTML5 has been in the works since 2004 and is still in “draft”. Its primary intent is to reduce the need for proprietary plug-ins (like Flash Player and Silverlight).

I can definitely see the benefit of not relying on a plug-in for multiple reasons. There is a concern if users will have the plug-in, but the bigger concern is vendor dependence. I think Adobe has the install base issue covered fairly well, yet it should still be a concern for locked down environments. To the bigger concern, I’d say that we already depend on companies like Apple and Microsoft quite heavily and that Adobe is far from a fledgling start-up that would be considered very risky. Naturally, I understand to the concern and will help my clients choose the appropriate technology.

The reality is that HTML5 is not coming anytime soon

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, claims that “the world is moving to HTML5″. How is that going to happen Steve when Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later?[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5]

Should we hold off development for a few years while Google (Ian works at Google) finishes the specifications?

Finally, how many different implementations of HTML5 do you think there will be?. There will most likely still be cross browser compatibility issues to deal with.

Flash Player and Silverlight

I’ll sticking with vendor dependence that I can use now over incomplete technology with potential compatibility nightmares any day!

A good friend of mine, Cliff Hall, is most known for the PureMVC framework which was inspired by his his lack of love for the Cairngorm framework. Well, Cliff apparently was irritated by the inability to create licensed products with Flex and AIR too, so he did something about it. Zarqon. He has created very useful tool for creating a licensed Flex and/or AIR applications. How you implement your app is totally up to you, Zarqon just helps you easily issue and validate licenses.

Are you a software skeptic, me too! No worries, there a free 30 day trial license that will allow you to fully evaluate the product and make a decision about whether it’s right for you.

It is now in “beta”, but if you begin implementation of a Zarqon-licensed product within the trial period that you plan to launch, let him know and you just may get a free license. Even if you do have to buy a license, it won’t set you back but $25.

I’m going to start my testing immediately and I’ll let you know my  thoughts later.

You can read all about it and sign up for the Beta at http://zarqon.net

Open a terminal window.

cd to download directory

chmod the AdobeAIRInstaller.bin to 755

su -m

enter password

./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

The hidden reason is cost. Cost for setting up each developer environment. Cost of licenses.

The bigger reason is, or should be, security.

Enter Platform as a Service (PaaS) to the conversation.

Although the idea of using the cloud for development is good in theory, it can be cost prohibitive. Here is why:

• The cost of using the cloud. In reality, you’ll end up spending around $1k per computing instance per year. i.e. per developer

• You still have to license any development tools for each developer seat. Check your EULA, they typically address ways of circumventing license requirements via virtualization.

You do get the benefit of quickly setting up an environment for a team. But lets face it, the only real benefit is the level of security in that your code base is never on someone’s laptop. Don’t get me wrong… this is a really big benefit!

From my research, I would recommend VMware ACE instead of PaaS. VMware ACE allows you to provision standardized client PC environments inside secure, centrally managed virtual machines called ACEs. Each ACE contains a complete client PC—including the operating system and all applications. Administrators use the dynamic policy configuration capabilities in ACE to lock down endpoints with device and network access control, there by protecting confidential company data and ensuring compliance with IT polices. You will get security through a managed virtual machine and the ability to quickly deploy a “ready to go” environment for your developers.
No, its not cheap. But it is way less expensive than the cloud with the equal benefits.

I know this because I’m looking into these tools in order to manage our training facility where we teach ColdFusion, Flex and LiveCycle.