Existence: flash has been in operation since the beginning of 1996 and has thus developed strong users and developers. Its latest version of the player is Linux, Microsoft Windows, Android 2.2+, Mac OS X, Google TV and RIM QNX. HTML 5 started in 2003, and in the beginning of 2011, its standard had risen to working in a draft state. As at today, HTML 5 uses such browsers as opera mini, apple safari, internet explorer and maxilla Firefox in a large extent. In terms of website adoption, about eighty-five percent of the highly used websites have adopted flash. Flash player is viewed by about seventy-five percent of the world’s population, the enterprises that rely on the flash players are about ninety-eight percent while the web games done in flash are about seventy percent. In contrast to this, some sites which have videos like Vimeo, Youtube and Blip. TV continues to use and support HTML 5. Again, unlike HTML5, flash develops enormous applications that work across all platforms. HTML5 is also implemented in different ways by the different browsers.
This is when Steve Jobs stated that flash is restricted to Adobe systems thus making it, not an open standard. On the other hand, HTML 5 is extremely monitored by a committee comprising of three firms namely, Mozilla Foundation, the Apple and Opera Software. In performance, many users especially those who use Linux and Mac OS X, complain about how flash uses an extensive CPU space for the playback of the video. Again, some flash developers code the flash files incorrectly making this another reason for unsatisfactory performance of the flash. It can also cause trouble for the animation of HTML 5, as well. Again, HTML5 is the newest edition of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). There is high hope that it will bring a great change in the web coding on the clients’ side. The speculation for the new version five of HTML has already commenced and it is expected to take a very short time. It will soon be in the internet. On the other hand, the most important method to absorb both the multi media contents and the animations and any other crucial internet applications with the web is the flash. Flash has been taken to a completely new level by the adobe systems after it acquired it from macromedia who was the owner (Powers, 2005).
The construction of flash websites with adobe tools is a lot simpler than with using integrated development environments for JavaScript, CSS and HTML. The adobe tools are, however, very costly. It takes a lot of time for HTML 5 to reach the market and for this reason; adobe has produced a version of a flash for HTML 5 to convert its contents in existence. They are currently working on making new tools for HTML5, as well. Since HTML5’s format is open, any toolmaker can make them. The current ones in the market are Hype. In terms of features, flash specifically measures increments in sub-pixel. This has resulted in pleasant look of flash web sites.
On the other hand, if confronted with HTML and CSS measurements, the web browsers will go either down or up and this will depend on which browser is in use. This leads to unreliability and inconsistency in the page displays. In terms of feasibility of DRM in HTML 5, there are no functionalities on digital rights administration. In codec’s, for example, the implementations can sustain DRM in HTML5’s scope. In terms of search engines and accessibility, both HTML5 and Flash texts can be easily accessed and read by the readers. However, lots of precaution should be taken while reading flash movies so as to ensure that they are correctly read. For example, if the movie is set to keep repeating itself, the screen reader can endlessly repeat it. Contents in both HTML 5 and flash can be indexed by Yahoo, Bing and Google. However, bi-directional text is not supported by Google. Therefore, Yahoo has added indexing support for flash sites (David, 2005).
All through, apple has found HTML5 to be the best alternative to flash for any contents or video on the iOS. Flash is not found on Apple’s devices such as iPod touch, iPad and iPhone, but it is compiled as an iOS application via Apple’s packager of flash CS5. Flash developers according to the Adobe labs, offer efficient and fast ways, to recycle the existing code. Steve Jobs the then chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple ridiculed the flash technology via a letter he posted to the Apple website. He gave an explanation and a reason as to why flash is not supported by Apple. He said that, during the PC era for mice and PCs is when flash was created. (Janine, 2008)
He also said that it was not necessary for people to consume any web content or watch video through flash. Again, he said that the security and the performance of flash were not up to standard. These were some of the rationale apple used against flash in order to omit it from its iOS. Apple has all along been remarkably inclusive with its operating system that has Mac OS X desktop. The company decided not to have the adobe flash, technology work with its newly made super slim Macbook Air notebook computer. They decided that if the customer who purchases the notebook computer and is in need of using Adobe flash in Firefox or any other browser, they will have to download themselves. Apple also did not allow flash on iOS platform because it is quite inefficient and it is a number of bugs. Apple selects a combination of features to ensure that it works efficiently, but this is not the case with flash. In this case, adobe is trying to incorporate flash in the platforms of mobiles. Apple supports flash only in very high end tool. (Warner, 2008)
I do not agree with apple omitting flash from its iOS because many customers and users of Apple need to use Adobe flash in Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and other browsers. In this case, the users are forced to download the browsers, and this leads to wastage of time. Those who have tried to download it have found how difficult it is to download. The procedures are cumbersome (Harris, 2011).
References
Harris, A. & Andrew, H. (2011). HTML, XHTML, and CSS All-In-One For Dummies. 2nd ed.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
Powers, B. & David, S. (2005). Foundation PHP 5 for Flash. Berkeley, CA: Friends of ED
Warner, M. & Janine, P. (2008). Dreamweaver CS4 for dummies. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub
