Urban Legend: "HTML 5 Will Kill Flash"

Before I begin my rant, a quick history lesson:

In the earlier part of the decade, Microsoft released a new web framework called ASP.NET. It was the successor to the often criticized Classic ASP platform, and solved many of the issues plaguing ASP.

Fast forward to the present:

It's 2010. ASP.NET has been around for close to a decade, and yet Classic ASP applications are still all over the place. Some are maintained, some aren't. Many are still as vulnerable as they were nearly a decade ago and yet they still continue to be deployed in production. Why hasn't Classic ASP completely fallen off the face of the Earth yet?

There are several reasons. The first is cost. Developing a complex application is a significant investment. Any organization making such an investment wants to receive a maximum return on that investment. Developing an application and then phasing it out within 2 years isn't practical. Developers are also creatures of habit, and sadly some dread learning something that's completely foreign to them. Learning a completely different framework is an undertaking, and since many development shops are ran like true sweatshops, this implies that any and all learning will be done on their own time. Not to mention, a ton of existing code could also be recycled for use in other projects as well.

Now that the history lesson is over, how does this apply to the Flash vs HTML 5 debate? Many of the same things are true today. Flash is everywhere. Stating that HTML 5 will crush Flash in a hurry is essentially stating that the entire web will be written overnight. I'm not a psychic, but I can predict that this simply won't happen and isn't even close to possible. With the economic downturn in recent years, employers aren't hiring as fast as expected and those that have retained most of their employees are doing so on a shoestring budget. If it isn't broken, they won't fix it. Period.

Adobe also pretty much controls the RIA market. Silverlight has barely made a dent, and probably won't do much more than take a tiny piece of Adobe's market share away. Flash, Flex, and AIR fanboys are loyal to Adobe and will not openly embrace a shift away from what they know.

Even if HTML 5 makes possible many things that are only possible using Flash today, do any of you REALLY think that Adobe will go down without a fight? They have a market penetration that others can only fantasize about. They also have the unique advantage of being platform-independent. Therefore, any standards they push will be deployed universally. In the browser world, this isn't the case. Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and others are all implementing the standards but far from uniformly. Rather, each of them are battling like schoolgirls to implement the newest and coolest features that the other vendor lacks. Adobe doesn't have to worry about this. Design a new feature, roll it into the next release cycle. Enough said.

Since Adobe has the luxury of doing things their own way without the support of the rest of the browser community (and without conforming to standards), they are in a great position to come up with new ways to push the boundaries of what can be done on the web. They make a ton of money from the products they sell, and therefore they will do anything they can to keep developers hooked on sipping the Adobe Kool Aid.

In conclusion, get used to Flash, get used to Adobe, and get used to thinking about how to secure all of the above. Placing your bets on false hopes won't make the web a safer place today. Even if by some miracle Adobe's technologies are gone in 10 years (they won't be), is thinking about what security should look like in a decade going to solve the problems of today?

-Jack