HTML5, Flash and Silverlight. Which one is dead?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about HTML5, Flash and Silverlight. This is a discussion that I’ve thought quite a bit about over the last few years. The first decision we had to make when we started building Scratch Audio was which of these tools to use. It wasn’t an easy decision and we went back and forth on it for a while. So, with all the talk around these platforms recently I thought I’d chime in with my own two cents.
But first, let me tell you a bit about me. In the last two years I’ve written production code in C/C++, C#, Java, Objective-C, PHP, ActionScript and Javascript. I’ve worked on projects ranging from Riot Games League of Legends to the popular iPhone/Android app Golfshot. I daily work on both Mac and PC. So hopefully what you’re about to read is a balanced, well reasoned and non-religious viewpoint.
FLASH
A lot of our competition is built using Flash including Myna and Soundation. When Flash came on the scene it really revolutionized people’s ideas of what was possible on the web. For a while, EVERYTHING on the web was Flash based. However, people quickly realized that Flash wasn’t searchable by Google. “Oh crap” people said (yes, that’s actually what they said). “If Google can’t read our content, it’s like not having a website at all!” And so the use of Flash quickly died off. But it didn’t completely go away. It turned out there were still some things that Flash could do pretty well. Specifically, Flash based video games became big and a little company named YouTube found Flash useful too.
Flash forward a few years (pun intended) and suddenly Flash is the webs favorite wiping boy. Much of what I’ve read lately would have me believe that Flash is the malaria of the interwebs. The complaints include
- Not Searchable by Google
- Annoying Banner Ads
- Resource Hog
- Constantly Causes Browsers To Crash
- Security Issues
My 2 cents
- Yep, we know. Google can’t search Flash. Don’t put text content in Flash. It’s a bad idea. But there are things that do make sense in flash (mentioned above)
- Yep. We’ve all seen nasty Flash ads. But, annoying ads aren’t going away if Flash goes away.
- Yep, Flash can be a resource hog. So are many video games, video players, and a host of other apps. I’d prefer apps use fewer resources, but if the app is awesome I don’t really care.
- Have I ever had Flash crash my browser? Sure… but not THAT often. I’m not sure where this comes from, but I have some suspicions. I’ll elaborate in a bit.
- Frankly, I’m not qualified to speak to the security issues in Flash.
So why all the Flash hate? I’m not 100% sure, but a lot of it seems to be coming from Steve Jobs.
Don’t get me wrong, Steve is awesome. His technical brilliance is surpassed only by his marketing genius. Seriously, if they gave out Grammy’s for best marketing not only would Apple win, all 5 nominations would go to Apple too. Oh, and their products… beautiful! No one builds a laptop as beautiful as my Mac Book.
I know there are legitimate concerns at Apple around the performance and security of Flash. I also know the best way to build a constituency is to rallying people around an enemy. I think Steve’s turned Flash into a convenient enemy (and solved the problem of getting Flash on the iPhone to boot).
HTML5
HTML5 is freaking awesome! It’s a much needed leap forward. In 5 years we’ll laugh at how quaint the apps we used to build were. I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to start using it. That being said, the reports that HTML5 will replace all existing computer applications, cure cancer, feed the hungry, and cause the Buffalo Bills to stop sucking seem… optimistic.
With Scratch Audio we didn’t go with HTML5 for three reasons. First, it’s not far enough along yet. Writing cross browser sites is hard enough in HTML4. Tools like jQuery have made things better, but equivalent tools don’t exist yet for HTML5.
Second, maintaining a code base of this magnitude in JavaScript seemed daunting.
Third, the performance of JavaScript is not good enough yet to run our application. I fully believe these issues will be resolved in the years to come and we’re carefully watching to see what happens. The day may well come when it just doesn’t make sense for us to NOT use HTML5. But, there’s no way we’re going to sit around and wait for that day. We’ve got to use the best platform available to us TODAY. Today it isn’t HTML5.
But wait, there’s more… Most people aren’t trying to build an online multi-track recorder, and much of what stops us from using HTML5 doesn’t apply. However there are still some things that I think many people are forgetting. For one, while the new <canvas /> tags are pretty awesome, they’re no more searchable by Google then Flash is. I bet we’ll see a bunch of stellar looking sites popup using HTML5, but the fad will slow down when people realize their sites aren’t showing up in Google.
SILVERLIGHT
We ended up writing Scratch Audio in Silverlight. The reasons include (in order of importance)
- Great performance
- Great programming language and developer tools
- Multi threading
I must say we’re VERY happy with the platform, but there are undoubtedly some drawbacks. First, the number of users with Silverlight installed is a huge concern. One of the best reasons to pick Flash over Silverlight is that almost everyone already has it installed. However, we’re seeing over 76% of our users already have Silverlight installed or downloaded it to use our site. Yes, that means we’re losing roughly 1 out of 4 visitors. Yes, that really sucks. However, I think we’ll bring that number up in time. I also believe that number’s better then what we’d see with HTML5. Only one third of our visitors have an HTML5 capable browser. If it’s hard to get users to download a plug in, it’s got to be even harder to get them to download a different browser.
Another issue we knew we’d be up against was the… urm… distaste? for Microsoft that many people have. This has been a bigger issue than we originally anticipated. We recently had some early discussions with a big name in the music industry die because a technical lead heard the word “Silverlight”. That’s pretty disappointing. Religious battles over software are silly. Microsoft, Apple and Google all suck in their own special ways, but I just can’t afford to avoid all of their platforms. I honestly don’t believe the average user of our site knows or cares who makes Silverlight. But I do think users are more likely to install a plug in (that’s also used by Netflix, SNF and the Olympics) than to download a desktop application (which is what most of our existing competition is). None the less, we’ve removed all mention of the fact that Silverlight is a Microsoft product from our install process.
Another concern is that Silverlight is still a young platform with an uncertain future. This concern is even more poignant in light of recent events. However, the Microsoft bloggers have responded that there is no lack of commitment. The most compelling of these for me is Tim Heuer (who I’ve met and is a really cool guy). He points out that he’s confident enough in the future of the platform that he’s moved his entire family to the mother ship.
So what do I think of Silverlight today? I love the platform. I love the tools. It’s a great solution for us at this point. Would I build another app in Silverlight? Sure, if it makes sense. I’ve definitely told people not to build their apps in Silverlight when I didn’t see what they stood to gain over a standard HTML4 site. But, if we were starting Scratch Audio from scratch again today (pun intended) I wouldn’t hesitate to use Silverlight again. It makes sense for us.
CONCLUSION
Flash is not dead. Silverlight is not dead. HTML5 is in utero. There are good business cases for each one. Pick what makes the most sense for your project. Don’t hate. If something’s cool, use it. Check out Scratch Audio.
Great article. I fully agree. If you want a more detailed discussion, I’ve written about the same topic on http://www.exgeekblog.com
Nice article. You make some very good points. The problem is that you immediately lose credibility points because you do not know the difference between “than” & “then.” Grammar counts. I was really taking you seriously and I thought you made some good points. The grammar is just painful to a detail oriented, nay driven programmer such as myself.
Case(s) in point (from your article):
I also believe that number’s better then what we’d see with HTML5.
…they’re no more searchable by Google then Flash is.
… …. …
Then, if you look at the comments, same thing! Is it contagious?
Took me several takes to figure out how to use Flash to wipe a boy. I assume you meant “whipping boy” instead of “wiping boy”. Grammar is extemely important, even for developers.
Great article, I couldn’t agree more! You can also add Hard Rock Memorabilia http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/) and NCAA March Madness (http://mmod.ncaa.com/) to the list of prominent Silverlight sites. Keep up the great work Eric!
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“Silverlight is not dead.”
Does this still hold good with the recent announcement from MS that they would be moving away from Silverlight development?
There’s no question that Bob Muglia’s statement made me pee my pants a little bit. But, it seems that the reaction to it was a bit overblown. Microsoft has made it clear that in no way are they stopping Silverlight development (see Tim Heuer’s blog that I linked to).
I do totally agree with where they are going though, and it’s the same point I hope to make with this post. Silverlight (or Flash) are not the best choice for most sites. Html (4 or 5) are a much better solution 95% of the time. But, there are some things that Html is not the best solution for (like our site). You have to pick what makes sense.
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Hate for Flash has been around long before Steve Jobs made it popular. The biggest reason was that use of Flash proliferated in cases where it was not needed, and instead it made the user experience worse.
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Just out of curiosity, what ruled Java out ?
That’s a great question. Java is another platform we looked at. I like that platform too. The decision on that one really just came down to having more experience in C# then Java.
When you said “(that’s also used by Netflix, SNF and the Olympics)”, I thought you might have mean JavaFX (see Vancouver 2010 Olympics).
However as big a support of Java (and JavaFX) as I am, I realize JavaFX is still in the early infancy phases, same as HTML5. For that matter, with JavaFX script getting the plug pulled from Oracle, and now being merged into Java phase, there may be further “infancy” phases.
just a little correction on the flash discussion: flash is searchable through google – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html. While you have to do a little more work, it does show up in search results. But if you are creating your entire site in flash you are doing something terribly wrong.
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Great, rational article. I fully feel you regarding the general Microsoft hate. It’s stopped a lot of developers from realizing how good Silverlight is.
Just echoing the sentiments in this post. I am developing a line o’ bidness app which started its life as a Winforms client and I would list the same reasons we chose and enjoy Silverlight (in addition to the desire to use Prism and WCF for leveraging our lovely existing code). It would seem we are firmly in the LOB “sweet-spot” that Microsoft is trying to direct attention to…. And for me, robust (bad-ass, actually) multi-threading is an underrated perk.
“Hear, hear!” regarding the environment/language/platform zealotry. Use what you know. Build beautiful apps. Allow others to do the same in peace.
I was fortunate enough to sit through a presentation from Paul Irish on the state of HTML5 and all I can say was wow… HTML5 is positioned as a serious contender for all things web in the future, however with all of the old browsers lying around it might not be the best platform (right now) to use to reach the masses.
However, there are some interesting projects out there that trying to help bridge the gap, like:
Modernizr (http://www.modernizr.com/)
YepNopeJS (http://yepnopejs.com/)
HTML5 shims (http://code.google.com/p/html5-shims/wiki/LinksandResources)
Oh yeah, the dream is finally coming true for those who have toiled away in incomplete/improper/incompatible-standard-definition/implementation hell for the past 10 years. I am VERY excited about the future.
That being said, I also am happy that the patterns used in our app are gaining some interest in other ecosystems. I am personally stoked about things like Knockout.js, MVVM for javascript. That also makes me feel quite at peace with the time spent in Silverlight/Prism as I learned lots of useful stuff that will be fun to use elsewhere. Like HTML5 when it becomes viable for my existing app
The crux of your argument seems to rest on Flash not being searchable by Google. Unfortunately, that’s quite false; Google implemented navigation and indexing of .swf files over a year ago:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/flash-indexing-with-external-resource.html
And they’ve continued to improve it since then:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-feeling-even-better-indexing-of.html
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Awesome post. Had not seen your product, but now I took a look and am impressed. I am not a musician, but I did forward the link to some I know.
I am also looking at choosing the correct platform for a small tool. I was afraid of the install base for Silverlight, but 3/4 of your users is pretty impressive. I too love C# and think I would just be more productive with it than the other platforms.
Great post.
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Great article, well balanced. I don’t think any one of these technologies will kill another. Silverlight and Flash seem to coexist pretty well. Alongside HTMLx
I give you Kudos for believing that Silverlight has a future on the web though – I am not convinced and neither seem the tech news outlets. Even the mainstream BBC Click ‘announced’ last week that Silverlight has effectively been killed.
Well, I’d be one of the users that would leave your site because I primarily use Linux and Microsoft will never directly support Linux with a Silverlight player. (Novell’s Moonlight doesn’t count for a real solution.) Whereas Flash player works great in both my Firefox and Chrome browser on Linux. I’m not a second class citizen on the web when folks stick to Oracle Java, Adobe Flash, or HTML/JavaScript – whereas anything Microsoft-based, and then I’m left out to dry as a non-entity.
Flash, HTML5 and Java are all fine with Linux users, but Silverlight is not. Did you simply ignore Linux or did you consider that there are not enough users to bother?
Thanks,
F.
Who does really care about the Linux community? Linux is too small for any company to ask itself whether or not it should influence their development startegy … and at some point, talking about Java – it sometimes differ from Windows to Unix anyway!
Humm ignorance is really a shame. Actually silverlight works fine in linux with a plugin for firefox build with mono. Take some time to read about before atack someone.
Tcha-Tcho already put the issue to rest, but I would like to add a post script. Most Unix/Linux people I know are so because it makes them feel like they are either fighting The Man or it makes them feel elite. For those people, I would ignore them for two reasons. One, if you want to do something for a silly reason like that, you can pay the consequences. Two, isn’t that supposed to be one of the great things about those platforms is that you can see all the code and add and take away to make the system do what you need it to do? If you don’t like that Silverlight doesn’t work, go make it work. You chose the platform where that is a standard issue, so go do it.
Linux on the client is irrelevant and always has been.
I think that Flash and Silverlight on the web are going away. Adobe is trying to keep Flash around with the new app marketplace for AIR. Silverlight of course will be on the Windows Phone 7 but once HTML5 is adopted Microsoft has said they will be focusing on that over Silverlight on the web. I find Microsoft’s position on HTML5 and that IE9 got the best rank from the W3C very encouraging. It looks like Microsoft is serious. They just need to get the WP7 browser to be HTML5 compatible SOON. Right now it gets 12 of 300 points on html5test.com. The other mobile browsers (Safari and Chrome) are 150+.
Microsoft can’t “focus” on HTML5 , the only thing that they can do about it is to make IE 9 support it better ,thats the thing , and the IE team is doing a good job so far.
there is not that much exciting thing about html5 .. yeah , a canvas element , are you forgetting something ? its JAVASCRIPT that takes advantage of that , and JS is not the best thing to work with , yes it has its uses , as well as flash & silverlight.
also , it will be YEARS from now when html5 will be as popular as HTML4
so don’t rush into it
Nothing is dying ! if someone claims X technology is dying they are probably stupid or ignorant ( or both )
thats my 2c
Can’t agree more with you. Especially, when you say… “Don’t hate. If something’s cool, use it.”.
Flash is searchable and has been for past couple of years. It has gotten even better now. Time to read more I guess?
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-feeling-even-better-indexing-of.html
Interesting insight. I would have thought the prime concern not to use HTML5 would be the lack of DRM for a site like this.
Well, Chrome Frame is a plugin that solves most of the HTML5 adoption problems quite handily. It’s not any more intrusive or annoying than plugging Silverlight, and the users get the added benefit of a better browsing engine to boot.
And that would be why I’ve never heard of it until Code Project mentioned you.
(As a sidenote, the amount of SL plugging they do is a bit ridiculous.)
Lastly I wanted to touch on your Canvas comment. Data within it won’t be accessible right now, but as HTML5 is an open spec who knows if they’d be able to crawl it at some point in the future. Beyond that, most of the Canvas manipulation would be in Javascript files, which at least have better visibility than black boxes like Flash and Silverlight.
Otherwise, a good article. I always love to read these sorts of things.
Now that the competition is going stronger I think Adobe is going rather well on pushing Flash. They recently announced hardware accelerated graphics (some people have achieven more than 3,5 million of polys/second), gaming devices support, they’ve made a new and better compiler, AIR support for TVs and other embedded systems, they are working on multithreading, etc.
Anyway, I’d say the Silverlight rival is not Flash per-se, but Flex.
“Adobe is going”… I meant “Adobe is doing” of course.
Wow!
User Browser
Supports
HTML5 ?%
Silverlight 1 > n ?%
Flash probally 90% +
Now my maths is poor but writing an app for few users is great fun and commercial suicide
html no javascript 100%
writing an app for all users is great fun and commercial suicide
finally
and the client wants the site in ?
client rules
Autodev
Great Article ,Thank you!
Very good article indeed,
We recently designed 2 products, one in Silverlight and the other in HTML5. We started on the HTML5 app first, and have recently started marketing it to Legal firms as a line of business solution.
In this scenario we can put a specific browser down as a system requirement and its not grumbled at by IT Managers.
We chose HTML5 because its not only beautiful, but because we intend to expand our coverage beyond Legal and into other sectors next year, and with that level uncertaintly of which sectors will have more uptake, we don’t know WHAT operating systems we will need to support, and HTML5 was the best option for us.
I still agree with stick to what you know in general. It keeps costs down.
Cool stuff
both is dead. html 5 developers a few and instead in moving to new language better move to php language.. I think html 5 need more tutorial.
My problem with Flash is mainly when objections 2 and 3 come together. This is mainly on a low-powered system without dedicated graphics. Flash is used to animate ads. The browser shows up in Task Manager as a cpu hog, but move the ad off the screen and the problem goes away. I shouln’t need a dedicated graphics card or faster machine just to show ads.
Last time I saw, which I must confess it was a year or two ago, Flash and Silverlight both offered more or less the same performance, SL was faster on some areas, and Flash on others. The real problem is that Flash easily allows non-developers to make content for it that is in no way optimized.
I agree with this.
Flash isn’t dead – the industry is trying to kill it. HTML5 and Silverlight are a move forward. And I also I agree; “Don’t hate. If something is cool, use it”.
Wiping boy – lol.
In particular, my dislike for flash comes from having to wait unnecessary loading times when it really shouldn’t be there. Trading practical for cool looking and failing many times. Developers should always provide non flash version, but… many times, it’s too much work and nobody cares.
That’s just developers’ fault, you can make Flash content divided in multiple files and provide a “smoother” experience to your users.
The same goes for Silverlight, you can make a giant XAP file and make your users wait forever, or split it into several other XAPs.
Who says Google can’t search Flash?! .. Google can actually search inside all your Flash contents.
I agree with scrod. I think there are a lot of features not mentioned about flash or not investigated. On the other side, I can’t believe your opinion when you say “silverlight have more performance”. Nice article but, I’m not 100% agree with your conclusions.
I echo the sentiments of most Linux users. Developers should consider all platforms when building web applications. This includes operating systems, browser compatibility, standards compliance, etc. The user base of Linux and smartphone devices is only growing and should not be ignored. There are legitimate reasons why M$ haters exist.
Flash & Silverlight are proprietary platforms and will eventually succumb to HTML5 which though it is still a work in progress is an open standard. Open standards are what will drive the Web onward lessening the importance of any one OS over another where the Browser, Ajax and HTML will be the underlying technologies for developing and deliver software.
When developing a new application I try to initially limit myself to using only HTML, CSS and Ajax solutions but of course there are times where I have to accommodate for situations where the development stack isn’t currently complete. However, I do recognize that the days are numbered for proprietary solutions. Even though their demise will not happen overnight it will happen when HTML5 is pushed further along its development life cycle and I believe it is only natural that developers will also follow.
Jeff
Never understodd why people are against Microsoft because they are successful but not against Apple for the same reason. I know I tend to choose Microsoft because I have used their products for 25 years now. Some are great and some not so great. In the systems I have built, some have been great and some have been not so great. My latest Windows app using WPF is great and we hope to make it browser compatible which is something that HTML will never be able to do, both Windows and browser.
Have you tried Zimbra Desktop? If you do, you could think that this application is a desktop application (in a traditional sense), but if you dig further, you will see that it really is a web application running at a desktop computer, without the user noticing that easily.
I don’t mean that is the best way of creating a desktop application, but that can also be said with WPF on the web. I personally prefer to use desktop technologies, that could be Java Swing or SWT or .NET Windows Forms or WPF, but that can’t be my final word. I need to focus on the needs of my project.
I think that the point is that any technology can be used at web or desktop, but there are technologies more suited to one project and less for another one.
Remember that “Golden Hammer” is an AntiPattern.
Thank you for this article. I get so tired of reading hateful, biased posts from fans of one platform or another, this was refreshing. All my computers are dual-booted Windows 7 / Linux Mint 9. From 1984-1998 I used a Mac exclusively, and the only reason I don’t have one today is because I can’t afford one, not because I don’t want one. I don’t understand the hate.
Yes, Silverlight is a great platform, with great tools, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. The reports of its demise were far overblown. The truth is, Microsoft HAS to make a push into HTML5. HTML5′s time will come. That time is not now…but it will come. And if Microsoft doesn’t make a push, they will fall behind. It doesn’t mean Silverlight is dead…one big reason? DRM. Netflix and other streaming services of copy-written material can’t use HTML5 (at least not yet). And Silverlight performance really shines in this regard, as well as the H.264 support.
Oh, great site by the way. I found the link to this post on a link-exchange, and discovered Scratch Audio along the way…I’ve been playing around with it now, and it’s great!
Flash games are worth the hassle of the plugin IMHO.
Great article. It’s really wonderful to read balanced opinions.
I think that Silverlight attempted to fill a need that was there to be able to easily develop WinForm based applications and Web applications without duplicating a lot of work. I definitely see value in this. Since it doesn’t look like it is gaining critical mass, I probably wouldn’t develop a web application from scratch in Silverlight only to be used on the web.
That being said, I think it would be smart for both Silverlight and Flash to simply turn into development tools that are simply wrappers for HTML5 when it is mature. The companies aren’t making money on the plugins, they are making money on the development tools. They can still make money on development but remove the burden of using a plugin with this model. The developer can also use actionsScript/.Net just as they did before.
Seems like the way to go.
Adobe is already showing some premature tools that allow compiling Flash into HTML5/JavaScript/CSS3.
I think the future is in making a cross-platform development environment, and Adobe is going that way, Flash/AIR is already in some form or another in near every desktop platform, on several embedded systems, on some consoles, and the list of supported mobile devices is growing as well.
I agree this is a very good article. I’m not sure anyone will read my entry at the very very bottom, but I’m surprised that no one covered the security aspect and that the only thing that the blog says about it is that the author is not qualified to talk about it.
I was totally indifferent to this subject until the Apple brouhaha attracted my attention to the Flash security concern. We spend oodles of money (and if not, oodles of time) ensuring that our system is protected against adware and spyware. But all those programs do not do anything against Flash cookies. You want to remove them you do so manually, though in some cases something spawns them again. I leave you guys think about it and go to the following blog fro details:
http://addiator.blogspot.com/2008/03/flash-cookies-finding-and-deleting.html
Well, that cookies problem is also present in Silverlight.
Flash added some time ago support for private sessions if the browser makes it available. If I’m not wrong, SL also supports this feature, but I cannot tell for sure, nor if they somehow differ in this area.
Thanks for a great article. We looked at many different solutions before we built our SEO software using Silverlight and I would not hesitate to recommend it as a great choice for business or rich internet applications. Our time to market for releases has been accelerated ten fold due to the rapid development nature of Silverlight.
Google does index and search Flash!
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-crawling-and-indexing-flash-content-14299
Silverlight + vb.net/c# – beautifull
Html + javascript – ugly
wish some day silverlight become open source and standart
i think this time is developer decision not user decision
The problem with any big company(Microsoft, Apple, Adobe)´s API, is that it is not open source, and you cannot change the source code to your advantage. Also the fees for updates become unreasonable.
Open Source software will prevail. Long live HTML5. Because it will eventually substitute all commercial alternatives for web development.
Wow, an article written about HTML5 vs. Silverlight that isn’t another G.D. religious crusade against one technology or the other. Thank you.
Thanks for the insightful article.
You mention, “Second, maintaining a code base of this magnitude in JavaScript seemed daunting”.
As a developer, that comes First for me. Using JavaScript rather than C# and the .Net libraries is just a *huge* step backwards. I don’t think that’s “hate”, or opinion, i think that is a fact.
HTML5 is going to cause a giant loss of productivity for developers. *sight* I can’t wait for HTML6 — the death of Javascript.
Great article. This is exactly the thought process we went through with http://RankAce.com , and ultimately chose Silverlight.
Great Article
Google searches in flash for quite a long time.
see below, might be useful infor from google
_______________________
We often get questions from webmasters about how we index content designed for Flash Player, so we wanted to take a moment to update you on some of our latest progress.
About two years ago we announced that through a collaboration with Adobe we had significantly improved Google’s capability to index Flash technology based content. Last year we followed up with an announcement that we had added external resource loading to our SWF indexing capabilities. This work has allowed us to index all kinds of textual content in SWF files, from Flash buttons and menus to self-contained Flash technology based websites. Currently almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site can be indexed by Googlebot and used to generate a snippet or match query terms in Google searches. Additionally, Googlebot can also discover URLs in SWF files and follow those links, so if your SWF content contains links to pages inside your website, Google may be able to crawl and index those pages as well.
Last month we expanded our SWF indexing capabilities thanks to our continued collaboration with Adobe and a new library that is more robust and compatible with features supported by Flash Player 10.1. Additionally, thanks to improvements in the way we handle JavaScript, we are also now significantly better at recognizing and indexing sites that use JavaScript to embed SWF content. Finally, we have made improvements in our video indexing technology, resulting in better detection of when a page has a video and better extraction of metadata such as alternate thumbnails from Flash technology based videos. All in all, our SWF indexing technology now allows us to see content from SWF files on hundreds of millions of pages across the web.
While we’ve made great progress indexing SWF content over the past few years, we’re not done yet. We are continuing to work on our ability to index deep linking (content within a Flash technology based application that is linked to from the same application) as well as further improving indexing of SWF files executed through JavaScript. You can help us improve these capabilities by creating unique links for each page that is linked from within a single Flash object and by submitting a Sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools.
We’re excited about the progress we’ve made so far and we look forward to keeping you updated about further progress.
Written by Jifeng Situ and Sverre Sundsdal, Software Engineers
I think you meant “whipping boy”, not “wiping boy”.
That’s an entirely different job description.
Okay go ahead and cast stones at me. I want to see Object-C#, Java for Andriod, and Silverlight for Win 7 Phone all go away. I guess not so much that they go away, but better support for standard web (HTML4 and eventually HTML5). I am a one man developer, often just trying to get something done (isn’t thats what its really about anyway). Why do I have to redevelop the same app 5 different times. Can’t I just make something universal and maintain one set of code and therefore spend time making it better than just getting it to live on one more platform. Why did we go to the web, because we could develop it so it runs on multiple platforms and multiple browsers. All these specialized devices are killing me. I want a better browser on these devices that can handle gestures on my HTML4/Javascript website automagically (maybe a mapping tool or a option to treat like Win 7 gestures that can be configure per website). Keep in mind most my development is Intranet, I would rather tell a user to use an IE compatible browser on an iPhone or Android OS phone rather than change code (this approach isn’t realistic on the internet). The best platform will be the one that is most universal whether thats Flash, HTML5, Silverlight, or whatever. Kinda of hoping Silverlight will be released for iPhone and Android (or a least one of the two). Flash probably wins here today (runs on Android and Jail broken iPhones).
Don’t forget about mobile. Think of how many users you have and soon will have visiting from IPhone, IPad, Android, Blackberry? Only one technology will target all devices and that is HTML 5. Flash is second. Silverlight will never run on any of these platforms.
I totally agree. Scratch Audio isn’t really targeting mobile users though. Again, it’s all a mater of picking what makes sense for each project.
Hi,
HTML 5 – Why this could not be searched through google ?
Thanks,
Thani
Much of HTML 5 can be search by Google. However, if you’re drawing directly to a canvas element Google will not be able to index it. At least not today…
Me again. Gee does HTML5 support gesters? I don’t think so. Can somebody develop a unversal gesters engine acrossed all devices. In case you guess it, I’m whinning about universallity again.
For me it’s not only that flash is a resource hog or that there are annoying flash ads, but it’s the combination. If I’m playing a flash game, I don’t care that it’s a resource hog because the game is what I’m doing with my computer. I wouldn’t consider this “hogging” but more “using.” The problem is the combination of the two. When I go to a site and 50% of my CPU is being used by just the flash ads on the site. Again, if flash weren’t so intensive, it’d be no big deal. If there were less of the ads, it’d be no big deal. It’s the combination.
Until recently I was running a first-gen AMD64. Yes, that’s kind of old now, but it has a lot of processing power. I mean come on, Gigahertz with a short pipeline, and many regular mainstream websites (news sites, sports sites, etc), would consume more than 50% of my computer. TV shows on Hulu would _sometimes_ be able to render full-screen without stepping (I ended up figuring out that the flash ads on the same page (running underneath the full-screen) would determine whether I could make frame rate).
So it’s not any one thing. It’s the combination that makes me hate flash.
[...] An interesting comparison of Flash, HTML5, and Silverlight: http://blog.scratchaudio.com/2010/11/html5-flash-silverlight-which-one-is-dead/ [...]
Love your site man keep up the good work
You stand in the middle way when some others pick up their own camps. Nice point, man
Silverlight is a dead bloated rotten carcass that is only being kept on life support my MS spending millions on the failed WP7 platform.
No one wanted it, no one needs it and the only service still using it is Netflix and it’s loosing customers because MS won’t release the DRM for Android (or linux) and it runs like crap on MAC(and every browser except IE on windows!)
The only thing I’ll use Silverlight for is to create malware.
dhflasfh is absolutely correct. Look… no developer will touch it as a serious multi-platform contender. It just does not make business sense as a global release platform. OK – If you have a small group who will install Silverlight to run your app. I could foresee this even at the time this article was written. Now almost a year later I am even more correct. WHY would you bank on a new proprietary platform, please no, bank the the language that produces a more broadly accepted platform (HTML). Now html5 versus Flash. HTML5 media play is awesome but I do not want to manage it all with Javascript or even it’s more eloquent sister JQuery. If are creating some giant public app that will be around forever and have millions upon millions of dollars to manage all of the javascript in the world (google) the go ahead. Otherwise use a server side sane language like c# or java or ruby or maybe php and get your app done and have time to update it. Flash kind of sucks but better to manage vectors then javascript so it wins that battle.