In 1996, Macromedia released their product called Macromedia Flash which is a vector-based animation platform. With Flash, web designers were now able to create animations using a timeline and vector design tools as a video. Furthermore, Flash was and still is a great solution for web designers to provide visitors smooth view in such small file size. The only thing that web surfers need to enjoy the sites using flash is to install Macromedia Flash Player.
However, with the arrival of JavaScript in 1997, there has been a war between Flash and JavaScript because Flash was afraid JavaScript would one day replace them with all the animation it supports. Why? Because a ton of JavaScript frameworks are becoming increasingly popular as a result of their high scalability, performance and usability. Some include jQuery, MooTools, script.aculo.us, Prototype, among others but especially jQuery, as of late.
jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and AJAX interactions for rapid web development. Although you may have enough Javascript skills to build your own Javascript code, using jQuery instead of can simplify the process (think hundreds of lines vs. a few lines of jQuery). Furthermore, there are thousands of plugins for jQuery published and large community support for this project. jQuery deserves being the heaviest competitor with Flash.
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Why should we use jQuery instead of Flash
There are a bulk of differences regarding the benefits and disadvantages between these two guys, but in this article, we just list some their most important features.
First, in order to build an application using jQuery, you don’t have to purchase anything, but with Flash you have to buy Flash software to do the encoding. And Flash software could cost you $699 and no less than $199 to upgrade from older versions. jQuery and most other JavaScript frameworks cost you nothing to use (some jQuery plugins are not free for commercial usage). At this point, jQuery wins!
The second and the most problem with Flash is it isn’t available on the iPhone, and many other mobile devices. According to Adobe, 98 percent of desktop computers and laptops currently support Flash, but the truth is it’s not compatible with all browsers including those on the iPhone, iPad and cell phones. Unlike Flash, jQuery supports screen reader accessibility. By using accDND (a jQuery plugin), we can enable keyboard and screen reader which is an accessible drag & drop functionality plugin for jQuery. jQuery wins again!.
In the next comparison, we’ll consider using jQuery instead of Flash in its customization. jQuery and other JavaScript frameworks are built for easy development and customization.
Although jQuery wins Flash in some angles of problem, it cannot fully replace Flash in use. Where Flash fully supports 3D capabilities and many extensive features for object animation, jQuery is limited. Furthermore, jQuery UI is nothing compared with Flash’s built-in UI – That’s one reason for Flash’s price tag. Besides this, we get problems with proper font display. We can use any fonts on the web with Flash, but we cannot do the same with JavaScript, although we have a ton of tools and services available to help us to embed fonts in HTML page.
One other area to look at is video. This is where HTML5 comes into the picture — which is a completely different post in and of itself.
In most cases, though, jQuery can do better than Flash. From here, we’ll round up some tutorials and jQuery plugins that are simply awesome. Each of these teaches how to get a desired “Flash” effect, but with jQuery instead.
Tutorials
Building an interactive map with jQuery instead of Flash
This tutorial helps you build an interactive map with jQuery instead of Flash. It helps you build the markup for the maps and a couple of jQuery functions to make it all work. It’ll be an interactive map that shows some information and the location of the various Marine Science outposts across the state. Information of the the locations are represented by dots, and clicking them, will display an info box.
Animated Sharing Bar With jQuery & CSS
Using pure jQuery, we can make an animated sharing bar which will enable your website visitors to share posts on a number of social networks. It runs smoothly on all browser versions.
The youlove.us scrolling background effect explained
If you have checked out the design of YouLove.us, you would be excited with its colorful animated background. Here they explained how they created their beautiful animated background. The technique is very simple. It will scroll only the body background while every element above it is transparent.
Crafting an Animated Postcard With jQuery
Learn the basics of setting up a continuous animation with an illustrated postcard which Flash usually does. This tutorial is a good one for you to learn how to work with animation loop in jQuery and the easing plugin.
Building an Animated Cartoon Robot with jQuery
A tutorial on CSS-tricks to create an incredible animated cartoon robot. It was created by layering several empty divs over each other with transparent PNGs as background images. This effect simulates a faux 3D animated background dubbed the “parallax effect†originating from old-school side scrolling video games. This is one of the best examples of where jQuery is replacing Flash.
Cloud of Bacon
In this tutorial, you will be inspired with the camera effect. The tutorial runs multiple animations (of arbitrary duration) at the same time, queues animations and even animates complex properties like colors or clipping rectangles.
A Colorful Clock With CSS & jQuery
Here’s a colorful clock created with jQuery and CSS only. This is really an interesting post to check out. It’s not a tutorial about the jQuery animate() function, but the jQuery helps CSS animation property works correctly. I highly recommend checking out all of the Tutorialzine Tutorials for jQuery inspiration.
jQuery OS X Stack and Drop Stack
A sexy menu created using jQuery and CSS with OS X style docks and stacks navigation. It’s super lightweight (~1kb) and is a really creative “outside the box” method of navigation for a website. It might be a little awkward having the navigation in the bottom right or left of the browser window but it would certainly be creative and saves lots of space.
Old School Clock with CSS3 and jQuery
Transform:rotate is a new feature of CSS3 which lets you rotate HTML elements. This tutorial will help you create an awesome “tick tock” clock that animates very smoothly. The jQuery code in this tutorial helps the clock get correct time information then inject all the CSS3 style for each element.
Making a 3D Engine in jQuery
Here they create a 3D engine that will allow us to create shapes simply by creating an array of points. This engine will have a Camera, a Scene and an Object. Perfect 3D cube in jQuery!
Puffing Smoke Effect in jQuery
An excellent tutorial features an impressive animation effect of cartoon-ish smoke which animates from factory smoke stacks. This tutorial provides a configurable jQuery plugin with instructions based on blog’s header of the author, so that you may create a similar animation effect for your website.
Plugins
jParallax
jParallax is a jQuery plugin that allows animation of simple parallax animations by animating the background-position of <div> elements.
jFlip
Create page flip using jQuery plugin instead of Flash. This plugins is useful for us to create the page flip effect that can be used in flipping page of a book. It could be a great idea for a comic book web site.
The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin!
Another great jQuery plugin which lets you share in the beauty of the page fold. Remember in the past, we always use Flash to create this effect for ad slot. Today, forget Flash and try it with jQuery. Everything is the same except you’re not relying on Flash, guys!
Easy Slider 1.7 – Numeric Navigation jQuery Slider
This is really a nightmare with Flash because jQuery does it perfectly and even better than Flash does. There are a bulk of jQuery Slider Plugins out there, but Easy Slider is arguably the best one with a lot of features and options.
AnythingSlider jQuery Plugin
This is another awesome jQuery slider that comes with cool features. AnythingSlider is a plugin that was built to make implementing it and customizing it much easier than other plugins.
reel
Reel is a jQuery plugin which takes an image tag and makes it a live “projection” of pre-built animation frames sequence. Its aim is to provide a 360° view of something or someplace. It’s a great alternative to widely used Flash techniques.
Flot
Flot is a pure JavaScript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. Like Flash, this plugin provides smooth and attractive graph for simple uses with nice features, zooming and mouse tracking.
jCrop
jCrop is a powerful image cropping engine for jQuery. It combines the ease-of-use of a typical jQuery plugin with a powerful cross-platform DHTML cropping engine that is faithful to familiar desktop graphics applications.
In conclusion
Although jQuery is a powerful JavaScript framework that can build many flash-like effects, it cannot fully replace Flash. However, jQuery is the stepping stone, helping bring the web closer to HTML5 and wider use of frameworks like Cappuccino (among others) for building non-reliant web applications.
If we are missing anything here, feel free to drop your line to make a friendly conversation. Any comment or suggestion is appreciated! What do you think? Will Flash last past this next decade?
Great article Lam
I didn’t know the “Reel” plugin
.-= Auré´s last blog ..Typographie et Web : la solution Typekit =-.
Thanks Auré! Long time no see, huh?
Great post, it certainly fueled some emotion and comments.
Since ’95 I’ve seen popularity of online platforms, code, frameworks, languages, etc – rise and fall, and learned not to fall in love with any of them.
We use whatever we need to get the job done right. Hopefully in the easiest method which equals less time to build, and a faster payment.
I use Flash a lot both PC and Mobile for specific projects, and love all of Adobe’s products! They’re simple to learn/use, and cut project time to build tremendously.
In the spirit of this article though, there’s also not one project we do that doesn’t include Javascript. We use numerous flavors of JS usually based on the specific project needs but – Jquery is obviously top choice based on the plugins and community supporting it.
Do I think Jquery will replace Flash?
Nope, just like I don’t think Apple will replace Microsoft or Linux, and vice-versa(s).
Is Jquery killing Flash?
No, but Jquery might be denting sales a bit. Jquery has some excellent plugins that become a nice replacement option for Flash on some specific feature aspects of Website Dev & Design for projects.
Both Flash and Jquery are excellent tools for Dev, period. It’s difficult to compare both in the same category though. They’re similar in some areas, but very different in core when you truly compare what they offer overall right now. Mostly this is IDE/GUI advantages for Flash.
I do believe Javascript has made an extremely strong comeback since the old days when browsers sucked and gave JS a bad rap. I can also see that with further popularity, development growth, and the open source movement, that JS could seriously contend with Flash – and similars in graphics, animation, video, etc.
One interesting theory on how this WHOLE drama of HTML5/JS replacing Flash all started IMO, is from the fact that SWF players/FLV videos can’t be played (for now) thru iPhones or iPads.
I read/hear numerous quote requests from clients that they “must have” their website videos to be played from iPhones/iPads…. a must why?!
Like someone wrote in this thread, iPhone less than 5% of web searches. That’s amazing to me that it’s still a must have, but hey the customer/clients always right I guess.
Because of the amount of these requests, we’ve had to add a download link or embed 3GP or MP4 videos for iPhone only on websites, but we still use SWF/FLV for PC video playback. Also had to add 3GP/MP4 now to video encoding system on all accounts too – just because of iPhone requests for video playback!
We’ve looked at several HTML5 video players to incorporate into our hosting platform, but all have their own little cross-browser issues right now. It does look promising though and I believe in the near future – fully production ready solutions are near.
Another interesting note is that most “good” HTML5 video players we’ve looked at have Flash “fallbacks” which basically will play Flash FLV if JS is unavailable or turned off in the browser.
All of this boils down to a serious kudos to Apple for having a super-strong branding and marketing department! My lord, people are iPhone/iPad crazy. I have a 16Gb iPhone 3GP too, love it, but it still won’t walk my dog, take out the trash, or cook my supper yet:) And I won’t be upgrading to the new “4GP” anytime soon, or every year either when a “New Version” comes out, my old 3GP iPhone gets it done fine.
I hope the FLV playback for iPhone/iPad happens soon, I would think it has too. There are too many smartphones which take Flash, and if Apple doesn’t or impedes progress of SWF/FLV’s on their IOS, it will just open the marketshare up to the competition, like Android and many others.
It’s all very interesting and exciting right now though in web 3.0. I love the progress being made in whole for the web and mobile, the future possibilities are quite mind boggling to say the least.
Mike Sayre
BoonJack Media
Great read Lam
I’ve used flash before but think it has much more compatibility issues than jQuery or other Javascript frameworks. I stopped using it a while ago.
.-= Shurandy Thode´s last blog ..Create a smiley face using only xHTML and CSS =-.
Don’t stop dude
, Flash is not gonna be killed by others. We just use others instead in some situations.
This article is an over simplification.
There is no tool nearly extensive as Adobe’s Flash IDE for developing web animation and graphical interfaces. This is not to even mention the Flex Framework, that add an entire new dimension to both Flash and RIA web services and interfaces in general. Actionscript 3 is also a superior development language to Javascript, JQuery or no JQuery, as it is strongly typed, fully object-oriented, and compiled.
There are some benefits to using Javascript over Flash in some situations, no doubt. I’m tired of people saying Flash is a dying or obsolete tool though, as this is just a plain lie.
I would disagree. Take a look at what has been done with the Cappuccino framework. It’s completely javascript based and replaces the need for Flash in a lot of places.
Take a look at this Javascript Nintendo emulator. While it’s not perfect (yet) it’s freakin’ close!
Javascript+HTML5+CSS3 will be replacing flash as it stands in the browser — with these three things, there’s simply no need for Flash anymore. Now, for desktop applications, that’s a different story (like AIR).
Hm, i disagree with Nathan actually, i know javascript is super flexible and you can do a lotta things, but seriously you have to be kidding when you compare the two of them,
have you seen the complex 3D you can do with flash CS4? , or the smooth setups with layers and masking, man, i’m not even scratching the surface of what you can do with flash. You’re just talking about the regular webstuff, like slider, scroll, float, drag, thats really cool when you need it, but
flash is amazing, not to mention the consistency over diferent browsers.
Do i have to worry about IE css?, dont think so
I have to disagree as well.
First off, the author’s “history” is incorrect. Macromedia didn’t release Flash… it was released as FutureSplash Animator by a company called FutureWave in ’96. Macromedia bought it and then Adobe bought them. If you’re going to give us a history lesson, get your facts right.
Additionally, I just came back from a Flash CS5 demo. Not only will Android support Flash soon, but, with the intro of Flash CS5, Flash will be compiled into a native iPhone app. So your argument regarding iPhone is inaccurate and ultimately moot.
Javascript is designed to traverse and interact with the DOM. It is not compiled and is executed at runtime making it inefficient for complex animations and calculations. Browsers are designed for general information display and the virtual machine the javascript vm that is created to execute such scripts is not efficient enough for anything more than simple animations. Whereas, compiled Flash is designed specifically for those reasons. Consider the difference between running graphics through a CPU integrated GPU vs. a separate graphics card. Same idea. I’ve seen alot of tag graphics implementations and have experimented with it myself. The frame rate for even a simple Wolfenstien implementation is atrocious. Flash does one thing and does it well.
Flash’s IDE and actionscript is specifically designed with creative professionals in mind. Most of the time, these people spend their time perfecting their craft and less time learning to program. There is nothing wrong with that, but many arrogant web developers believe that you should have equal or more technical knowledge than creative in order to qualify to work on the web. Sorry, but just like a web designer wouldn’t expect a developer to anything or invest time in learning about color theory, graphic design, 3D modeling and animation, composition, typography, illustration, drawing, etc. – designers/animators/illustrators tend to spend little time thinking about SQL queries, unobtrusive javascript, matrix algorithms, recursion, data modeling, etc.
The IDE just makes it easy to do the job. Even if a decent javascript animation timelime came out – which it probably will – it still has to deal with Flash’s adoption, it’s own further advancement, and javascript’s/browers inherent inefficiencies.
Finally, Google and Yahoo both use proprietary algorithms to search flash text, index it, and optimize for it.
David Kaplan
Ahh… one other thing. Regarding the screen readers. I’m not visually impaired, but I would imagine that most visually impaired people don’t really care if ball bounces to the left or right or how high.
Clearly, if you designing a site for an audience who is likely going to have problems seeing, then Flash is not a good way to go about it. Anyway, you should know better.
But then, given the heavy focus on animation, graphics, etc. in this article, that isn’t really the argument, is it?
Oh….. one MORE thing… there ARE free open source Flash IDEs out there for the cheapskates.
I am waiting for a moment when jquery will totally replace flash, then I will be happy…
You will be waiting a long time.
I hope you have a lot of patience because that will be a long wait
Hmm… Javascript + HTML5 + CSS3 seems to be a very tough contender for Adobe Flash. Even though Flash is a step ahead, it has a lot of crashing issues and is hungry for power. I can literally hear my computer cry for mercy when I open a flash website.
I think jQuery has revolutionized the web as we know it today. It has opened doors to a lot of amazing possibilities. I can only imagine how HTML5 and CSS3 are going to improve the web user interface drastically… I cannot wait to see it happen.
I’m giving Flash….. around..lets say…. 3 years at max…. (^_^) What do you think?
.-= Richie´s last blog ..30 most awesome Apple inspired concept designs =-.
I love the power of jQuery… easy-to-use, powerful, great integration with HTML5 and CSS3… the present and the future!
.-= piervix´s last blog ..Sports News PVM: A Free WordPress Theme =-.
I can’t fully agree with you. I love jquery and flash i’m working in both. Jquery is a great lib that helps to create great web apps in small time but there are so may thing that jquery can’t do flash is not about animating some thing, jquery can replace animation user interaction parts but cannot stream media,cannot create a bitmap or jpg on the fly , audio video sharing, live streaming and may more. so i think jquery cannot replace flash.
.-= Anil Mathew´s last blog ..new generation web site builder =-.
JavaScript can make imagery on the fly, actually
Also HTML5 takes care of video streaming.
Check out my last comment here.
See my reply to your reply.
Hi Lam ,
hope we can network .
from my limited use of jquery it does seem alot easier and simpler to use than flash although I cant knock flash as its still v popular and alot of people use it more than I do.
thanks for the post nicely researched
.-= Benjamin Rama´s last blog ..15 Free Space Brushes – Galaxy Nebula & Planets =-.
jQuery killing Flash? …good luck with that. I have yet to see another platform that can produce great online interactive/emotional experiences as well as flash.
damn straight.. these guys really don’t know what they’re talking about.. Glad someone here is more ‘experienced’.
.-= _mark´s last blog .._mark: Web Developers / Game Dev – #flash #as3 | Flash Physics Port from Java Lib (w00t!) : http://github.com/sqrtof5/traerAS3 =-.
The Cappuccino Framework is a good start
But like the article said, “Although jQuery is a powerful JavaScript framework that can build many flash-like effects, it cannot fully replace Flash. However, jQuery is the stepping stone, helping bring the web closer to HTML5 and wider use of frameworks like Cappuccino (among others) for building non-reliant web applications.”
You can do flash app for 0$ …
Wrong information’s here, i think you just love to see flash dead, so it’s not a not an impartial article, you are wrong…
Why killing flash ?
do you want to restrict the web ?
Flash is doing just that. It’s restricting the web. We are not reliant on having this proprietary plugin in order to enjoy websites like YouTube.
Who said articles have to be impartial? That’s the whole point of writing! To share your opinion and to engage in a discussion regarding said opinion!
Sure you can do a Flash app for $0 if you steal the software or have a friend do it.
I can also get a car for $0 that way too
Wait! What? YouTube uses FLV files which ARE Flash. What are you talking about?
And, again.. there ARE free Flash IDEs so there is no need to steal. See my reply above.
(sarcasam) Yes, it’s much better to use opensource (or nearly opensource) software to cobble together animation and have beg other users for help when you encounter an issue and get a zillion “works for me” replies than use the standard application used for animation for almost a decade. (/sarcasm)
Seriously, I’ve seen several articles lately by people declaring the death of Flash because of jquery, Silverlight, html5 or some other yet to be proven technology. Most of these folks, well meaning as they are, simply don’t understand the versatility and ease of Flash for both animation and video. The folks talking about HTML5, for example, are all excited about HTML5′s ability to display video directly without the Flash plug-in… great, wonderful, fantastic, now we can all download various codecs from warez sites for all the numerous video types available rather than simply using flv… not to mention the fact that video is but one tiny aspect of Flash’s capabilities.
Seriously, what’s the beef with Adobe lately?
no free like free !
http://osflash.org/open_source_flash_projects
you can do flash app for 0$
i’m happy to see html 5 has a javascript video player !
and i’m enjoy to see the web evolving it’s exciting!
This will make you happy: http://jilion.com/sublime/video
Yes, we all have time to learn jquery, html5 and other new techs to do in hours what Flash can do in seconds. Great!
Good information, thanks. The more I look into jQuery the more I love it.
One option to making Flash files with Adobe Flash, is using Swish (swishzone.com). That program has come a long way, and is only $150 which is even less than the Flash upgrade.
Thanks again for the article!
Awesome Collection. Nice collection of tutorials, Thanks for sharing.
Can’t agree more! We’re strong advocates of JS/CSS instead of Flash too. For this reason we built http://www.worldofmerix.com without Flash
Your site is very impressive on a lot of levels. But, I’d like to see you do that with a dynamically generated and fully textured 3D rotating globe that you can zoom in and out with, with animated flags, and little people popping up in their respective countries while waving little flags – all while maintaining a decent frame rate.
No, really, I do.
haha, expect all these features to arrive with new release of World Of Merix V2
@Kamil Kaniuk: I was surprised with your WOM, very impressed!
The end of days for the Flash is coming..
That robot animation is cool “for javascript”,
but how can you even compare these two.
Anyone knowing enough Flash/As3 saw this post they would be laughing, you can’t compare them.
Man, it looks like you guys haven’t seen the potential of flash.
it certainly won’t be replaced by javascript anytime soon.
Maybe you want to read the whole article instead of only the title. We are not saying we will replace Flash by using jQuery or other Javascript Frameworks at all. In some case, Flash cannot do better than jQuery. That way we need to share our opinion in a discussion like this!
Yeah, I always have a problem with authors/bloggers/writers who use shock value to get traffic.
Next time you might want to word your article, “How Flash and jQuery can work Together” or “How to Animate Using jQuery instead of Flash”
Accusing people of reacting inappropriately to a title that was clearly designed to elicit that emotion is kinda dumb.
David
This magazine doesn’t need shock value to get traffic because we have our stable traffic. Although the title is a statement, but in the content and the conclusion, it has an argument against the true statement, see? We are making a shock title, but we include the an argument against it. That’s a very common way to generate a controversy in essay and writing.
Maybe I didn’t write well to make you understand the whole things. Ok, next time, I will do it better.
jQuery is just way more flexible and intuitive. I have been happy to give up flash and can’t imagine much that would make me want to jump back into action script again.
I can’t Believe it, a greatest Jquery tutorials i have ever seen
Gotta Love jQuery. Death to Flash for web design. Animation is fine.
.-= Kawsar Ali´s last blog ..Create an Wooden Background Website Layout in Photoshop =-.
This is just dumb. Plain and simple.
FIRST, the HTML5 Canvas element utilizes Javascript (not jQuery) to only EMULATE what actionscript is better at within the Flash Platform and is years away from catching up to what actionscript does NOW in terms of Web Applications.
SECOND, there are 100% FREE Open Source Alternatives to Develop in Flash including Adobe’s own FREE Flex SDK and IDE’s like FlashDevelop.org.
THIRD, HTML5 cannot ever touch RIA’s like prezi.com (at least not within the next 5 years)
.. so all this HTML5 chest beating baboonism has really reached ludicrous levels guys. Quit trying to ‘kill’ the echelon of web programming technology, especially when you really don’t fully understand it.
.-= _mark´s last blog .._mark: Web Developers / Game Dev – #flash #as3 | Flash Physics Port from Java Lib (w00t!) : http://github.com/sqrtof5/traerAS3 =-.
We don’t require anyone to agree with us
We know that HTML5 and jQuery are completely separate. jQuery is a JavaScript framework, HTML5 is a markup language. Like the article said: “Although jQuery is a powerful JavaScript framework that can build many flash-like effects, it cannot fully replace Flash. However, jQuery is the stepping stone, helping bring the web closer to HTML5 and wider use of frameworks like Cappuccino (among others) for building non-reliant web applications.”
I’m sure there are great free development tools available for Flash, but continuing to use them still means that we’re reliant on proprietary software and programming languages (which the past shows that these languages won’t last as long as open source).
Reg. HTML5 and Prezi. Apparently you haven’t done enough research on HTML5. There are already several applications that accomplish things like prezi.com.
“baboonism”? Really? We’re just presenting our opinion here. We’re not forcing anyone to agree with us.
Ok, I was harsh.. but I’ve seen too many other blogs that turn into a poo flinging flash bashing arena. I was automatically on the offense a little there, my apologies.
Please elaborate and provide links to the prezi-like apps that you speak of..
.-= _mark´s last blog .._mark: Web Developers / Game Dev – #flash #as3 | Flash Physics Port from Java Lib (w00t!) : http://github.com/sqrtof5/traerAS3 =-.
Uh, actionscript is free. So are almost all programming languages. It’s the compilers and IDE’s that cost money. Get your facts right.
And, because there are F/OSS IDE’s in development – you second argument is invalid, as well.
Additionally, it’s always nice to have a paid support system in place in the event you have problems instead of Googling everything hoping to find a solution.
Many companies that use open source software and languages make you pay for their plugins and support – sometimes at rates higher than their proprietary counterparts.
Finally, commercial products are often (in my opinion – usually) superior in performance, function, and usability than their free counterparts. Like it or not, money is a motivation to produce better products and enables one to continue to improve them.
David
Who hasn’t done their research?
Come on, guy! Are you sure you read the whole article? If you lazy to read the whole article, but at least please read the introduction and the conclusion! Come on, who say Flash was killed by jQuery fully, huh?
Like what I said: “However, jQuery is the stepping stone, helping bring the web closer to HTML5 and wider use of frameworks like Cappuccino (among others) for building non-reliant web applications.”
I didn’t put any individual opinion in this article. I didn’t say: “Hey everybody, I think jQuery is killing Flash”, did I?
Errr your article title is “How jQuery is Killing Flash” so you could sort of see where the guy is coming from?
Hi guys, I must add that I did not read the conclusion of the article on my first visit and my comment above may have been a bit harsh in criticism, but I do still have a point.
Lam, you do state that jQuery is not a Flash replacement and you are correct on this point. My apologies.
Incidentally, for anyone interested in developing in Actionscript here are some links to FREE TOOLS:
PC: http://www.flashdevelop.org/
MAC: http://www.ecommercedeveloper.com/articles/1613-Setting-Up-the-Flex-SDK
ANY PLATFORM:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK
http://openvideoplayer.sourceforge.net/
http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/
.-= _mark´s last blog .._mark: Web Developers / Game Dev – #flash #as3 | Flash Physics Port from Java Lib (w00t!) : http://github.com/sqrtof5/traerAS3 =-.
I agree with _mark, JavaScript is good at Animation through jQuery now, wow, big deal, flash was good at animation years ago. Flash, Actionscript 3 and Flex Crap all over JavaScript when creating interactive online experiences. And no matter how good jQuery gets, Flash will continue its own development to maintain its position in web development/design…
html5 is not even “done”… still a working progress, same as css3.
jquery is nice, yeah. in some cases it is much easier to accomplish “things” on webpages instead of using flash. agreed on that.
and not all browsers are working with html5/css3… but with flash.
.-= Michael Pehl´s last blog ..Playin’ with jQuery and YOURLS =-.
I think you should research more thourougly before putting out an article like that. With the use of jQuery you have an API with possibilities that would match the Flash Players capabilities from around 5 or 6 years ago. Sure it’s enough to provide for a lot of use cases on a website, but I don’t see no Bitmap or Audio or Video Manipulation in any Browser API. There’s no streaming support for audio or video, there’s no microphone or camera input handling there. But sure, if you want some sliders, scrollers and a couple of fade in’s and fade out’s, then JS/JQuery whatever Browser API will probably suit your case.
You might as well have a _good_ look at http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home
There’s no need to buy a Flash IDE, but other’s have covered that already.
Thanks! I wasn’t even aware of Tamarin!
The main problem here is there are a lot of people who still don’t understand why is actually Flash developed for. If you see the evolution of web, like Adobe did, you can understand why they develped AS3 and some frameworks. They absolutly knew that new versions of Flash are not developed for simple slideshows or menus. You can use jQuery for that.
This always became a kind of war between “flashers” and “javascripters”, it’s more or less like discusing about whats better, a television or a car? They are different things, developed for different purposes.
In actual Internet context, for simple slideshows, lightweight and simple website, jQuery is better. No problem. But can anyone tell me how to develop something with motion graphics, great interaction, video, etc. without Flash?
ie: adidas.com/teamgeist
@Solé and @kram08980 Great, that’s comments that I’m looking for! Keep your comments in my hand book for further suggestion reviews and kind words!
Lam, great article. I agree with you to some degree. My field of development in the small business industry requires solutions that are not embedded data to allow business with limited budget for their online presence to compete for rankings in Search Engines. For reasons like this I’ve decided to shy away from Flash many years ago. That been said, there are times when a project merits usage of Flash.
There are other fellow developers that prefer to go without Flash in the services repertoire. The guys from Spigot Design have their say about this too http://spigotdesign.com/business/why-we-dont-do-flash/
.-= Hector Jarquin´s last blog ..Hello world, We have Launched! =-.
Thank you so much for writing this article. The title actually made me underestimate the amount of information I would be reading (and boy they’re darn useful and insightful) – simply speaking, it’s another very well written piece of article.
I have read through some of the comments above about HTML5, javascript, jQuery and flash, but I’m not going to dwell into that since I’m not an expert at any one of them. I just know the surface stuff so do take my comments as a pinch of salt.
While I have to admit that some coders avoid using javascript libraries because they’re heavy and bulky (the older versions of prototype + scriptaculous are indeed, very very heavy), one thing raw javascript cannot compete with jQuery (and any other libraries like MooTools and Prot) is that they are very user-friendly and community-empowered. There is almost a standard readme, wiki and proper support forum where people can turn to when in doubt for every single library.
One thing I particularly love about jQuery is that it makes animations and other effects that seem completely cosmically impossible to an ameteur coder (like me) pretty much easy to execute with a few lines of code. jQuery definitely made many designers and coders explore options that were seemingly impossible at the first place.
While I have to commend Adobe’s effort to upgrade Flash at their best effort, there are certain aspects when it is more feasible for one to rely on javascript and its libraries for certain effects. I could still remember the days when gallery/image scrollers are made from flash, much to my annoyance because not only they loaded painfully slowly over bogged down Internet connections, but also they are not search engine friendly. I am not too sure about the situation now but I’m pretty much sure that many search engine bots still fail to extract text out of flash movies, something that we can circumvent if we produce a similar product that is a hybrid of clean concise HTML and Javascript.
There are indeed many drawbacks and advantages when one decides to use javascript and its accompanying libraries over flash, I feel that the decision is still up to the webmaster/coder/designer. Afterall, they’re making choices that they feel comfortable working with, right?
p/s: Thanks again for the really insightful article. Now I have one more reason to convince my friends why they should use jQuery for image scrollers, and spend less time convincing them that many web-based animations we see today are not actually made in flash
.-= Teddy´s last blog ..Borders – An experiment with border widths =-.
I am tired of flash, it needs to either a) move with current trends or b) be put on the shelf to gather dust. I am in favor if Javascript.
Great article. Thanks!
* Warning incoming rant from a dev that has used Flash, JS, CSS, ASP, PHP, CF, SQL, etc.. for over 10 years… *
You argue high price for Flash IDE (Of which you don’t need to compile Actionscript at all – Flash Developer is FREE!), but you also negate the argument by explaining how Flash has a great UI and that’s probably why it costs more. The Flash IDE is usually for corporate use not an individual (-freelancers) otherwise it’s not worth the money.
You argue iPhone support as a win when it still is less than 5% of traffic on the web because it’s a “pinch” web browser. Most people STILL use a real browser to view the web. The iPhone is used when you are stuck or bored some where without web access.
You are wrong about screen reader accessibility; You can code for it.. in fact Flash has had that since IE6 (yeah even IE6 had that).
You complain about not being able to use all the Fonts you would like like you can in Flash.
And all this adds up to a “killing” of Flash? People saying this obviously don’t understand the true power of Flash and AS3. Those animations? HAHA seriously? I bet I could animate those in half the time it took in CSS and it would work on all major browsers (or on your PS3 if you prefer).
Way too much Kool-Aid drinking in here…
Feonyx
PS. Also some of those demos state “This demo will not work in Internet Explorer” … good luck with that.
theres an error on Easy Slider 1.7 – Numeric Navigation jQuery Slider image link.
thanxx for the links by the way.
Hi guys, I must add that I did not read the conclusion of the article on my first visit and my comment above may have been a bit harsh in criticism, but I do still have a point.
The author does state that jQuery is not a Flash replacement and he is correct on this point.
For anyone interested in developing in Actionscript here are some links to FREE TOOLS:
PC: http://www.flashdevelop.org/
MAC: http://www.ecommercedeveloper.com/articles/1613-Setting-Up-the-Flex-SDK
ANY PLATFORM:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK
http://openvideoplayer.sourceforge.net/
http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/
.-= _mark´s last blog .._mark: Web Developers / Game Dev – #flash #as3 | Flash Physics Port from Java Lib (w00t!) : http://github.com/sqrtof5/traerAS3 =-.
Thanks for the resources, man!
This article is great for one reason and one reason alone – I’ve had way too many debates on Flash’s usefulness vs. other ways to animate.
Next time someone tries to debate with me about it, I’ll just point them to this page and save myself the argument.
David
As programming, i works a lot with PHP (mostly), Rails, .NET and CMS such as WordPress, Drupal. Those worked much better with JS framework (jQuery), CSS framework etc… than Flash.
In 2005, Flash was awesome and JavaScript/HTML was nightmare for just to make simple effects and JS framework doesn’t exist.
Today, we got HTML5, jQuery, CSS3 etc and Flash look like same plus some 3D and developer only by Adobe.
CMS developer will make JS framework better (or visa versa) because easy work together. Therefore faster improving and will overtake Flash in few years
So I think in future, Flash will die. Sorry.
jQuery: fantastic, versatile javascript library full of cool web functionality? By all means. Flash killer? Um, don’t send out the obituary notices just yet. The animation examples shown are pretty basic, and from a non-developer’s standpoint, pretty difficult to implement. This brings up the question of user base– a lot of the best banner designers out there are great at timeline Flash, but not much on the coding side of things. Online ad agencies are perhaps the biggest part of the Flash-linked revenue stream, and if they started replacing their flash banner jockeys with jQuery developers, I would be…surprised.
It’s just a matter of time before someone builds a web app which allows designers to easily build jQuery (or Cappuccino) based animated ads.
Reality check? There is a reason why SVG and canvas demos sucks on the net.
Lam, i understand what you’re trying to do here with the article,
it’s good advice, however, your title is very deceiving , i’m honestly
kinda dissapointed of blogs trying to pull tricks like these to
attract more users, if you want to be considered more seriously
you might want to be more accurate on the titles.
I agree with Kaplan in all senses by the way.
Other than that, you have a great space here for discussions. You’re on my tweets.
.-= nashio´s last blog ..The browser based to-do list that i like =-.
the one that i need is cool uploader with jquery, like flickr,
but yeah i think flash will die
There are some great jQuery examples here, but overall this reads like an oversimplified mission statement on the slow death of Flash. For example, the notion that Flash’s nonexistence on the iPhone not quite right. IPhones represent MAYBE 25% of the smart phone market for one thing… and on the other hand, Flash CS5 will allow you to export your content as iPhone apps natively – and that is just a few months away.
Furthermore, what do you do when you have an interactive project that a framework does not exist for? You have to build it from scratch, which a) would require deep knowledge of javascript (and by then it is no longer “jQuery” that you are using), and b) depending on complexity could very likely take you weeks to build. Customized interactive content is far quicker and simplified using a runtime environment, like Flash. And it will likely remain that way for years to come.
Flash on mobile devices will not work. Every claiming that it is coming to the chrome platform fail to realize that flash sites are designed for a click interface. The new mobile platform(s) are touch based which means that flash interfaces will fail.
Also, flash lite is based off of the MX platform and new flash sites written for ActionScript 3 will not run. The reason you do not have the issue on the desktop is that Adobe ports 2 virtual machines within the flash runtime. Instead of creating a true player for the mobile space, Adobe was lazy and pushed out an older vm.
I read all the article and I will not even talk about this title… It’s just another “OMG THE “INSERT ANY HTML5, CSS3, JS, PHP, jQuery, wathever technology” WILL KILL FLASH title to drive traffic to the blog. I think Magazines like designdepot and smashingmagazine who just tweet every little single blog post that bashes Flash will be glad to tweet this…
Kudos for you for making this title and try to win traffic and some google revenue from it…
Oh and btw, how can someone start a tittle saying that jQuery and Javascript WILL KILL Flash and then, across the text, makes a comparison between the goods and bads of both technologie…
I will not bother with this…
jQuery won’t ever approach what flash can do. Yeah, a bouncing robot is neat. But go to http://www.thefwa.com and look at some real quality amazing flash sites. Then take your ‘jQuery killing flash’ and shove it.
jQuery is an awesome tool without a doubt. In fact, I just finished using it for some JSON / AJAX functionality for a site. But its not going to replace or kill anything.
And won’t work on mobile devices?? Flash 10.1 on Nexus 1 > http://bit.ly/bg61wD
Ian
You just made my point. That demo does not contain hover events which is used in the majority of flash sites. Good luck viewing Hulu.
This was a wicked list!!!!
Thanks so much.
Wow, jQuery has caught up with flash 6. Don´t get me wrong people, I am a jQuery user and I love it, but the flash it has caught up with, is the flash from a quite a few years back. I am however looking forward to jQuery getting there. Keep it up.
I was a die hard fan of Flash till the time HTML+JS were not easy to work on. But I have moved out from Flash completely. The main reason was that my clients don’t want flash because it is not SEO friendly and it would take more time to develop a simple app which communicates with the database. It would be expensive to deploy because 3 people would be involved. Designer+Flash Developer+Server Side Guy. With HTML+JS website, only 2 people will be involved and the website would be SEO friendly.
One more observation which jolted me was redesign of tv.adobe.com. Earlier it was built completely in Flex but now only the video player is in Flash. Rest of the website uses HTML+CSS+JS+COLDFUSION. Why is that? I heard on one of their videos regarding redesign of tv.adobe.com that using Flex proved to be very complex and non-manageable.
If Adobe is not going to use Flash for themselves extensively then how can a common designer or developer use it.
This is my personal opinion and observations in my real life as a freelancer. Both can co-exist in this world. I would just ask Adobe that they should not have made AS3 so complex. The designers are having a tough time mastering it as they are not code savvy.
I love jQuery… I love the new things about HTML5 and even CSS animations but to think that it will replace flash give me a break… both will co-exist and both has it’s place. For example I would never build a site for… let’s say a restaurant and use flash… it’s not necessary but if I was building a web game or the next hulu I wouldn’t want to use HTML5.
And let’s not forget SEO! Flash is still unreadable by the search engine bots as opposed to useing jQuery, you can wrap all your animated text and slides within DIV and etc. which makes for great search engine crawling. jQuery Wins!!
You’re correct!
Your wrong, Flash swf files can be read by Google. It has been able to for some time!
http://www.getelastic.com/seo-for-flash/
I like jquery plugin to use it to create clocks with css and javascript, i have been creating clocks using flash but, jquery is helping me out to create new wonderful applications that i once used flash to do each one.
Have a look at a jparallax header:
http://www.pixarts.ch
Have a look at a jparallax header:
http://www.pixarts.ch
I wanted to show the creative process.
Flash won’t go anywhere. If anything, it will get stronger. I think people who don’t like flash (don’t know how to use it) are the ones putting these ideas out there. jQuery and other js libraries are a great alternative but only for a few things. iPhone and other devices WILL have flash, if not today, tomorrow. It’s a matter of time and a technique to cell more devices. Flash is not only amazing for web, but for desktop too. I think I (and many others here) made their point.
agree with you ..
Papa sos un zapallo (además de GATO)
SEO anyone???
Do you realy think your client want animation over SEO features?
With jquery we can implement animation and effects without the risk of loosing rank…
Put simply there are times and places for both technologies. jQuery is great for lightweight interaction (loading,effects ect) but there is no way it can compete with flash on the same level. A lot of people seem to forget that flash developed a lot of the current techniques used in RIA interaction.
And theres no competition when it comes to interactivity.
E.g
http://www.verbatim.jp/senshuken/
When javascript,HTML and CSS can produce something like the above then you have an argument on your hands. Until then, use each tool when necessary and stop spreading myths about jQuery killing flash.
Can javascript create a displacement map? No
Can javascript rotate an image or any other object 90dg? No
Can javascript take a picture from a webcam? No
The above a simple to achieve in flash. Video players,tweening , alpha transparency, loading ect are only a small part of what flash is capable of.
@Dudi
To say SEO is all clients care about is naive. It depends on the project your working on and who your client/target audience is. SEO in flash is possible with swfObject. Allowing pages to be indexed/behave as if they were a standard web page.
There is a time and place for each technology. The real masters of the web know when its the right time to use them.
I love jquery because it’s suit for SEO than using flash, in addtion, it’s so easy to setup or modify for my website
.-= viettel´s last blog ..Viettel nâng băng thông cho các gói cước ADSL =-.
A really eye opening article Lam. So I think I started learning jquery at right time becuase for the last six years I was only a Flash guy. I have been working as a full time freelancer and my area of expertise is Flash, xml and Flex.
Though jquery cannot come near 3d capabilities of Flash or exchanging dynamic data with servers using xml plus many more things but it is clean way to show basic things we do in flash without straining your CPU and without any special plugin.
I too believe jquery is providing tough competition to flash. But it will be too early to say that Flash is dead
A great article.
Can jQuery do stuff like this? Even with HTML5?
http://www.anttikupila.com/category/actionscript-3/
No. I rest my case.
jQuery is a good tool. Flash is a good tool. Differnet tools for different jobs. A hammer has been around for a million years. Just because you have a cordless drill doesn’t mean a hammer is also useful depending on the job.
Great information! Check out this table of the pros and cons of jQuery and Flash. I found it to be very helpful! http://bit.ly/bkvakf
jQuery…pfff. LMFAO. Do it the hard way or do it with flash. Flash is the king and are here to stay for ever !
Some of these example really sucks.. please, stop this nonsense and try to make them work together as it means to be..