Many years have passed since you were the hottest and preferred of all the popular kids. Lets make something clear, you have never belong to me, you are proprietary. There will never be control of your actions, loyalty, understanding, and efforts that you put towards this relationship. Please don’t judge me, this isn’t easy… you have been important in my life, however, it is time to move on. I don’t see you as I used to, I see future along HTML and CSS. I know you are curious about me and JS. Well, J’s scripts have shown me the light… there’s life after you.
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I enjoy hanging out with your gang, I hope our break-up don’t ruin my friendship with your clan, they help me be better at what I do. But you, I’m always uncertain of the future. Always waiting for you, I’m tired of your annoying loading times, I guess I’m not that patience.
It doesn’t bother me seeing articles showcasing and promoting you. But you should know that your actions are more like someone going through a middle life crisis, driving a shiny vehicle doesn’t hide what Jobs pointed out about you Its time to move on, I need to improve my life, I need better experiences, I’m not the only one that feels this way, my friends, family, public, specially you know what I’m going through.
Many colleagues have moved on, the cool kids turned their back on you. Cameron, Lucas, Spielberg, and Anderson still treasure you, but time will come when they leave you and give HTML, CSS, and JS a chance. That will certainly be a precedent that the world is getting to know you better. I hope all the signs warn you that you need to change, if you do… who knows, we may have another chance.
I promise you, no one will replace your portrait on the wall, I give you my word. I will remember you as the lively and enthusiastic you once were, please don’t ruin the image I have of you, don’t make a scene of this.
I wish you well. I’ll see you around.


The Flash that we know is dead? Maybe. But surely it will reborn again, with new features. I agree with you, we will be able to build awesome apps just with html css and js, especially with the new features brought by html5 and css3. As a developer, I think it’s great, but according to me, Adobe is going to react
Flash is dead its a artifact of the 00′s it a model T in the would of race cars.
Flash I wish I could say RIP but I have always blocked you. You seemed to be used more for ads to get by the latest blocking tech.
So good riddance to old rubbish.
JJJ
Everyone compares HTML5 to Flash which to me is strange, Flash is primly a designing tool (yes and a broad platform) and HTML5 is a markup language that is far from standard (dated to be ready year 2022). What did I miss?
HTML5 have video tags which can support various formats, h.264 is proprietary (you pay for the license), .ogg is open and supported by W3. Why doesn’t Apple support both like Google or Flash? Yes you pay for the flash software as you do for most from Apple, but you can write ActionScript in FlashDevelop (free) and other open source software (without paying for any license). And Flex developer is also open source.
When flash as we know it dead or fixed, and/or I can use html5 as a web standard I will be more than happy as a web developer. HTML5 is awesome and makes me cry of happiness every time I see new stuff about it, but comparing two different things right now is nothing more than Apple smoke screens.
Sorry Steve.J I just don’t buy it
/R
The real problem with Flash is that Adobe has tried to shoehorn it into markets where it doesn’t belong. Web 2.0 came along and suddenly Adobe was screaming “RIA! RIA! so they added a bunch of crap to make Flash an option for making RIAs but what a mistake that was, barely anyone uses it because HTML is good enough for 95% of RIAs.
Then the iPhone takes off and suddenly Adobe is screaming “MOBILE DEVICES! MOBILE DEVICES!” before they even have a desktop class plugin ready to run on the damn things (only now are they ready to deploy it onto Android after 2 years of screaming)
This whole time Flash has got worse and worse at what it was designed for, it can barely animate a basic shape moving across the screen now without dropping a frame here or there. The animation tools are in such a mess and have been so untested that the new timeline is completely useless and tedious.
The only thing Flash has been decent for is online games really, but you need a very talented individual to get a decent performing one of those out of it.
True that! I have stopped returning Flash’s phone calls…
Still good thinks to see from Flash, i think people are precipitating.
Html5 is nice but still far from flash. All these flash articles are just excuses to get more traffic.
Hi Paco,
This is just an opinion post which formatted as a letter just for fun.
@jojo: So you seriously think annoying ads will go away if Flash is gone? Wow. It’s going to be _real_ hard to block HTML5 ads when they are – you know – HTML.
That would be a good point really!
Oh boy, I’m so sick of idiots that have to compare HTML5 to Flash. If everyone would think like you we would probably have only one programming language because every time a new one would appear it would kill the old one. You have to be so brain dead to proliferate such idiocies because of Apple’s stupid marketing campaign. By the way I’m not a Flash developer if that’s what you think when you read this..
Robert, I will never think you are a developer. HTML will always be a markup language regardless the released version, we can enhance it graphically with CSS and functionality wise with JS.
Flash and I used to have a great relationship, but we need to help allow our selves to grow, and not be stuck with a platform that could be matched on functionality by open standards (functionality that personally I need to deliver to people I do business with). I look forward to try new things, better things… I wish everyone will, including you.
Hector,
Unfortunately I work in telecom so I have nothing to do with HTML or Flash, though I still have problems getting you. Maybe it’s because of all this metaphorical discourses and all. Though I never thought you were a developer either, developers write code not blogs.
Oh but since this is your domain, maybe you would care to explain me what happens in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4 and while you’re at it maybe explain this one too? http://vimeo.com/9596010
Oh and make sure you speak at a metaphorical level all over the place.
Thanks!
Robert,
Misconceptions and stereotypes are common. One thing is clear, there are many good writers among the community that deserve respect and admiration. About the platform, The fairy tale is over for me, I enjoyed working, creating and playing with it. I look for different things now. However, as I mentioned before, if one day the platform brings something that enchants me, I’ll certainly give it another chance.
So you avoided my questions. Ok, that’s all I wanted to know.
I do wish Flash was open source. But most things I find annoying about flash are the ways people use it.
HTML5 is probably going to be cool, but by the time it gets enough browser adoption that we can actually use it, I’m sure we will find new reasons to love Flash.
I do try to use flash in a minimal fashion, I’ve expanded my use of javascript now that computers run faster, but flash is still the best tool for the job sometimes.
Hector, wake up.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23224/Jobs_on_Flash_Hypocrisy_So_Thick_You_Could_Cut_it_with_a_Knife
“Free software†is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free†as in “free speechâ€, not as in “free beerâ€. – Free Software Foundation
I agree with the author about some of his highlights, but… the fact that using proprietary platforms to access the internet, is no more than another controversial opinion. There will always be money motives on taking sides, specially for corporations like Apple that has not less interest on profit than any other company.
Hector, I feel like I own Flash more than I own HTML5 (assuming you’re talking about the version of HTML that has even a small subset of the capabilities of Flash). Why do you feel it’s the other way around? If you wanted the HTML5 spec changed do you think Google and Apple (as editors of the spec) would listen to you? My expereince with Flash is that if there’s a bug or a feature request, I log it in the Flash bug database and an Adobe employee looks at it and responds. The response is not always as I wish but I feel that someone is listening. Adobe wanted to put an Fx prefix on all the components in Flex 4, developers spoke up and Adobe changed it in response. Great. In comparison, do you thinki Hixie would put anything into the HTML5 spec that he didn’t agree with? Face it, Google and Apple control the HTML5 spec for their commercial purposes. If you think you have ownership over HTML5 more than Flash, I seriously wonder why. Idealism is great – and standards a re a good idea where they work – but the real world doesn’t always reflect that.
One of the most interesting article that I came across along with this beautiful page customization
I was once an active Flash user for building websites (such as my portfolio site http://www.evographik.com) and yes, due to various benefits provided by HTML/CSS/JS, I switched over and moved on like you did. But that does not mean I think Flash is useless from now on.
In my opinion, Flash has becoming a really good tool for building games and other high-interactive applications with its new improvements. So in terms of web development, Flash is no longer the best choice around now but it certainly will not die and live even better in other areas of development.
What a sad peace of intellectual diarrhea. I thought SJ is the worst but you proved me wrong. Man, I feel sorry for you replacing you childhood memories photo with Mr Jobs portrait…. so sorry… so sad…
I enjoyed your article, but I would have enjoyed it more if you had corrected all the typos and grammatical mistakes.
I’m not sure where the typos and grammatical mistakes are…
This is a good article after all.
I still like Flash. Jquery is cool but its syntax annoys me for some reason (I know its easier than plain Js).
Flash is smooth tho when its not too bulky. And if everyone stopped using Flash for websites, video, music etc I’d still use it for making animation or cartoons.
I can’t make cartoons in Jquery…
But who wants to make cartoons when you can make awesome image galleries and slideshows…
I still like Flash. Jquery is cool but its syntax annoys me for some reason (I know its easier than plain Js).Flash is smooth tho when its not too bulky. And if everyone stopped using Flash for websites, video, music etc I’d still use it for making animation or cartoons.I can’t make cartoons in Jquery…But who wants to make cartoons when you can make awesome image galleries and slideshows…