The announcement of Apple’s iPad has sparked a fresh debate over Flash on the web. It was very obvious during Steve Jobs’ iPad announcement that the new device did not support Flash. This isn’t a big surprise since the iPhone and iPod Touch do not either. The iPad has the potential to be more of a web consumption device, so the absence of Flash definitely raises some issues. If the iPad turns out to be as popular as the iPhone, web developers will have to think twice about using Flash on their sites and potentially loosing a large segment of users. Apple has made it clear that they think the future of multimedia on the web will involve HTML5.

HTML5 is the next generation of the language used to create websites. This is the first major update to the HTML standard in over 10 years. While the HTML5 standard is still a draft, many of the features are supported in current browsers. There are many exciting new features available in HTML5, including audio and video tags. It is these multimedia tags that are threatening the future of Flash.

HTML5 is a threat to Flash because it offers an alternative to one of the key benefits of Flash. Up until HTML5, the best way to embed video that worked across platforms and browsers was to use Flash. Almost everyone has a Flash plugin installed in their browser, so it makes sense. But, even before HTML5 there were forces working against Flash.

For a long time Flash was the best tool for delivering animation and multimedia.  But those things are changing.  Flash may no longer be the best choice for these features. You can now do very sophisticated animation with jQuery, and with HTML5 you have an alternative for delivering video as well.  HTML5 makes adding video to a web page as easy as adding an image.

In the end, I believe Flash will fade due to in part to limitations placed on it by Apple and lack of access to the iPhone and iPad.  There has also been trend toward open, non-proprietary standards like HTML.  Flash may still have a place as a presentation tool, but it’s role on the web is likely to diminish over time.

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