Are you going to re-develop your websites for Apple’s iPad?
A recent report on Marketplace by Farhad Manjoo from Salon.com throws out a compelling case as to why Apple has chosen to abandon Flash support on it’s new iPad. The decision by Apple to do this was not an idealistic one to simply “snub” Adobe as Manjoo puts it. It was a calculated choice based on where the Web is headed – a web without Flash. As you can imagine, this has sparked a bit of controversy.
But Adobe’s Flash, which was originally created by Macromedia many moons ago, has always been somewhat controversial. Many once argued that Flash ruining the web, making it clunky and cumbersome for people to experience web pages. However with the increase in bandwidth that has become available, and the improvement in web browser technology, I don’t think that argument holds much water. Flash has made our web experience far more interesting and constructive.
The debate in its simplest form goes like this: Apple’s new iPad does not support Flash because it it is banking on a Web that does not hinge on Flash for video display and interactive media such as gaming and advertising. This future is only possible because of HTML5, the next generation of HTML.
HTML is the construct on which everything you experience on the Web is founded. HTML is like the brick and mortar of a physical building. It is what makes the things you see in a web browser able to appear. Without HTML, you can not view a web page. Any web page.
HTML5 supports video on the web differently from how you watch video now, which is through plug-ins – small pieces of software that install on your computer and permit you to view things in your web browser like video. Flash is a plug-in provided by Adobe and it is the most widely used plug-in for video display. HTML5 permits websites to display video much like the way images are displayed, so essentially it eliminates the conflicts many people encounter attempting to watch video on the web, e.g. long download times, crashing browsers, etc.
HTML5 sounds ideal, eh? Well, it is. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Flash is on its way out.
As John Herrman explains on gizmodo.com, the stir is only a stir and Flash is not going away, at least not any time soon. There are numerous reasons for this and Herrman gets into them at length in his article “Why HTML is not going to save the Internet“. With Apple’s track record for anticipating the future of certain technologies, you can imagine the stigma surrounding this topic.
In the end, it’s Apple taking the big risk here. iPad users will not be able to experience websites running Flash which 85 of the top 100 most popular sites use to display content like videos or games or slide shows. If you go to those sites with the iPad, you’re likely to see an error icon instead.
With this chance, Apple is counting on web developers to make non-Flash versions of their sites using HTML5 standards for video and advertising. If the iPod is any testament to how the market could respond, it is possible we will see a lot of shuffling going on over the next few years in how websites are developed. Are you going to re-design your websites to meet HTML5 video standards that do not require Flash or other plug-ins?
