Did HTML5 Demolish Flash? Or Something Else?

http://dta.greweb.fr/

Here is a fantastic, fun, and easy to learn game. Take a tank, drive it around some objects, and shoot other tanks. Cannot get any more fun than that. The game is written in WebGL, which is OpenGL for HTML5, an evolving technology that will provide 3D graphics to completely demolish Flash all-together. But wait, was it HTML5 that really challenged Flash?

Flash, the dominant service in web animation, has been winding downward in popularity and opportunity in the web world today. When Flash came out, it was revolutionary to see the animation and smooth graphics. Implementation of Flash crawled the internet and for years Flash was dominant in advertisement, entry screens, rich applications, 3d headers, and so many more elements of the web world. But where is Flash now?

Flash seems to have come and gone… but wait. Flash hasn’t gone anywhere, Flash has become integrated to our every day life. Mostly in the form of video, such as YouTube and Vimeo. Netflix has teamed up with Microsoft and Silverlight. But we don’t see our every day Flash animations as often, these days.

It seems that these Flash animations have entered the world and now been held to a higher standard. Flash can not have an “animated” feel in the business world. It must have a crisp and professional, precise and elegant feel; which can be challenging for Flash, especially with the limitations of ActionScript and lack of pure 3D engine integration.

Most basic animation these days can be accomplished with JavaScript and jQuery. The JavaScript engines these days compute at such high levels, that integrating a Flash component is completely unnecessary. I claim that Flash isn’t being dismissed by HTML5, rather JavaScript and JS Frameworks that are supplementing the functions that Flash would be performing. Instead Flash is your pure video or pure ActionScript rich media piece.

Rather than saying HTML5 will take out Flash, I would say that JavaScript took out Flash and HTML5 put the nail in the coffin.