Many enterprise projects have invested big time in Flex. Now Adobe has basically said "We are pulling out most of our full time resources and hoping that the ASF picks up the slack. HTML5 is the new hotness so move to it"
This basically sucks for a lot of enterprises because like it or not :
1) HTML 5 is still evolving and maturing
2) Flex capabilities today are where HTML 5 will be in 1-2 years.
It feels like adobe could have managed this situation a lot better. Slowed down Flex dev a little and accelerate HTML5 a lot. Provide kick-ass tools for converting between the two (ala Google Swiffy but something that works much better). Publish detailed guides on how to migrate - what works and what doesn't with the migration, etc. Basically make the people who adopted your tech feel that they are NOT being left high and dry.
Sorry, stupidity has a price. People yelled "iceberg" and explained the issues with Flash a couple of years ago. Now you've hit the iceberg. Read and try to digest:
Yes, a very un-HN answer but I still see people stuck in IE6 because I couldn't convince corporate lemmings that web software needed to run in browsers other than IE6.
The web needs to run everywhere! It's not owned by one company.
Last I checked, the warnings about Flex were few and far between, and Flash is still very much alive and well. This is not the iceberg you are looking for.
I've seen plenty of people point to the single-source vendor as a major concern. Given Adobe's failure to competitively maintain any platform they've acquired most people I know were careful not to put too much trust in something which could be discontinued at any point.
I don't give a crap if Flash dies, but why lie? Seriously. Just say, Flash is a piece of shit and we don't want it. At least, you could structure an argument around that.
Thoughts on Flash does hit a few worthy points, but many of them are flawed. Others have outlined them in previous mentions of this post, but I'll summarize a few of them again:
- They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome - left out a few other relevant browsers here.
- For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers” ... why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - pretty sure many JS menus rely on rollover states. There are other examples beyond menus, of course.
- New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices - except where you don't allow developers to select/take photos or files from the user's device (most useful apps have this functionality), giving the developer no choice but to develop a native app. I think a full implementation of HTML5 would include <input type="file">, call me crazy.
- By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system. - except when you can develop your own IDE, compile and package Flash code without any intervention from Adobe.
The anti-Flash mob like to bring YouTube into the conversation, as if YouTube is also anti-Flash. Make no mistake, without Flash, YouTube would not exist. Remember that YouTube was founded on the principal that one could record from webcam (not available on any browser currently) and upload it for others to view. How is this being done on a mobile device natively within the browser?
Then build the few things that still need Flex in Flex/Flash, and build the rest in HTML/JS. This is likely how most Flex apps should have been written to begin with.
This basically sucks for a lot of enterprises because like it or not : 1) HTML 5 is still evolving and maturing 2) Flex capabilities today are where HTML 5 will be in 1-2 years.
It feels like adobe could have managed this situation a lot better. Slowed down Flex dev a little and accelerate HTML5 a lot. Provide kick-ass tools for converting between the two (ala Google Swiffy but something that works much better). Publish detailed guides on how to migrate - what works and what doesn't with the migration, etc. Basically make the people who adopted your tech feel that they are NOT being left high and dry.