| My Thoughts on “Thoughts on Flash”: A Look at the Bigger Picture | ||||||||
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| A few months ago Apple’s CEO – Steve Jobs: A person, whose intelligence, philosophy and vision, I truly admire – predicted the death of Flash (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/), as we enter the era of the Post-PC (tablets, smart-phones, etc.) devices. This topic ignited a battle between the two leaders within their industries – Apple vs. Adobe. Most importantly, the feud didn’t stop there – ever since I’ve been noticing, people and companies influenced by this topic, removing their flash content from their sites. Before I indulge into my thoughts, let me set the expectations, that I’m not siding with any of the above mentioned companies’ point of view. I rather give my perspective on where they, or anyone involved in this discussion, is “getting it wrong". Also, allow me to bring some credibility “to the table”: Following Apple’s steep growth since its rebirth in 1998 and owning pretty much any Apple device, people that know me well, know me as a MAC enthusiast. On the other hand, holding a degree in Multimedia and running the Multimedia department in a company on Inc. 500’s Fastest Growing Companies list, I’ve been using Adobe apps more often than many of us are using pens nowadays. Now… to the point. The dynamics and the evolution of the web (interactive) content is getting to a point where the use of one particular software or a single use of a technology, to deliver content to the end user, is getting old-fashioned. As Steve Jobs said (on another topic) “the user wants to use the content however he wants, whenever he wants ” - today the Internet content is not limited to web sites only. We have Internet content being delivered to Desktop Widgets/Gadgets and apps, phones, tablets, TVs, cars….etc. In order to expand your audience, the same content needs to be delivered to the end-user via multiple technologies, compatible with all of the above-mentioned devices, with an intuitive and user-friendly UIs (User Interfaces). Having said that, to argue whether to use Flash or HTML5 or anything else is pointless. A good example of the above mentioned is Best Buy's online store (and of-course many others). Best Buy has at least 3 venues to deliver its internet content to end-user: Best Buy's main website - http://www.bestbuy.com/ Best Buy's mobile website - http://m.bestbuy.com/ Best Buy mobile app - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/best-buy/id314855255?mt=8 As mentioned above, any venue is customized to provide best end-user experience. In this case, if Best Buy (or any other company) is going to create a venue to target specifically Post-PC devices, why should it matter whether their main website uses technologies (ex: Flash) that don't run on mobile devices? Apple's online store also uses multiple venues to capture and provide best user experience to its audience. If technologies, such as Flash, provide the best user user experience for the PC audience (which currently is about 80%-90% of the visits on a site), why eliminate any technology to satisfy the mobile audience (10%-20%) and limit the user experience for the larger share......... and on top of that, create a version specifically for the the mobile audience? Does this make sense to anyone? What matters most and what “modern” developers need to focus on, is building a CMS (Content Management System) foundation, that could easily deliver the same content to “these” multiple venues and devices, and still keep the ethnicity and the branding tone identical throughout. User's demand and the marketing approach (and maybe technical and security requirements) should drive the decision of the right use of technology and the UI environment to deliver the content with. The Internet evolved to a point where is not living within “www” and “http” anymore. The end-user doesn’t (and shouldn’t) care about the programs (or programming language) the developers are creating the content with. What matters is where and how the end-user is expected to interact with the content. This is what sets the technology trends. On the other hand, we have matured as end-users. "Dancing babies", flashing screens and corny sounds on pressing buttons is not attractive to us anymore - something that we used Flash for. Web sites are a little more "suddle" and "calm" nowadays. It is the natural progression of events to use other technologies to create simple animations when the user doesn't expect the full-page Flash experience. In conclusion, I hope Apple has a long and a brighter future, Adobe overcomes the “hits”, stays focused and doesn't give up on Flash. To anyone else taking sides and making conclusions, I’d like to remind, that (same as dogs) this feud aims to mark territories/markets. When making decision on what technology to use for your site or application, it’s probably best to research how your audience would interact with your content first. Let this be the decision driver.  |
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