So what’s all this hubba hubba about Apple ditching Adobe on all its devices about. Well with all the news and blogs going around on the internet, I thought I’d have my two cents.
Working as a web developer in Africa has been tough from the inception. The challenges are vast from access to internet all the way to trying to implement technologies on very poor, sometimes archaic infrastructures. Not only that, the variations in browser versions can be mind boggling to say the least.
Which brings me to Flash... a technology which is absolutely fantastic in how you can completely redefine a website with rich interactivity and even video. This is what I thought way back in 1999 when I first starting developing my own websites, which were largely html website mixed with javascript and applets to spice things up.
Way back then however Flash based websites was a novelty to say the least. But the reality of it was that under the high priced and slow bandwidth conditions of the late nineties in Africa, you just couldn’t use flash if you wanted your website to reach millions of people. It was - realistically speaking, a novelty for the few who had high speed connections.
I was practically a sponge back then in the nineties lapping up any piece of information I could get on developing websites, learning PHP, Perl with all its CGI scripts and javascript to spice things up of course. When it came to learning Flash however which I had access to large amounts of resources, I made the conscious decision that it would at least take 5 years for the South African internet market demographic to bring down broadband prices to make it viable enough to develop flash based websites for the masses. So I ditched learning Flash... Focusing my attention on learning languages, such as PHP and ASP.Net which I’m now a solid developer and demand for my services is sustainable.
And now it’s ten years down the line and it seems I was correct about broadband prices coming down. But I had made the conscious decision to abandon learning flash, and ten years down the line... I don’t really regret it. Why? I hear you say...
Look flash was a great idea, but I think the overall strategy around it was not really sound in my opinion. It was always intended as a plugin to solve a problem of providing rich interactive content until browser standards matured. From my vast reading on the specifications of browsers, from HTML 1.0, HTML 3.0, HTML 4.0 and even XHTML I always knew that they would eventually mature to the day where we would not need plugins such as Flash to truly deliver a unique web experience to visitors with just pure HTML. And now Flash’s mere existence is threaten by something we have been using to deliver websites to you from the webs inception.
I’m sorry but I have to agree with Steve Jobs, welcome HTML 5.0 I welcome you with open arms...
