Of Flash, the Web, and iDevices
John Nash over at Adobe has published a great essay on his personal blog about the nature and status of Flash vis-a-vis web standards, functionality, and the iPhone (and now iPad) embargo:
I came to Adobe ten years ago to build an open standards (SVG)-based Web animation tool. I like standards, and I have some experience here. … Here’s a quick summary of my long piece below:
Flash is flawed, but it has moved the world forward.
Open standards are great, but they can be achingly slow to arrive.
Talk of “what’s good for standards is bad for Adobe” is misinformed nonsense.
Flash will innovate or die. I’m betting on innovation.
Note that Nash actually worked on Flash’s competitor — remember Flash was created by Macromedia, then Adobe’s competitor for authoring applications — and is well aware of its history and its limitations. Most importantly, it’s a thoughtful piece with lots of details. No screed. No paranoia. Not your typical internet.
