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Flash-only vs. AJAX sites
friendlybit.com — Even though web developers like me have discouraged from building Flash-only sites for as long as I remember, they are popping up all over the place. For no reason! We are ready to make the leap to standards. And our weapon with be AJAX.
danieltyack- 9 diggs
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- Dracos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dugg on general principle, but leaving Flash in the ditch isn't going to happen just yet. Also, AJAX is not the all-singing, all-dancing super-buzzword some people make it out to be.
The 4 things Flash can deliver that AJAX (read: Web Standards) currently cannot:
-- Sound. There is no standards-based way to embed or attach sounds to web pages... yet. CSS3 will take care of this.
-- Vector shapes. Everything on the web is a rectangle, whether it looks like one or not. SVG was supposed to fix this, but it hasn't hit the mainstream, and creates roadblocks for itself.
-- Animation. Simply animating web page elements is a huge chore... delivering video is impossible.
-- Fonts. A Flash author can use whatever font he likes, and it will look that way on any user's screen. Web fonts, not so much.
These three factors combine to create not only the most annoying standards based ads ever, but also things like games.
The canvas element tries to bridge the visual gap, but it isn't part of any standard, and doesn't look like it's going to be widely deployed any time soon.
I agree Flash sucks, but until Web Standards can completely fill the void it would leave, people will still use it.- Huvet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Well said Dracos. The article only talks about Flash-only sites, not games and ads, so I don't think it's incorrect in that respect. I must agree that we can't throw away Flash anytime soon.
- woodan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article is grossly inaccurate and written by an AJAX fanboy that clearly has no idea how Flash works.
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