For the last few months I keep seeing more and more HTML 5 is going to kill Flash articles. You know the ones: Flash is super bad and HTML 5 + CSS3 + JavaScript are going to take over so you better stop using Flash for anything. It seems to be really popular to claim the death of one technology or technique lately.
There are plenty of other posts out there that describe all the ins and outs of one vs the other already, so I’m not going to get in to that. The thing that gets me is that way this seems to have some people thinking there really is a battle. That it is this one choice versus this other choice and there is no middle ground.
As fun as it is to debate and have a little drama, taking sides doesn’t really do anything.
Yes, there are things that Flash doesn’t do well, it’s often been used for the wrong reasons, and it has been used to make terribly annoying things at times. But, the same came be said for HTML/CSS and JavaScript. They both have their strengths, they both have their weaknesses, and that’s totally okay.
So why do we spend so much time pitting one against the other? Shouldn’t there more talk about how we can use them both, or even together?
Dan Mall shows a great example of how to use Flash and web standards together in his Getting a long on the playground * talk . It makes a lot of sense. Both Flash and web standards are tools we have available to us when we want to build a web site or web app. Having options is a good thing!
We don’t all have to be experts in every single web technology out there, but knowing what your options are and keeping an open mind will get you a lot farther than fighting over which technology is going to “die” next.
*Like most good talks, the slides alone don’t really cut it, but if you haven’t had a chance to see it in person, they’ll give you a pretty good idea of his talk.
