Web de­vel­op­ment: HTML5 puts Flash on the sidelines

For a long time, Adobe Flash was every­where on the internet. Website operators who wanted to provide their visitors with mul­ti­me­dia content such as videos, animation, or games couldn’t avoid the de facto standard, Flash. This has been despite security gaps, stability problems, per­for­mance defects, and com­pli­ca­tions on mobile devices. But the Flash-era is coming to an end. Even Adobe, the man­u­fac­tur­er, can see the writing on the wall. Since October 2014, the open web standard HTML5 with native mul­ti­me­dia elements offers an at­trac­tive al­ter­na­tive to the pro­pri­etary Adobe product. According to Apple and Mozilla, now even the internet giant Google has announced that it is turning away from the eternal problem child. And for good reason.

As a software platform for the pro­duc­tion and display of in­ter­ac­tive mul­ti­me­dia content, Adobe Flash changed the look of the internet. The tech­nol­o­gy, orig­i­nal­ly developed by Macro­me­dia, enables the animation of text and image elements to deliver videos, games, and in­ter­ac­tive ap­pli­ca­tions through a web browser. Flash supports a bi-di­rec­tion­al streaming of audio and video content — also in 3D since 2011 – and accepts user input via mouse, keyboard, mi­cro­phone, and camera. In­ter­ac­tive Flash animation pro­gram­ming uses the object-oriented pro­gram­ming language Ac­tion­Script. A graphical approach is also offered by the Flash authoring en­vi­ron­ment Animate CC (formerly Flash Pro­fes­sion­al). For the creation of video games and ap­pli­ca­tions for in-browser use, desktop computers, or mobile devices, Adobe developed the cross-platform runtime en­vi­ron­ment AIR (Adobe In­te­grat­ed Runtime).

Flash-based projects are delivered in the pro­pri­etary file format Shockwave Flash (SWF). This contains the Flash animation in a com­pressed binary form. The spec­i­fi­ca­tion of this format was released by Adobe as part of the Adobe Open Screen Project in 2008. But SWF doesn’t meet the criteria of an open standard.

On the user side, SWF files require the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ap­pli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming interface (API), which is in­te­grat­ed into the web browser in the form of a plugin. The most popular dis­tri­b­u­tion was Adobe’s in-house Flash Player. In the early years of the 21^st century, Flash dominated almost the entire net when it came to animated ad­ver­tise­ments, in­ter­ac­tive live tickers, menus, mini-games, or video players. This de­vel­op­ment was promoted using popular video portals — mainly YouTube, which used a Flash plugin for a long time.

Until 2010, the Adobe Flash Player was installed on almost all internet-capable computers, making it a popular target for malware de­vel­op­ers. Time and time again, serious security gaps appeared that were closed, thank­ful­ly, more or less promptly by the man­u­fac­tur­er. This trend was sadly high­light­ed in 2015 when Adobe was forced to announce twice in a row that there were risky vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties with no existing patch. As a result, leading browsers advocated immediate de­ac­ti­va­tion of the plugin. But the decline of the Flash-era had already been clearly visible for eight years.

With the iPhone in 2007, Apple presented not only the first modern smart­phone with touch­screen tech­nol­o­gy, it was also the first popular web-enabled device that refused to use the quasi-standard Flash. The company received vast amounts of ridicule and re­sent­ment from both de­vel­op­ers and users for this move. Three years later, Steve Jobs followed up with a personal ex­pla­na­tion of this decision. In his Essay “Thoughts on Flash", the Apple founder cited six arguments as to why Flash would not be supported on Apple’s mobile devices:

1. Adobe Flash is a closed, pro­pri­etary software
2. Nearly all video content is also available in the modern H.264 format
3. Adobe Flash is unsafe and unstable
4. Flash sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the battery life of mobile devices
5. The Flash standard is not suitable for touch devices
6. Flash is an impeding layer between platform and pro­gram­mer

Instead of con­tin­u­ing to implement an outdated tech­nol­o­gy, Apple announced the alignment of the mobile operating system iOS with the Flash al­ter­na­tive HTML5.

Adobe, on the other hand, saw primarily business motives behind Apple’s decision but had to accept that the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Apple devices meant that things had changed. More and more website operators began offering mobile versions without Flash content and making videos and an­i­ma­tions available in HTML5 format instead.

From the beginning, Flash was the standard format of the video portal YouTube. Users who wanted to watch clips as a stream in their web browser were forced to install a Flash plugin as well as regular updates. This changed in 2010 when the de­vel­op­ers of YouTube decided to offer videos in HTML5 format instead. Since 2015, all YouTube content can be streamed via HTML5 without a Flash plugin. Today, the open web standard Adobe Flash has been com­plete­ly replaced on the video portal.

The in­creas­ing rejection of the SWF format didn’t meet Adobe un­pre­pared. Already in 2011, the company announced its intention to integrate HTML5 into its own products and services. They also announced the in­tro­duc­tion of mobile Flash versions. At the end of 2015, it finally renamed Flash Pro­fes­sion­al to Adobe Animate CC. The com­plete­ly over­worked version of the animation software supports the native HTML5 Canvas element and the 3D graphical interface WebGL. Both formats are open web standards. The company now rec­om­mends that ap­pli­ca­tions that create animated web content with Adobe products use HTML5 instead of Flash.

Despite its re­ori­en­ta­tion, Adobe promises to continue to ensure the security and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Flash content. In the field of online gaming, new open standards haven’t been fully developed yet. Vendors such as Facebook continue to work with the software so that Flash-based game content continues to run safely and reliably.

Like other browser man­u­fac­tur­ers, Google also restricts Adobe Flash support. Since September 2015, the Flash plugin is disabled by default in Google browsers and Chrome users are required to actively confirm that they want to play the cor­re­spond­ing content. A clear sign that the unloved tech­nol­o­gy is most likely destined to soon disappear from the Google world.

In August 2016, Chrome de­vel­op­ers announced that Flash content, which loads in the back­ground of the browser, is blocked by default from version 53. The team cited security gaps as well as stability problems as its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. According to the de­vel­op­ers, 90% of all Flash content on the web is processed in the back­ground without any added value for the user — primarily in the context of web analysis. This impairs load times.

In the fore­see­able future, Flash will only play a minor role in Chrome. Already from Chrome version 55, which was released in December 2016, Google made clear that it would like to use HTML5 only. Flash content should be activated manually only if a website runs with it ex­clu­sive­ly. As a market leader, Google could finally push Adobe Flash out of the internet for good.

The general shift from Flash to HTML5 has several causes. Two arguments stand in the fore­ground: HTML5 has the status of an open web standard and operates without ad­di­tion­al plugins. While Flash is presented as a pro­pri­etary software under the control of Adobe, HTML5 is developed and doc­u­ment­ed openly and in­de­pen­dent­ly by an in­ter­na­tion­al panel. The web standard is therefore available to all software de­vel­op­ers without re­stric­tions or licensing con­di­tions. Mul­ti­me­dia content in HTML5 is in­te­grat­ed directly into the source code of a website via native audio and video elements as well as the drawing surface Canvas. An ad­di­tion­al pro­gram­ming interface like Adobe Flash Player isn’t necessary. So HTML5 avoids a central security gap that hasn’t yet been reliably closed by Adobe: any ad­di­tion­al plugin that needs to be installed in the web browser provides hackers with an attack surface. In addition, each platform needs its own plugin. Mul­ti­me­dia content embedded in a website via HTML5, on the other hand, can be displayed across platforms, since all well-known browsers are now able to interpret HTML5. Even if Adobe wants to continue sup­port­ing Flash, a sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ment of the tech­nol­o­gy is unlikely. Instead, the service is likely to be re­strict­ed to providing security updates. The new mul­ti­me­dia elements of the hypertext markup language aren’t the only thing sidelin­ing Adobe’s pro­pri­etary software. Microsoft’s Flash al­ter­na­tive Sil­verlight, which is offered as a separate plugin for various browser models, must also be defeated. In the Edge web browser, which was in­tro­duced together with the Windows 10, Microsoft also runs without the plugin interface. Instead of Sil­verlight, HTML5 is primarily used to display mul­ti­me­dia content in the Edge browser. Flash content is still supported, as with Chrome but the player is no longer a plugin, rather it’s a module built into the software. Website operators should also respond to this de­vel­op­ment and translate Flash content into HTML5-com­pat­i­ble formats.

Even today, access to Flash content is re­strict­ed to internet users who surf with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Con­sid­er­ing the current de­vel­op­ments, it’s fore­see­able that animation in the SWF format will be com­plete­ly blocked from popular browsers in the near future. This already applies to today’s mobile internet use. To make sure that visitors will continue to receive and be able to play all of the content of a website, website operators should convert all Flash-based animation to HTML5. The same goes for Flash-based ads that appear in ad networks like Google AdWords, BingAds or Dou­bleClick. In June 2015, Google already announced a switchover of all display ads to HTML5. The Flash to HTML5 converter Swiffy was available to Google customers until July 1, 2016. Anyone wishing to convert SWF files now, after the deadline has already passed, is referred by Google to the in-house software Google Web Designer or to Adobe’s Animate CC.

• Google Web Designer: The free web editor Google Web Designer enables users to design dynamic websites and ads with HTML5. The tool is available as a desktop ap­pli­ca­tion for Windows, Mac, and Linux. A design view offers various drawing tools, a text editor, and 3D tools. An­i­ma­tions are con­trolled via timeline. Access to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XML is provided by the code view, which also provides syntax high­light­ing and auto-com­ple­tion. But contrary to what Google promised, elaborate Flash projects can only be converted to a limited extent according to user reports.

• Adobe Animate CC: The popular animation software Adobe Flash Pro­fes­sion­al is now called Animate CC and is available to users ex­clu­sive­ly via Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Use of the software thus requires a sub­scrip­tion. If you have one, then the software can also be used as a desktop ap­pli­ca­tion without an internet con­nec­tion. The range of functions cor­re­sponds largely to the previous version. But with the alignment to HTML5 and WebGL, Adobe opens itself up to open web standards. Support for the Flash format SWF is retained, though. A detailed video tutorial on how users can convert existing Flash an­i­ma­tions to HTML5 Canvas elements is shown in the video tutorial on the man­u­fac­tur­er page. With Animate CC, you can export an­i­ma­tions as well as OAM files, which gives you access to other Adobe programs such as Muse, InDesign, or Dreamweaver.