Standards-based Ajax Beats Flash Anyday
A few weeks ago I got an interesting call at work: John Fontana of NetworkWorld wanted to ask me a few questions about Ajax for an article he was working on. He had read a piece that I wrote called Using Ajax for Creating Web Applications.
The article he was writing is now online: Battle lines drawn again between browsers. In it Fontana provides an overview of the current browser tension between Firefox and IE.
You’ll find a short quote in the article from me (and thankfully it is one that I still agree with):
“I would say going forward that AJAX is going to have a ton of focus and support behind it,” says Joshua Porter, research consultant and director of Web development for research firm User Interface Engineering. “Because it is built on open standards, it is going to be the next plateau that we reach on the Web, like with HTML.”
On this note, I was listening to a podcast earlier today called The Platform Revolution that included Kevin Lynch of Macromedia. He talks about HTML not being robust enough for most web application needs, and suggests that Flash is becoming the front-end application tool of choice.
I think that developers will soon prove Lynch wrong, as they (WE) value open, de facto standards over proprietary tools.
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Comments
1. Gene 4:32pm, Tue 6th, 2005
While I think you’re generally right–for most ordinary applications Ajax is better–Flash can do lots of nifty things Ajax can’t.
Also, just to play devil’s advocate, Flash already works with other standards (XML, JS, etc.)… is its proprietaryness really a problem?
2. Andrew 6:16pm, Tue 6th, 2005
Lynch is pitching his product, of course he’s going to say HTML isn’t robust enough. Can anyone name a web application built in Flash that’s really taken off? Maybe they’re all intranet type things, but I’ve just not really seen any beyond the proof-of-concept ones. Where is this front-end tool of choice *really* winning out over HTML?
Flash is nice, but building a Flash app well remains a specialized skill. Most web programmers can easily add Ajax behavior to their toolkit by incorporating a javascript file or two, and refactoring some HTML code. It’s quite easy by comparison.
3. Jared Spool 7:01am, Wed 7th, 2005
Andrew,
I think there are some compelling uses of flash, not as the total-control application that we often see cited by MM such as the Broadmoor reservation system, but as components that make up a part of an application.
Flickr’s photo organizer, CNN’s video viewer, and the Amazon’s CD sample player are elements that come to mind. They are Flash components, often combined with AJAX interaction elements, to create an entire experience that just feels right.
From what we’ve seen, getting the HTTP synchronicity issues resolved with AJAX requires a skillset too, foreign to many interface developers. I think it may be easier than Flash, but not by a whole bit. However, I think toolkits, prebuilt components, and other toolsets will make both AJAX and Flash easier for developers.
4. Rex Chung 10:35pm, Wed 7th, 2005
All these Flash VS AJAX battles are abit waste of time. I think we, as interet users and developers, all know what works well on the Web by now. Why not just find new ways to use Flash and AJAX together?
I’m sure Flash and AJAX can complement each other in alot of ways. eg. MXNA report
5. Josh 11:27pm, Wed 7th, 2005
There are certainly places where Flash makes more sense than Ajax, and vice versa. I didn’t mean to imply that Ajax as a technology was better than Flash. I just think that over the long-term (i.e. years), that a standards-based tool will marginalize a proprietary one, and thus my quote in the Fontana piece.
6. Dave Feldman 9:13am, Tue 20th, 2005
I’m curious to hear more of this debate. My impression is that Flash is a better choice for creating rich, interactive UIs. Its font support (especially the new font rendering in v8), drawing APIs, animation capabilities, and standardized collection of widgets make it better suited to applications.
That said, I think there’s a very good chance Ajax will be more successful because it builds on existing HTML and because its availability (openness aside, it’s free and Flash isn’t) makes it a more fertile ground for smaller developers to experiment. I’m just not sure that’s a good thing. Perhaps projects like OpenLaszlo will ultimately make Flash a more attractive platform for those who don’t want to buy or learn Flash Pro.
7. Rex 11:24am, Thu 29th, 2005
What about SVG+AJAX vs Flash?
SVG is the open standard candidate that can compete with Flash on vector based graphic rendering. However Flash still offers alot more power in video compression.
8. Josh 12:52am, Wed 2nd, 2005
How would you compare Flash vs. AJAX in the context of accessing MySQL data?
9. Wadim 2:05am, Wed 16th, 2006
This is very GOOD idea IMHO
10. David Eldridge 8:02am, Fri 29th, 2006
I am a web developer who just began working for a county in Kansas. I have been building standards-based webs for virtually my whole experience. I hate locking myself into proprietary languages (like our .NET framework), so I try to avoid it. I am interested to know more about Ajax. I have been trying my hand a little with it (implementing Google Maps on our site), but I cannot validate my pages, because I am building my pages in XHTML 1.1 and w3c says that events like onclick, etc. have been depricated. What should I know in order to make use of this technology and still comply with standards?
Sincerely,
David Eldridge
david@socklint.com