The Flash vs HTML5 website built by Waste Creative has now attracted nearly 4,000 Facebook 'Likes', split between Flash and HTML5.
The luscious, animation-packed website was created to provide insight into Waste Creative’s thoughts surrounding popular web technology for gaming. The site explained how the company created the game Waste Invaders as a proof-of-concept to test Flash Player 11, and then used Adobe Air to release it as an iOS app. Subsequently, the game was ported to HTML5.
Waste Creative found that Flash still offers some benefits regarding gaming: it’s supported more thoroughly on the desktop (99 per cent of browsers have the plug-in versus 82 per cent of browsers supporting the HTML5 canvas element), has stronger audience penetration for important hardware accelerated 3D technology, is simpler from an asset management standpoint, and has more mature authoring tools. However, the company argued that these things are all balanced by the lack of Flash plug-in for mobile browsers, and canvas and WebGL making inroads on smartphones and tablets.
According to the site, its creators love both Flash and HTML: “They’re both just tools, and we love all our tools! Taking sides with tech gets you nowhere fast.” It stated Flash remains a rich resource, with unparalleled community support, but HTML5 is the “hot ticket in the form of its increasingly robust mobile browser support”.
However, those voting on the site (in some cases, .net suspects, in knee-jerk fashion) weren’t about to let such noodly even-handedness stand; at the time of writing, the HTML5 option had over 2,600 ‘Likes’ to Flash’s 1,000. Perhaps Flash’s forthcoming revamp will win some of them back.
