Category Archives: general

Flash is dead. Long live the internet.

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When I was in high school I didn’t own a computer. I used to read the occasional Popular Mechanics magazine and would linger for a while on the articles about the internet or HTML, fascinated by this new technology that I had barely even used. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve always been drawn toward computers, but more specifically, computers connected to other computers. Whether it was playing a video game online or browsing through the millions of websites, I could always spend hours every day in front of a computer soaking up information and experiences, interacting with people on the other side of the world.

Soon after I bought my first computer I started building simple websites. I had all of the best animated gifs you could find, along with those awesome water ripple java applets and whatever other bells and whistles I could find. It was awesome. I wanted to push the boundaries of this new thing. To make something unique that nobody had seen before. This led me to Macromedia Flash 4. My new hobby slowly taught me how to program, and over time I got pretty good at it. Eventually I landed in New York City and found a job at a tiny little web design shop, building websites for big corporations and loving every minute of it.

During this time the internet was recovering from the big crash at the end of the 90′s and as browsers slowly evolved, so were the websites we were building. But browsers were slow to update back then, so Flash filled a need to move faster and give us more options to explore and new technology to use (and abuse!). Around this time I wrote a little javascript utility to detect the presence of the Flash plugin and conditionally inject Flash into a website or not, and I watched as it grew over the years and became one of the most used utilities on the internet.

Flash was huge. Everyone wanted a flashy website and the only way to get one that any meaningful number of people could see was to use Flash. As browsers struggled to keep up, Flash charged ahead allowing us to build some truly amazing websites. Admittedly, there was some abuse of this technology, but we still charged ahead, trying to discover and build the next generation of user interfaces. Most older companies still thought of the internet as just another medium to advertise on. They wanted a flashy website to show off to their investors and clients and cared less about building something useful. The ubiquity of the Flash plugin made it an easy choice to build these new kinds of websites. We weren’t held back by the limitations of HTML any more, and that let us all explore wild ideas and try things that wouldn’t be possible with HTML or Javascript for years to come.

But now, years later, the browsers are catching up. Mobile devices are becoming more important than desktop computers (a trend I expect to continue for years to come). As more people use the internet in their day to day lives, businesses have realized that having a useful website is more powerful than just a flashy animated advertisement.

A few months ago I noticed that SWFObject usage on the top 10,000 websites was declining for the first time ever (I believe usage peaked in the summer of 2010). Last week, Adobe announced that they would halt development of Flash player for mobile devices, and refocus their efforts on HTML. Since this news was announced, I’ve seen many sad and nostalgic tweets from friends and colleagues. Some seem to be taking the news better than others, and it’s understandable that some people are sad to see Flash go. But it’s important to remember that no single technology is responsible for this awesome thing we call the internet.

This brings us back to my younger self sitting at home in Arizona playing with Flash and Photoshop, building new things. I’ve always loved making things, and I suspect many web developers feel the same. The pleasure of making something great is what drives us, not a specific technology. So don’t be too sad about Flash evolving, or even dying. Just keep making awesome things with whatever tools you have at your disposal.

Discuss this post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3227994

Flashbelt 2009

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With Flash on the Beach Miami being canceled, you may be asking yourself “Where do I get my Flash and design conference fix now?” The answer, of course, is Flashbelt! It’s in June, on the 7th to the 10th. You should come!

Tickets are on sale now to this awesome small-ish Flash and design conference. This will be the third year in a row I’ve given a talk here, and it’s easily the best conference in North America.

My talk will be about building and maintaining the YouTube video players, and some lessons and tricks we’ve learned along the way, so if you are interested in very high usage/high performance Flash apps, this should be a good talk for you.

2008 Conference round-up

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A list of conferences I’ll be giving talks at this year so far. If you’re in the area you should check them out:

  1. FiTC: Toronto (April 19-22, Toronto, Canada) – Always a good time Flash conference up in The Canadia. I’ll be giving a talk about the new YouTube API features we announced today, specifically the Flash and Javascript player control APIs and about the new Chromeless player.
  2. Google I/O (May 28-29, San Francisco, CA) – A conference all about Google apps and how to use them. I’ll be giving a talk on using the YouTube player APIs and Chromeless player.
  3. Flashbelt (June 10-13, Minneapolis, MN) – One of my favorite Flash conferences is back this year with a ton of great speakers. I’ll be giving a presentation on lessons learned while rebuilding the YouTube video players from scratch.
  4. Singularity (October 24-26th, Everywhere) – Singularity is a new ‘conference’ that takes place online – all sessions are broadcast over the internet, and there’s a TON of speakers for this thing. It will be very interesting to see how it turns out – I think it has the potential to change the way technology conferences happen online.

I think that’s about it for now. I’m interested in talking about the YouTube API stuff at more conferences. So if you are running a conference and would be interested in having me speak, please let me know.

The 2008 update!

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Hello!

I haven’t posted anything in quite a while, but I suppose I’ve been busy enough to justify it. So, I’ll start with an update to what I’ve been doing over the last few months:

  1. Rebuilding the YouTube video players. Nearly from scratch. More on this later.
  2. Helping out here and there with SWFObject 2.0 – It’s nearly complete, go try it out. This is a completely rewritten version (sorry, not backwards compatible), but we think it’s an overall better solution to any other Flash embed method out there.
  3. We got a puppy.
  4. Mostly enjoying San Francisco. The city is a pretty cool place to live. If you’re a nerd. So far it doesn’t quite measure up to New York City, but it’s still growing on me. My main complaint is that everyone here is crazy crazy crazy about the hot new web startups or who you work for and what you can do for them. New York had a little bit of this, but at the same time there was so much other diversity of interests it just seemed so much more interesting. I used to think that a city full of nerds would be awesome, but now I’m not so sure. Anyway, enough of the SF bashing :).

In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading off to my first SXSW. Should be very exciting, as I normally just hang out with Flash or Javascript nerd conferences, but this one seems so much bigger.