A bit of technology

This year a new buzz is all around us and it's an adoption of HTML5 and CSS3. Yes, I like this new stuff because it will simplify my job as a web-developer plus it gives some of very needed tools and features for the web. But there's one big misunderstanding flying around...

For some reasons unknown to me a lot of people think that HTML5 will kill Flash. That's arguable for sure, but these people want Flash to die because of stupid Flash banners which slow your PC a lot and disrupt your browsing/twitting/facebooking/etc. They think that HTML5 will auto-magically make everything fast with all the bells and whistles. Oh rainbows and ponies...

The problem with Flash banners/games performance is a consequence of poor programming by banner/game authors - it is not related to Flash itself by any means. It's just that we could not create animated banners by other means. But now we can! With HTML5! I decided to show the world such HTML5 "banner" and created an entry to 10K Apart contest. It is called Plugins suck - check it out! Click Launch App button on the right and follow the instructions.

Plugins suck was crafted using the worst JavaScript practices possible - just like Flash banner authors do (but they use the worst ActionScript practices, of course). It will eat all of CPU time on most systems (it's single-threaded, so on multi-core CPUs it will eat up only on core) and it will leak memory in some browsers. I would recommend not to view it in Firefox - this browser just can't handle that banner. Use Opera or Chrome. Another advice is to run it on dual-core system.

The problem is that we will see such banners on real web sites as soon as HTML5 gets more adoption. It will be somewhere around IE9 release date. And there will be one major difference between HTML5 and Flash banners - you won't be able to disable these lagging banners with 1-3 clicks like you can disable Flash ones.

This is our future of the web without Flash.