What's the Big Deal about Flash?

[kevlaw]

@kushiel

runs around screeching

Everyone is talking about HTML5 and its video abilities in particular as being our savior. It’s not going to happen until the versions of IE that don’t support it are at <5% market share or governments drop it.

Websites getting funding from Heritage Canada still require that all critical parts of a website be accessible without Javascript. Think about this for a second - if you’re serving video available in both official languages, you cannot switch languages via Javascript. If your design relies on dropdown menus, you’re screwed because IE6 needs Javascript.

We can all drool over HTML5, but it’s almost a decade away from becoming a standard we can use.

I’m painfully aware of the problem of legacy browsers. My site gets almost 40% ie6. I’m deeply disappointed by the XHTML fiasco…but…

I think iPad will accelerate html5 adoption precisely because of the no flash limitation. At my co. We have already decided “no new flash” for our site