Google has announced that they are going to banish most ads built-in Adobe Flash from its advertising Network. Like may other giants of this industry, Google has taken a step further to the abolishment of Adobe Flash. This is what we are hearing for quite sometime as in 2015, Facebook also called Flash to get retired and Youtube too has been thinking the same.
There is no doubt that Flash is what we can call the best of multimedia and software platform we had and for many years it has ruled over Internet. This technology was developed way back in 1996 and since then, it has changed the way we used to work on Internet, which was just a largely static web at that time. But that was just the beginning.
In the early 2000s, Flash was available on almost every Desktop computer, and was used to display web pages and online games, it brings the animation, the fun element into our desktop. YouTube has also used it as a means to display compressed video content on the web.
However, now Flash is being considered dead or ancient technology which cannot cop up with latest emerging gadgets and technology. Google confirms that its AdWords and DoubleClick networks will no longer accept new “display ads” such as banners built-in Flash and from January 2017 it will stop displaying Flash ads on websites – but some video ads built with Flash will still be accepted.
It is being said that Flash has been plagued by security problems, and has been criticized for affecting computer performance and battery life. Its ubiquity has made it a target in front of possible hackers.
David Mendels(EVP Products, Macromedia/Adobe 1992-2005) confirms that they had build a separate version for feature mobile phones but they didn’t anticipated the power of iPhone and Flash wasn’t quite ready for that and this was a beginning of Adobe Flash’s end.
Google said. We’ve rolled out tools to encourage advertisers to use HTML5, so you can reach the widest possible audience across screens.
Overview of HTML5
HTML5 is basically not a programming language but a mark-up language. HTML5 is the latest revision of the HTML standard superseding HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and XHTML 1.1. HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web.
It is a cooperation between the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).
The new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Google Gears.
Supported Browsers
The latest versions of Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera all support many HTML5 features and Internet Explorer 9.0 will also have support for some HTML5 functionality.
The mobile web browsers that come pre-installed on iPhones, iPads, and Android phones all have excellent support for HTML5.
Features of HTML5
HTML5 introduces a number of new elements and attributes that helps in building a modern websites. Following are great features introduced in HTML5.
- New Semantic Elements: These are like <header>, <footer>, and <section>.
- Forms 2.0: Improvements to HTML web forms where new attributes have been introduced for <input> tag.
- Persistent Local Storage: To achieve without resorting to third-party plugins.
- WebSocket : Awesome bidirectional communication technology for web applications.
- Server-Sent Events: HTML5 introduces events which flow from web server to the web browsers and they are called Server-Sent Events (SSE).
- Canvas: This supports a two-dimensional drawing surface that you can program with JavaScript.
- Audio & Video: You can embed audio or video on your web pages without resorting to third-party plugins.
- Geolocation: Now visitors can choose to share their physical location with your web application.
- Microdata: This lets you create your own vocabularies beyond HTML5 and extend your web pages with custom semantics.
- Drag and drop: Drag and drop the items from one location to another location on a the same webpage.
Adobe Flash v/s HTML5
- Flash and HTML are both in business for a very long time, however, Flash wasn’t able to keep up its pace with HTML’s compatibility with latest technology.
- Flash runs a bit slower on some platforms such as linux, Mac OS X etc. But HTML5 doesn’t have any issue in running on these platforms.
- Adobe Flash is not supported by iOS, that’s the reason, a Flash file cannot be run on devices like iPhone, iPad.
- Flash is not great for mobile devices and laptops whereas HTML5 takes the lead in these areas.
- Adobe Flash also consumes more power and is not compatible with touch screen. On the other hand, HTML5 is totally compatible with touch screen.
Now, many High-Profile organisations like Google, Youtube etc are turning their backs on Flash. In 2015, Adobe had released its 170th Flash update to overcome security vulnerabilities, but it didn’t worked well. To wrap this up, all we can say that Flash was built and designed for some other time and as the technology is advancing, we all have to move further.
