In my opinion Steve Jobs is right about the disadvantages of Flash. It's not an open format and to just use it as a video player just because the browsers don't support certain video content is a bit overkill.
However as a developer of a complex web applications the alternative he gives, HTML5 / Javascript, would be not a pleasant option for me.
First of all they are a bit too open. It is all 'human' readable text which is totally unnescessary. When the HTML is generated/cross compiled from an application server it gets so messy that it's in fact not readable anymore and just eating network bandwidth/memory/cpy cylcles --> energy --> co2 emission and so on. Add it all up for the entire planet for a decade and see what kind of figure comes out... A Flash swf is compact and efficient, but a 100% decompilable alternative would be better.
Second, Javascript is not a practical language. It does not support class/type inheritance, in fact it does not support types. So when writing code you won't have anything 'under the dot'. (My app works with complex data structure maps with many inherited types created on a server, then transferred over the network in to Flash/Flex which then uses it)
When Javascript 2.x finally gets out there it might get better, but that still leaves problem #1 and this one:
It does not compile, so all the errors only appear when you try to run the program. It's not just as advanced as Actionscript 3 or C#.
Then finally there is the problem with Javascript that it has always been a pain in the ...any organ you like, to get it working exactly the same on Internet Explorer and all the other browsers on all other os-ses.
If someone comes up with a open source solution that works with a language at the level of Actionscript or C#, is supported on all platforms and browsers, and can at least do what Flash/Flex or Silverlight can do, I'll be the first to start using it. Maybe Moonlight has a shot. I like the concept (
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight)
Message was edited by: Sander Postma