HTML5/CSS3 vs. Flash: Animation

Hi everyone,

One of the top discussions on the web right now is HTML5/ CSS3 vs. Flash. I’ve heard everything from “Flash is going away!!!” to “HTML5/ CSS3 can’t compete with Flash!” Today, I will be throwing in my two cents on the matter.

I use Flash somewhat regularly for projects that I work on with clients. What I like about Flash is that it is very powerful for doing animations. Most animations can be done with a combination of the timeline and ActionScript. Everything is contained in the SWF file once you are done, making it a nice little package for posting on the web.

However, these are the things that I feel are large issues with Flash: It is not accessible. This means that people with challenges or disabilities will not have access to the content. There are no built in functions to help screen readers with reading text. You can’t access the source code of the SWF file once it is on the web… Secondly, you have to have codecs. This is not too big of an issue, but if your whole website is made out of Flash, then it definitely is. You may lose out on some customers because they do not have the newest Flash codec.

I’ve been playing around with HTML5 and CSS3. I converted my portfolio website using the two (except the movie files… those are still SWFs until the video tags are implemented across all browsers). What I like about HTML5 and CSS3 is that it is fully accessible to all people. This is huge! The back end of the webpages has been reorganized with specific tags for accessibility, such as the <header> tag, the <section> tag, the <article> tag, etc. This is an added bonus for us web designers and developers because it makes organizing our files and reading them much easier. I also like how much cleaner the pages look using HTML5 and CSS3 animations. Here’s a sample of an animation by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp:  http://introducinghtml5.com/examples/ch05/animate2.html.

The downside with HTML5/ CSS3 is that it is not fully implemented in all of the web browsers. Once again, Internet Explorer is behind the rest and has not implemented it yet. I also am not sure if making similar animations in HTML5/CSS3 to Flash (like motion tweens and shape tweens), will be easier or harder to do. I am thinking that it will take a lot more back end coding in order to get the animations to do the same thing. I could be wrong, but I do not know yet.

For right now, I think that both HTML5/CSS3 and Flash will be used on the web. I think that Flash will be around for at least a few more years. Who knows? Maybe Adobe will revamp Flash to make it more accessible or add new features? If Adobe does revamp Flash, it will add more competition to the web and drive more innovation.

I am going to continue my quest of learning even more about HTML5/CSS3 and post my findings here.

What are your thoughts on the issue?

Advertisement