Nerdery… again

26 January, 2009

It’s not a secret: I don’t like Flash.

I don’t like Flash because it is responsible for the overwhelming majority of my browser crashes. I don’t like it because it consumes memory and (especially) CPU resources on my computer for almost the sole purpose of showing me advertisements, which also translates directly to reduced battery life on my laptop.

Furthermore, I resent the way that Flash rose to new heights of popularity by providing a terrible video playback mechanism that (although it largely solved the problem of video codec ubiquity) can’t reliably perform the most basic of media playback functions, such as accurately seeking within the stream, even after it’s fully downloaded.

You could say that I’m overly sensitive, and you’d be right. But it’s my computer and I don’t like Flash, so too bad for you. I am deliberately being an asshole about this to make sure that anyone who makes a web site always has to consider Flash-alternative content. I won’t let you get 100% availability. Sorry. But not really sorry.

I hate flash so very, very much. It's a headache every time I try to load it. And it sucks to develop too. I just wish youtube would go 100% to the H.264 like they've done for the specific Apple tv and iPhone clients, once they turn the corner a lot of sites will follow. Right now everyone wants their embedded video to look like youtube, instead of wanting it to work well.

And relatedly: adobegripes (via Daring Fireball).

Hey, two tumblogs in one day, a Fb record!