Scribd to Ditch Flash in Favor of HTML5
After Apple and Microsoft have (finally!) publicly announced they are ready to pull the plug on Adobe Flash, the first makers of Flash webapps are starting to ditch it in favor of HTML5: As Techcrunch writes, Scribd, an online document hosting service, will focus its efforts on HTML5 from now on.
Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells [Techcrunch]: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”
I am very pleased to hear that. Now that web standards are finally offering the kind of versatility modern web applications need, it is a fantastic development that companies are getting rid of the monster that is Flash. That’s good for the user for so many reasons, and it’s a great example of what HTML5 can really do.
Update: Ryan points out in the comments that Scribd has a demo document online of what this is going to look like. It’s fantastic!
By the way: Another company I would like to see getting rid of Flash (in fact, I never understood why they used it in the first place) is slideshare. They are turning into a de-facto standard for posting presentation slides online, but as of yet, their main UI is solidly in Flash’s claws. 
Yeah, this is pretty awesome! And they have a sneak peek here: http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5
I should say that Microsoft and Apple didn’t REALLY announce their support for HTML5… If anything, their actions will only prevent Flash from being “eradicated” for a while longer… What they did, instead, was announce their support for H264, which they (partly) own. And since H264 is not HTML5 and can never be, they didn’t really announce what you said they did.
Ryan: Very nice, I did not see that before, it’s awesome!
Tiago: What you write is not entirely true. While I do agree with you that the whole h264 issue is a big problem, this post is not about video. Both Apple and Microsoft announced that they support HTML5 as the “future” over Flash and that’s all I am claiming in this blog post. Again, video formats are a completely different issue.
I jumped to conclusions then, I apologize. I’ve seen people confusing HTML5 with the video war, so that’s why I said that. Particularly because Apple and Microsoft only talk about HTML5 when it’s about the video war, and Apple’s Safari has always been up there in terms of standards…
Sorry for the confusion.
Tiago: No problem. I agree whole-heartedly that by saying “here, we support HTML5, we’re all open now” while referring to their implementations of h264 video, both Apple and MSFT are doing the open web — and therefore the users — a huge disservice
What exactly are they using HTML5 for? I see a few CSS3-Transition and animation things in the page, and they talk about downloadable fonts, but those are CSS, right (and they former isn’t even very developed CSS yet)? Has HTML5 just become the new Web2.0? Or is it just synonymous with, “We’re not using Flash for something that never should have used Flash”?
DigDug: Well observed! I think the point they are making is that it is going to look like this, even for more complicated documents. They mention they are going to use canvas.
What about 280slides?
http://280slides.com/
“280 Slides runs right in the browser, with no download and no installation, and it works just like the desktop applications you’re used to.”
Better than to deal with Flash crashes, buggyness and utterly dismal security record.
This change will be much more user friendly. With HTML5 things will just run smoother. No more hold up from Flash.