Dropping the Distractions

April 20, 2005 burakk

Tim Bray thinks Adobe will drop Flash (after the acquisition), because Flash is a distraction.

In his own words: ‘Adobe, historically, has been good at focusing on what works and dropping the distractions. Flash is a distraction.’.

I’d have loved to say ‘SVG is the distraction’, but that’s not true. SVG has its own tiny place. But Flash has the future. If Adobe is as good as he claims about focusing on what works for the web, this is actually good news for Flash.

Tim Bray is known as the XML guy (one of the three co-editors of the XML specs), so it’s not at all surprising that he is quite blinded by his love for XML formats. He’s also the ‘Director of Web Technologies’ at Sun Microsystems and it may be that he personally doesn’t like Flash as ‘a cross-platform, cross-browser "write once play anywhere" kind of thingy‘*…

Notes:

  • I never understood how the XML will save the world. I thought 42 was the answer to the ultimate question, not XML. It’s a simple text format and has its uses.
  • Sun Microsystems created ‘Java’ language with the promise of ‘Write Once, Run Anywhere’.
  • SVG is an XML format that never made it as the web animation standard as some hoped. Adobe has been a main supporter of SVG. People who don’t get what Flash and SVG are, usually claim that SVG will replace Flash in the future (in a future that never comes…).

* Quoting from JD’s post: Bray on future.

Also see Surely you’re joking Mr Bray by Spike.

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4 Responses to Dropping the Distractions

  1. Burak KALAYCI says:
    April 20, 2005 at 03:16

    Just saw that Mike Chambers also posted about this:
    http://www.markme.com/mesh/archives/007517.cfm

  2. luar says:
    April 20, 2005 at 05:19

    good strike back! Those java/sun guy always wanna flash die, even flash die, it is not the world of java -_-

  3. Jon B says:
    April 20, 2005 at 05:33

    I remember when I first discovered SVG years back on the adobe website – I thought it was cool, but then I thought it was a huge load of uncompressed code that could never be used for serious secure applications in it’s current state – admittedly flash isn’t that secure either, but at list it isn’t in plain view and it is smaller.
    This whole adobe buying macromedia has me scared – I’m try to be positive but macromedia apps are just nice and they developers are nice – adobe seems so corporate and complex and elitist – I love photoshop, but adobe building macromedia’s products just doesn’t feel right.
    Flash should win, it is too big not too, I just hope Adobe don’t bloat it all up with a huge player and all the designer features we’ve been craving – I know we want them, but we also want a ubiquitous and fast, flash player.
    Basically, please don’t break anything Adobe.

  4. Burak KALAYCI says:
    April 20, 2005 at 16:08

    Aral Balkan does it again. Read Tim Bray’s post dissected at:
    http://www.flashant.org/index.php?p=345
    Also Tim Bray updated his post with comments he received from mostly the Flash community.