Why "in HTML5" is even mentioned in that post?

Yep, another post about that ever hot debate on Flash VS HTML5. Time has passed since Jobs took that decisive move against Flash, and I think it’s now time to summarize all that and try to give some sort of temporary conclusion.

Let’s go back to that Steve Jobs speech first. And the reason why Flash was a threat for Apple. At this time, the App Store was getting momentum, and Flash was also getting at a point where it was about to be good on mobile. Look at the performance of AIR apps on the iPad – the most selling game is made with Flash – it’s what Flash could have been on mobile browsers if Adobe wanted it. But allowing that would have led to a radical switch in the industry.

I mean, why the hell would you give 30% of all your sales to Apple if you can make it for free in a browser? The more it goes, the more it appears that HTML5 is still not as good as Flash. And among the big actors, only Google is seriously working on it. Google makes it’s money on data, and Flash is compiled, therefore hard and expensive to analyse. Flash can be blocked also, and Google has no control on it. So HTML5 appears to them as the best option.

When Flash was created, it’s purpose was to allow rich experiences, animations and interactivity, on all platforms. To be a new generation of creative tools. Flash was made by a small bunch of people, money was not necesseraly the main motive in my opinion. So there was a strong “why” in Flash. There was also a strong “why” in HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language – which was on the other hand created for text-based content.

… And here comes the “why” in HTML5. As stated by Tim Berners Lee himself in the Guardian:

“Then Berners-Lee weighed in with a post on the W3 mailing list. First he noted the history:

“Some in the community have raised questions recently about whether some work products of the HTML Working Group are within the scope of the Group’s charter. Specifically in question were the HTML Canvas 2D API, and the HTML Microdata and HTML+RDFa Working Drafts.”

(Translation: Adobe seems to have been trying to slow things down on at least one of these points.)”

This is of course denied by Adobe, but some members of the group don’t share the same views, to read here. So here is the “why”: Adobe doesn’t really want you to do lots on the web, therefore has similar interests with Apple, also willing to slow down HTML5 to protect their App Store.

If HTML5 video is still not fully supported, for example, it’s purely for business reasons. This has nothing to deal with technology. Open source video codecs on the web, might not even ever happen, due to patents, potential law suits, or willingness of control from one of the browser / OS / device manufacturer or even network carrier. And this is just one of many nasty details in that story.

And this is why HTML5 – as a standard and not just a Chrome experiment -  is an utopia for at least 5 to 10 years.  HTML5 is a fake movement for now on, made essentially by Google.  I’m not saying HTML5 will never happen. But this is not an open-source project, this is a business battlefield.

The application level

On a Mac, go to Applications, Flash Builder, then right click on Flash Builder then click on “show package contents”. Into Contents > Mac OS, open Flash Builder X.X.ini. After -vmargs, you will find a few options for memory. Here’s how mine looks like:

-Xmx1024m
-Xms1024m
-XX:MaxPermSize=1024m

Xms is the minimum amount of memory that FB can use. Xmx is the maximum memory. MaxPermSize is the maximum residual memory that will be allocated to FB. Most of the time, PermGen Space errors can be fixed by changing that parameter.

Those are the default values. In case nothing else is set at the JRE or project level, those will be applied.

The JRE level for ANT

In Flash Builder, go to Run > External Tools > External Tools Configuration. Then click on an ANT build and select the JRE tab. In VM arguments, you can define a specific setting for that build script. Here’s what I use most of the time: -Xms512m -Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=2048m.

MXMLC maxmemory

This allows to specify the max memory of one compilation inside an ANT script, for example: <java jar=”${mxmlc}” fork=”true” failonerror=”true” maxmemory=”256m”>. Sometimes it happens that the compiler has too much memory available and fails. Therefore, you will see a Java Heap Space error.

So in my case, I’m giving 1Gb of memory by default at the application level. Then 2Gb for some of my ANT scripts, as it makes compilation faster (but might cause heap space errors, so I keep it project-specific). And finally, maxmemory as a way to reduce memory on some parts of my build script.

It seems that the default JRE in FB don’t accept more than 2Gb in Xmx and MaxPermSize. Most projects won’t use that much memory most of the time anyway, but I would advise not to go higher than that (if you don’t change JRE for the latest ones, FB won’t start at all. You will then have to roll back the config, then restart FB).

Java Heap Space and PermGen Space don’t necessarily mean there’s not enough memory. This is especially true for Java Heap Space, I’ve noticed that reducing the memory (maxmemory) is the solution, most of the time.

Settings might vary a lot depending on your project. Usually, giving 1Gb of memory by default in the application and only changing script-level and mxmlc params to fine tune is the way to go.

Clients are going to ask for more HTML5, and too many things just can’t be done using that technique. This will create a gap in technology which is going to arm the evolution of the web.

More information on ZDnet: A Web Developer Speaks: Flash Player is Dead. HTML5 isn’t ready. Long live AIR!

Download the AIR application here. You will have to update AIR manually to the latest version (3.2) on the Adobe Labs website to make it work.

You can use OBJ, DAE and KMZ files. If you don’t have any models, I’ve added a few in a folder on GitHub (the models are from Oyonale, free for commercial and personal use!).

This project has been made using Flex 4.6 Prerelease, and is using AIR 3.1.

The source is on GitHub, feel free to use it!