Apologies for being probably the 1,000,000th person to realise this, but I believe with the advent of HTML 5 the days of Flash as a mainstream web technology are numbered.

I have been mulling this over for a while, the recent release of Apple’s iPad combined with a conversation I had with a designer not long ago have crystallised my thoughts about it.

The designer emailed me about a project he was involved with, which not only sported a Flash intro, but the whole site was built in Flash. So I set about explaining that it wasn’t 1998 anymore and the benefits of converting  to plain text / HTML from SEO (from time to time I hear Flash is better at SEO nowadays, but I’m still not sure I buy it) and Accessibility points of view.

He was concerned that we would lose the tight control over the typography and visual effects that Flash offered. Again, I explained that with modern coding techniques using HTML 5, CSS 2-3 & Jquery, all aspects of the old site were achievable without the aid of a plug-in.

I also mentioned that having text fly in and out when hovering over links might seem like a good idea to the client and be fun to design, but the end user would probably end up frustrated and annoyed – I know I was after 5 minutes. The point was particularly prescient as it was a brochure style site where the major call to action is contacting the firm. Clearly the goal mustn’t be to make it harder and more irritating for a user to find out who the company is, what they do and how to reach them.

So far so old, everyone has heard these arguments all before and yet flash is still around, still has a large market penetration in the browser space. So what makes me think it’s going away?

In short HTML 5.

The new HTML specification provisions for video to be played natively in the browser without a plug-in. I think this is huge, no more will we visit a site with a freshly installed browser and see the message “You must install another piece of bloat-ware to view this content” (I am paraphrasing here obviously) before the obligatory face palm. There will be no more need to update an extra plug-in every time a security flaw is announced (or not as the case may be) on top of all the other things modern computers need to update.

It seems to me that 70-80% of Flash use is for streaming video on the internet, YouTube, Ustream etc. As soon as the major sites start converting over to HTML 5 and using the browsers native capabilities I can see Flash’s prominence dwindling quite rapidly. The only applications I can see requiring it might be those with very rich user experiences, but with more powerful modern browsers and advanced coding technologies such as Jquery even that will shrink. Leaving just online gaming, e.g. farmville etc. which is a fast growing and lucrative niche at the moment, but I wonder if it will soon reach it’s peak.

So what does all this have to do with Apple and the iPad? Well aside from the pros and cons of the device itself, some commentary has extended the negativity shown to the iPhone in not supporting Flash, to it’s larger slate based cousin.

Criticizing Apple for not supporting Flash on the iPhone was a bit short sighted in the first place as clearly such an authoritarian company is not going to do a competing technology any favours when it could promote it’s own Quicktime format (e.g. the YouTube app). But also for the reasons I listed above, Flash should be surplus to requirements in the near future, more so thanks to Apple’s Safari browser being one of those leading the way in advancing new browser technologies.

With that in mind and the fact that Apple have already sold a shed-load of iPhones (and iPod touch’s), will undoubtedly sell a lot of iPads, their Macbooks aren’t doing too bad either – all of which ship with Safari. Also Google is cranking out their Android / Chrome OS machines, end result: there is going to be a huge market of devices and consumers that do not want nor need Flash in their lives!