Ecommerce Product Design Tool: Why Switch from Flash to HTML5

Like recording tapes, flash is also a medium that needs a player to work and is on the verge of dying a slow death. And just like CD players and then digital players replaced tapes, HTML5 is now making flash obsolete. In 2010 Steve Jobs published letter promoting HTML5 as the future. Since then, it has become a hot subject among Web developers and designers. And last year Google announced that it will stop accepting ads made with Adobe Flash and will totally ban them from 2 January 2017. This means that all digital animations will then have to use HTML5 or be converted into video format.

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This changing trend is also a wake up call for all Magento store owners who are still using flash based product design tool. It's high time you changed your product designer into a HTML5 based product designer for your Magento Store.

In this article we have compared flash and HTML5 and listed down three good reasons why you should use let go of flash and adopt HTML5

Mobile Hates Flash

With the launch of HTML5, mobile has emerged as one of the publishing world’s biggest advantages. Flash on the other hand is constrained to PCs – a market which, according to Gartner, saw a 10% decrease in shipments in 2013 compared 2012.

It is also well known that Flash is not good for many Android & iOS devices and laptops whereas HTML5 moves a step ahead in these areas. Flash consumes more power and is not compatible with a touch screen. Because of this, Adobe Flash causes a device to heat up. HTML5 on the other hand is compatible with touch screens and does not have any issues with any device.

In spite of Adobe's best efforts, Flash for Android devices never gave a seamless user experience. Many customers experienced choppy playback and in certain situations it absorbed battery life down. Beside PCs, there’s won’t be any room left for Flash and even in PCs, Windows 8 will have partial Flash support.

So the verdict is clear – the future belongs to mobile and mobile hates flash. And once mobile sets a trend, desktops will follow suit.

Semantic Structure of Interactive Video

While mobile is the most obvious advantage of HTML5 over Flash, there’s a characteristic that's part of HTML5 semantic structure which is just as important and particularly powerful for Interactive Videos based on HTML5. Through semantic structure of Interactive Video, you can develop projects using HTML5 that have various interconnected pieces that Web crawlers know how to recognize. But with Flash, you’re getting a black box that, when crawled, shows up as just a Flash video without any extra information. Flash is entirely closed container due to which Web crawlers and search engines can’t see inside of it.

Running on Different Platforms

On some platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X, Flash runs very slowly as it does not have access to Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) processing. GPU is performed on the CPU & this causes the application to slow down enormously. Other drawback of Flash is that in order to play a SWF file, you need to install Adobe Flash and so you have to ensure that the device and the operating system are attuned with Adobe Flash.

When it comes to running on Linux and Mac OS X, HTML5 outshines and it has been shown that HTML5 content excels Flash by running 58% faster.

HTML5 is the only application to dart across all mobile devices is replacing Flash, and firms that have long believed on Flash need to get on board. Those who still think Adobe Flash is the way to go ahead will likely be changing their tune in the near future. HTML5 is becoming more and more popular with various companies providing easy to use, interactive platforms to create presentations and websites that are wonderfully designed with least work on the user's end.