HTML5 vs. Flash comparison finds a few surprises, settles few debates
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 10th 2010 11:36PM
posted March 10th 2010 11:36PM
Think we'd all be better off if HTML5 could somehow instantly replace Flash overnight? Not necessarily, according to a set of comparisons from Jan Ozer of the Streaming Learning Center website, which found that while HTML5 did come out ahead in many respects, it wasn't exactly a clear winner. The tests weren't completely scientific, but they did find that HTML5 clearly performed better than Flash 10 or 10.1 in Safari on a Mac, although the differences were less clear cut in Google Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, Flash more than held its own on Windows, and Flash Player 10.1 was actually 58% more efficient than HTML5 in Google Chrome on the Windows system tested. As you may have deduced, one of the big factors accounting for that discrepancy is that Flash is able to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration in Windows, while Adobe is effectively cut out of the loop on Mac -- something it has complained about quite publicly. According to Ozer, the differences between HTML5 and Flash playback on a Mac could be virtually eliminated if Flash could make use of GPU acceleration. Hit up the link below for all the numbers.Update: Mike Chambers has performed some additional tests that he says shows that "does not perform consistently worse on Mac than on Windows." Check out the complete results here.
I really don't understand the complaints about Flash. I understand that it sucks on OSX (and there is blame on both Adobe's and Apple's side for this) but on Windows I've had no problems pretty much ever. Even on crappy computers Flash games and SD video worked fine. On older, outdated PCs HD Flash works fine (even without 10.1 and HW acceleration). On my current Core i5 with 4GB of RAM Hulu uses like 4% of my CPU and I don't have 10.1 either.
h264 inside of HTML5 will eventually take the place of Flash for video, but in the meantime Flash works perfectly fine.
@DJ I know dude I have no problem with flash so I don't care about html5 because my PC's flash loads YouTube like it doesn't care
This study is comparing *implementations*. The real crux of the matter with respect to these technologies is not about their current implementations. The next version of an implementation of either technology on a given platform may be good or crappy.
What is really at issue here, is do we want the web to be about open standards or proprietary de-facto standards. My vote lies with open standards and HTML 5 is the embodiment of that.
I would rather not have video and interactivity on the web be controlled by a single company (Adobe). Do you?
@publicfarley H.264 is not open. It is pattented. And to use it you must pay for those pattents. which is why Opera and Firefox do use H.264.
@publicfarley I know Ogg Theora is open but HTML5 in Youtube uses h.264 and not Ogg Theora.
@publicfarley well I hope that you support Ogg Theora and not h.264 (Apple's christened standard) since Ogg is open source and h.264 is not. It is likely that if HTML 5 used h.264, Firefox, Opera, and most Linux browsers could not implement h.264 due to royalties.
@publicfarley Yeah, HTML5 should take some place like Videos on web.(Especially non-DRM contents like User-Generated Video) However Flash is also good as web games and vector-motion website. I just don't understand that Flash should be removed because "Jobs said so."
HTML5 doesn't have the capabilities of Flash, and the 10.1 update addresses performance concerns on nearly all systems.
flash sucks, go html5. the person claiming that flash video only use 4% of their cpu (Core i5) is smoking something. go play a 1080p video on youtube, hulu only goes to 480p. or atleast, the stuff I've watched so far only goes up to 480p.
@jckchn Or he is just not using a mac...
the problem isn't that flash is a bad performer on windows and x86. flash performs quite well on windows. the problem is that flash is a closed platform, and if you want flash to work on your project, you need to hope adobe loves you enough to make flash work. maemo/meego for example, is stuck with the *awful* linux plugin. if HTML5 is performing badly, the meego people can fix it themselves. if flash is performing badly, they have to beg adobe to fix it. if we keep depending on flash, we are going to forever be limited to systems from a few big manufacturers.
@notatoad
I don't like the idea of all this flash content being beholden to Adobe, but for those same exact reasons, I don't own anything made by Apple.
I think it's funny that a _draft_ spec in it's first implementations is giving comparable performance to a tech with a decade in the market. Compare HTML5 to Flash 1 and see how that looks.
@dryan But Flash 1 does not come out recently....HTML5 is great, problem is h.264 and Jobs. I love my Macbook but I hate Jobs(used to like him til iphone).
I hope these performance results translate well over to the mobile platform
In what way is Adobe "cut out of the loop on Mac?" OS X is a completely open platform, developers can make any program they want for it. All the stories linked in this article point to iPhone/iPad news, which is of course a closed platform. There's nothing preventing Adobe from fixing Flash on OS X. This article is inaccurate.
@L3gionCP
I agree. How is it that Engadget can link iPad/iPhone problems to Mac? Sure they're made by the same company, but it's an entirely different operating system; much less limited than iPad/iPhone OS's.
Still I really don't have any problems with Flash. I can say in full honesty that Flash has not *once* crashed Safari, and I watch everything in HD. The incorporation of HTML5 needs to be worked on... not Flash. I'm not just talking about on a Mac, PC, Safari, FF, IE, or anything specific, it just generally needs work altogether.
@L3gionCP because apple does not give Adobe access to all of the api's on a mac. Flash has access to api's on a pc that it cannot access on a mac allowing for things like hardware acceleration among other things. This article is fine, your comment is inaccurate
@Edobe
Adobe can't use OpenCL, that's amazing news!
How did Apple target them and yet let everyone else use it.
and um obviously OpenCL isn't the h264 accelerator API. Okay, just in case you thought i didn't know...
I kinda wondering if this guy remembered in his tests that mac cpu usage goes up to 200% (100% for each core). which would mean that all the mac values should be divided by 2 if thats the case.
I think HTML 5 only exists for people to argue about it.
What I find odd is that, while the absolute CPU usage may be similar, HTML5 Youtube doesn't cause my laptop's fan to run like a jet engine and doesn't stutter on playback like Flash does. And this is on Windows, where support is supposedly best. My graphics card should be able to handle more than 1080p decoding, and does easily in other circumstances, yet it stutters on a 360p Flash video.
@aeiluindae
Are you on 10.1?
@Tes Agreed, he probably hasn't updated flash in ages.
Wouldn't HTML5 be better for battery life on portables? In the end wouldn't they improve on HTML5 as needed? Please educate me on this...
Flash isn't going anywhere, its only going to get better over time.
Did Steve tell you that? What kind of a hip hop name is Steve anyways?
Safari on Mac is a 64 bit program that runs Flash as a 32 bit out of process plug-in so in addition to flash not being able to use GPU hardware acceleration in Mac, that is also a factor for the performance
I don't like Apple denying people from flash but at the same time HTML5 is the ultimate future for streaming video. Like Jobbs said, Adobe is just flat out lazy. Either that or their software teams are so chalked up in red tape that they are hardly utilized for their skills. (old-school software development management) And I say that as a mostly linux but full windows and mac user too. There has been almost no revolution and development in flash since the days of Macromedia. Adobe has just added a little backend here, another option to an aspect there and a *bunch* of it was only to integrate better with their other products. Other than that they have basically ignored advancing the platform for the end user until all this talk right now. Lets see if its anything like 64bit flash support ever gets released. Going on about a half a decade there but we have alpha for linux only! I'm expecting no less from all this hype about 10.1 ever being released as stable.
@mkhpalm
Adobe is not Lazy. Like any other developer they have to deal with what apple has provided in the frameworks:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/10/html5-vs-flash-comparison-finds-a-few-surprises-settles-few-de/3#comments
Simply put Apple has issues with the compositing of assets that Flash Player allows.
my bad, wrong link. Here is the correct one: http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html
I'm curious about what you said regarding Flash not being allowed to take advantage of GPU acceleration on Macs. Where in your linked articles does it explain that?
And does HTML5 on Windows already take advantage of GPU acceleration? Or if HTML5 is improved in that area, will it then be about the same/better as Flash on Windows?
Waaaaaaah, I wanted Flash to go away!
Of course this was a well balanced comparison. Established beta version Flash technology with years of work behind it, versus an early alpha iteration of HTML5. You silly bastards.
I called Flash a beta because it bloody well is. I'll consider it a finished artifact when it "does no harm".
Timing is everything. Steve Jobs time is up and Apple has to move on and grant their users the experience they deserve, and that includes enabling the full Flash experience in their products. Oh and please, no more iPads. Innovate!
If Apple were to acquire Adobe and reposition Flash as an open standard it would take all of a few seconds before Silverlight stepped into breach as it's replacement. Everyone other than Apple and Google is using Flash as point of marketing differentiation, i.e., what's USP of of non-Apple tablets without Flash capability. Quite frankly, I'd rather see Silverlight than Flash as a web standard - at least MS has the resources to get it right.
@Ariel Bender
"If Apple were to acquire Adobe and reposition Flash as an open standard..."
That is when I stopped reading, because that world doesn't exist.
I'm all for new standards, but I still haven't figured out why everyone bashes Flash. It's common knowledge (I hope) why it doesn't work as well on Macs. I'm completely avoiding change until browsers, HTML5, and video formats all get along.
Flash has never let me down.
The debate all over the webs seems to be Flash v. HTML5 when it comes to displaying video on said webs. Comparing these two options seems sensible, everyone uses Flash, it is the de facto current standard, and HTML5 has the allure of being a more open potential standard for the future. Still, I would have liked to have seen Silverlight included in the comparison as well; it isn't as popular as flash but in my experience it has appeared to be rather snappy in its video playback.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned code issues. I tried to watch Youtube and other sites that supposedly support HTML5 from Firefox but I couldn't. You know why? Because H.264 is not free. So Firefox could not include it in the browser. And most video content out there is in H.264 or some other closed codec format. Chrome does have it and I honestly don't know how they got away with it (or maybe they are paying licensing fees).
Here we go again!
Please, once and for all, here is a quote from Morgan Adams, an interactive content developer who knows a lot about building Flash and what he had to say:
Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.
That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.
Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
and please don't post links to "simulation videos" like this:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/08/hp-slate-makes-an-appearance-to-show-off-flash-stays-for-a-rock/?s=t5
It's not real!
Hmmm, doesn't Chrome have GPU Acceleration?
Anyways, I wish someone would make a custom version of Chrome without V8. Then have a whitelist where if a certain site could benefit from the V8 javascript engine (such as gmail, docs) load a real Chrome with all it's full bells and whistles for that site.
Simple DHTML navigation scripts don't need to be compiled to native code, imho.
It's a bit unfair for Adobe to whine about being "cut out of the loop" on MacOS X (or any other platform) right now. They can't be bothered to implement the full acceleration features on other platforms, moaning about how it "can't be done", and conveniently ignoring the people who tell them "erm, of course it can, do [this]". Adobe needs to listen to people who know things (I'm not saying I'm one of them, but there are people who do), instead of whining about how the things they supposedly need "can't be done".
I honestly don't see where all the flash hate has came from recently, I know it is not so great on the mac, but on windows I have never had a single complaint about flash, it seems to work fine for me.
Apple will not use Flash if it can help it, because of so very many reasons. Some of which are just bickering between the companies I am sure. I don't care, since Flash is buggy anyway, and Adobe never seems to fix the stuff they should quickly.
Flash is something that programmers have to pay to use, and the changes are out of their control, so the learning curve is a big question mark, based on a profit-minded company. If HTML5 can take its place, then I am all for it. Of course it won't work as well out of the gate, since it is brand new and Flash is 15 years old at least.
Apple's argument that Flash is a potential hack threat is viable.
My Mac runs flawlessly, except for badly coded programs, which only crash themselves, and not the comp. I was helping a friend with his HP laptop, and the thing needs 3-5 minutes to START UP!!!!
so awful to experience after being used to my 10-15 second start-ups. Go OS X. Adobe can sell its minions HTML5 scripting software for 600 bucks a pop if they can write it.
Apple is able to keep up with Android. Well, they are paying more attention to html5. You know apple have give up the cooporation with adobe, than there must have a result: win or not. I trust on apple, because many 3rd software companies like "ifunia video converter and dvd ripper" live on providing software to apple users, what's more i believe html5 is the backbone of the website.
http://www.ifunia.com/ipad-column/on-apple-ipad-html5-and-flash.html