Adobe Flash’s lackluster performance vs. the promise of HTML-5

It’s Linux’s dirty little secret.  None of the Linux distributions advertise it.  Certainly no one will mention it when they are trying to convert you away from using Windows.  Despite it all, the fact remains, the day you become a Linux user is the day you become a second-class citizen as far as Flash video playback goes.  Now, all those sites that host those video clips you like so much to watch (YouTube, Hulu, DailyMotion, Vh1, etc.) suddenly smell a lot less sweet.

For some time now, Linux and Mac users alike have been quite disappointed, and even irate, at just how poorly the Adobe Flash Player performs on their systems.  Some complain of choppy video playback, while most (myself included) are upset at it’s high CPU usage.  I can pretty much forget about playing Hulu videos at full screen.  Sure, my laptop can do it, but the CPU revs so high that the fan has to stay on the whole time at full-blast.  Besides being noisy and eating up battery charge, that’s a good way to shorten the lifespan of your computer, so instead I’m relegated to watching videos in a small box on my screen (and even then my fan huffs and puffs from time to time).  I don’t know about you, but I’m just plain getting fed up

Sure, there are some open source flash implementations – most notably swfdec and gnash.  Both, however, are much less mature and less feature-complete than the official player, which means they won’t be able to play nearly all the videos you might have hoped.

Maybe somebody out there is listening.  It seems some industry giants share my dislike of Adobe Flash.  Both Apple and Google have so far been giving Flash the cold shoulder on their respective mobile platforms.  Both the iPhone, and Android-powered G1 do not as of yet officially support Flash (nor are there any official plans for them to do so in the future, so far as I know.)

There is even some better news.  A brave not-so-few are leading the charge for alternatives to streaming video with Flash.  Ars writes how HTML-5 may usher in the migration towards an open video standard based on open source and patent-free technologies like Ogg Theora. If you want to see how things are shaping up, you can download the latest Firefox beta,(which comes with built-in support for HTML-5) and then head over to some of Google’s own demos, a YouTube mockup, or perhaps DailyMotion’s OpenVideo site (which was recently announced.)  There’s even an OpenVideo Conference later this month, in which some of these, and other developments will be discussed.

Let’s hope something good will come of all of this soon.  Displacing Flash from it’s dominant position for streaming internet video will certainly not happen overnight.  It will take a persistent and dedicated effort by technologists, programmers, content providers, content portals, browser makers, W3C, and us end-users.  Fortunately, all the pieces seem to be coming together.  Having a friendly giant in your corner doesn’t hurt either.  It’s recent announcement of Google Wave (an HTML-5 based web app), the fact that it owns one of the leading internet video streaming sites, YouTube, their continuing and prominent sponsorship of Firefox, not to mention their industry sway and deep pockets, certainly puts Google in a strategically-significant position to push for HTML-5 adoption.

As for myself, for now I’ll just be content to sit back, and wait and see.  Maybe in a year or so I’ll be able to watch Hulu vids in full screen after all.