Everyone seems to be having a go at Flash these days. Steve Jobs rants about it, HTML5 fans look down on it, browsers are taking steps to shield themselves from some of its more buggy aspects.
Firefox is the latest browser to corral Flash to lessen crashes. Version 3.6.4 allowed only 10 seconds grace to unresponsive plugins before terminating them. Version 3.6.6 grants a more generous 45 seconds. Some say this time extension was granted with Flash in mind, because it “routinely hangs on for more than 10 seconds without crashing.”
Flash is facing stiff opposition from a combination of HTML5, CSS3 and various JavaScript frameworks. Early adopters are pushing these technologies to extraordinary lengths. Steve Dennis created an animated version of Twitter’s “Fail Whale” illustration, using only CSS3. Jacob Seidelin used Javascript, Canvas and Ajax to recreate Wolfenstein 3D in a browser. Apple has a Safari-only showcase of online video, audio and animation, with not a .swf to be seen.