What's the latest and greatest alternative to Flash?
I recently accepted a part time gig revamping a set of multimedia/presentations that are used in med education courses. I have been asked to research the future of web and smartphone multimedia platforms. Basically, whats new. Currently, we use flash to create all of our educational multimedia applications but we are starting to develop a new theme and would like to develop apps that are compatible with the PC, apple products and android products.
I am not up to speed on what is currently trending as this is not my profession! My boss asked me to research HTML5, but I having a feeling that is not going to be a solution. Does anyone have any advice on the "new flash" for web and multimedia? Thanks for reading.
Answer
Most likely the answer you're looking for is the HTML5 stack. This allows for rich animation and manipulation of text and multimedia through Canvas, CSS3 transforms, and JavaScript. HTML5 also has built in support for multimedia through <audio> and <video> tags. Multimedia can also be manipulated and analyzed through new API calls available in JavaScript. There are also a host of JavaScript libraries like RaphaelJS for creation of interactive vector graphics.
Since you are interested in creating multimedia presentations I would recommend checking out HTML5Wow which is essentially a presentation on the capabilities of HTML5, made with HTML5.
http://www.htmlfivewow.com/slide1
There is also capability for 3D animation through CSS 3D transforms, and 3D rendering through WebGL. Check out Google Chrome Experiments for some intense HTML5 demos using WebGL and other HTML5 technologies.
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
There are also some great demos on HTML5's capabilities by Mr. Doob.
Even Adobe acknowledges that HTML5 is the future. They have invested a lot of resources in creating HTML5 manipulation tools, and modifying existing software like DreamWeaver to support HTML5. Take a look at Adobe's new "Edge" software.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
In terms of portability, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE9+ have good support for HTML5. It is also already built into Android, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices. HTML5 will also have a prominent role in application development on the Windows 8 platform.