This article is a reaction to Periscopic’s post “Our Research into Flash and HTML5: Which One is Right For Your Project?” published on May 3rd on their website.
The analysis done by Periscopic is very professional and well documented. It matches my experience concerning the technical side of the choice. I advise reading the original post because it gives you a realistic view at what stage both technologies are, in relation to their usability in data visualization projects.
I would like to point to another aspect that has significant impact on your decision about the “optimal” visualization solution. Being forced to make a choice between Flash or HTML5 became relevant in 2010 when Apple announced that their smart devices will not support Flash, followed by these devices being extensively used to surf the internet. Even though “smart devices” group without Flash support (mainly iPhone and iPad users) seem to be small compared to total population, it represents a very specific group of users. During the first release of our politic polls dashboard on our website, in January 2011, we learned that the optimal solution is to have both, the Flash and HTML5 visualization. About 95% of our users support Flash and uses Flash visualization. The other 5%, mainly iPhone and iPad users, use the HTML5 version.
Our goal was to build an identical dashboard for smart phone users in HTML5 but we experienced some difficulties and ended up with a slightly different version, as you can see above. The gauge problem in HTML version can be solved by using a different JavaScript library. Our short term solution was to use a slightly simplified version for the smart phones. We considered using the HTML5 solution for all users but unfortunately this one is not correctly displayed in IE6, IE7 and IE8. About 50% of all users, at that time, accessed content on our website using IE6, IE7 or IE8. Forcing HTML5 was definitely not an option for us. We end up offering both the Flash and HTML5 solution and routing the users to the proper version based on their device.
Although the most recent versions of the 5 major browsers support a good amount of HTML5 functionality, these versions still need to be adopted by the majority of users worldwide. This adoption might take some time. According to statistics published on Microsoft IE6 countdown website, IE6 which was released 10 years ago, is still used by 11,4% people worldwide. The IE6 seems an extreme example and there are large differences between the regions, but I want to point that the migration process might take not weeks or months as someone might think, but years. Beside migrating users to new version of browsers, the majority of developers need to obtain sufficient knowledge and gain experience in working with HTML5. The experience is also counted in years. Just look at any job application. The experience of 2 years would be moderate and an expert has usually 5 years or more of experience. If we consider that real “push” toward HTML5 took place in 2010 by Apple not supporting Flash on their mobile devices, I expect that the “in between” period will last for another few years.
Due to the Flash/Apple collision and the (still) wide use of older version of browsers it is not possible to design a single data visualization solution that will perform optimal on all devices and reach wide audience. For a project asking for wide audience and communicating important information in a visually engaging way the dual approach (Flash/HTML5) was the best solution for us. Doing this, you need to accept minor differences between the solutions. In the future we expect HTML5 to become more widely supported and applied by the majority of users in a way Flash is applied now.
If, for any reason, you need to choose for one of the solutions, Flash or HTML5, then ensure you know the users very well and how crucial the information is for them. For what reason someone will visit your webpage/ visualization? Is it to see how cool it is or to obtain important information? Using Flash only for communicating important information to a wide public is not the optimal choice nowadays. The same is true for the “HTML5 only” solution. If the information is crucial to users you cannot afford to miss any user due to incompatibility of your solution with the user’s device. Note that the majority of users lacking Flash support nowadays consist of users of Apple smart devices (iPhone and iPad). This is very specific group of users. It consists for a large portion of opinion makers and influencers telling their opinion to a wide internet public using blogs, posts and social media websites. Their opinion can significantly impact your company’s image.
Choosing between the Flash or HTML5 solution is very difficult in some situations because the majority of users worldwide does not have proper HTML5 support and the small group of users that lacks Flash support has large influence in shaping the public opinion through new media. If possible, avoid the choice for only one of the technologies and support both groups during this transition period.
Dusan Mijatovic
