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Video: Flash Trounces HTML5 on Mobiles

We're not trying to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but here's an interesting video of Flash and HTML5 duking it out on two different mobile devices.

We're not trying to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but here's an interesting video of Flash and HTML5 duking it out on two different mobile devices.

Developer Chris Black shows us two versions of the same animation, one done in Canvas and JavaScript and one done in Flash. He first runs it on a brand new iPod Touch (HTML5) and then on an Android Nexus One (HTML5 and Flash). The frame rate is much higher and steady on the Flash version – 57 frames per second versus 40fps in Canvas on the Nexus One and 22fps on the iPod.

A few huge caveats here: The animation is very simple, and is hardly on par with most web animations. Also, the JavaScript code is not optimized as much as it could be, which may be hurting the frame-rate numbers in the HTML5 portion of the test. Lastly, it's only an experiment. The HTML5 test measures the rendering speed of the mobile browsers being used, so it can't be taken as a true head-to-head Flash/HTML5 benchmark. Read the comments on Black's post and you'll see people reporting different results across different Android devices. To that point, he uses an iPod Touch, roughly the same as an iPhone and not as fast as an iPad (none of which can play Flash content).

So what's the purpose, then? Black says he's trying to take the temperature of the different choices to decide where it makes the most sense for him to focus his efforts as a developer. Here's his rationale, in the comments of his post:

The bottom line is that I need performance out of new technologies that match that of existing technologies. I’m quickly growing tired of coding down to new technologies. I need code to work in both HTML5 and Flash, not one or the other. When I can build Flash in a quarter of the time that outperforms the same JavaScript, I begin to wonder where we should draw the line.

We found this video on the blog of John Nack, Adobe's product lead for Photoshop who also has a long history of dealing with vector graphics in browsers. His thoughts:

Now, does this mean that HTML5 sucks or shouldn’t be used? Of course not! ... All these implementations are new, and I expect they’ll all improve, especially as developers figure out what techniques work best for each. Competition is great. For things that HTML5 does best, use it; same goes for Flash.

So, add a teaspoon of salt and stir.

This article originally appeared on Webmonkey.com, Wired's site for all things web development, browsers and web apps. Follow Webmonkey on Twitter.

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