Steve Jobs doesn’t like Flash. That’s patently clear.

He blames most Mac crashes on Flash and, I have to say, since Firefox starting sandboxing plugins I’ve seen regular reported Flash crashes.

However, a lot – a lot – of high profile websites use Flash, mainly to render video. Steve’s answer to this is HTML 5 – a new version of HTML that is being supported more and more by the browsers. And HTML includes video capability. Great – no more Flash.

Except his argument is flawed.

1. HTML 5 is still a draft standard and is liable, probably for a good few years yet, to change.
2. Flash does more than just play video and HTML 5 doesn’t support a lot of what it can do.
3. Although HTML 5 allows video, it doesn’t force you to use a particular format. And, as usually happens, a “war” is going on between competing formats – with 3 formats being particularly strong. Where most browsers are plumping for the 2 royalty free options (after all browsers are given away free), Apple has only added the commercial version to Safari and, so far, that appears to be the less popular. Each site will have to re-encode their videos for a different format other than Flash – are they really going to do it for 3 other formats?
4. HTML 5 video can’t do everything that Flash video can – it is unable to display video fullscreen and there are content protection issues.

Many have speculated that Job’s dislike of Flash mainly comes down to the fact that, unlike pretty much every other aspect of the iPhone, Apple can’t control it. Even apps, written by others, have to be checked and authorised by Apple, after being written on Apple development tools.

Which makes their choice of video format look odd, as it’s a third party commercial product. But then, they would have even less control over the two open formats.  iTunes and Quicktime already use this format and besides, one of the other formats is being championed by Google.

By insisting that Apple products do not use Flash but instead force their particular video format on the masses that buy them they are, in effect, almost guaranteeing themselves success longer term. Or are they? Can the other browsers support a commercial video format which they will have to pay for.

And, at the same time, sites are going to be reluctant to recode all their video until a format is clearly successful.

But, it’s good to see Steve is taking it on the chin as he always does. After a blogger contacted him about supporting the alternative, open formats, Steves reply was “a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs now”.

Nice.

Bit.ly Bookmarklet In Use

A bookmarklet is a browser shortcut that runs a small JavaScript script, adding useful and immediate functionality to whatever page you might be browsing at the time.

There are many, many to be found on the internet – the site marklets.com is a rather complete collection of around 1000 that you can use. Equally, the site centricle.com produces its own (mainly web development related) bookmarklets for people to freely use.

However, one of the most useful bookmarklet related sites is the Bookmarklet Combiner, which lets you generate your own Bookmarklet, consisting of links to others that you specify.

But, to save you the hassle of searching, here are 21 I’ve found to be the most useful. To use any of them, simply drag the name to your Bookmark list at the top of the browser.

Modify Page

1. PageZipper
This appends multiple pages together to form one, continuous page. Useful on blogs, for instance, where a post may be over divided into multiple pages. [Homepage]

2. PrintWhatYouLike
If you wish to print a page, this lets you modify exactly what you want – turn off background printing and images, for instance. You can even mark which part of this screen requires printing. [Homepage]

3. Readability
This lets you strip everything on a website you are viewing but the content of the article itself. Again, useful for blog reading. [Homepage]

4. Remove Bloat
This eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes from a page. This can be particularly useful on those sites where browsing is reduced to a chore thanks to an over abundance of Flash animations!

Downloading

5. Bitlet
Click on the BitLet Bookmarklet when you want to add a “download by bitlet” link near a torrent you want to download. [Homepage]

6. ClipNabber
Download almost any video from any video sharing site. [Homepage]

Passwords

7. View Passwords
Display all passwords on the page that are otherwise not visible – e.g. those displaying as asterisks. [Homepage]

8. BugMeNot
Many sites often free access, but only after signing up to an account. BugMeNot is a service that provides shared signins to popular sites, saving you the hassle of having to sign up first. [Homepage]

9. SuperGenPass
SuperGenPass uses a hash algorithm to transform a master password into unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit. And because it’s a bookmarklet it never stores or transmits your passwords. [Homepage]

Web Development & Design

10. Design
Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools, encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment. [Homepage]

11. Firebug Lite
This is a cut-down version of the well-known Web Development tool, designed to work on other browsers other than Firefox. [Homepage]

12. Ruler
Displays an on-screen ruler which you can use to identify the current pointer position and measure between two points. [Homepage]

13. WP Toolbar
Appends the default WordPress admin menu to whatever page you’re currently on (assuming you’re on a site that’s running WordPress) and styles it with CSS, fixing it to the top right corner. [Homepage]

URL Sharing

14. Email This
Email details of the current page to others. This doesn’t use your own email client, but the email is sent via its own site – simply provide your own email address. [Homepage]

15. Facebook Share
Send details of the current page to your Facebook account, read to share. [Homepage]

16. GmailThis!
Like Email This but uses your own Gmail account – a “Send” window appears with the site details pre-filled in. [Homepage]

Bookmark

17. TheThingsIWant
Save online product pages to the TheThingsIWant website, where you can share, view and buy. [Homepage]

18. Read It Later
Allows you to save the current URL to a special Read It Later account, which you can then view later. [Homepage]

Miscellaneous

19. FreezePage
Stores a copy of the web page that you’re looking at on their servers, for you to access later. [Homepage]

20. Translate
Use Google to translate the current page. [Homepage]

21. Bit.ly
The popular URL shortening service provides a neat sidebar where you can quickly create a short URL and even share it on Twitter [Homepage]

Here is a visual representation of the latest information regarding Android’s “traction” in the 18 months since it debuted.

The charts are from the AndroidTapp.com website and the data was provided by Google Inc. at Google I/O 2010.