Adobe to stop flash for mobile devices

baby_jesus · Nov 9, 2011

just caught this, thought i might share

Adobe ceases mobile flash development

Thefoodman52 · Nov 9, 2011

Nothing to panic over, really.

Adobe is just deciding to stop/slow development with flash and start using HTML 5.
Should benefit us all in the long run.

alostpacket · Nov 9, 2011

Just wait till ads + full sites are all rendered in a canvas tag....

Good luck ad-blocking that.

I get the sense they want to focus on AIR more -- but even that is a bit of a confusing road.

I dont think they can make the kind of money from HTML5 IDEs as the did the Flash IDE. HTML5 coders are not religious Dreamweaver users, whereas a lot of flash devs were bone headed and used the Flash IDE.

Frankly, I am a little surprised. The mobile Flash player was "almost" usable. It needed work, but man they were getting close over the last year. Sad really.

What would be really interesting would be if Adobe went up for sale. Hooboy I'd sure hope that doesnt happen.

mikedt · Nov 9, 2011

Thefoodman52 said:
Nothing to panic over, really.

Adobe is just deciding to stop/slow development with flash and start using HTML 5.
Should benefit us all in the long run.

Indeed.

Seems to me that Adobe is kind of admitting defeat with its proprietary Flash technology and embracing open standards instead. This is good.

alostpacket · Nov 9, 2011

the SWF file format was not proprietary, just the player.

Embracing open standards is good, but remember, as a technology Flash was an amazing thing. A vector rendering engine with a scripting language years ahead of Javascript.

It also put video in the hands of any old joe with a website, and brought us out of the dark ages of competing real player/quick time/Windows media player nonsense.

However, there were valid criticisms of its performance, security, and usability. But these things are still now, and increasingly major problems with JavaScript as well. XMLHttpRequest has broken more back buttons than Flash ever did

Anyways, I'm sad to see it go. It's a fine tech. They should really just open-source it, then we wouldn't have to go backwards with fragmented HTML5 video and browser support. I've always said, it's cool if you dislike Flash, but the people whining that it should "go away" would be better served by making something better instead.

dmaxfan · Nov 9, 2011

Adobe ditches mobile Flash, refocuses on HTML 5 - ZDNet Asia News

chanchan05 · Nov 9, 2011

No problem I think. We're using desktop grade flash on Android, not Flash Lite for Mobile.

A.Nonymous · Nov 9, 2011

Where will our mobile devices go for security holes?

novox77 · Nov 9, 2011

this doesn't impact the Android camp since we have always been flash AND HTML5 ready.

It doesn't impact iOS users because they still can't view flash on any site that uses flash (jailbreak and custom browser aside).

So it may validate Steve Jobs' view on Flash (most of his points I agree with in theory), but it doesn't benefit anyone in the near term.

psychotron · Nov 9, 2011

Looks like Steve Jobs was right all along, stupid Adobe...

robobrain · Nov 9, 2011

It is sad. The end of an era. I've been using Flash since version 2... it has its faults but overall it pushed the web forward.

THE ANDROID · Nov 10, 2011

Hmm no Flash player for future Androids....
Might as well stick with iPhone now as I really wanted the upcoming Sony Ericsson Nozomi.

Brucew0617 · Nov 10, 2011

No Flash is great, I always get crash on my Firefox

DexTyler · Nov 10, 2011

Do many sites use HTML5 right now though? Or any Android browsers?

Hopefully Opera Mobile will use HTML5.

alostpacket · Nov 10, 2011

Sorry for the mess folks, Merged duplicate threads on this topic

fredsmith · Nov 10, 2011

I watch ESPN3 on my GTablet, as well as the NFL Game Rewind. I know that current flash will be supported, but what happens when the inevitable Flash upgrade rolls in? If the sites that I watch anything on currently use Flash, and don't switch to HTML5, then part of the web will be shut down. The ESPN3 app on the iPhone isn't very good, IMHO, because it segregates users out by cable providers. The website does that, but is far less restrictive than the app. Those are just two examples I can think off of the top of my head where mobile users in general may lose access to part of the web. Bummer.

novox77 · Nov 10, 2011

fredsmith said:
I watch ESPN3 on my GTablet, as well as the NFL Game Rewind. I know that current flash will be supported, but what happens when the inevitable Flash upgrade rolls in? If the sites that I watch anything on currently use Flash, and don't switch to HTML5, then part of the web will be shut down. The ESPN3 app on the iPhone isn't very good, IMHO, because it segregates users out by cable providers. The website does that, but is far less restrictive than the app. Those are just two examples I can think off of the top of my head where mobile users in general may lose access to part of the web. Bummer.

It is to the sites' advantage to spend the effort to migrate to the HTML5 standard because they don't want to alienate any customers. Some sites will be slower to realize this than others, either due to not keeping up with the trends, or not having the financial resources to do the conversion.

Adobe's announcement gives a kick in the pants to sites still using flash. If a site has spent the time and money to develop a dedicated mobile version of their site, it behooves them to make sure that video content on that mobile site plays will with mobile devices, obviously, and if Flash is no longer supported in future phones, it'd be dumb for them to do nothing. Consumers will find other sites to get their content.

jerofld · Nov 10, 2011

THE ANDROID said:
Hmm no Flash player for future Androids....
Might as well stick with iPhone now as I really wanted the upcoming Sony Ericsson Nozomi.

Incorrect, sir.

Adobe said they are stopping development of Flash. Not that they're withdrawing it. The flash player will still be in the Android Market, unless Adobe feels that they should remove it. But, at this point, it'll stay there.

John Redcorn · Nov 10, 2011

Does the flash that will still be available for android work on ICS?

I'm happy to see the death of flash imminent but it's not going away for a long time. Would not be cool if ICS can't run flash and cant see lots of the web.

lunatic59 · Nov 10, 2011

John Redcorn said:
Does the flash that will still be available for android work on ICS?

I'm happy to see the death of flash imminent but it's not going away for a long time. Would not be cool if ICS can't run flash and cant see lots of the web.

I can't say about the release version of ICS, since it hasn't been released yet, but it works on the current builds.

alostpacket · Nov 10, 2011

I'd venture a guess that it will work -- they arent really stopping work till spring (so the rumor goes)

UssjTrunks · Nov 11, 2011

mikedt said:
This is good.

I have trouble understanding this rhetoric. How can butchering the online user experience (this applies to your own experience as well), be good for the user?

HTML5 might be the future, but we're still living in the present, where Flash is the overwhelming standard. I rely heavily on Flash every day on my Android phone. This is huge blow to Android's marketability, as having Flash support was one of the main features that won me (and many others) over. I have very few reasons to get another Android phone over an iPhone now.

All in all, I think it would be in Google's best interest to buy Adobe's mobile Flash technology or potentially face a huge exodus of consumers. Many Android users were already on the fence about which phone to get, and this might just sway them over to the dark side. I know I'll now probably be considering an iPhone for my next phone (which would have been completely out of the question before this).

Also, could someone on this forum explain to me what this means:

"Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations."

Could these "licensees" keep the technology alive, or is that just a pipe dream?

Slug · Nov 11, 2011

UssjTrunks said:
we're still living in the present, where Flash is the overwhelming standard.

Not according to Adobe's own blog article:

However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.

All in all, I think it would be in Google's best interest to buy Adobe's mobile Flash technology

Iirc Google are amongst the loudest advocates for HTML5, so I doubt they'd be interested in prolonging Flash's life.

jerofld · Nov 11, 2011

UssjTrunks said:
Also, could someone on this forum explain to me what this means:

"Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations."

Could these "licensees" keep the technology alive, or is that just a pipe dream?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: The Flash language is open source. Adobe may even make it so their players are open source and people could continue to develop for it. But, like practically everything else that is abandoned to the open source community (rather than have been grown there from the start like Unix / Linux), it's likely to die off within a few years. Probably as HTML5 takes the front line and makes flash less and less popular on desktop machines.

Slug said:
Iirc Google are amongst the loudest advocates for HTML5, so I doubt they'd be interested in prolonging Flash's life.

You never know, though. Google likes to buy stuff.

Adobe to stop flash for mobile devices

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