Adobe rumored to be abandoning work on mobile Flash player

[DBMandrake]

"Adobe has briefed its employees on the company's plans to abandon development of Flash player for mobile browsers in a blow to Google Android and Research in Motion PlayBook tablets, according to a new report.

ZDNet cited "sources close to Adobe" late Tuesday as claiming that the company will soon make the following announcement, possibly as early as Wednesday:
Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/09/adobe_rumored_to_be_abandoning_work_on_mobile_flas h_player.html

So Adobe are finally throwing in the towel on mobile Flash ?

[Ben]

Oh finally. Ding dong, 'ey?

Flash is a superfluous technology now. We can do better. It never should have made it onto mobiles in the first place, but back-in-the-day so much of the web used Flash (I've even used Flash-based ordering systems on websites!) that I suppose there had to be some crossover.

[Hands0n]

Good riddance, in my opinion. The notion of having to install a layer of software into your browser just so you can "experience the web" is bizarre. It is a wonder that it ever came about in the first place.

HTML5 is where its at, and the future too. Despite their protestations smartphones have managed quite well without Flash. Good on Apple and Microsoft for resisting Adobe Flash, and even Google Android doesn't supply it as part of the basic OS install, it is an installable option.

Me? I don't use Flash on any of my mobiles or Macs. I have found it completely unnecessary. If a website doesn't work because I don't have Flash then I simply go elsewhere.

Flash is destined to go the same way as Microsoft IIS, the latter that wouldn't work properly on anything other than Internet Explorer.

[gorilla]

It will be a while before flash actually goes away. Now, I'm not a fanboy - quite the opposite - but have you tried to work out how to present audio on a webpage using HTML5? You'd think MP3 would be the easiest file format, but no, firefox doesn't have native support.
Oh, by the way, I'm all ears as to suggestions :)

On another note Apple are already all over this: (the whole internet)
http://storeimages.apple.com/1772/as-images.apple.com/is/image/AppleInc/home-hero-slide2_GEO_EMEA_LANG_EN?wid=530&hei=359&fmt=jpeg&qlt=95&op_sharpen=0&resMode=bicub&op_usm=0.5,0.5,0,0&iccEmbed=0&layer=comp

[Ben]

You need to use multiple audio sources to support all browsers: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_audio.asp

[gorilla]

yeah I know, a right pan in the backside. Of course you can still use flash :-) I think we should start a campaign to save flash. Who's with me?





hello?




Just me then. Hhmmmm :-)

[Ben]

Hehe! Ah come on, it's not too bad; at least it can be done in a tag so it's not like you have to exclude certain browser users entirely... but yeah, you still have to encode the audio twice :( Not ideal.

Hopefully that kink will get worked out.

Killing mobile Flash does make sense, though, I think. Browsers shouldn't need third-party add-ons just to browse the web... not anymore. That said, perhaps without Flash we'd not have what we have now in CSS3 and HTML5 - so it was definitely a necessary evil. Just not on my mobile. Please.

[Hands0n]

It is bizarre that Flash lasted as long as it did, given the state of technological development in everything else web. A testament to laziness, just like IIS in its day. And then the world moved on.