Last week, Adobe officially announced that it will no longer be developing a Flash player for mobile browsers. Instead, the company will focus its mobile efforts on HTML5 and enabiling developers to create AIR applications that can be packaged and distributed to all the major app stores. Many flash developers are up in arms over the announcement and the future of Flash is again a topic of vigorous debate in the community.
Danny Winokur, the vice president of the Flash Client Platform at Adobe Systems, stated the following in an online post last week:
HTML5 [is] the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
Flash will continue to grow in the desktop space, but will most likely continue in the realm of advanced gaming and premium video. After seeing some of the demos from Adobe Max showing off the GPU accelerated 3D I would say that they have a long future in gaming – just as long as they continue to stay ahead of anyone else.
Ever since the late Steve Jobs posted his “Thoughts on Flash” in April 2010, there have been many debates about the future of Flash. While many of these debates were conducted by those who had no real idea about the technical capabilities of either Flash or HTML and JavaScript, Flash still seemed to become the butt of everyone’s jokes.
If you read the announcement from Adobe closely, you’ll see that the closing remarks are full of positivity. They state that Adobe is super excited about the next generations of both HTML and Flash. I share this optimism, and I too am looking forward to what is now just around the corner for each. Regardless of whether or not this was the right decision for Adobe, my hope is that this news will end the so called ‘War’ between these two technologies. Both technologies are simply tools, and by moving beyond disparaging battles about which is “best”, we can hopefully anticipate pushing the boundaries of both, whether participating in desktop or mobile development.
So, how will Adobe continue to contribute to HTML and the HTML 5 spec? Adobe Edge was a start, but it’s far from something I would use for creating HTML animations in a professional enviroment. It was fun to play around with for awhile, but it is certainly not finished. Maybe exporting Flash to Canvas or SVG? PhoneGap is now an Apache project, and since Adobe recently acquired Nitobi, perhaps we could see some integration there somehow?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. What do you think Adobe could do to improve the mobile web and the mobile ecosystem as a whole?
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By Shaun Dunne
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I see you’re not so impressed by the verbatim of sayings. I am. Remembering: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
Well, IMHO this might start a slow death of flash and a painful time for both webadmins and users:
If we are saying mobile and mean phones, well in this case we have a clear line that points to html5 without problems for anyone (at least if they ever mentioned to really define the standards). If you want anyone on your website using a phone you REALLY should create an optimised version for them, so everything is fine.
But if we say mobile and mean tablets, we come to a different story. If I have created my page scalable and with not too small buttons, tablet users might want to use the full featured “normal” version of my homepage instead of a limited mobile version, that looks strange on the tablets big screen.
Making two versions is bad enough, but making 3 (or more) versions is not so much fun. So Website owners will now tend to use html5 instead of flash whenever possible, so that the “normal” version works on tablets as well as on desktop computers. This might be the reason for a slow death of flash.
But what if you want to use the so cool features of the next generations of flash? This is when the pain starts: either for tablet users (which cannot enjoy pages created in this way) or for the website creators who now have to make 3 versions of their homepages (Desktop version, full featured html5 tablet version and phone optimized version).
Mobile devices will grow more important by the day for everyone who means business in the web. If this growing segment of users is no longer supported by flash, it will be no longer used. Young developers will learn other programming languages than ActionScript.
For a painful time we will have both. But the more devices out there have no access to flash, the less it will be used. And so – sooner or later – it will be a part of web history.
This post, both the comments and the whole news saddens me to the core. It feels I have lost a part of my soul, because ActionScript is bought me in the world of programming and still inspires me to this day.
A simple google search on any Flash topic shows up results from as far as 2000. This shows the kind of community flash enjoyed. I do not like this HTML5, it is no where near. However we have to embrace it and nudge ourselves 5 years back. Since HTML5 is like the dark ages of programming.
Thanks,
Cheers from Pakistan.
Changes are inevitable but it’s tough for developers who, like me, invested years mastering action script, Flash etc. HTML5 is part of the new phrase of mobile communication, and whether we like it or not, things spin and change. People will want free online games etc without plugins. Still great that Javascript is so easy when you know Actionscript.
English is not my first language, so sorry if my weird words dont make sense!!
Greets :)
ps I love this site!
Damn you Steve Jobs. To anyone who has read ‘thoughts on Flash’, I think Jobs was really arrogant and that whole article basically said ‘screw you Flash, I wanna do it my way’. His claims were ignorant, naive and some of them completely lies. Too bad Apple has such a name that it CAN actually make a difference and tell the whole development industries what to do. I am growing to hate Apple more and more, and it’s a shame their ‘cult’ has so many ‘followers’. (I’m not talking about any Apple customers here, but the fanboys and worshippers)