Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

on Jan 31st 2012 with 16 comments

In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

November 9th, 2011

On this day, Adobe was scheduled to have its regular analyst meeting to talk about how things were going for the company and lay some groundwork for the direction of the year ahead.

A variety of technical publications began declaring “Flash is dead”…

A press release and blog post released that morning stated that Adobe did intend to drop all future mobile browser work on the mobile version of the Flash Player. Even more alarming than this fact was the language used by Adobe, which centered around the dismissal of the mobile Flash Player with statements indicating that HTML was the superior technology. This rightly upset a good number of Adobe’s strongest supporters in the Flash and Flex community.

Later that week Adobe posted more information about their plans for Flex and revealed that the SDK would be contributed to the Apache Foundation and maintained by Spoon, Adobe, and the community at large.

To say that the community was shocked by these statements would be putting it mildly. A variety of technical publications began declaring “Flash is dead”, and then the real PR-nightmare began as those of us with investments in the Flash Platform became flooded with inquiries from publishers, editors, clients, and the general public – all demanding clarity.

Mobile Flash Player in the Browser

So, what really happened that day? What did Adobe really say? Adobe stated that they would be halting development of the mobile web browser version of Flash Player for Android. This effectively places future versions of Android on the same level as iOS regarding Flash Player.

They are doing this as part of a massive company reorganization to shift resources to HTML support and tooling, and to focus mobile Flash efforts to AIR on Android, iOS, and other potential systems like Windows 8 Metro. Overall, this is a good thing and, if presented differently, would not have had nearly the negative impact that it has.

It is important to note that mobile Flash Player 11 is not going away on Android (for now) – but if Android handsets want to continue with new versions, they must license the porting kit from Adobe and compile it for their customers. It will remain available for download and use in the meantime.

Mobile Flash Player source is being licensed to those who wish to compile for their own platforms (like Blackberry does now). So, mobile Flash Player may not be going away at all in some circumstances. It all depends on what the partners want to do.

Apache Flex

With regard to announcements surrounding Flex: the SDK is being donated to the Apache Software Foundation and will receive continued (hopefully invigorated) support by the Spoon project, Adobe itself, and possibly other corporate contributors.

Flex has seen a good deal of adoption by Flash developers for use in mobile AIR-based projects due to increased, near-native performance in recent builds and for the excellent layout and structural resources it provides. Many mobile developers have a large investment in the framework, and are rightly concerned.

Flex is now an Apache “incubator podling”, and is a very active project within Apache. Assuming that the Apache Flex team is able to organize everything enough to put out a release or two (normally achievable over 4-6 months), the project is expected to graduate to full Apache project status – putting it on the same level as ANT, Tomcat, HTTPD, and other well-known, popular projects used worldwide.

Note that PhoneGap (now, Apache Cordova) was also contributed to Apache by Adobe directly after the Nitobi acquisition – so this is by no means a death sentence or dismissal of the framework.

With Flex in the hands of the wider community, there are actually more resources available in light of the number of individual contributors. Even if you are not an Apache contributor yourself, if you have a patch for Flex that would be useful for others – get in touch with a contributor to see whether they might see value in the patch and perform the contribution in your stead.

Don’t forget that a number of contributors are Adobe engineers and the company has stated that although the runtimes are still under their care – they will align releases in light of what is going on at Apache.

Adobe AIR (Mobile Flash Apps)

Adobe is “doubling-down” on AIR for mobile.

As stated, Flash content delivered through mobile AIR on iOS, Android, and Blackberry is going nowhere and is in fact being provided with more resources. This is what most developers have been working with when it comes to mobile– not Flash Player in the browser.

I believe that AIR is still quite valuable for mobile application development and especially valuable for gaming with the upcoming Stage3D support. Buried amid the 11/9 announcements is a repeated statement that Adobe is “doubling-down” on AIR for mobile.

One of the reasons cited for dropping mobile Flash Player in the browser was to divert resources to mobile AIR. Furthermore, Adobe’s new line of Touch Apps for Android are (almost) all built upon AIR for Android. All of these signs, along with continued development of the runtimes, points to an active future on mobile for the Flash Platform.

Closing Thoughts

Recent announcements from Adobe really aren’t nearly as bad for developers with investments in Flash technology as it would seem. Mobile Flash Player in the browser was (and still is) nice to have. Since November 9th, 2011 – Adobe has pushed out a number of updates to both Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 on mobile. They are actively supporting Flash Player 11 on Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”.

Publishers like O’Reilly and video2brain have both published materials from myself and others since the announcements. My employer and clients value skilled developers who know how to work with Flash on devices, desktops, and even servers.

Things will even out as the reality of the situation becomes clear and people stop freaking out over the announcements. In fact, Adobe is running a “Flex User Group 2012 Tour” in North America to dispel some of these myths and rebuild trust within the community. Flash definitely has a home on mobile – it just might take a different form than what we initially expected.

References

 
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Joseph Labrecque is primarily employed by the University of Denver as senior interactive software engineer specializing in the Adobe Flash Platform, where he produces innovative academic toolsets for both traditional desktop environments and emerging mobile spaces. Alongside this principal role; he often serves as adjunct faculty, communicating upon a variety of Flash Platform solutions and general web design and development subjects.  

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  • http://rblank.com R Blank

    Joseph:

    Great post. But, at the end of it, I’m left with the same thoughts I had last November. Namely, this: Adobe killed Flash Player on mobile, because it failed to hit certain benchmarks or criteria, which had never been publicly disclosed (and thus, which were hidden from the public and community).

    It is only reasonable to postulate that similar benchmarks exist for AIR on mobile. And so, until Adobe discloses what those benchmarks are, anyone selecting AIR as a platform for their mobile presence is left operating on faith that Adobe will not pull the plug on that tech, too.

    In short, I believe that Adobe needs far more than a Flex tour in order to rebuild trust with the community: they need to be transparent with the markets about what AIR needs to accomplish in order to survive. Otherwise, it could easily suffer the same fate as Flash Player mobile, leaving firms who’ve adopted their AIR tech in the lurch.

    • Felix

      I agree and wanted to add that it’s also about the long term, it’s not just about what can be done with Flash now, is about what you will be doing in 3, 4 years. Will there even be Flash jobs left?

  • james

    Thanks for the article Joseph.

    R_Blank, being very active with AIR for Mobile, I can assure you that each new release has shown significant improvements in speed and otherwise. That is not to say that Adobe would never pull the plug on it. But the same can be said about any of the other cross platform development suites, what is to keep them from throwing the towel in.

    I think the *bad* delivery of the announcements left a lot of people with bad tastes in their mouth, and still has them worried about Adobe killing AIR for Mobile. But it is clearly not the case.

  • Eric Sorenson

    Perhaps instead of contemplating if the Flash platform is dead, we should be asking ourselves if we can in good conscience choose Flash for a new project over other options. When considering interoperability, usability, future friendliness and long term viability, I think a Flash solution a hard sell.

    On another note, it’s disconcerting that this mobile blog doesn’t have a responsive layout. I need to zoom to read it on a smartphone.

    • pj

      Its all about context here: desktop browser, mobile browser, desktop app, mobile app?
      So when you say you cannot pick flash for any new project, what context are you speaking about? And what are the other options?

      • Eric Sorenson

        Even Adobe itself can see that JS/HTML5/CSS3 is a better option than Flash for the vast majority of contexts. This is why they’ve diverted resources to building tools for JS/HTML5/CSS3.

        Flash currently has 2 areas of strength: complex video, and multimedia fallbacks for legacy browsers. Over time, the HTML5 video and audio specs will improve, and legacy browsers will fade away.

        Mobile device usage is skyrocketing, causing the percentage of Flash-enabled site visits to drop. The Windows Metro UI doesn’t even allow the Flash plugin. JS/HTML5/CSS3 solutions have a far brighter future. They have strong support from Microsoft, Apple, Google and Adobe. Why focus on a shrinking user base?

  • pj

    I fully agree with you: html5, css3 & js is the platform of the future, and will just keep getting better as the older devices & browsers die out – personally I give it 5 years to reach a critical mass.
    If I was to start a new project today strictly for tablets & smartphones – html5 is the obvious choice.

    But give me a project thats mainly targeting the desktop, requires extensive use of multimedia (sound, video, animation) and interactivity, I will (to answer your question) in very good conscience – pick flash.

    For native mobile apps development, Adobe AIR is also positioning itself among all the many other tools that allow developers to use their current skillls to target android and iOS.

    • Eric Sorenson

      “The transition to a plug-in free Web is happening today. Any site that uses plug-ins needs to understand what their customers experience when browsing plug-in free. Lots of Web browsing today happens on devices that simply don’t support plug-ins. Even browsers that do support plug-ins offer many ways to run plug-in free.

      Metro style IE runs plug-in free to improve battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers.”

      http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/01/31/web-sites-and-a-plug-in-free-web.aspx

      This is coming from the world’s most popular desktop OS. Metro style Internet Explorer will be the default experience in all new Windows desktops within a year.

      • pj

        The worlds most popular desktop os has been trying very hard to kill their 10 year old browser (IE 6) for the past 5 years, and it seems they’ve finally done it. Windows XP, also 10 years old, is still the second most popular os in the world, the first is windows 7. Both have almost 70% share in the OS market. Just like HTML5, I give windows metro another 5 years minimum.

        I base all my platform choice decisions for any project on cold, hard statistics rather than the idealism of open, common web standards – even though I follow and try to keep them as much as possible. This is one of my favourite sources for those statistics: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

    • Eric Sorenson

      Even if we assume that your clients are not going to be put off by your site failing to render on increasingly common mobile devices and Windows8 PCs, by your estimates you’re going to have to rewrite it within 5 years anyway.

      Your clients are not going to like that, especially if they find out that you had future friendly options from the very beginning.

  • http://brianswebdesign.com Brian Temecula

    I’m in the Flash Haters Club. Can’t stand it on any device. I’ve used it on my own sites, but it is now totally unreliable and I don’t want to have to detect Flash and provide alternate content. It’s just too much work. The sooner it dies the better.

  • mraak

    @Eric, I think it’s obvious to anyone that Flash in a browser is becoming obsolete, though maybe not in couple of years to come. What’s great about it is AIR which is far superior platform for device development than any Sencha, Titanium, Corona or similar. Whether for games, list based apps, or whatever. The ease of coding, maturity of the language (as opposed to JS or Lua), UI assets, interoperability with Flash IDE, Illustrator, Photoshop, Catalyst, not to mention RTM(F)P, and a great pool of animators and artists used to work flows. That was the whole point of the article, as written in the closing section:

    “Flash definitely has a home on mobile – it just might take a different form than what we initially expected”

  • Maulik Bengali

    Flash may not be any close to dead. Agreed. But believe me widespread misconceptions may kill it eventually.

  • Tjardo

    All due to the arrogant Steve Jobs and his Apple cult. Damn you Steve.

  • Tjardo

    One thing I don’t understand, doesn’t AIR *run* on Actionscript? How can Adobe drop Flash to focus on AIR? Sounds like a contradiction to me.