Decoding Adobe's Big Device Push

nerdyH writes "Adobe yesterday chummed the waters around Flash and AIR as cross-platform app dev environments for mobile devices. It promised runtimes for several popular mobile OSes, including WinMo, Symbian, Palm webOS, and Android, with future RIM/Blackberry support hinted as well. Moreover, it reiterated its commitment to the Open Screen Project, an Adobe-led industry group that, if you deconstruct its name and look at its membership roster, appears tactically focused on enabling hardware acceleration of Flash/AIR on devices, as part of a larger strategy of making the runtimes ubiquitous as UI development frameworks for essentially every computer-like device with a user interface."

Comments

Seems like Adobe is waking up

[dingen]

With HTML5's video, audio and canvas elements, there will be less and less need for Flash in the future on the web. It seems like Adobe is realizing this as well and has decided to move the focus of Flash from mere embedded objects on web pages to a way of easily creating full, rich and cross-platform applications for both PC's and phones.

This coiuld work out pretty well for them in the end. I must admit clicking a game together using Flash and publishing it to every major platform sounds more attractive than the more traditional ways of developing software, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking this.

Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up

[sexconker]

With HTML5 not being supported by MS, and only certain codecs being supported by Apple, the video tag isn't worth shit, unfortunately.

Besides, flash video players are all about the bloat - look at youtube/hulu, you've got captions, annotations, ads, menus at the end, etc.

I haven't looked into the other new tags, but flash for video should have died years ago.

Last I checked embed src="file.ext" worked fine, and my browser loaded a plugin/full app to handle whatever it was. (Though it's not actually part of the spec, is it?)
It wasn't pretty, and it just played the video. But that's all I want. Sadly, everyone else loves "teh web 2.0" and demands all the bits and bobs.

We've had streaming protocols for ages that worked directly in the browser, or by opening up a media app. We can always improve the protocol and the codec without touching flash.

The problem is it's not about the content anymore. The content is the lure. No one wants to serve up site.com/videos/video1.mp4 through straight html. They want you to go to site.com, see ads, click around, add comments, see a list of related and sponsored videos, and maybe watch the actual video.

This is why flash (and similar) will live on, regardless of the alternatives.

Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they will learn something from squeezing Flash onto these embedded devices that can be used to help make the desktop edition less resource intensive.

The proof is in the pudding...

[rickb928]

...and Adobe claimed they would have flash on Android this Fall.

October is here. Now they say next year.

I am not hopeful that they can get flash on Android. Possibly they are waiting for better devices so they don't have to shoehorn it into the G1, which could use more RAM, but it is what it is.

In fact, I predict, no Flash for the G1 ever. And many of the other platforms as well. Adoby wants to FUD the developers and keep HTML5 on the shelf as long as possible, since stuff like Canvas will pretty much eat their lunch and dinner if they don't watch out.