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Adobe Ends Development of Flash On Mobile Browsers
larry bagina writes "Jason Perlow of ZDNet is reporting that Adobe will stop developing Flash for mobile browsers and focus on AIR and HTML5 tools. I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 750 voices screamed out in terror and were laid off. But that noise was overshadowed by everybody else celebrating."
Mobile being the future of the Web, it should also means the end of Flash on the desktop in a few years. Nobody's going to waste money doing Flash for the desktop and HTML5 for the mobiles, especially when the desktops can already do HTML5 too.
Applications done in Flash but compiled to Adobe Air is okay, just don't trash the Web with the stupid plug-ins.
Next step: agreeing on a CODEC for the HTML5 videos*. That's gonna be a fun topic!
* doesn't the tag allow for two source files? If it doesn't, it should!
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 750 voices screamed out in terror and were laid off. But that noise was overshadowed by everybody else celebrating.
Seriously?? _THAT_ submission made it to the front page with _THAT_ tidbit?? There wasn't another submission that didn't make light of people losing their jobs?
Come on, Slashdot - I know you're trying to generate page views and whatnot to increase revenues but can we please stop being complete asses about it. Eventually you'll start driving people away which will DECREASE page views...
Seriously...
It is really nice that on my Asus Transformer, every website I've used just works. Compare that to my iPod touch and the iPad where I just get a big lego piece.
Until all websites stop using Flash, this sucks.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
I feel sorry for the creators of all the flash content, but OTOH, they should have thought better when they chose that platform in the first place.
The next closed platform to tackle, iOS?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Everybody knew eventually this was going to happen. Adobe started transitioning to HTML5 years ago. Clearly they aren't there yet, but this is proof that progress is being made. (finally! the end of flash is not near, but it's certainly coming!)
It's almost 2012, I think Adobe is doing this at the right time now that most browsers are starting to be fairly HTML5-complete (as complete as HTML5 itself is, which is not _that_ much).
I know many now think "Steve Jobs was right!". Well, I don't think it took a genius to know that this was coming, Adobe has been preparing for it ever since HTML5 started going big (thanks to Apple and Google, among many others). I would not say this is Adobe "finally giving in" to Steve, because Adobe has never really opposed HTML5 AFAIK. Flash has always been complementary to stuff the web was not ready for; even if we hate flash that's why it existed. Now its 2012, not 2007, and most people are ready to go HTML5 and definitely drop flash (wide browser support, more mature spec, somewhat consistent across browsers, etc.. at least compared to 2007).
Oh great, now there is no easy way to block all the bloat of surfing the internet. These were truly the glory days when ad block + flash block created a nice browsing experience. We will soon be subject to every ones personal animation framework; coded in fancy html5 with loads of hacks to get it to work on each browser, no easy way to block it and helpfully running at 99% cpu util.
So, it is no secret Apple devices don't do flash and yet you bought two... way to go on voting with your dollars.
Buying TWO devices whose user experience you claim sucks. Please tell me you are not allowed to vote. Ever!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Next step: agreeing on a CODEC for the HTML5 videos
To support iOS devices you need to support h.264.
Thus supporting any other formats mean extra, needless work.
Pretty much any site on the web today tat supports video has already transcoded to h.264.
Hello, de-facto standard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Adobe is being stupid. I use flash on mobile every day, most of the day. Very stupid move Adobe.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
He had worked on Flash for many years since Macromedia owned the project.
Is he one of the people I can blame for the bugs from back then that still exist today? I kind of feel like a dick for saying it, but maybe if his team were better at their jobs then they would still have them.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It took 750 people to work on mobile flash and it was still complete crap? WTH do they do all day?
I think the real issue is far more hideous. With the likes of Apple (and now Microsoft) saying "No plugins". It was becoming clear only native apps were going to be allowed in the playground.
While many rejoice. See a closed proprietary system is in the death thralls. I caution you not to rejoice. But to contemplate what's really going on.
Apple made a closed system that allowed all profits to funnel through it. And not a peep out of the Dept. of Justice on such anti-competitive practices.
So Microsoft said, "Hey, let's do the same with Windows 8."
Adobe just merely read the writing on the wall. Such anti-competitive behaviors are going to be allowed. A user who purchases a computer will be told by the manufacturer what software they run on their own property.
Adobe doesn't make money on Flash. It costs them a small fortune. They make it on the tools they sell. And well, they're just going to do more with their tools outputting native and HTML5.
In the end....it's the consumers who lose. Less choice. Few alternatives. And it's a pay-to-play(ground).
All apps must be approved by Apple. All developers must share a 1/3 of their profits with Apple. Is it ANY wonder Apple exceeded even Exxon-Mobil?
There's an app for that. But you can't install it unless we approve and get a lion's share. How does this world look for developers?
$1
Apple takes 30 cents.
Gov. take 30 cents.
Developer is left with 40 cents to cover overhead and all.
Steve Jobs can't say "I told you so," all Android users knew he was right (or should have, anyway): flash is crap and we wish the web would switch to something better. But we're not going to be the ones to cut of our noses to spite our faces by going without flash while it is still so pervasive on the web. Steve and his devoted market segment are making the sacrifice for us, and at the same time driving content providers away from flash while I get to enjoy the convenience of still being able to use the flash content from websites who haven't switched. I have nothing but gratitude for that. I'd never buy an Apple product, I don't agree with the man's business practices, and I think the godlike homage he's gotten in the past few weeks since his death unfairly ascribes to him a lot of technical knowledge more properly attributable to the Woz. But credit where credit is due, he repeatedly had the balls to say "this is an outdated technology, we're switching to something better, backward compatibility be damned. Our users will follow us through the rough transition and be glad of it." See OS9, the floppy drive, the PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and soon, hopefully, Flash.
Flash has two primary failings (designed for mouse, and compatibilty loss,) which is is why it doesn't work on:
- Mobile phones without a "mouse"
- Touch devices without a "mouse"
- Console game devices without a "mouse"
- Underpowered CPU devices (think smartphones without 1080p video, and handheld game consoles prior to the 3DS)
- Screen resolution over 480p
- Framerates over 30fps
Flash's failings:
- Pointer optimized, So you need a mouse, or something that mimics the constant movement of a mouse (eg Wiimote)
- Webplugin optimized, try using flash on a PS3, it's terrible. Try it on Android, Terrible. Try it on the Wii, it works as long as you only use one button. You can't make a flash game "Good" on a Wii, and it's unusable on all mobile devices.
- Video decoder written in software (FATAL.)
- No forward compatibility, or at least not any more.
Lets roll back the clock for a minute to see how we can save flash from itself.
Adobe has been adding feature bloat to the Flash Authoring tool, back when it was a good-enough animation tool (since been superseded by tools like ToonBoom)
Adobe kicked off the "video streaming" by relegating the flash player to being nothing but a dumb video player, ignoring it's primary purpose - small vector graphics animation.
Once Adobe put h264 video in it, it's fate was sealed, everyone started producing h264 video content and then the browsers added better software or hardware support without needing the player, particuarly in mobile devices.
So what do you need flash for anymore? You don't need it anymore except for it's originally designed purpose - small vector animation.
So Adobe could save the remains of flash by having the vector animation component integrated into the h264 standard. We currently lack both a 2D and 3D vector playback format that can be treated like video. Forget the flash games, those are done and being replaced with html5 games or ipad/android games that can be integrated with the AIR runtime. Games designed for the desktop, should stay on the desktop and be specifically designed and targeted for mobile touch screens, not try to be "flash everywhere." The last time flash worked "everywhere" was version 7. After that point Mobile devices could no longer play flash, and desktops couldn't keep up with larger screens without increasing CPU speed.
What we need is, basically to define lossless "vector keyframe" and "vector delta frame" along with a "bitmap keyframe" and "bitmap delta frame." MNG didn't take off because it was a bloated problem that tried to be bitmapped flash. Forward compatibility using the mpeg family containers makes more sense, because one of the key problems with large flash files is that they lose sync. I mean like right now in order to make a 3MB swf file a 1080p video on youtube you have to dump all the frames into 1080p frames which consumes something like 100GB without using ZMBV (or about 3GB with it) and then upload it to Youtube which compresses it to like 100MB.
Flash, as a solution to play video is dead. The only reason Youtube employs it, is for ads.
Android's support is only likely to last five or ten more years the urgency is clear.
Android is not Windows. You think this plugin will keep working for another 5 years based on what exactly ? Android vendors can't even be bothered pushing the latest version of the OS to their customers, you think they're going to spend time making sure a dead technology works ?
I don't know what you mean about openness, it is still awesome.
The whole "You can just compile Android from source. Oh nvm, we're not going to give you the latest sources" thing.
I loaded up a hacked version of BBC iPlayer (which uses Flash, at least until tomorrow's update) that works over mobile networks (normally it is limited to wifi), and then I installed the development version of RMaps because there are some handy new features that have not reached the stable version on the market yet.
"You can hack applications!" Developers are just going to love that argument.
"You can install the latest unstable develoment versions!" Because that's the feature that has drawn the multitudes to desktop Linux.
Best of all my friend is able to have my old HTC Hero as a going concern because Cyanogen is better than the official HTC ROM and up to date, rather than it becoming next to worthless.
The ultimate Android argument: it's better because a team of volunteers has to spend their time hacking it into an actual non-sucking version which the customer then ultimately has to support themselves instead of their phone manufacturer. Relying on a third party version of an OS when Google has demonstrated that they have no problem keeping the source to themselves to provide their partners and themselves with a competitive advantage is building your house on quicksand.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.