37 ms·

Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5

597 points by latch 15y ago

mishkovski 15y ago
I guess next step towards HTML5 is moving off from mobile native development(iOS, Android, Windows Phone).
- suivix 15y ago
  I don't think we should move off completely. It's best to have some redundancy in technology.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
If true, I believe it would be healthy for the mobile web. There are still developers out there who believe that Adobe will come up with a decent mobile Flash experience, even though it has failed to deliver on those promises for the better part of a decade. If Adobe just comes out says "Not gonna happen", we can all move on and invest our time and energy in technologies that actually have a future.
- gcp 15y ago
  Unfortunately, users are still going to be demanding for a while that their online flash games work.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    According to the article, Adobe isn't giving up on Flash altogether. They're simply admitting that Flash does not and will not work on mobile devices. The people who currently play Flash games on the desktop will continue to be able to do so. However, if a game developer wants to offer a good mobile experience, they'll have to make it using web standards. And if they're going to do that, why build it again in Flash for the desktop?
    - gcp 15y ago
      That's the sane reaction people like you and me might have, but it does, quite unfortunately, not match reality at all. Google is heavily advertising Android over iDevices as having Flash support. Users know this and expect Flash to work. It works, sortof, on the default browser. It didn't work for the longest time on Opera and Firefox Mobile. Opera now supports it somewhat reasonably (presumable due to a truly herculean effort of their developers to figure out the real API without any meaningful Adobe support), and Firefox Mobile barely in some of the latest Nightlies. Especially due the latter adding support (for a non-open standard!), I think it's a clear illustration that the feature is considered a must have if you want to have significant user penetration on Android. Consider also how much effort Google is putting into helping Adobe make Flash more secure. Think about why they bother. The problem is that Flash websites are out there. The investment has been thrown into the black hole. People who payed for these sites are going to sit on them for a while. And there's quite some sites that only work on Flash. It only takes one of those that you want to visit, such as a restaurant or whatever, without non-Flash fallback, to see how annoying it is not to have Flash. You can't visit the site, period. So you must support it until all those sites are rooted out. And Adobe now even officially doesn't give a shit.
      - sjwright 15y ago
        Google heavily advertises flash support because it's a point of difference. And while it's true that there are flash-only websites out there, most of them are barely or completely unusable on mobile -- because they require a hovering-and-clicking input device or enough processing power to saturate a desktop CPU or is laid out to suit a large display. The number of websites that require flash AND would work fine on a phone is vanishingly small.
        gcp 15y ago
        I believe your claim is completely and utterly wrong, but I don't think there's a point in discussing much without hard data. As I pointed out above, the 3 browser players on Android seem to think Flash support is quite important. Surprising if it is something nobody wants. Laid out to suit a large display? Jeez, an Android phone in portrait has as much vertical resolution, or more, as a cheap laptop. Even in landscape its not a 2:1 resolution advantage, and the phone can still scale the content, too.
  - ricardobeat 15y ago
    95% of them will never work anyway since they rely on having a pointer and hover actions.
  - rsynnott 15y ago
    What percentage of online Flash games (a) work at acceptable speed on a phone and (b) can be sensibly used with a touchscreen? I'd be astonished if it's more than 5% or so.
- luriel 15y ago
  Many developers already moved on, no need to wait for Adobe's permission to do so.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Agreed, I have too. But this way, with mobile Flash and Silverlight abandoned, we can all put more energy into web standards, even the developers who aren't usually ahead of the curve.
nirvana 15y ago
It's very nice to see Adobe embracing open standards. I look forward to the day when I can completely give up Flash (for Hulu) and Silverlight (for Netflix) completely.[1] They are the source of almost all the issues and browser crashes I've experienced. I never would have guessed it in the 1990s, but in this day and age, native applications and open web standards are the way to go. Java held such promise for time, as did flash, etc. I wonder if their declines are due to their essentially proprietary nature, or due to poor technical choices made by their stewards. (though the latter could be called an example of the former.) [1] In fact, since Hulu is doing so much better than netflix these days I think we'll be giving up netflix completely before too long. I would have thought the ads would be an issue, but Hulu has streaming down solid, and Netflix for whatever reason is more flakey.
- fbuilesv 15y ago
  I don't think for a second that Adobe's decision was motivated by the open nature of HTML5 itself. If anything being open is a downside for Adobe in their current market position. I don't think the "poor technical choices" of their product are explained by its proprietary nature (MP3, H264 are example of the contrary) but they are for sure the reason they're moving away from it.
37prime 15y ago
My colleague will be meeting one of Adobe Senior VP's in a few weeks. For sure I'll send him a few questions to ask. A lot about HTML5.
shaggyfrog 15y ago
Flash has been dead tech walking on mobile ever since Apple passed on it after years of vapourware promises and getting nowhere fast with performance issues -- ones that still persist today on the devices that actually have a Flash player. Jobs especially was roundly criticized for his public stance on this, but in the end, he was proved right: Adobe never could get Flash working properly on a low-powered device.
- soonisnow 15y ago
  For sure the fact that Apple/Steve passed (violently so) on Flash made it mobile DOA, but is it possible the actual frame/second rendering on Flash 10.1 was actually better-performing than HTML5? These tests are from 2010 but suggest so.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s (April) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE (September). Not so sure Steve was proved right so much as it was self-fulfilling prophecy (from the mobile deity himself)?
  - watty 15y ago
    Flash definitely outperforms HTML5 on mobile and desktop: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/ http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
    - jonhendry 15y ago
      But which eats more battery?
      - gcp 15y ago
        The slower one, as the CPU must stay on longer. Not a good argument, hence.
    - gcp 15y ago
      The native Android browser isn't very good in JavaScript (not JIT? old JIT?). Firefox Mobile and Opera Mobile outperform it greatly. That's the advantage of a real open standard: you can choose your implementation. No such luck with Flash.
Riverbed 15y ago
I really hope Adobe can make the transition to a standards-based world fast enough for them to remain a significant player. It is so hard for a mega-company to wean itself from the fat margins of a proprietary world they created.
- wmf 15y ago
  Since Adobe's fat margins were from authoring tools, presumably that opportunity still exists. AFAIK none of the existing HTML5 authoring tools are close to Flash in power.
  - Riverbed 15y ago
    When you own both the authoring tools and the runtime, the world is your oyster. Sure, HTML5 authoring tools suck today, and it will be a huge boon if Adobe leads the way to the promised land. But the barriers to entry for others to then go the same way is so much lower than in Adobe's previous environment. Well, it will be very interesting ride over the next few years!
    - beej71 15y ago
      But the barriers to entry for others to then go the same way is so much lower than in Adobe's previous environment. Can you not just target Flash Player? Seems like the barrier to entry is going to be the same as Adobe's in either case, except that with Flash, Adobe must also maintain Flash Player.
      - TillE 15y ago
        Flash is not open. It's also a moving target for everyone but Adobe.
        beej71 15y ago
        I agree, but on the HTML5 side, we have not one but several moving targets, and IE is hardly open.
thought_alarm 15y ago
Did Adobe ever put a serious effort into mobile Flash development? It seems they were more interested in blaming Apple for the lack of mobile Flash than actually doing the work required to make Flash a remotely viable option for mobile devices. I wonder, what was the catalyst that caused Adobe to admit what everyone else already knew? Perhaps they saw the 5 year anniversary of the iPhone on horizon and figured enough BS is enough.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it's just a non-starter. Flash is just a dying tech. Were someone to seamlessly roll its functionality into an easy to use package, I'm sure you'd see it die out for games as well, which is the only remaining use-case there isn't a ready replacement for.
  - thought_alarm 15y ago
    I'm sure no one understands the technical challenges better than Adobe's engineers. The problem is that the company never admitted these challenges to their developers and customers (until now). Instead, they continually explained the problem as merely a political fight with Apple. Your website is no good on mobile? Don't blame us, blame Apple's lust for control. At worst, they flat out lied to their developers and customers. At best, they are merely incompetent. Either way, if I were heavily invested in any Adobe technology I would seriously question how I could continue to trust that company.
    - idspispopd 15y ago
      Amanita Design, creators of the indy award winning flash-based game "Machinarium", recently released this title to iPad. Machinarium is a basic point and click puzzle adventure. If written in native code this would have no issue running on even the first iPhone (of which there are plenty of similarly detailed games.) However due to using the Adobe iOS tools(air etc.) The performance is dismal on iPad 2. iPad 1 owners have mostly sought refunds, and left bad reviews - forcing the developer to make the game "iPad 2 only" despite being a battery killing lap heater. (This already puts it in the apple cross-hairs as it's available to download to iPad 1 users.) Discontinuing flash player is only half of Adobe's problem, the bad code is still being manufactured into processor-heavy apps which sap battery life and demand far-higher specs than what would normally be required if writing in native code, as noted in the example above. The crux of the problem is that it's not a small amount of additional processing overhead, these basic apps are churning through battery via excessive cpu time. These tools from Adobe are allow developers to port their flash games to the app store, and instead of increasing their revenue, it's creating problems and damaging their image/fan base.
marcamillion 15y ago
It sure is a shame that they never did this before Steve died. Would have been a nice going away present. :(
cowpewter 15y ago
This makes me a little sad. For all that people complain about Flash, and any problems the Flash Player runtime has, it's really a fun environment to code for. I like AS3, I like the Flash API, and I greatly enjoyed writing Flex back when that was most of my job. I don't have nearly as much fun writing HTML/JS as I did writing AS3. I liked the (optional) strict typing. I liked writing for a single target and knowing it would just work. I liked having the power to say, "Render this thing in just this spot," and having it do what I wanted rather than spending hours fiddling CSS. So as much as the decline of Flash is generally heralded as a good thing (and I agree that Adobe really never managed to fulfill their promises/goals with Flash on mobile devices), I'm still going to miss it when it's gone. Edit: Just want to note that I'm speaking from the perspective of writing large, complex webapps in AS3/Flex, not just websites. Use the right tool for the job, etc etc.
- wahnfrieden 15y ago
  Surely you saw this coming though? But anyway, a lot of your issues with HTML/JS for the types of things you'd use AS3 for are a matter of immature tools and libraries I think. Google's added static type notation to JS via their Closure compiler - you might take a look at that. And straightforward rendering is something that Adobe could be great for giving us now that they're refocusing on this.
  - cowpewter 15y ago
    Oh yeah, I've seen it coming. There's a reason my day-to-day at my job doesn't involve much Flash anymore. It doesn't make me any less sad about it becoming more 'official' though. It's more of a nostalgic sad than an upset sad. I can certainly hope that HTML/JS evolves more in the direction of AS3, though I fear that Adobe will either push in the direction of Canvas-manipulating tools (where now you have a crappier API than Flash and you still lose the ability to arbitrarily throw some html in the mix (say, for including ads)) or their tools will mostly lend themselves to huge bloated div-fest monstrosities like what we've seen out of Muse so far.
    - magicalhobo 15y ago
barrkel 15y ago
One of the nicer things about Flash is that it's easy to block en masse, which cuts out on so many visually distracting animated things. One of my worries with HTML5 is that we won't have a good heuristic for preventing animation and video. As it is, YouTube occasionally serves me up their HTML5 video player, and it's a significantly worse experience than the Flash one, for the simple reason that it autoplays, whereas FlashBlock will stop Flash autoplay. I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to a video, wondering why it sounds so awful, and then figuring out there's another video autoplaying in a background tab. So we (or at least I) will need some way of killing / freezing HTML5 canvas, video etc. elements until the user assents to their animation.
- Apple-Guy 15y ago
  Vimeo HTML5 player does NOT autoplay.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  A Chrome/FF extension to disable autoplay seems trivial.
- culturestate 15y ago
  for the simple reason that it autoplays, whereas FlashBlock will stop Flash autoplay. I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to a video, wondering why it sounds so awful, and then figuring out there's another video autoplaying in a background tab. The default behavior in Safari is not to play any content until the tab it's in has been focused - that goes for HTML5 video, Flash, QT, or what have you. Constant spot of annoyance for me anytime I'm forced into a different browser.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jaredsohn 15y ago
    Chrome and FireFox have FlashBlock extensions and Chrome has a "Click to play" option in about:flags (but unlike Safari it is turned off by default.) These features should behave similarly except it sounds like in Safari players are enabled by default when you visit a page but for these other browsers you will have to manually click on things to start them playing.
joelthelion 15y ago
I never thought I'd say this, but thanks, Apple.
drawkbox 15y ago
The hardware just wasn't there to do software rendering and won't be yet for a couple to few years on mobile, by then it may be too late. Hardware acceleration is needed on devices.
magicalhobo 15y ago
Why does an entry titled "Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash" link to an article that starts "Our future work with Flash on mobile..."?
- analyk 15y ago
  Because you didn't read the rest of the sentence? "...devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores."
  - magicalhobo 15y ago
    The title says focusing on HTML5, the article says focusing on native apps with AIR. "ceasing development" and shifting focus are not the same thing.
walropodes 15y ago
Flash in mobile web browsers always felt awkward and sluggish to me. I'm glad that they'll be focusing their mobile efforts towards polishing AIR
- marcf 15y ago
  But isn't AIR just flash? I am somewhat confused.
  - audreyt 15y ago
    AIR is a deployment platform for both WebKit and Flash, and as of AIR3 the support for HTML5 has improved quite a bit: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_and_webkit.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_and_webkit...
artursapek 15y ago
I had honestly forgotten about Flash.
protomyth 15y ago
Given how bad Flash is on Linux and OS X, it was no real surprise that they couldn't get it right on mobile. The two platforms on the desktop that they put few resources into became the basis for the biggest mobile marketshare. Adobe spent so much effort on punditry on their blogs about how everyone else was wrong and reviewers and Apple were so unfair. This is going to be a bigger PR problem then it should of been.
melling 15y ago
This is going to do a lot of harm to Flash on the web. Now we know for sure that any Flash web pages will never work on mobile devices. Mobile apps are great but I still think the majority of people will use their devices as web browsing devices. Finally, it really destroys your trust in Adobe. Will they discontinue their mobile AIR tools if they have a few more bad quarters?
- w0utert 15y ago
  > Finally, it really destroys your trust in Adobe. Will they discontinue their mobile AIR tools if they have a few more bad quarters? That's an interesting and relevant question, but it also nicely shows why the whole idea of requiring proprietary plugins to view web content was a bad idea (tm) in the first place. Hate to say it, but Jobs was right about two things when he defended the lack of Flash support on iOS: it performed like crap, and it was a liability since you'd had to rely on Adobe to support it.
  - watty 15y ago
    It performs better than HTML5 on mobile.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
dylangs1030 15y ago
Disappointing as it may be, it's realistic. I could never see mobile devices being capable of loading and running flash based games or web environments consistently or seamlessly. It just requires too much power the device doesn't have. Even the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dual core technology aren't up to the task, and I believe that's the closest mobile ever came to supporting flash. But even mini laptops can just barely handle flash websites with glitzy introductions and interface. A phone can't handle that, it's outdated and inefficient for smaller modules of power.
- watty 15y ago
  That's a developer issue, not a platform issue. A glitzy HTML5 application/website will perform worse than HTML5. Benchmarks: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/ http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
  - bgarbiak 15y ago
    That's why almost no one makes 'glitzy' apps in HTML5 - and this is, actually, a good thing. However, I expect it to change once Adobe tools for HTML5 will mature and gain traction. As was the case with Flash, these will be more popular among designers than among developers and - with all due respect to our fellow artists - we all know how it ends. Hopefully better hardware, GPU acceleration and WebGL support will be widely adopted by then, making performance issues less significant.
    - cormullion 15y ago
      As one Flash developer told me once, there's a strong temptation to indulge in "flashturbation"...
- lmm 15y ago
  Flash for video works beautifully on the Transformer. I use it to stream anime all the time. I do hope I will still be able to do so, one way or the other.
- juliano_q 15y ago
st3fan 15y ago
What does that mean for RIM and the PlayBook?
- marcf 15y ago
  I think that is a very important question. Flash has been key to RIM's strategy.
- rsynnott 15y ago
  They're not killing AIR for mobile (though I can't see it getting much attention in the future), but the PlayBook is essentially a dead platform walking anyway.
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Adobe still says they're supporting AIR, but RIM seems to be focusing more on HTML5 for the PlayBook now as well.
michaelpinto 15y ago
The idea of Adobe focusing on using Flash to create native apps is a great idea -- and I'll think they'll do well with it. There's an army of folks who know ActionScript who don't want to learn Objective-C, and there are tons of apps which are created for ad agnecies where development speed matters.
- yesbabyyes 15y ago
  There's an army of folks who know ActionScript who don't want to learn Objective-C, and there are tons of apps which are created for ad agnecies where development speed matters. Those apps tend to overlap with the tons of apps that nobody wants.
  - michaelpinto 15y ago
    Well sadly you don't know if an app is wanted until after you ship it! And while you;re correct that there are many second rate apps, there are also many novelty apps that a niche audience (and it doesn't have to big group of people) craves. For example only a small audience may crave a "Red Bean Ice Cream Finder" but if it's you're favorite flavor you gotta have it...
- rsynnott 15y ago
  They've had the tools to do this for a couple of years, and it's been uncontroversially acceptable under app store rules for a year. It's barely ever used. I don't see any reason this would change.
faizanaziz 15y ago
Some loved it, some hated it. Others didn't play with it :)
Tichy 15y ago
The problem is, right now it is easy to circumvent a lot of annoying ads by blocking Flash. If everything goes JavaScript, not so easy.
bigbango 15y ago
Good riddance!
dogfu 15y ago
Apple wins! Jobs always wanted developers in a "exclusivity" arrangement. Adobe busted out and supported Windows as Apple floundered. Jobs always wanted to set an example to those who leave the village. Looks like Apple's refusal to allow flash on mobile will teach all the villagers a lesson. Who is number one? Apple is!
teyc 15y ago
I think it is not because the Flash runtime lost, but because WebKit has achieved ubiquity. Think about it, the reason we needed these runtimes in the first place is because web browsers have their own quirks. However, with WP7 languishing with less than 2 digit market share, what's left in the smartphone markets are essentially webkit-based browsers on Safari and Android.
kinofcain 15y ago
This is the end of flash. Mobile is the future of computing and if Adobe is giving up on flash for the mobile web, then they're giving up on flash for the entire web. The statement that they're shifting focus to air apps is to save face. The only reason people want to build AIR apps is because they already know flash from working with it on the web. And you know what? That's awesome. What the interactive web needs, flash, canvas or HTML5, is creative tools that people like adobe used to be really good at producing.
- dave_sullivan 15y ago
  I think you're talking about 2 different things when you say "the end of flash". If you mean the end of the flash runtime for mobile browsers, then that's accurate. If you mean the end of flash as a dev platform (that is as3, flex, etc.), I didn't get that at all from the article. As it stands, I can write one app that will work on any desktop browser as well as across a growing range of mobile devices, including iOS. The performance really seems to be near native on iOS (for an example, see Defenders HD--I have no relation whatsoever with the devs but I do know it was done in flex). Speaking for myself, I really like as3 and flex for certain tasks and hope Adobe doesn't abandon it as a dev platform.
  - kinofcain 15y ago
    True, I'm talking about two different things. Three, really: mobile flash, desktop browser flash, and the app-packaged flash solutions like AIR. I don't think we can really split mobile web flash from desktop web flash, so I think that Adobe is fully aware that browser flash is dead, and I can't see them putting any real resources into the desktop version. Browser flash has, since it was omitted from iOS, limped along under the promise that it was coming to mobile devices "any day now". And every crappy implementation was met with "well you should see it on the next version of [android os|android phone|blackberry]". But that promise is gone, and browser flash is now a dead product with a rapidly shortening shelf life. The reason I think the death of browser flash is also going to kill AIR (Packaged Flash), is because it eliminates the easy entry point that the AIR platforms had. AIR was barely successful only because it took advantage of a huge, huge ecosystem of people writing browser flash. But that ecosystem has hit it's high water mark and is now officially receding: New developers aren't going to go out of their way to learn browser flash, and people aren't going to pick packaged flash over other tools if they don't already have a vested interest in the language and the runtime. It's ok, but it's just not that great, and at the end of the day true "write once, run anywhere" isn't that important (and it's a bit of a myth), and if it is for you, then write a web app.
Macsenour 15y ago
As a game producer, my understanding and limited experience is that HTML5 for games isn't robust enough to handle Flash-like gaming. In particular I'm thinking of sound issues. Am I correct?
- 9999 15y ago
  Basically, yes. Someone will probably come along and hem and haw about the various competing sound APIs that everyone is working on right now. Then someone will say that Flash can do crazy 3D games, but Canvas/JS can't. Then someone will say that WebGL is coming along nicely. But not on every browser, and not with any consistency. And so on and so forth. Switching to the Canvas/JS stack from AS3 and the latest Flash Player APIs is honestly like stepping into a timewarp to the year 2000 when Actionscript 1 was just coming into its own.
bphogan 15y ago
I seriously wonder what this means for Flash on the desktop. The responsive design movement keeps throwing these Morgan Stanley and other reports out there that predict that by 2015, people will be using mobile devices more than desktop devices. What incentive does Adobe have to continue develppig Flash for the browser? Their statement eludes to nearly ubiquitous support for HTML5 on mobile devices. When IE10 comes out, will that level out the desktop market? I always hear Flash developers saying that Flash does so many things better than HTML5. But if nobody's able to view the content because nobody wants to develop a Flash player for the target platforms, what does it matter? I'm not saying I think Flash on the desktop is dead, but I could certainly see Adobe moving that direction. They're turning Flash into a platform like Titanium or PhoneGap, where it generates mobile apps, mobile web apps, or desktop apps. They're already doing that now. If that works, and I suspect it will work quite nicely, then I'd see even less incentive for them to support building "applets".
cormullion 15y ago
Also, 750 jobs lost. Isnt that a lot? That is sadder than the loss of a plug-in. Adobe seem to lay people off quite frequently, or is it my selective recall?
headhuntermdk 15y ago
Maybe devs will start to realize it is less/not about them and all about their target audience/user
mbq 15y ago
Flash was how it was, but it was quite one -- HTML has never managed to be consistent and predictable technology, and I doubt HTML5 could change anything...
j45 15y ago
Flash in some ways delivered what Java promised to. Truly one code base on multiple devices. Supporting many devices and OS' is what Flash conquered. I kind of chuckled at the iOS statements about Flash, but it seems to run OK on every mobile device I ever got to try it on. Potato, Potatoe. If browsers are the new Universal Interface to conquer and standardize, there's a new problem. We now have variety in implementation of standards, making those standards tough to use. Where Flash was when it was 2-3 years old isn't much different than where HTML5 is for those of us who have been around long enough... except there's a lot more browsers out there than there were Operating systems. Flash could control how efficient it was, or wasn't.. but who will make sure all the browsers process HTML5 efficiently? Are we really aware of how much we're going to get ahead, and how soon? How much time will I spend recreating what Flash, or something else could do for me already today, so I'm not just trading some great HTML5 features for spending my time coding stuff Flash has? I don't use a ton of Flash or HTML5 right now and don't foresee it. When it's the best tool, I use it. Where it's not a complete tool, I'll think twice. This is one area though, where Adobe's expertise might be second to none -- making it work identically everywhere as best as possible with gracefully degrading libraries. I hope their recent acquisitions serve as fuel for solving a problem really needing solving.. by them or someone. Should be interesting to see what happens when we get what we wished for, the devil we don't know vs the devil we kind of did.. :)
yason 15y ago
Finally they came to their senses. They had good authoring tools but not-so-great flash runtime. Retain the former but use highly competitive HTML5 browsers as a standards based runtime instead.
TylerBrock 15y ago
Thank god!

597 points by latch 15y ago

mishkovski 15y ago

I guess next step towards HTML5 is moving off from mobile native development(iOS, Android, Windows Phone).

suivix 15y ago
I don't think we should move off completely. It's best to have some redundancy in technology.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago

If true, I believe it would be healthy for the mobile web. There are still developers out there who believe that Adobe will come up with a decent mobile Flash experience, even though it has failed to deliver on those promises for the better part of a decade. If Adobe just comes out says "Not gonna happen", we can all move on and invest our time and energy in technologies that actually have a future.

gcp 15y ago
Unfortunately, users are still going to be demanding for a while that their online flash games work.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  According to the article, Adobe isn't giving up on Flash altogether. They're simply admitting that Flash does not and will not work on mobile devices. The people who currently play Flash games on the desktop will continue to be able to do so. However, if a game developer wants to offer a good mobile experience, they'll have to make it using web standards. And if they're going to do that, why build it again in Flash for the desktop?
  - gcp 15y ago
    That's the sane reaction people like you and me might have, but it does, quite unfortunately, not match reality at all. Google is heavily advertising Android over iDevices as having Flash support. Users know this and expect Flash to work. It works, sortof, on the default browser. It didn't work for the longest time on Opera and Firefox Mobile. Opera now supports it somewhat reasonably (presumable due to a truly herculean effort of their developers to figure out the real API without any meaningful Adobe support), and Firefox Mobile barely in some of the latest Nightlies. Especially due the latter adding support (for a non-open standard!), I think it's a clear illustration that the feature is considered a must have if you want to have significant user penetration on Android. Consider also how much effort Google is putting into helping Adobe make Flash more secure. Think about why they bother. The problem is that Flash websites are out there. The investment has been thrown into the black hole. People who payed for these sites are going to sit on them for a while. And there's quite some sites that only work on Flash. It only takes one of those that you want to visit, such as a restaurant or whatever, without non-Flash fallback, to see how annoying it is not to have Flash. You can't visit the site, period. So you must support it until all those sites are rooted out. And Adobe now even officially doesn't give a shit.
    - sjwright 15y ago
      Google heavily advertises flash support because it's a point of difference. And while it's true that there are flash-only websites out there, most of them are barely or completely unusable on mobile -- because they require a hovering-and-clicking input device or enough processing power to saturate a desktop CPU or is laid out to suit a large display. The number of websites that require flash AND would work fine on a phone is vanishingly small.
      - gcp 15y ago
        I believe your claim is completely and utterly wrong, but I don't think there's a point in discussing much without hard data. As I pointed out above, the 3 browser players on Android seem to think Flash support is quite important. Surprising if it is something nobody wants. Laid out to suit a large display? Jeez, an Android phone in portrait has as much vertical resolution, or more, as a cheap laptop. Even in landscape its not a 2:1 resolution advantage, and the phone can still scale the content, too.
- ricardobeat 15y ago
  95% of them will never work anyway since they rely on having a pointer and hover actions.
- rsynnott 15y ago
  What percentage of online Flash games (a) work at acceptable speed on a phone and (b) can be sensibly used with a touchscreen? I'd be astonished if it's more than 5% or so.
luriel 15y ago
Many developers already moved on, no need to wait for Adobe's permission to do so.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  Agreed, I have too. But this way, with mobile Flash and Silverlight abandoned, we can all put more energy into web standards, even the developers who aren't usually ahead of the curve.

nirvana 15y ago

It's very nice to see Adobe embracing open standards. I look forward to the day when I can completely give up Flash (for Hulu) and Silverlight (for Netflix) completely.[1] They are the source of almost all the issues and browser crashes I've experienced. I never would have guessed it in the 1990s, but in this day and age, native applications and open web standards are the way to go. Java held such promise for time, as did flash, etc. I wonder if their declines are due to their essentially proprietary nature, or due to poor technical choices made by their stewards. (though the latter could be called an example of the former.) [1] In fact, since Hulu is doing so much better than netflix these days I think we'll be giving up netflix completely before too long. I would have thought the ads would be an issue, but Hulu has streaming down solid, and Netflix for whatever reason is more flakey.

fbuilesv 15y ago
I don't think for a second that Adobe's decision was motivated by the open nature of HTML5 itself. If anything being open is a downside for Adobe in their current market position. I don't think the "poor technical choices" of their product are explained by its proprietary nature (MP3, H264 are example of the contrary) but they are for sure the reason they're moving away from it.

37prime 15y ago

My colleague will be meeting one of Adobe Senior VP's in a few weeks. For sure I'll send him a few questions to ask. A lot about HTML5.

shaggyfrog 15y ago

Flash has been dead tech walking on mobile ever since Apple passed on it after years of vapourware promises and getting nowhere fast with performance issues -- ones that still persist today on the devices that actually have a Flash player. Jobs especially was roundly criticized for his public stance on this, but in the end, he was proved right: Adobe never could get Flash working properly on a low-powered device.

soonisnow 15y ago
For sure the fact that Apple/Steve passed (violently so) on Flash made it mobile DOA, but is it possible the actual frame/second rendering on Flash 10.1 was actually better-performing than HTML5? These tests are from 2010 but suggest so.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s (April) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE (September). Not so sure Steve was proved right so much as it was self-fulfilling prophecy (from the mobile deity himself)?
- watty 15y ago
  Flash definitely outperforms HTML5 on mobile and desktop: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/ http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
  - jonhendry 15y ago
    But which eats more battery?
    - gcp 15y ago
      The slower one, as the CPU must stay on longer. Not a good argument, hence.
  - gcp 15y ago
    The native Android browser isn't very good in JavaScript (not JIT? old JIT?). Firefox Mobile and Opera Mobile outperform it greatly. That's the advantage of a real open standard: you can choose your implementation. No such luck with Flash.

Riverbed 15y ago

I really hope Adobe can make the transition to a standards-based world fast enough for them to remain a significant player. It is so hard for a mega-company to wean itself from the fat margins of a proprietary world they created.

wmf 15y ago
Since Adobe's fat margins were from authoring tools, presumably that opportunity still exists. AFAIK none of the existing HTML5 authoring tools are close to Flash in power.
- Riverbed 15y ago
  When you own both the authoring tools and the runtime, the world is your oyster. Sure, HTML5 authoring tools suck today, and it will be a huge boon if Adobe leads the way to the promised land. But the barriers to entry for others to then go the same way is so much lower than in Adobe's previous environment. Well, it will be very interesting ride over the next few years!
  - beej71 15y ago
    But the barriers to entry for others to then go the same way is so much lower than in Adobe's previous environment. Can you not just target Flash Player? Seems like the barrier to entry is going to be the same as Adobe's in either case, except that with Flash, Adobe must also maintain Flash Player.
    - TillE 15y ago
      Flash is not open. It's also a moving target for everyone but Adobe.
      - beej71 15y ago
        I agree, but on the HTML5 side, we have not one but several moving targets, and IE is hardly open.

thought_alarm 15y ago

Did Adobe ever put a serious effort into mobile Flash development? It seems they were more interested in blaming Apple for the lack of mobile Flash than actually doing the work required to make Flash a remotely viable option for mobile devices. I wonder, what was the catalyst that caused Adobe to admit what everyone else already knew? Perhaps they saw the 5 year anniversary of the iPhone on horizon and figured enough BS is enough.

redthrowaway 15y ago
They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it's just a non-starter. Flash is just a dying tech. Were someone to seamlessly roll its functionality into an easy to use package, I'm sure you'd see it die out for games as well, which is the only remaining use-case there isn't a ready replacement for.
- thought_alarm 15y ago
  I'm sure no one understands the technical challenges better than Adobe's engineers. The problem is that the company never admitted these challenges to their developers and customers (until now). Instead, they continually explained the problem as merely a political fight with Apple. Your website is no good on mobile? Don't blame us, blame Apple's lust for control. At worst, they flat out lied to their developers and customers. At best, they are merely incompetent. Either way, if I were heavily invested in any Adobe technology I would seriously question how I could continue to trust that company.
  - idspispopd 15y ago
    Amanita Design, creators of the indy award winning flash-based game "Machinarium", recently released this title to iPad. Machinarium is a basic point and click puzzle adventure. If written in native code this would have no issue running on even the first iPhone (of which there are plenty of similarly detailed games.) However due to using the Adobe iOS tools(air etc.) The performance is dismal on iPad 2. iPad 1 owners have mostly sought refunds, and left bad reviews - forcing the developer to make the game "iPad 2 only" despite being a battery killing lap heater. (This already puts it in the apple cross-hairs as it's available to download to iPad 1 users.) Discontinuing flash player is only half of Adobe's problem, the bad code is still being manufactured into processor-heavy apps which sap battery life and demand far-higher specs than what would normally be required if writing in native code, as noted in the example above. The crux of the problem is that it's not a small amount of additional processing overhead, these basic apps are churning through battery via excessive cpu time. These tools from Adobe are allow developers to port their flash games to the app store, and instead of increasing their revenue, it's creating problems and damaging their image/fan base.

marcamillion 15y ago

It sure is a shame that they never did this before Steve died. Would have been a nice going away present. :(

cowpewter 15y ago

This makes me a little sad. For all that people complain about Flash, and any problems the Flash Player runtime has, it's really a fun environment to code for. I like AS3, I like the Flash API, and I greatly enjoyed writing Flex back when that was most of my job. I don't have nearly as much fun writing HTML/JS as I did writing AS3. I liked the (optional) strict typing. I liked writing for a single target and knowing it would just work. I liked having the power to say, "Render this thing in just this spot," and having it do what I wanted rather than spending hours fiddling CSS. So as much as the decline of Flash is generally heralded as a good thing (and I agree that Adobe really never managed to fulfill their promises/goals with Flash on mobile devices), I'm still going to miss it when it's gone. Edit: Just want to note that I'm speaking from the perspective of writing large, complex webapps in AS3/Flex, not just websites. Use the right tool for the job, etc etc.

wahnfrieden 15y ago
Surely you saw this coming though? But anyway, a lot of your issues with HTML/JS for the types of things you'd use AS3 for are a matter of immature tools and libraries I think. Google's added static type notation to JS via their Closure compiler - you might take a look at that. And straightforward rendering is something that Adobe could be great for giving us now that they're refocusing on this.
- cowpewter 15y ago
  Oh yeah, I've seen it coming. There's a reason my day-to-day at my job doesn't involve much Flash anymore. It doesn't make me any less sad about it becoming more 'official' though. It's more of a nostalgic sad than an upset sad. I can certainly hope that HTML/JS evolves more in the direction of AS3, though I fear that Adobe will either push in the direction of Canvas-manipulating tools (where now you have a crappier API than Flash and you still lose the ability to arbitrarily throw some html in the mix (say, for including ads)) or their tools will mostly lend themselves to huge bloated div-fest monstrosities like what we've seen out of Muse so far.
  - magicalhobo 15y ago

barrkel 15y ago

One of the nicer things about Flash is that it's easy to block en masse, which cuts out on so many visually distracting animated things. One of my worries with HTML5 is that we won't have a good heuristic for preventing animation and video. As it is, YouTube occasionally serves me up their HTML5 video player, and it's a significantly worse experience than the Flash one, for the simple reason that it autoplays, whereas FlashBlock will stop Flash autoplay. I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to a video, wondering why it sounds so awful, and then figuring out there's another video autoplaying in a background tab. So we (or at least I) will need some way of killing / freezing HTML5 canvas, video etc. elements until the user assents to their animation.

Apple-Guy 15y ago
Vimeo HTML5 player does NOT autoplay.
redthrowaway 15y ago
A Chrome/FF extension to disable autoplay seems trivial.
culturestate 15y ago
for the simple reason that it autoplays, whereas FlashBlock will stop Flash autoplay. I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to a video, wondering why it sounds so awful, and then figuring out there's another video autoplaying in a background tab. The default behavior in Safari is not to play any content until the tab it's in has been focused - that goes for HTML5 video, Flash, QT, or what have you. Constant spot of annoyance for me anytime I'm forced into a different browser.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jaredsohn 15y ago
  Chrome and FireFox have FlashBlock extensions and Chrome has a "Click to play" option in about:flags (but unlike Safari it is turned off by default.) These features should behave similarly except it sounds like in Safari players are enabled by default when you visit a page but for these other browsers you will have to manually click on things to start them playing.

joelthelion 15y ago

I never thought I'd say this, but thanks, Apple.

drawkbox 15y ago

The hardware just wasn't there to do software rendering and won't be yet for a couple to few years on mobile, by then it may be too late. Hardware acceleration is needed on devices.

magicalhobo 15y ago

Why does an entry titled "Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash" link to an article that starts "Our future work with Flash on mobile..."?

analyk 15y ago
Because you didn't read the rest of the sentence? "...devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores."
- magicalhobo 15y ago
  The title says focusing on HTML5, the article says focusing on native apps with AIR. "ceasing development" and shifting focus are not the same thing.

walropodes 15y ago

Flash in mobile web browsers always felt awkward and sluggish to me. I'm glad that they'll be focusing their mobile efforts towards polishing AIR

marcf 15y ago
But isn't AIR just flash? I am somewhat confused.
- audreyt 15y ago
  AIR is a deployment platform for both WebKit and Flash, and as of AIR3 the support for HTML5 has improved quite a bit: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_and_webkit.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_and_webkit...

artursapek 15y ago

I had honestly forgotten about Flash.

protomyth 15y ago

Given how bad Flash is on Linux and OS X, it was no real surprise that they couldn't get it right on mobile. The two platforms on the desktop that they put few resources into became the basis for the biggest mobile marketshare. Adobe spent so much effort on punditry on their blogs about how everyone else was wrong and reviewers and Apple were so unfair. This is going to be a bigger PR problem then it should of been.

melling 15y ago

This is going to do a lot of harm to Flash on the web. Now we know for sure that any Flash web pages will never work on mobile devices. Mobile apps are great but I still think the majority of people will use their devices as web browsing devices. Finally, it really destroys your trust in Adobe. Will they discontinue their mobile AIR tools if they have a few more bad quarters?

w0utert 15y ago
> Finally, it really destroys your trust in Adobe. Will they discontinue their mobile AIR tools if they have a few more bad quarters? That's an interesting and relevant question, but it also nicely shows why the whole idea of requiring proprietary plugins to view web content was a bad idea (tm) in the first place. Hate to say it, but Jobs was right about two things when he defended the lack of Flash support on iOS: it performed like crap, and it was a liability since you'd had to rely on Adobe to support it.
- watty 15y ago
  It performs better than HTML5 on mobile.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

dylangs1030 15y ago

Disappointing as it may be, it's realistic. I could never see mobile devices being capable of loading and running flash based games or web environments consistently or seamlessly. It just requires too much power the device doesn't have. Even the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 dual core technology aren't up to the task, and I believe that's the closest mobile ever came to supporting flash. But even mini laptops can just barely handle flash websites with glitzy introductions and interface. A phone can't handle that, it's outdated and inefficient for smaller modules of power.

watty 15y ago
That's a developer issue, not a platform issue. A glitzy HTML5 application/website will perform worse than HTML5. Benchmarks: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/ http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
- bgarbiak 15y ago
  That's why almost no one makes 'glitzy' apps in HTML5 - and this is, actually, a good thing. However, I expect it to change once Adobe tools for HTML5 will mature and gain traction. As was the case with Flash, these will be more popular among designers than among developers and - with all due respect to our fellow artists - we all know how it ends. Hopefully better hardware, GPU acceleration and WebGL support will be widely adopted by then, making performance issues less significant.
  - cormullion 15y ago
    As one Flash developer told me once, there's a strong temptation to indulge in "flashturbation"...
lmm 15y ago
Flash for video works beautifully on the Transformer. I use it to stream anime all the time. I do hope I will still be able to do so, one way or the other.
juliano_q 15y ago

st3fan 15y ago

What does that mean for RIM and the PlayBook?

marcf 15y ago
I think that is a very important question. Flash has been key to RIM's strategy.
rsynnott 15y ago
They're not killing AIR for mobile (though I can't see it getting much attention in the future), but the PlayBook is essentially a dead platform walking anyway.
ConstantineXVI 15y ago
Adobe still says they're supporting AIR, but RIM seems to be focusing more on HTML5 for the PlayBook now as well.

michaelpinto 15y ago

The idea of Adobe focusing on using Flash to create native apps is a great idea -- and I'll think they'll do well with it. There's an army of folks who know ActionScript who don't want to learn Objective-C, and there are tons of apps which are created for ad agnecies where development speed matters.

yesbabyyes 15y ago
There's an army of folks who know ActionScript who don't want to learn Objective-C, and there are tons of apps which are created for ad agnecies where development speed matters. Those apps tend to overlap with the tons of apps that nobody wants.
- michaelpinto 15y ago
  Well sadly you don't know if an app is wanted until after you ship it! And while you;re correct that there are many second rate apps, there are also many novelty apps that a niche audience (and it doesn't have to big group of people) craves. For example only a small audience may crave a "Red Bean Ice Cream Finder" but if it's you're favorite flavor you gotta have it...
rsynnott 15y ago
They've had the tools to do this for a couple of years, and it's been uncontroversially acceptable under app store rules for a year. It's barely ever used. I don't see any reason this would change.

faizanaziz 15y ago

Some loved it, some hated it. Others didn't play with it :)

Tichy 15y ago

The problem is, right now it is easy to circumvent a lot of annoying ads by blocking Flash. If everything goes JavaScript, not so easy.

bigbango 15y ago

Good riddance!

dogfu 15y ago

Apple wins! Jobs always wanted developers in a "exclusivity" arrangement. Adobe busted out and supported Windows as Apple floundered. Jobs always wanted to set an example to those who leave the village. Looks like Apple's refusal to allow flash on mobile will teach all the villagers a lesson. Who is number one? Apple is!

teyc 15y ago

I think it is not because the Flash runtime lost, but because WebKit has achieved ubiquity. Think about it, the reason we needed these runtimes in the first place is because web browsers have their own quirks. However, with WP7 languishing with less than 2 digit market share, what's left in the smartphone markets are essentially webkit-based browsers on Safari and Android.

kinofcain 15y ago

This is the end of flash. Mobile is the future of computing and if Adobe is giving up on flash for the mobile web, then they're giving up on flash for the entire web. The statement that they're shifting focus to air apps is to save face. The only reason people want to build AIR apps is because they already know flash from working with it on the web. And you know what? That's awesome. What the interactive web needs, flash, canvas or HTML5, is creative tools that people like adobe used to be really good at producing.

dave_sullivan 15y ago
I think you're talking about 2 different things when you say "the end of flash". If you mean the end of the flash runtime for mobile browsers, then that's accurate. If you mean the end of flash as a dev platform (that is as3, flex, etc.), I didn't get that at all from the article. As it stands, I can write one app that will work on any desktop browser as well as across a growing range of mobile devices, including iOS. The performance really seems to be near native on iOS (for an example, see Defenders HD--I have no relation whatsoever with the devs but I do know it was done in flex). Speaking for myself, I really like as3 and flex for certain tasks and hope Adobe doesn't abandon it as a dev platform.
- kinofcain 15y ago
  True, I'm talking about two different things. Three, really: mobile flash, desktop browser flash, and the app-packaged flash solutions like AIR. I don't think we can really split mobile web flash from desktop web flash, so I think that Adobe is fully aware that browser flash is dead, and I can't see them putting any real resources into the desktop version. Browser flash has, since it was omitted from iOS, limped along under the promise that it was coming to mobile devices "any day now". And every crappy implementation was met with "well you should see it on the next version of [android os|android phone|blackberry]". But that promise is gone, and browser flash is now a dead product with a rapidly shortening shelf life. The reason I think the death of browser flash is also going to kill AIR (Packaged Flash), is because it eliminates the easy entry point that the AIR platforms had. AIR was barely successful only because it took advantage of a huge, huge ecosystem of people writing browser flash. But that ecosystem has hit it's high water mark and is now officially receding: New developers aren't going to go out of their way to learn browser flash, and people aren't going to pick packaged flash over other tools if they don't already have a vested interest in the language and the runtime. It's ok, but it's just not that great, and at the end of the day true "write once, run anywhere" isn't that important (and it's a bit of a myth), and if it is for you, then write a web app.

Macsenour 15y ago

As a game producer, my understanding and limited experience is that HTML5 for games isn't robust enough to handle Flash-like gaming. In particular I'm thinking of sound issues. Am I correct?

9999 15y ago
Basically, yes. Someone will probably come along and hem and haw about the various competing sound APIs that everyone is working on right now. Then someone will say that Flash can do crazy 3D games, but Canvas/JS can't. Then someone will say that WebGL is coming along nicely. But not on every browser, and not with any consistency. And so on and so forth. Switching to the Canvas/JS stack from AS3 and the latest Flash Player APIs is honestly like stepping into a timewarp to the year 2000 when Actionscript 1 was just coming into its own.

bphogan 15y ago

I seriously wonder what this means for Flash on the desktop. The responsive design movement keeps throwing these Morgan Stanley and other reports out there that predict that by 2015, people will be using mobile devices more than desktop devices. What incentive does Adobe have to continue develppig Flash for the browser? Their statement eludes to nearly ubiquitous support for HTML5 on mobile devices. When IE10 comes out, will that level out the desktop market? I always hear Flash developers saying that Flash does so many things better than HTML5. But if nobody's able to view the content because nobody wants to develop a Flash player for the target platforms, what does it matter? I'm not saying I think Flash on the desktop is dead, but I could certainly see Adobe moving that direction. They're turning Flash into a platform like Titanium or PhoneGap, where it generates mobile apps, mobile web apps, or desktop apps. They're already doing that now. If that works, and I suspect it will work quite nicely, then I'd see even less incentive for them to support building "applets".

cormullion 15y ago

Also, 750 jobs lost. Isnt that a lot? That is sadder than the loss of a plug-in. Adobe seem to lay people off quite frequently, or is it my selective recall?

headhuntermdk 15y ago

Maybe devs will start to realize it is less/not about them and all about their target audience/user

mbq 15y ago

Flash was how it was, but it was quite one -- HTML has never managed to be consistent and predictable technology, and I doubt HTML5 could change anything...

j45 15y ago

Flash in some ways delivered what Java promised to. Truly one code base on multiple devices. Supporting many devices and OS' is what Flash conquered. I kind of chuckled at the iOS statements about Flash, but it seems to run OK on every mobile device I ever got to try it on. Potato, Potatoe. If browsers are the new Universal Interface to conquer and standardize, there's a new problem. We now have variety in implementation of standards, making those standards tough to use. Where Flash was when it was 2-3 years old isn't much different than where HTML5 is for those of us who have been around long enough... except there's a lot more browsers out there than there were Operating systems. Flash could control how efficient it was, or wasn't.. but who will make sure all the browsers process HTML5 efficiently? Are we really aware of how much we're going to get ahead, and how soon? How much time will I spend recreating what Flash, or something else could do for me already today, so I'm not just trading some great HTML5 features for spending my time coding stuff Flash has? I don't use a ton of Flash or HTML5 right now and don't foresee it. When it's the best tool, I use it. Where it's not a complete tool, I'll think twice. This is one area though, where Adobe's expertise might be second to none -- making it work identically everywhere as best as possible with gracefully degrading libraries. I hope their recent acquisitions serve as fuel for solving a problem really needing solving.. by them or someone. Should be interesting to see what happens when we get what we wished for, the devil we don't know vs the devil we kind of did.. :)

yason 15y ago

Finally they came to their senses. They had good authoring tools but not-so-great flash runtime. Retain the former but use highly competitive HTML5 browsers as a standards based runtime instead.

TylerBrock 15y ago

Thank god!