John Round

Adobe drops support for Flash on mobile browsers

jround — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:24:28 +0000

Although I still believe that Flash is a superior technology to HTML5, and delivers a better user experience, I am finding it harder and harder to justify using Flash. Adobe is correct that the support for HTML5 across mobile browsers is better than the support for their Flash Player. On mobile browsers, HTML5 is the way to go. Their decision makes sense from a purely financial perspective but the manner in which Adobe has handled this abrupt change in their direction leads me to believe:

1) Adobe clearly has given up on the technology whether they will admit that or not. They have stopped development of the plugin for mobile browsers, banished the Flex SDK into the hands of the open-source community, fired hundreds of folks who were responsible for Flash on mobile browsers, and now they are focusing on rolling out new tools to develop HTML5.

2) They care very little about their developer community and really don’t understand how to communicate to and lead them.

3) They do not possess a clear vision of how to move forward successfully. This announcement could have been handled in a way to have the entire developer community looking forward to leveraging their skills with Adobe software into the future. All that would have had to happen would have been to make the announcement part of the AIR 3.0 announcement at Adobe MAX last month. Paint the bigger picture of the increasing success of HTML5 across mobile, and position AIR as the better solution to Unity, Corona, Haxe, or PhoneGap for developing mobile apps.

Adobe is now scrambling to put out the message that nothing has changed for Flash developers and support continues for Flash on the desktop and for AIR. I seriously doubt the P.R. folks who got them into this have the intelligence and creativity to get them back out.

FITC Screens Conference

jround — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:09:59 +0000

Just back from the Screens conference in Toronto. Lots of new things to look into developing for devices. Adobe was conspicuous by their absence. Another failure in their P.R. departments efforts to push AIR and stem the flood of “flash is dead” comments from the HTML5 fan-boys. I think my favorite demo was using your tablet or smartphone to interact with an app called “We Draw” on the Samsung Smart Tv, kind of a pictionary style game. I took lots of notes, as I organize my thoughts I will post on what I learned.

A clever site

jround — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:18:07 +0000

So, as a flash developer this site made me smile. Upon visiting it again several months later I noticed a comment “I thought this was stupid and dumb and the site creator was an idiot… until I checked the source code! Now it’s hilarious, good job sir! “ that made me look at the source. Clever, it made me smile all over again. Is HTML5 Ready Yet?