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

zdnet.com

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

#21

Post by fbuilesv »

nirvana wrote: post #3

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, a…

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.

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

#23

Post by jay_kyburz »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #11
gcp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, users are still going to be demanding for a while that their online flash games work.

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 f…

They don't have to make it for web standards, they just need to recompile for mobile. They are dropping the flash player not the whole flash platform on mobile.

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

#24

Post by wahnfrieden »

cowpewter wrote: post #16

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…

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.

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

#25

Post by jay_kyburz »

cowpewter wrote: post #16

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…

I have to agree, I'm really enjoying working in flash every day at the moment. Web development has a long way to go before it's this much fun.

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

#27

Post by culturestate »

barrkel wrote: post #17

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, wherea…

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.

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

culturestate wrote: post #27
barrkel wrote: post #17

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, wherea…

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. Cons…

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by cft »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #25
cowpewter wrote: post #16

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…

I have to agree, I'm really enjoying working in flash every day at the moment. Web development has a long way to go before it's this much fun.

The fact that Adobe acquired Macromedia was quite unfortunate for the web. Had Google acquired it, they would have probably opensourced the player code, and maybe contributed the AS3 rendering engine into WebKit as an alternative to javaScript, making Flash native for WebKit browsers. Maybe it's not too late for this step even now.

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

#30

Post by jaredsohn »

barrkel wrote: post #17

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, wherea…

FlashBlock just uses CSS to hide certain and elements from the page; the same techniques work for and (My MuteTab Chrome extension (http://www.mutetab.com) does this) and I'm sure the same could be done for .

If you want to completely prevent animation of the page, though, you'll need to disable JavaScript completely (as you can currently do in the NoScript extension), although this could be troublesome if the site requires portions of the JavaScript to operate.

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