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

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

#81

Post by hrktb »

cowpewter wrote: post #47
hrktb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the sadness ? Flash for mobile browser was a PITA from the start. The lite version was limited not only in power but in the APIs, was too sandboxed, and there was no practical use I can think of. I don't see Flash on android for anything serious (serious as complex webapps). Adobe AIR is a much more adapted and competent environnement, and it's getting more traction that ever. Seems a pretty sunny landscape for A…

I don't have any experience with AIR for mobile, but on the desktop it's a sad second-class citizen, only slightly more featured than wrapping your website in a site-specific browser like Prism, and no longer fully cross-platform since Adobe decided to stop releasing updates on Linux. I really wanted it to be awesome, but it's not. I do agree though, that complex browser apps just don't work on mobile Flash. I had be…

I am still longing to see how it goes, but there seems to be more and more "second class citizens" everywhere.

While iOS would be the major platform for heavy applications, lightweight utility apps get more and more developped in a cross-platform manner. And as a user I don't feel a great loss, since the apps are more often updated and are OK for the job.

Being a second-class citizen should be less damaging now than at the time we were running clunky java or Qt apps on windows or OS X, like a few years ago.

At least we'll get used to it, and it might become the norm for a whole class of apps.

For the position of AIR...it's compile compatible with iOS, android, it has a runtime on Playbook and the upcoming BBX, it seems to be OK on windows phone as well. I have the feeling that it is where "we" really wanted to see Flash move forward. Not as an HTML extension, but as a real immersive platform.

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

#82

Post by cowpewter »

Angostura wrote: post #55
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'm speaking from extreme ignorance here, so excuse my .. ignorance. But isn't the Adobe game plan to keep the powerful development tools that you know and love, but have them spit out HTML5 rather than Flash?

I don't actually like Adobe's development tools. I like ActionScript 3 the language, and I enjoy writing code that targets the Flash Player runtime, and its API. I write all my AS3 in TextMate.

What I've seen so far of Muse doesn't really inspire me to want to use their new HTML5 tools. I didn't like Flash Pro either. Those tools are not written for developers, they are written for designers (or 'devsigners' as terrible as that moniker is).

Now, if Adobe came out with their own version of something like Coffeescript or Google's Closure Compiler, where you wrote your code in some sort of stricter subset of ECMAScript that compiled to browser JS, I'd check it out. Especially if they somehow came up with some sort of sane rendering API that could make valid HTML. But I suspect the closest they will get is writing tools that convert ActionScript to work in Canvas.

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

#83

Post by xiaoma »

redthrowaway wrote: post #14
thought_alarm wrote: post #8

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…

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.

>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.

I gotta call BS on that. I've personally played hundreds if not thousands of flash games on an under-powered $500 laptop purchased in 2009. The article itself mentioned the success of flash on Blackberry devices, due largely to the fact that they cooperated with Adobe's engineers instead of freezing them out.

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

#84

Post by ootachi »

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…

"Render this thing in just this spot" is pretty well handled by absolute positioning, at least.

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

#85

Post by sjwright »

gcp wrote: post #13
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 hercu…

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.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

melling wrote: post #49

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?

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by soonisnow »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #6

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.

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 (April) and 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)?

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

#88

Post by VMG »

ootachi wrote: post #84
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…

"Render this thing in just this spot" is pretty well handled by absolute positioning, at least.

especially with canvas

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

#89

Post by dextorious »

xiaoma wrote: post #83
redthrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I gotta call BS on that. I've personally played hundreds if not thousands of flash games on an under-powered $500 laptop purchased in 2009. The article itself mentioned the success of flash on Blackberry devices, due largely to the fact…

What Flash "success" on Blackberry?

That's like the overstatement of the year...

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

#90

Post by watty »

soonisnow wrote: post #87
shaggyfrog wrote: post #6

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.

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 (April) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFax1oYyBE (September). Not so sure Steve was proved right so much as it was self-fulfilling p…

Flash definitely outperforms HTML5 on mobile and desktop: http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
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