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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

#141

Post by cpeterso »

YooLi wrote: post #138
9999 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit: "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary." Well, except for the SWF format, the mxmlc SWF compiler, the Tamarind interpreter, most of the popular video codecs, the FLV container format, AMF, RTMP... And I could go on. Huh. Okay, I guess the only things that are "proprietary" are the authoring tool (although you're welcome to make your own) and some very important parts of the actual Flash Player (if Ado…

Hmm... Where can I download a full Flash plugin made by another company? Not the partial open-source implementations that only do a small part of everything that is 'Flash'. It's like saying Mac OS X isn't proprietary because it uses a lot of open-source pieces. "(if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation)" But they didn't, that's the whole point. Did you read 'the…

> How much does apple make if the app is free?

$99/year from iOS Developer Program. Even free native apps reinforce Apple's platform lock-in. Cross-platform web apps lessen users' dependence on iOS.

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

#142

Post by 9999 »

YooLi wrote: post #138
9999 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit: "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary." Well, except for the SWF format, the mxmlc SWF compiler, the Tamarind interpreter, most of the popular video codecs, the FLV container format, AMF, RTMP... And I could go on. Huh. Okay, I guess the only things that are "proprietary" are the authoring tool (although you're welcome to make your own) and some very important parts of the actual Flash Player (if Ado…

Hmm... Where can I download a full Flash plugin made by another company? Not the partial open-source implementations that only do a small part of everything that is 'Flash'. It's like saying Mac OS X isn't proprietary because it uses a lot of open-source pieces. "(if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation)" But they didn't, that's the whole point. Did you read 'the…

"But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store."

I don't actually hear that many people repeating this, but to expand a little bit on this, it's not just apps, it's also media content. The Flash ecosystem provides one of the few forms of DRM that the big movie studios have deemed acceptable. With Flash off of the iOS web platform it makes it just a little bit harder for users to buy content from someone other than Apple. Do you truly believe that there aren't motives beyond providing a better user experience behind what Jobs laid out in that article? The "break even" story about what the app store makes is a bunch of bullshit too. If Apple's operating expenses are truly 33% of every sale, then they are the least efficient company on the planet.

"Not much of a 'full web' experience then."

Compatibility is actually not all that bad. For your standard restaurant web site or photo portfolio, they're still usable even without being updated, the experience is simply not optimal. Still, having it at all is better than having nothing. The full web is about those millions upon millions of flash animations, restaurant web sites, e-brochures, photo galleries, and digital artworks, some of which date back to the late 90s now. A big part of why I'm disappointed by Adobe's decision is that that stuff is going to become inaccessible to a lot of people going forward. It's like the decision not to bring Hypercard over to OS X. Other technologies had already succeeded it, but there was a lot of useful and interesting stuff done in that format that is more or less lost now.

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

#143

Post by magicalhobo »

cowpewter wrote: post #36
wahnfrieden wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

I still used Grooveshark when you guys moved from Flash to HTML5, despite it being a less enjoyable experience. But, when the AIR app became just a wrapper for the HTML5 site, I cancelled my subscription.

It seems like a lot of work went into switching, considering the functionality is still the same as the Flash version. Did any good come out of switching to HTML5?

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

#145

Post by 9999 »

Macsenour wrote: post #108

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?

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.

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

#147

Post by sjwright »

gcp wrote: post #99
sjwright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 landsca…

Okay then, Google and the 3 browser players on Android advertise flash support because it's a point of difference.

As to whether anyone wants it, well, what they really want is to be able to browse all their favourite websites. Fair enough, but forcing the web to stop treating a proprietary add-on as mandatory is a legitimate (if imperfect) way of solving that problem.

Flash sites designed for a large monitor are a pain to use on a mobile device, and it's not because of resolution, it's because they're often combined with smallest-possible typeface sizes and a layout that frustrates if you have to zoom in. Believe me, I've used enough restaurant flash-sites that are all but impossible to navigate on my Android.

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

#148

Post by Steko »

cpeterso wrote: post #141
YooLi wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... Where can I download a full Flash plugin made by another company? Not the partial open-source implementations that only do a small part of everything that is 'Flash'. It's like saying Mac OS X isn't proprietary because it uses a lot of open-source pieces. "(if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation)" But they didn't, that's the whole point. Did you read 'the…

> How much does apple make if the app is free? $99/year from iOS Developer Program. Even free native apps reinforce Apple's platform lock-in. Cross-platform web apps lessen users' dependence on iOS.

Doubt that would even cover the bandwidth.

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

#149

Post by Samuel_Michon »

gcp wrote: post #99
sjwright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 landsca…

"the 3 browser players on Android seem to think Flash support is quite important. Surprising if it is something nobody wants."

I'm sure there are folks who want it. It just doesn't work. And Adobe has acknowledged that by axing the project, after promising to get it right for 6 years straight.

Let's disregard that mobile Flash is limited, buggy, CPU intensive, and battery draining. Most Flash content just doesn't work on small screens that are meant to be manipulated with fingers. The 'hover' action alone is causing web standards programmers head aches -- preparing Flash interfaces for mobile requires > ten times as much work, which the vast majority of Flash creators will never do.

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

#150

Post by Samuel_Michon »

luriel wrote: post #120
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #2

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.

Many developers already moved on, no need to wait for Adobe's permission to do so.

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.
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