
Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash, refocuses efforts on HTML5 - latch
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5/19226
======
cowpewter
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.

~~~
bad_user
You're complaining about the development environment, which is considered to
be better than JS/HTML5 by many people.

However, the Flash runtime is the reason people complain about Flash. It is
slow, it leaks memory, it crashes like crazy and has been a second-class
citizen on every platform other than Windows since forever.

JS/HTML5 on the other hand is a mess in terms of development tools. But it is
getting more and more reliable. And it's a real standard with multiple
implementations that are extremely competitive. Apple was right for excluding
Flash from their mobile browser, as for mobile phones HTML5 is currently much
better, even though the technology powering it is newer than Flash.

Adobe's current plans are to build development tools for HTML5/JS too. They
are even pushing for improvements in the standard, like CSS3 Regions.

~~~
ender7
Sadly, the development environment matters quite a bit.

\- I will miss being able to declare classes using a sane syntax (Coffeescript
helps in this regard)

\- I will miss the optional type annotations, which caught many a bug for me
(you can use JSDoc annotations + closure compiler, but only if you like
placing a verbose comment in front of _every single variable declaration_ )

\- I will miss having an IDE that can actually do code completion (this not
possible without type annotations, so it's not coming to Javascript any time
soon)

\- I will miss interfaces

\- I will miss namespaces (there are various ways to hack namespaces into
Javascript. They are all letdowns.)

\- I will miss color transform filters, drop shadow filters, and blur filters
(might become part of CSS if Adobe's proposal gets approval)

\- I will miss the (mostly excellent) API documentation (MDN tries its best,
but is not even close)

\- I will miss masks (of any arbitrary shape)

\- I will miss being able to create and dispatch my own events without having
to use someone else's event framework

\- I will miss having all my resources compiled into one blob and loaded
together, rather than having to worry about preloading all of my UI images

\- But most of all, I will miss _performance_. Yeah, Flash is
buggy/slow/memory hog blahblahblahblah. But have you tried doing anything
graphically complex in HTML5? Holy shit, your processor will scream. Things
that Flash used to laugh at will bring Chrome to its knees. Don't get me
started with IE.

So no, Flash is not great. It has a ton of warts. But HTML5 is not ready. Not
even close. So we're going to have to spend the next ~2-3 years in techno
limbo while it catches up. And that makes me sad.

HTML5 is particularly not ready on mobile. For example...don't use gradients,
since they kill performance. Oh, and don't use opacity either, since that also
kills performance. Seriously? I need to build a UI that doesn't use opacity
animations? FFFfffuuuu--

Apologies for sounding like a grumpy old man, but promises of "someone will
come and fix it with a standard...at some point" don't really get me excited.
I worry that in vilifying all the things that Flash did _wrong_ , the web
world is going to ignore all the things it did _right_ , and refuse to
integrate those things into HTML.

~~~
rayval
> But have you tried doing anything graphically complex in HTML5? ... Things
> that Flash used to laugh at will bring Chrome to its knees.

Agree. An example is graph visualization. Fire up your CPU monitor and go to
<http://arborjs.org/atlas/> and view this very cool physics-driven mesh
visualization written in Javascript. You'll see the needle jump to 95% or
more. On my relatively modern laptop, if I run this for more than a few
minutes, it shuts off due to overheating. Also, this app does not work on IE.

By contrast, I can run an similar Flash-based visualization and CPU usage
ratchets up to 60 or 70% but not more, and it works on IE.

~~~
kamechan
about 30% CPU utilization on my 2011 macbook air (core i5 1.7Ghz) with chrome
16beta. not bad. is this same page written in flash somewhere?

------
thought_alarm
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
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.

~~~
xiaoma
> _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.

~~~
flomo
More like "Flash turns Apple laptops into battery-powered space heaters". The
OS X player is so cruddy that simple ads will cause my MBP to spin up the
fans.

------
barrkel
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.

~~~
culturestate
_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.

~~~
jaredsohn
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.

~~~
culturestate
Safari has a similar plugin called ClickToFlash, but no Chrome-like option as
far as I know.

------
shaggyfrog
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
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)?

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

~~~
jonhendry
But which eats more battery?

~~~
gcp
The slower one, as the CPU must stay on longer. Not a good argument, hence.

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

~~~
Samuel_Michon
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
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
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
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.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"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.

------
protomyth
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.

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

------
kinofcain
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
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
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.

------
bphogan
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".

------
melling
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
> 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
It performs better than HTML5 on mobile.

------
j45
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.. :)

------
michaelpinto
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
_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
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...

------
Riverbed
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.

~~~
georgemcbay
They've already been making this transition for at least a year and probably
planning it for even longer than that -- look at Muse, look at Edge.

Adobe doesn't give a crap about the Flash Player for its own sake, it was just
a loss leader for their tools business, which anyone who has been paying
attention would have noticed started leaning towards html and away from Flash
a while ago now.

~~~
mcrider
Not to mention Phonegap, which is now an Adobe product thanks to their recent
acquisition of Nitobi.

------
dylangs1030
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.

~~~
juliano_q
I run flash in a decent way in my Nexus S. It is not the best experience in
the world (as usual when dealing with Flash) but it works.

~~~
dylangs1030
Hm...just curious, can it handle a flash game?

------
Macsenour
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
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.

------
walropodes
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
But isn't AIR just flash? I am somewhat confused.

~~~
audreyt
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...](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_and_webkit.html)

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

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

------
bigbango
Good riddance!

------
yason
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.

------
cormullion
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?

------
mbq
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...

------
Tichy
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.

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

------
teyc
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.

------
st3fan
What does that mean for RIM and the PlayBook?

~~~
rsynnott
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.

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

------
artursapek
I had honestly forgotten about Flash.

------
nirvana
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
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.

------
drawkbox
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.

------
37prime
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.

------
marcamillion
It sure is a shame that they never did this before Steve died.

Would have been a nice going away present.

:(

------
magicalhobo
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
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
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.

------
dogfu
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!

