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Topic: Software Development

Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

Summary: While often touted as a big advantage of the Android OS, killing Flash for mobile will benefit that platform as much as anything.

James Kendrick

By for Mobile News |

Colleague Jason Perlow reports that Adobe is throwing in the towel on Flash for mobile, and concentrating on HTML5 going forward. They list a lot of reasons for the move, but it follows a long debate with Apple over the utility of Flash in the mobile space. While many will chalk this up as a victory for Apple and iOS, I believe it will be the best thing ever for Android.

Android enthusiasts have listed the support of Flash as a victory over the iOS platform which excludes the ability. Device makers have even included in Android device ad campaigns that Flash support provides a "real web" experience. The real world shows that may not always be a good thing.

Flash on Android devices has been spotty during my extensive use of the platform. I have seen web pages heavy with Flash content fail to work properly, devices slowed to a crawl as some Flash code takes over the system, and watched gadget battery level sucked dry due to some Flash content playing. Flash support has been inconsistent at best, and terrible at worst.

I can't remember the last time I missed Flash support on the iPad or the iPhone. I go to the same web sites using those devices as I do my desktop and Android gadgets. I don't have missing features nor content. I also have smoother browsing than I do on Android with Flash enabled.

It is time for Flash to die on mobile devices, and prudently Adobe agrees. It is no longer the advantage some would have you think it is in the mobile space. It won't be missed.

Image credit: Flickr user Josef Dunne

Topics: Software Development, Android, Enterprise Software, Google, Mobility

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  • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

    Adobe is not throwing the towel on Flash. While html 5 is promising, it has the capabilities of flash in the year 2000. Flash works fairly well on Android and has gotten much better. That's how you make progress. The first cameras on phones did not function well either. They didn't stop production for that matter.
    sshadfar
    Reply 1 Vote

    • OK so which is it? This is the second blog article in two days which

      @sshadfar ... reports that Adobe is indeed throwing in the towel where flash and mobile devices are concerned. Your statement disagrees so again I ask which is it?<br><br>Pagan jim
      James Quinn
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

        @James Quinn
        +1
        Ram U
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @sshadfar

      What capabilities do you think HTML5 is missing that flash has?

      The only things i can think of are video and mic capture, which 99% of flash apps don't use.
      monteslu
      Reply 1 Vote

    • Flash works fairly well on Android?

      @sshadfar - Are you nuts? The phone I use for work purposes, a Sony Ericsson Experia trundles to a crawl and needs restarting due to the heavy Flash cra* on many web-sites.... and don't get me started on battery usage.

      The quicker it disappears, the better.....
      grillomalta@...
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @sshadfar

      Here is another person who has zero credibilty. Every major tech site is now running stories that, frankly, should have been run a year ago.

      Why does flash work so well for you and so poorly for everyone else? Even Adobe is killing the pig.
      dhmccoy
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

    Some people has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. When we wrote about this back in March 2010: http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2010/RainyDayEngineering/Week11/RDEMar1510.htm#NoFlash


    ...we got some rather "passionate" counters of why Apple's No-Flash strategy will fail.

    As with many past tech directions, watching what the porn sites do is a great early indicator of how things will go. Many of the sites that were mobile-friendly didn't have a lick (yes...a pun) of Flash.

    No one cares that you video on YouTube won't play on the iPad because Flash was not supported...it's not making anyone any money.
    RainyDayInterns
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @RainyDayInterns Actually, a lot of my friends are going off of the iOS system in favor of Android-based devices because they play Flash. 3 in the past week, alone. I've had exactly 1 friend (even if one counts the 400 people I "know" on Facebook) who's gone TO iOS from Android, and that's because she didn't realize she could sync iCal with an Android device. And you know what? She hates her new iPhone. And she consistently lists the Internet browsing as one of the things she truly misses.

      But no one cares.
      evilkillerwhale@...
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @RainyDayInterns

      Both sides said the FUTURE was HTML 5. The difference is that Apple essentially decided to screw iOS users in the PRESENT by cutting out flash. James apparently goes to different places on the web, but I'm still seeing mostly flash in the video content I see. Plus there are forms on websites I need for work that use a lot of flash for layout. Yes, I'd like them to change it. Making me incapable of doing my job form months on end isn't an effective way of making the other guy change the way he does things.
      tkejlboom
      Reply 1 Vote

  • Killing Flash would be a great thing for the internet!

    That Adobe attack vector has lived far too long already. It is time to toss it in the dumpster of history and move on to a better engineered solution: html5.

    Regards,
    Jon
    JonathonDoe
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @JonathonDoe I did a comparison of attack vectors, JavaScript and major browsers versus Flash, and Flash was at the bottom of the heap in all respects. In other words, JavaScript and the browser are much more (up to 500% more in some cases) insecure than Flash. As with all the hype around Flash and HTML5, your facts are simply backwards.
      PatrickBay.ca
      Reply 1 Vote

      • Who are you, and what do you do for a living?

        @PatrickBay.ca ... If I am to believe you... You collect anti Apple rhetoric from any number of sources which I can't verify? Now you test browsers (plural) with flash and java to determine security issues!?! Tell me what were the criterion for this test? Also an likely the key issue here why is Adobe doing this in your knowledgable opinion?

        Pagan jim
        James Quinn
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

    So what will all the carriers and Android OEMs do when they can no longer say "and it has Flash!" in their ads?

    Either I and Mr. Kendrick are the only 2 people on this planet whose browsing habits are so unique that we don't suffer due to lack of Flash, or the need for Flash is drastically overstated.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Flash, I simply despise how it's implemented on websites more often than not. I think the phrase "Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea" perfectly describes about 95% of websites using Flash. For that 95%, I have to be incredibly interested in their content to suffer through their Flash nightmares, otherwise, I'll be more than happy go without.
    piousmonk
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @piousmonk Part of this "announcement" (none has been made, Adobe hasn't "conceded" anything -- not that it's stopped anyone from reporting this), has been that Flash will be made available to mobile manufacturers as previous verisons have under the OpenScreen project, so the plugin can still exist in the wild (just not manufactured by Adobe). Of course, none of this has been announced or revealed, this is just a bunch of tech blogs prognosticating and guessing under the guise of "reporting".
      PatrickBay.ca
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @piousmonk In my normal internet surfing I really don't run into many items where I need flash. However, where I do run into issues is when I run things like Network Monitoring tools(the graphs are in Flash), etc.. Then I just go to vmware view and work from there. But 99% of the time it's really not a big deal. Flash used to be a much bigger deal then it is today.
      Johnpford
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @piousmonk "So what will all the carriers and Android OEMs do when they can no longer say "and it has Flash!" in their ads?"

      They still can say that. Adobe are not withdrawing Flash from the Market. They just aren't enhancing it any further. They will be releasing security updates only.
      st0kes
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

      @piousmonk, They could say "it has active wallpapers" or "it has active icons/widgets" or "it has true multitasking". Android is so much advanced over iOS that it doesn't really need Flash to be superior. Read S.J. biography. He hated Android as he hated all competition, especially those with better technology.
      meve
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

    I don't agree with your assessment of flash on mobile at all.. I will agree that flash intensive sites bog down the browsing experience (games etc.. ) that does not mean it does not have it uses.

    If you have not found a difference in experience any sites you visit then you don't surf much. There are literally thousands of sites that are utilizing flash in a manner that makes the browsing experience for a user a must at the current time. Will that change, probably, but as of now that is not the case.

    I have no stake in this at all but you seem to be trying to make a point about what you prefer instead of facts.
    heathman
    Reply 1 Vote

    • So 2-4 thousand out of 240 million site really need Flash

      @heathman

      I can live with not getting 0.001% of the real web.
      Bruizer
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

        @Bruizer Try 73% of the real web. There's so much Flash content out there that you probably aren't aware how much it has penetrated. Thing is, you, like every other Flash naysayer, is still stuck in the early 90s where Flash was used for awful animations and bad advertising. It's the people who say they won't miss Flash that are typically way behind the times because they have no idea what Flash is capable of, how it's been improved, how it's evolved, or even what the statistics around content penentration are.
        PatrickBay.ca
        Reply Vote
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