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James Kendrick
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Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android

By | November 9, 2011, 4:14am PST

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

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

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Topics

Adobe Systems Inc., Mobile, Android, HTML 5, James Kendrick, Flash

James Kendrick has been using mobile devices since they weighed 30 pounds, and has been sharing his insights on mobile technology for almost that long.

Disclosure

James Kendrick

James Kendrick has no affiliations or relationships that need to be disclosed.

Biography

James Kendrick

James Kendrick has been using mobile devices since they weighed 30 pounds, and has been sharing his insights on mobile technology for almost that long. Prior to joining ZDNet, James was the Founding Editor of jkOnTheRun, a CNET Top 100 Tech Blog that was acquired by GigaOM in 2008 and is now part of that prestigious tech network. James' writing has appeared in many print publications: Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine, Information Week and Laptop Magazine to name a few. James' coverage of the mobile technology sector has regularly appeared in the New York Times, Salon.com and CNN/ Fortune online. Not just a writer, James has filmed numerous video reviews and how-tos that have garnered well over a million viewers. He has appeared on local news segments and been interviewed by the Associated Press on mobile technology topics. Additionally, James has been podcasting about mobile technology for years.

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poof ... gone in a flash
oreps 12th Nov
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
sshadfar 9th Nov
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.
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OK so which is it? This is the second blog article in two days which
James Quinn Updated - 9th Nov
@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?

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
Rama.NET 9th Nov
@James Quinn
+1
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
monteslu 9th Nov
@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.
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Flash works fairly well on Android?
grillomalta@... 9th Nov
@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.....
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
dhmccoy 10th Nov
@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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
RainyDayInterns Updated - 9th Nov
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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
evilkillerwhale@... 9th Nov
@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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
tkejlboom 9th Nov
@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.
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Killing Flash would be a great thing for the internet!
JonathonDoe 9th Nov
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
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@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.
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Who are you, and what do you do for a living?
James Quinn 9th Nov
@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
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
piousmonk 9th Nov
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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@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".
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
Johnpford 9th Nov
@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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
st0kes 10th Nov
@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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
meve 10th Nov
@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.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
heathman 9th Nov
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.
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So 2-4 thousand out of 240 million site really need Flash
Bruizer 9th Nov
@heathman

I can live with not getting 0.001% of the real web.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@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.
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What is it with this word "real"!?!
James Quinn 9th Nov
@PatrickBay.CA... First of all why use it? Is there a fake web? If not then real seems to be out of place. The web... Is the web and it's all real flash or not.

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
heathman 9th Nov
@Bruizer

Ha Ha, keep telling yourself that. That way you wont know what your missing. Burying your head in the sand and acting like things don't exist is the way I like to live my life to....
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
Johanna232 9th Nov
@Bruizer
I have flash disabled on all devices, so I know what, if anything, I'm missing and it I agree, it is very little. The person called heath man must play games all day or something. For general utility disabling Flash does not affect me much, and I am online from 7am to 7pm each weekday.
For 25 years.
Some woman said her friend got an iPhone and now she misses "browsing the web"? WTF is that? how stupid.
If you like flash you should be using a GameBoy not the Internet.
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I think if you stop for a moment and think about it you'll find that
James Quinn 9th Nov
@heathman ... everyones definition of "real" is very subjective. It's up to the individuals themselves as to what is "real". I personally agree with the author. I've not found a lack of flash on my iDevices to have been an issue.

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@James Quinn You can't know what you're missing if you have no way to try it out. Trust me, YouTube video and Flash ads use maybe 1% of the capabilities of Flash 11 (the newest version). I'd agree I don't need Flash to watch YouTube or to see annoying ads, but there's so much more that Flash can do that you simply will never be able to discover because Steve Jobs decreed that you are to be limited and you will like it. It's a bit like owning a muscle car and complaining about how crap it is to drive even though you've never had the opportunity to really drive it anywhere because there are no roads around.
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You seem to assume that all I use or have used is Apple?
James Quinn Updated - 9th Nov
@PatrickBay.CA... In my many years of computer repair and support I've owned and used or worked on countless PC's with any number of MS OS's. I use both Parralels and Boot Camp in my iMac. Granted I don't miss or use flash on my iPhone nor do I miss adds in general (one of the primary reasons I avoid Google). Don't assume to much here:)

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
ShqTth 9th Nov
I think what is missing is to be able to turn on/off flash on a particular site, and also for that website to know that flash is not available, that way it will show an alternative.

Also, can't the flash be click to active? That way, flash wont work until you click on it to activate it if that is how the web browser is setup or the profile for the website.

I think there needs to be a flash profile for the web browser, and for selected sites (you can add them or some profiles are installed by default). Also there should be an option to auto disable flash on high cpu usage (or pause flash)
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@ShqTth Enabling or disabling Flash content per site is 100% up to the browser. You'd have to contact the individual browser manufacturer to request that feature (but not a bad idea). About "click to play", that's the way Flash behaves by default. Likely this option has been disabled in your browser -- once again, you have to check with the people who wrote it because it's not a Flash-specific thing.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
ShqTth 9th Nov
Flash is needed for the best internet experience, because web developers are not going to code an alternative page for tablets. So ending flash is ruining it for end users. also web developers should be encouraged to move to html5, but you can't force everyone to spend every development time just for mobile devices, so consumers loose.
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I guess that depends on the end user.
James Quinn 9th Nov
@ShqTth ... For me no I'm good. For you at least early on with mobile maybe. But this is the world of tech I can remember when the 286 chip was the power chip of its day:). In tech things change and fast.

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
PatrickBay.ca 9th Nov
@ShqTth The real debate that continues to get missed is, doe HTML5 measure up to Flash? Can you play video under HTML5 and JavaScript (HTML5 can't do it alone!)--yes. Can you have bloated animated ads under HTML 5 and JavaScript (I've done the comparison and HTML 5 content can be up to 100 times larger than comparative Flash content) -- still yes. But then you start to get to what modern Flash can do and the "yes" disappears. Can HTML 5 do hardware accelerated, shared-based 3D? No. Can HTML 5 create direct TCP / UDP socket connections? No. Can HTML deal with / produce vector animations and highly compressed graphics? No. How about full peer to peer connectivity through HTML5? No way. And these are just a few examples where HTML5 and JavaScript (again, HTML 5 doesn't do ANY of this by itself), won't work. Just won't -- there simply is no way to do it in JavaScript or HTML 5. These technologies are roughly where Flash was about a decade ago, so any company that's seriously considering cutting out Flash and replacing it with HTML 5 and JavaScript will be in for a rude and unpleasant awakening. The result will be bulky and large, will not perform as well, and will be highly limited in its capabilities.
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Have to admit I do not know what tech is being used
James Quinn Updated - 9th Nov
@PatrickBay.ca ... On my iPhone. However what I do know is I get great battery life and speed is very good. So based on my many years with Apple I am confident what solution Apple provides me will not be bulky nor bog me down either today or tomorrow (the future)

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
evilkillerwhale@... 9th Nov
@Pagan Jim:
You've shown repeatedly in the past that you have no idea what goes on in the world of technology. I often question how you get your computer started each day. Maybe a friend set it up and it's "just worked" all this time.
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Ah the classic and terribly flawed "insult" method
James Quinn Updated - 9th Nov
@evilkillerwhale@...of discusion:P How quaint. I start my computer by pressing the on button and I use a 27" iMac so what is this setup thing you mentioned? That word is strange to me and has no place in my Apple world...ha!

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
kenosha77a 9th Nov
@Pagan Jim:

Regarding your response to evilkillerwhale. As an owner of a 27" iMac myself, isn't the 2560 x 1440 display gorgeous. I use a very good (and at one time "state-of-the-art" Samsung 24" display as my secondary monitor and it's 1920 x 1200 display resolution pales in comparison.

Oh .. about that computer startup comment he made. My primary boot drive is an SSD and under Lion, my system is operational in 22 seconds from a cold boot up. I guess I don't have enough time to contemplate how my system just works for me. After all, 22 seconds is a very short time for such deep thoughts.
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I prefer open standards
Monkeypox Updated - 9th Nov
like HTML5 to closed, proprietary solutions like Flash. This is all good.
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Every time I have used an
tgschmidt 9th Nov
ipad or iPhione (about a dozen in the last 2 years) I have come across sites I could not fully use or enjoy because of lack of Flash support on those devices. I really don't care what is used (flash, HTML5 etc). I just want my mobile device to be able to access the sites and display the full content.
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Every time I have used an Android product.
Bruizer 9th Nov
@tgschmidt

I have come across multiple Flash based sites (that served perfectly acceptable content on iOS devices) that slowed the device and experience to a crawl. I just want my mobile device to display content in a fast, easy and fluid experience.

Pick your poison. I will take the road toward the future and not the past.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
evilkillerwhale@... 9th Nov
@Bruizer The phones are now packing 1.5Ghz dual core processors and 1+ GB of RAM. Combined with LTE, I don't really think Flash is a problem. I've had Flash on my 3G 1GHz single core, half gig of RAM phone for over a year. Never experience a problem other than some Flash games really do need keyboard controls. On the other hand, none of the browsers display HTML5 the same way. I like unified experiences. Flash has it. Others don't.
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Are you saying that is needed to run flash!?!
James Quinn 9th Nov
@evilkillerwhale@...Too bad that power could be used elsewhere if not needed to run flash:)

Pagan jim
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
sldgiehi 9th Nov
http://urlenco.de/wgwk
http://urlenco.de/wgwk
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
ctleng76 9th Nov
One of my reasons for not getting an iPhone has always been the lack of support for flash. It's interesting how this is happening on the heels of Steve Jobs' passing. It is almost as if Adobe didn't want Jobs to have the satisfaction of seeing Flash go away.
I still don't agree with Apple's decision to block the installation of Flash on their devices. I hate being told what I can and cannot install on my device, which is why I don't own an iPhone.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
mathelli 9th Nov
Uhh, what about flash games and interactive animations? HTML 5 is seriously in being able to perform this level of interaction. I love HTML5, CSS3, and javascript, but they can't be used in their current state to perform the level of interaction flash provides.
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Very interesting point
roncemer 9th Nov
I switched from iOS to Android, and one of the reasons was Flash support. It is kinda cool to be able to view funnieststuff.net videos on my phone (our player is written in flash), but content providers will definitely adapt. As easily as we transcode all of our videos to flv, we could subsequently transcode them to any other format, including whichever format HTML5 ends up settling on (or multiple formats if M$ insists on fragmenting or deviating from the HTML5 video standard).

I guess the key to success is the same as it always has been: to support multiple devices, you must produce multiple versions of the same content. If you can automate that, even better.
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Mobile Browser vs Mobile Apps
galshort 9th Nov
Adobe announced their intention to cease development for mobile browsers, not mobile devices. Adobe's announcement shouldn't be news to anyone who actually develops web content anyways. A good web developer is going to develop new browser based content with mobile usage in mind, which by default means Flash is avoided in most cases. If a designer needs to include any rich media content (animation & interactivity), they can already use Adobe Edge to mimic some of the basic features of Flash-based content.

The mobile APP side of things is where Adobe is moving the Flash platform to. It is a big player there already on iOS and Android. Creating highly stylized user experiences in the form of an app is a much more appropriate usage of the Flash runtime anyways. That is the area where HTML 5 is lacking. Not because HTML 5 can't be a player from a features standpoint, but because it just takes too much time and effort for developers to do relatively simple things. The beauty of Flash is that the development environment is equally usable by designers and developers. And it is FAST to develop in. Is there a more well rounded tool for interactive rich media content creation? Flash is used for much more than browser-based content, and Adobe is just moving the platform to areas where it is best suited.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
primusmagestri@... 9th Nov
@galshort I agree, the support seems to be pulled from mobile browsers but it would be welcomed kept as apps through the AdobeAIR. it makes much more sense as with many other overly-rich-and-interractive web content.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
Johanna232 9th Nov
For some time now, before Apple's position on Flash was taken, any website which required Flash in order to be used was alienating a lot of users who avoided them due to security, CPU hogging, and annoying popups, stupid animations and so on. I work in the industry as many of you probably do, too.

Apple only made clear what the more tech-savvy people were already aware of.

Adobe made so many promises to deliver a working mobile Flash, but the couldn't, and they for so long ignored Apple, put their Apple versions of their products at the bottom of their list of priorities, that I'm sure internally they were not surprised when Apple gave them a taste of their own medicine.

The vast majority of truly useful websites (news, travel, banking, shopping, etc) don't require flash and never did. I don't have time to waste on cutesy stuff, and I have not missed Flash but maybe once per day of heavy web use. I use a Flash blocker which will load Flash if I click on it only. So I know when I am on sites that use Flash.

Flash for desktop has a future, maybe 2-4 years, but proprietary plugins are just going the way of dinosaurs, IMHO.

Apple's taking the lead on this is just like how they often take the lead on things like abandoning floppy drives, abandoning CD drives, abandoning all drives of any kind and going for flash memory, abandoning keyboards for touch, abandoning mouse buttons -- they are pretty good about knowing when something is not really needed.
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
primusmagestri@... 9th Nov
@1CoolCat you know, Apple hasn't been too kind with the users in not allowing some storage expansion through memory cards happy but for other storage options, I agree, no much for them, kudos for taking the right step in slimming the designs wink

about the flash content in (oh, so many) web pages, I'm once again reminded of the shortcommings in development. It was said that monkeys could code Java - BUT after that you should go again and improve it! now, every monkey could code Flash but rarely someone comes after to improve the experience or performance of all those stupid flashes that run on so many pages. it doesn't matter it's a single Flash add, if it's enough badly written it will ruin the entire experience. I agree, one could do similar damage with JavaScript so we're not monkey-prone anyway sad
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
Davewrite 9th Nov
@1CoolCat

+1
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RE: Killing Flash for mobile is best thing for Android
david.egdoll@... 9th Nov
Flash is requred on Android os for various video utput e.g BBC iplayer and other live or recorded video. I can't use BBC iplayer on my Android os 2.1 tablet but can on my os2.3.
Are there alternatives which would enable os2.1 and prior to to run these?
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poof ... gone in a flash
oreps 12th Nov
.

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