Flash Mobile Not Quite Dead Yet, Coming to ICS Soon
Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" will receive Flash support by the end of the year, but it will be the last mobile Flash Player provided by Adobe.
Addressing reports published earlier today in regards to the future of Flash Mobile on Android (or a lack thereof), Adobe announced that the version slated for Android 4.0 aka "Ice Cream Sandwich" will be the last for this specific platform. Consumers should expect to see Flash Player for Android 4.0 by the end of the year.
Consumers who purchased the just-released Galaxy Nexus sporting Google's new version of Android saw that it came packed with absolutely no Flash support whatsoever - Flash Player didn't come pre-installed and it's currently not listed for Android 4.0 on the Android Market. With Adobe revealing the discontinuation of Flash earlier this month, it was believed that Flash support concluded with Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" for smartphones and Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" for tablets.
But according to Adobe, there's still another wave -- and a final wave at that -- of Adobe Flash for mobile. "Adobe will release one more version of the Flash Player for mobile browsing, which will provide support for Android 4.0, and one more release of the Flash Linux Porting Kit – both expected to be released before the end of this year” a company spokesperson confirmed.
Beyond that, Adobe will provide "critical bug fixes and security updates" as the company shifts over to HTML5 development. Earlier this month Adobe seemingly expressed defeat in the mobile sector, admitting that HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases even exclusively.
"This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms," Winokur said. "We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers."
RIM previously stated that it will continue Flash Player development for the PlayBook tablet. Google on the other hand will likely follow its current path down the HTML5 development road and eventually phase out Flash support in Android altogether. Unfortunately, the internet is still saturated with Flash content, so it may be a long while before Android's web browser can surf without requiring the memory-hogging Flash Player app.
Which now leads us to this question: why isn't Android's stock browser a smaller version of Chrome?
- The BlackBerry PlayBook is Now Officially $199
- Android Malware Up 427 Percent Since July
- Get Your Own TRON Lightcycle for $50,000
- Watch Some Fangirls Rap About Windows Phone 7
- The North Face Has a Backpack with Airbags
- Porn Giant Suing Over New .XXX Adult Domains
- Meet the Rest of Our Holiday Gift Guide Models
- Sims Creator's New Title is All About the Player's Life
- Kindle Fire Costs Amazon $201.70 to Build
- Hackers Attempted to Gain AT&T Customer Account Info
- IPv6 Adoption Grows by 1,900%, Says Internet Census
- Rumor: Apple Receiving Retina Displays For Next iPad
- McAfee: Android Malware Jumped 37% Since 3Q12
- Microwave Shows YouTube Videos, Accesses Twitter
- Galaxy Nexus Benchmarked, Beats iPhone 4S in Browsing
- Rumor: George Clooney in the Running for Steve Jobs Role
- 8.9-inch Kindle Fire in 2Q12, "Hollywood" Late 2012
- Amazon Drops All Sprint, Verizon and AT&T Phones to 1 cent
- Is The Facebook Phone Finally Real (and Called Buffy)?
As a Flash developer... the web may be shifting towards HTML 5, but as long as it requires me to program in JavaScript I refuse to jump on board. JavaScript is a horrible language that needs to be utterly destroyed.
It would be absurd for ICS not to support flash. Flash may be on its way out, but it's still too important to be completely gone yet.
As a Flash developer... the web may be shifting towards HTML 5, but as long as it requires me to program in JavaScript I refuse to jump on board. JavaScript is a horrible language that needs to be utterly destroyed.
Long live to the C++(?)
I agree, JavaScript sucks, it doesn't work the same in all browsers, it's not OO and it puts your code base out there to be stolen. Flash and Flex have their problems, but you right some pretty scalable code in Flex and you don't have to right a different version of the code for each browser.
We don't need HTML 5, we need a proper OO language that runs on a common runtime environment that runs cross browser and cross platform.
The real question is when is Google going to get Nestle to sell Android shaped Ice Cream Sandwhiches. I want some!
As a web designer, I've programmed in both JavaScript and ActionScript and I can easily say that anyone touting Flash over JavaScript should not be programming for the web. All languages have their faults, but just because it's different doesn't make it horrible. JS can totally be used in a OOP style, but is more popular in its functional style and it's A LOT easier to get things done with, especially with popular frameworks like jQuery. The ironic thing about all the JS hate is ActionScript is largely derived from the same language as JavaScript: ECMAScript. It's time to embrace the future of the web folks.
Totally agree with FPG. JavaScript is in fact OO. It may not be as strongly typed (which I assume is what koga73 was pointing at) but it is extremely power for developers who actually know what they are doing. I've worked with ActionScript since before it supported type casting and was essentially JavaScript compiled into a flash object. Those two languages are too similar to say one sucks while the other doesn't. It's like tell you're twin brother he's uglier than you are. In addition, JavaScript can be obfuscated and although that's not an end solution, complaining that someone can steel your code is like say; you own a car without a garage and have no place to lock it up at night. Someone can steel your car no matter where you park it if they tried hard enough.
HTML5 is like the electric cars. They are a great idea, and I foresee a wonderful future with them, but it's not quite polished enough to be considered the platform alternative yet. On top of that, there are still so many combusion engines (Flash) in the wild and simply taking away the gas stations isn't going to solve the problem of slow or reluctant adoption. It will just piss a lot of people off!
Is Adobe going to stop flash development for Windows too?
If so and if they only will release bug fixes for the current versions, then that would mean that flash still will work until all the sites are using html5 instead.
I mean, then we never would come to a point where a web page said that you need flash player 12 (or whatever the version that is the one that i required at a ceratain point in in the future) to play a video in the Android browser.
HTML5 is like the electric cars. They are a great idea, and I foresee a wonderful future with them, but it's not quite polished enough to be considered the platform alternative yet. On top of that, there are still so many combusion engines (Flash) in the wild and simply taking away the gas stations isn't going to solve the problem of slow or reluctant adoption. It will just piss a lot of people off!
except there was an electric car a number of years back before hydrogen was the big thing, that could get 300 miles per charge. sure it couldnt lug a soccer team like a suv can, but it gets you from point a to b and than some.
A lot of the sites I like to browse on my phone are Flash only. I won't be updating any time soon.
A lot of things still depend on Flash. Hence, a no-brainer.
FPG you're completely missing the point in the difference between Javascript and Actionscript. It's all about the API not the language syntax.
Gmarsack, forget about Actionscript 2 and take a look at Actionscript 3 and Flex. It's radically different and steps in a far better programming direction that Javascript has.
At the company I work for we use Flex and Dojo for different projects. We estimate things take about 4 times longer in Javascript than Flex. HTML5 is not, and will not be, a silver bullet.
Any platform dropping or not providing Flash support is short sighted.
As long as Flash content on the internet is still occupying 95% of all browser plug-in usage then development will never stop and to suggest so is ridiculous.
It's like saying because there are electric cars for sale we should close down every gas station immediately.
It is a slow process and is not dependant on Adobe, it is dependant on the people who own the websites to edit their content and seeing as there are billions of webpages, err, good luck with that.
With the amount of flash objects written and used on websites, it will be awhile for flash to be out of the picture. That transition away from flash to html5 would be very slow if it weren't for smart phones and tablets. People are buying more of these devices and are becoming increasingly dependent on them Vs. just a computer.
Websites can no longer ignore the fact that mobile traffic is increasing significantly.
Website owners have to make tough decisions that they aren't necessarily comfortable with. They've traditionally used flash but now they have to consider html5 or rely on other options such as jQuery inorder to have a more uniform experience on all browsers and devices.
You also have the fact that flash is intrenched in the creative community. That's what they know and have always done. The fact that html5 is slowly becoming the new direction, that scares many of them as they have to learn new ways of doing things they were good at. Kind of like back in the day when Cobal was fading fast. The Cobal developers were forced to retool and that scared many of them. Many couldn't cope.
Earlier this month Adobe seemingly expressed defeat in the mobile sector, admitting that HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases even exclusively.
Lol you mean APPLE?!?!? Who cares? HTML5 is great but no one but isheep cares if they can't (BECAUSE THEY CAN'T) get flash. and flash is still used on desktops..... I really don't know ANYONE who browes in "mobile" mode instead of desktop. If you use mobile the website is worthless. Yea. we still need it to work. Yea. adobe is making it work. Yea. "i" devices are still worthless and can't view any content on the inernet. But whats the point? if you want to actually use the internet you can't use IOS till every site switches to HTML5. And its going to be a long time.
What about silverlight? What makes it so different from Flash?