Adobe stops developing Flash Player for Mobile Browsers

[Deleted member 13524]

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/category/developers

We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

Weird, to say the least..
I guess they were scared of the Microsoft-Nokia combo getting a substantial market share in the near future?

EDIT: correction about the difference between development and support. I was wrong about the discarded support.

 

[Ailuros]

Please don't hurt me anyone, but I'd appreciate myself even for the PC something more efficient than Flash. Ever monitored how many resources flash really eates up in some cases?

 

[Laurent06]

Please don't hurt me anyone, but I'd appreciate myself even for the PC something more efficient than Flash. Ever monitored how many resources flash really eates up in some cases?

Oh yes, I even use a plugin to disable it by default as it makes my browsing experience a nightmare even though my machine is powerful enough.

Let's see how far Adobe goes into HTML5, and I hope all browsers will implement HTML5 efficiently

 

[Ailuros]

Oh yes, I even use a plugin to disable it by default as it makes my browsing experience a nightmare even though my machine is powerful enough.

Let's see how far Adobe goes into HTML5, and I hope all browsers will implement HTML5 efficiently

Well here's to hope that OS developers in the embedded space find an adequate alternative; if not HTML5 something else.

 

[swaaye]

I've stopped installing Flash anyway. It's really not useful for me. YouTube is the only time I use it and there's a far more efficient mobile app for that. I certainly don't miss the Flash banner ads.

 

[idsn6]

I guess they were scared of the Microsoft-Nokia combo getting a substantial market share in the near future?

...yes, I'm sure that must have been it.

 

[Dominik D]

Let's see how far Adobe goes into HTML5, and I hope all browsers will implement HTML5 efficiently

I don't think that's doable. HTML5 is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of another abstraction. Like with anything else you either sacrifice performance or security. And implementations even if quite efficient are so all over the place you can't really target HTML5 and claim you've got a solid user experience across the board.

I was responsible for implementing software 3D renderer in 2D canvas some time ago and it was a nightmare. At the time Chrome did all of the operations in integers, so it was impossible to have a subpixel positioning of triangles. Firefox had completely inconsistent performance across machines (rendering off-screen on a 64x64 quad could easily consume 100% of one core on the machine, where other browsers would take 10-15%) and IE9 had some quirks here and there (of course). The same goes with Opera, which additionally would crash from time to time.

And this is desktop. On mobile all this is irrelevant because no matter how awesome your browser is you're eating up battery like crazy. Suddenly it doesn't matter how much time guys from Imagination spend making their HW power-efficient, you just have to sacrifice something in order to go through all the layers (JS->browser magic->2D/3D API->HW). Or you talk to the HW from your browser and pay the price of having crashes, exploits and what not. I love writing code in HTML5+JS but at the same time I think it's a terrible and lazy idea to let people develop like this. Either you write a slow, power inefficient high level code in a high level language on a top-level abstraction, or you write insecure code that talks to the low level abstraction from the high level code. And this design invites all sort of crappy behaviors I don't even want to think about. :S

There's a huge hurray-optimism when it comes to HTML5 as if it were a panacea for all the current pains. The problem is that in real life scenarios it exposes the same painful issues people have with browser compatibility. It's just that now it is quadrupled in strength and bites you even more.

 

[darkblu]

I don't think that's doable. HTML5 is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of another abstraction. Like with anything else you either sacrifice performance or security. And implementations even if quite efficient are so all over the place you can't really target HTML5 and claim you've got a solid user experience across the board.

I was responsible for implementing software 3D renderer in 2D canvas some time ago and it was a nightmare. At the time Chrome did all of the operations in integers, so it was impossible to have a subpixel positioning of triangles. Firefox had completely inconsistent performance across machines (rendering off-screen on a 64x64 quad could easily consume 100% of one core on the machine, where other browsers would take 10-15%) and IE9 had some quirks here and there (of course). The same goes with Opera, which additionally would crash from time to time.

And this is desktop. On mobile all this is irrelevant because no matter how awesome your browser is you're eating up battery like crazy. Suddenly it doesn't matter how much time guys from Imagination spend making their HW power-efficient, you just have to sacrifice something in order to go through all the layers (JS->browser magic->2D/3D API->HW). Or you talk to the HW from your browser and pay the price of having crashes, exploits and what not. I love writing code in HTML5+JS but at the same time I think it's a terrible and lazy idea to let people develop like this. Either you write a slow, power inefficient high level code in a high level language on a top-level abstraction, or you write insecure code that talks to the low level abstraction from the high level code. And this design invites all sort of crappy behaviors I don't even want to think about. :S

There's a huge hurray-optimism when it comes to HTML5 as if it were a panacea for all the current pains. The problem is that in real life scenarios it exposes the same painful issues people have with browser compatibility. It's just that now it is quadrupled in strength and bites you even more.

For all the drawbacks you listed above, Flash was still worse usability-wise. Just because everybody was at Adobe's mercy of releasing the plugins, and Adobe had totally dropped the ball on that front. Give some time to HTML5 and things will improve - abstractions will get streamlined, low-level APIs will become more cooperative - those are all things solvable with time. Adobe's situation was not.

Apropos, I was absolutely baffled to recently discover that Chromium could successfully run WebGL on a 1st-gen x86 mac mini sporting the notorious GMA950, given its iffy OGL2.0 support (note: apple made quite some effort to get GLSL on the old GMAs, despite the hw kicking and screaming in discord). That is a scenario that would have been nothing short of inconceivable if things were left to Adobe, for whom it took forever to get their plugins barely functioning even on perfectly capable hw.

 

[Dominik D]

Sure, plugin code produced by Adobe sucked but that doesn't change the fact that no amount of specs and standards is going to make HTML5+JS truly cross-browser compatible. It's only achievable if you have one code base. Which is the case with Flash. Building low-level abstractions into high-level languages adds another burden with "well understood" and "well developed" APIs. WebGL sounds great, until you hit incompatibility between ATI's and nVidia's cards/drivers' behaviors. This is not solvable. This has not been solved with a "simple" CSS and multiple implementations and won't be with rapidly advancing HTML5, JavaScript and WebGL standards. Just because something works on a machine doesn't mean it's going to run well or in a predictable manner.

 

[Arwin]

There's a huge hurray-optimism when it comes to HTML5 as if it were a panacea for all the current pains. The problem is that in real life scenarios it exposes the same painful issues people have with browser compatibility. It's just that now it is quadrupled in strength and bites you even more.

Maybe, but HTML5 does use fewer resources than Flash, doesn't it?

 

[hoho]

WebGL sounds great, until you hit incompatibility between ATI's and nVidia's cards/drivers' behaviors.

Don't forget mobile stuff.

Maybe, but HTML5 does use fewer resources than Flash, doesn't it?

Have you seen any proper HTML5 implementations of some of the more complex flash stuff? If so could you perhaps link to them?

 

[Arwin]

Don't forget mobile stuff.
Have you seen any proper HTML5 implementations of some of the more complex flash stuff? If so could you perhaps link to them?

Define me proper first. And then of course there's the question whether the more complex flash stuff is a good idea on mobiles in the first place.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I don't think that's doable. HTML5 is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of another abstraction. Like with anything else you either sacrifice performance or security. And implementations even if quite efficient are so all over the place you can't really target HTML5 and claim you've got a solid user experience across the board.

I was responsible for implementing software 3D renderer in 2D canvas some time ago and it was a nightmare. At the time Chrome did all of the operations in integers, so it was impossible to have a subpixel positioning of triangles. Firefox had completely inconsistent performance across machines (rendering off-screen on a 64x64 quad could easily consume 100% of one core on the machine, where other browsers would take 10-15%) and IE9 had some quirks here and there (of course). The same goes with Opera, which additionally would crash from time to time.

And this is desktop. On mobile all this is irrelevant because no matter how awesome your browser is you're eating up battery like crazy. Suddenly it doesn't matter how much time guys from Imagination spend making their HW power-efficient, you just have to sacrifice something in order to go through all the layers (JS->browser magic->2D/3D API->HW). Or you talk to the HW from your browser and pay the price of having crashes, exploits and what not. I love writing code in HTML5+JS but at the same time I think it's a terrible and lazy idea to let people develop like this. Either you write a slow, power inefficient high level code in a high level language on a top-level abstraction, or you write insecure code that talks to the low level abstraction from the high level code. And this design invites all sort of crappy behaviors I don't even want to think about. :S

There's a huge hurray-optimism when it comes to HTML5 as if it were a panacea for all the current pains. The problem is that in real life scenarios it exposes the same painful issues people have with browser compatibility. It's just that now it is quadrupled in strength and bites you even more.

That's pretty much what I was expecting from HTML5 and why it's never excited me much even though I hate Adobe Flash + JS (due to security holes).

I suppose AMD and Intel will be excited however as it will likely give an example to your everyday consumer on why they need a more powerful computer to experience full featured HTML5 to its fullest without exposing too many security vulnerabilities.

Regards,
SB

 

[Dominik D]

Maybe, but HTML5 does use fewer resources than Flash, doesn't it?

Depends. Video in Flash is much more reliable and more performant than HTML5 (even if we take into account that e.g. WebM isn't as well researched and supported as, say, MPEG 4). Image-based operations in 2D canvas aren't more performant than Flash counterparts. I have no experience with proper 3D in Flash but I did some experiments with WebGL on Chrome and Firefox and it's usable but hardly jaw-dropping (and there are some incompatibilities even I hit with my simplistic tests*). At this point the biggest problem is not only raw performance (whatever that is in case of JS ;>) but lack of mature tools and libraries one could use with HTML5.

* but I've got to admit that most of them (if not all) were due to well known bugs and were related to Firefox not conforming to specs at the time

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, I don't know that we can really compare video just yet. Personally, I have had youtube run HTML5 instead of Flash for a while when they tested that, and I haven't had any issues during that time. Lots of issues with Flash and my sound card though for some reason.

One thing I like about HTML over Flash on my desktop machine is that when Flash crashes, it means game over Flash everywhere, in any browser, and I lose my sound pretty much everywhere. But when there is an issue with a webpage (and I can barely remember when that has happened the last time), in many cases, but particularly with Chrome's nice system, I just lose that page, no harm to the rest.

Flash is also the one thing that I've seen cause crashes on all systems we have (my Mac Mini included).

For now, I still see it as an unnecessary evil, and never feel that any of the sites that use it, give me something that's worth it. The one essential area where it is used for seems to be video, but even there I have my doubts - I noticed that back when Flash wasn't an option on the PS3 (still really isn't, to be fair), just clicking the download link on a video (for instance when game trailers offered mp4 as an option and those links worked, which wasn't always) allowed me to stream it in HD full screen just about perfectly.

 

[I.S.T.]

Y'all are forgetting the massive amount of flash animation and games on sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds. Flash is always going to be around, there's too much content that uses it.

 

[hoho]

Question to people claiming that html5 can do anything flash can:
Can you suggest me a video/audio player I could use on my page to share stuff with others that wouldn't need 3 different video formats to be able to work in most used browsers (and even then needing flash-based backup plan)?

I'd love to get my hands on something like that but haven't found anything decent so far. At the moment I'm using Kaltura but it's far from decent.

 

[Dominik D]

Y'all are forgetting the massive amount of flash animation and games on sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds. Flash is always going to be around, there's too much content that uses it.

No one is suggesting Flash is going to disappear like that. It's about Flash becoming a less viable solution as a content format for the future. This is what dictates whether technology is alive or dead: likelihood and volume of people actively using it to produce content and solutions with it.

Question to people claiming that html5 can do anything flash can:
Can you suggest me a video/audio player I could use on my page to share stuff with others that wouldn't need 3 different video formats to be able to work in most used browsers

Codecs are not part of the spec so there's no way you can play one encoded stream in all major browsers (whatever that means - different regions have waaay different browser market penetration stats, e.g. Opera has 50% in Belarus, 25% in Russia, 10% in Poland and less then 1% in US, so answer to the "is Opera a major browser" question varies depending on your target).

 

[hoho]

Codecs are not part of the spec so there's no way you can play one encoded stream in all major browsers

Exactly Flash can do this today.

Though don't mis-interpret me. I'm not saying Flash is something great. I'm merely stating it works and for some stuff it works better than (non-existing) alternatives

 

[Arwin]

Question to people claiming that html5 can do anything flash can:
Can you suggest me a video/audio player I could use on my page to share stuff with others that wouldn't need 3 different video formats to be able to work in most used browsers (and even then needing flash-based backup plan)?

I'd love to get my hands on something like that but haven't found anything decent so far. At the moment I'm using Kaltura but it's far from decent.

Kaltura themselves have some interesting words on the subject:

http://blog.kaltura.org/is-flash-dead#