The second day Flash died
The first day Flash died was January 27th, 2010, when Steve Jobs announced the iPad. A few months later, in his Thoughts on Flash letter, he confirmed and explained why he saw the future of the mobile web without Flash. He was hardly alone in thinking so, but it remained somewhat controversial at the time.
Since then, tens of millions of iPads have been shipped and no other tablet manufacturer or mobile manufacturer has been able to ship a device with a decent Flash implementation. However, beyond the “Steve was right” mantra and the obvious trend towards HTML5, the forthcoming death of Flash still wasn’t consensual.
Until today. Adobe just bought two hugely successful HTML5 tooling companies, TypeKit and Nitobi (makers of PhoneGap). It is hard to imagine a stronger endorsement for HTML5.
I think October 3rd, 2011 will be remembered as the second day Flash died, this time by the hands of its owner.
Of course Adobe will still spin Flash as a convenient solution for some use cases, which will remain true for the next few years, but they clearly announced where they want to go next, and boy, I couldn’t be happier that it’s towards the open web. For this, I think we can all give credit to Adobe. Few companies this size would even semi-publicly admit their technology is a dead-end and invest so heavily in a more open solution.
Big cheers to them for that.
Disclaimer: I co-founded Joshfire, a company also deeply invested in HTML5.
and Flash is definitely dead with the association beetween Adobe and Woodwing
http://public1.tripolis.com/preview?FarbLzNC2QogxK6nU0pWnnyY2tgeABFU0T7UduYINP4XvW9iBjZtaKcNd2LaET6V
Jeremieclevy
3 Oct 11 at 9:50 pm
If you think that Adobe is killing off Flash by today’s announcements then you clearly have no clue about their plans for the Flash platform. HTML 5 is nice and popular and all but it’s about 6 or 7 years behind Flash. Not to mention that only the most modern of browsers can run HTML 5 applications.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other anyway. Adobe’s primary products focus on helping the creative professional be as productive and creative as possible.
Disclaimer: while I don’t work for Adobe, I am an Adobe Community Professional.
Andy Matthews
3 Oct 11 at 10:02 pm
I understand the article premise, but it seems a bit misleading to me. Yes, Adobe has made a major investment into their HTML5 development efforts. But, that doesn’t mean Flash is necessarily dead. They are redirecting the Flash Player back towards gaming. With the hardware acceleration benchmarks they are hitting with Stage3D and the telephony communication capabilities, it seems likely that Flash is going to make major advancements in their gaming capabilities. But we can’t overlook the compiling capabilities of Flash Builder to mobile and air apps. Especially when apps like Machinarium are topping the iOS market and sites like TweetDeck are being acquired. I wouldn’t say Flash is “dead”, I would say it is adapting to a new market.
Christopher Bousquet
3 Oct 11 at 10:30 pm
What does PhoneGap have to do with HTML5 in the browser It is used to create compiled mobile applications. You can compile flash applications to all devices including the iOS ones as well. And everything has always had font’s, both flash and the browser, why is this making “Flash die”? You are really stretching it with these points and I think many other things that have happen since Job’s message would have better made your case like ECMAscript skipping passed the version that Adobe based ActionScript on or WebGL taking off and many example sites have better user experiences than most flash sites with the same richness. Or maybe Adobe and Google making a swf to html5 converters or benchmarks of JavaScript running faster than ActionScript. I’m sure there are other things but today didn’t make the death of anything. Tomorrow Adobe will release a bunch of new Flash released stuff at the same time Apple is releasing a bunch of there stuff and everyone will continue on the same as it has always been. An open comity of undecided behemoths will never match the efficiency of a single company trying to compete in the free market. Flash will always have more features than the browsers and as long as users want these features flash isn’t going anywhere.
Tyler Larson
3 Oct 11 at 10:45 pm
Don’t forget Adobe has two software offerings in beta utilizing HTML5 and flash familiar interfaces: Edge and Muse.
This is where Adobe can transition flash developers into building HTML5 apps and websites with a somewhat familiar environment where interaction is paramount.
Andy Waldrop
3 Oct 11 at 10:58 pm
You seem to be forgetting about that one time Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 10 won’t allow plugins, including Flash.
Eric Martindale
3 Oct 11 at 11:02 pm
I hate that Adobe acquired PhoneGap. Adobe makes really bad software that does some really great things.
There’s so much other ‘creative’ software nowadays, that unless they are into full print media workflow I bet most small to medium shops can do without the expensive Adobe bloatware.
http://dearadobe.com
Mike
3 Oct 11 at 11:40 pm
As I said, there are indeed a few areas where Flash is still ahead. Games for instance. Some aspects of Video.
My post was about momentum. Chrome/Firefox improve 5x faster than the Flash runtime. Give them another year or two and they’ll be ahead in all areas. I think Adobe also realizes where the future is headed and is preparing to make killer tools for HTML5 just like they had the de facto killer tools for Flash. The more tools, the better, so I wish them to succeed.
sylvain
4 Oct 11 at 12:04 am
All the “better” features of Flash won’t matter for publishers having hundreds of millions of Flash-less iOS devices trying to access their content in Mobile Safari.
As long as HTML5 is “good enough”, and it has proven that it is for most areas, Flash will be gradually removed from most major websites. It is already widely happening. This is what I call the death of Flash, just like Java applets are dead even if 0.1% people still use them for some reason and probably always will.
sylvain
4 Oct 11 at 12:09 am
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