Although we still hear the occasional clamor for Flash on IE9 for Windows Phone 7, the masses have pretty much moved on. Good thing for us too as Adobe is expected to announce later today that they will no longer be porting or making Flash for any mobile OS or browser going forward. Some rudimentary support for Android is expected to remain e.g. security fixes, but if Android changes in a significant way (which it usually does), there will be no new support for those devices. From ZDNet's source:
"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates."
Of course it was way back to February 2010, we heard Microsoft and Adobe were working on Flash for Windows Phone 7. There was further mention in June of that year including promises of Adobe AIR support, but by February 2011, Microsoft had clearly moved on, betting it all on HTML5 and IE9. In the end, this seemed like a good decision by Microsoft (removing a feature is never received as well as adding one, even if it is janky). But now we know, we'll never have the frustration of watching Flash bring our devices to a crawl.
Well, we're not sad in the least.
Source: ZDNet; via Android Central
Comments
Everytime I tried to watch some videos on my phone, my prepaid internet packet just vanished in minutes...so, I guess that WP7 users can be happy with youtube over wifi only. Flash consumes more data and power and it was right from the start to exclude it. I just wish we had support for other things like flac and divx, but that's another story.
why not just add unlimited internet to your contract? mines 900 mins with unlimited texts and internet for £35/month and I can watch youtube vids all the time
So i guess that the battle between Flash and HTML5 for mobile browsers is finally over.
Thank goodness!
It was only a matter of time.
Yeah, but what about all the websites that have videos and/or animation that require flash? Is html5 supposed to fix this or are websites expected to evolve past flash...? I'm tired of getting those "Flash Player required" error messages.
I am very sad whenever I hear about how bad Flash is and how great HTML5 is. I'm convinced that most don't know what they are talking about and so they resort to parroting whatever they hear from their friends.The reality is that HTML5 has some great potential, but it will likely never allow the cross compatibility and power that Flash offers. Currently if you wanted to do anything advanced in HTML5 (animation and even video) you will have to write code in a manner that accommodates different browsers and browser versions. Furthermore, you will never get a visually consistent experience between browsers and OSs until you have more refined and accepted standards.With Flash, you get the same experience, regardless of the browser or operating system (except for maybe slower performance because of hardware). Flash IS open source so you can use open source IDEs to develop Flash material and Flash allows the embedding of Fonts.I know that some people say that Flash kills the battery etc. Maybe so, but I would like the option to trade the degraded battery life to have the ability to view Flash content. Furthermore, the big elephant in the room of this argument is that HTML5 animations will also drain the battery.If HTML5 were so great, you would have seen the Google+ website work properly IE9 in WP7 from the get go. Smashing Magazine did an article on how to do a really cool graph in HTML5 that looked slick, yet it only worked in Chrome.As a developer of both Flash applications and web applications I can extremely confidently say that Flash is miles easier to develop for than HTML5, more powerful than HTML5 (even supports the Unreal Engine), and most importantly for all of us browsing the web, allows us all to see exactly what the created intended. It's too bad that Adobe has abandoned the Flash player for mobile devices. Flash would have allowed us all to experience an “app” experience without having to go through a marketplace or app store. Contrary to popular belief, Apple wasn't against Flash because of performance, they knew that Flash would have dug into their AppStore profits.
Now i'm feeling foolish... Saw something similar on another tech rag and thought it was just a dumb commenter...so i will ask for clarification from my usage case.Use case scenario - fantasy foolball live feed update on sportsline.com (webpage updated via flash technology)IOS and Android does not work - WP7 does.Unless my friends are stupid (which is the case, but beside the point), the browser takes them to an iPhone page for both iphone and android and neither is able to view or use the live scoring updates. I verify weekly (we meet for MNF) and i'm the one that has to give the live updates to them. So...If i know the website is using flash technology, and it doesn't work on their phones, but it behaves on my WP7 (an old Focus), just like my desktop at home... But you guys are saying flash doesn't work on WP7... I need help figuring this out!
Stevesu,It is likely you are viewing their normal (full) page and it is detecting the lack of a flash player and offering you a Javascript alternative. Their mobile site probably doesn't have this option, which is why your friends can't see the live feed.If you have the url, it will be easy to determine if what I am guessing is true, though I'm sure it is.