flash is nearly dead

[qmr55]

Did you catch the part about a "fully viable program" in my comments? Technology long ago fell into the realm of just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. My point is that give us a fully functional program (as existed long ago with Flash) and let us live with it for a number of years. It takes a considerable investment of time and effort in particular to learn advanced Flash action scripting. Have you ever attempted it? My reasoning may make no sense to you, but to me, yes, what we have now is good enough. Future improvements should come as developers and the market demand it - not as an ongoing pursuit to keep a software program always on the brink of obsolescence. Am I using words that are too big for you?

I understand exactly what you're saying but I highly disagree. First to answer your question, yes I have tried and yes I can do it fine. There never is a good enough in web development especially because the new world is always looking for a faster and easier way to get things done. In this case, HTML5 may be the solution to that problem that flash has caused for years.

I disagree with the statement "Future improvements should come as developers and the market demand it" because in my opinion users and developers are always asking for a better faster way to do anything whether it be on a desktop computer, a laptop or even a mobile phone now a days. The market is ALWAYS looking for improvement in electronics. Why do they come out with new TVs every year, if the one I have from the 90s works fine still? The market demands better quality video and a better viewing experience.

Am I using words that are too big for you?

Takes a bit more than that to get to me...lol.

 

[2972renfro]

Evolve or get the heck out of the way. First Apple, then Microsoft and now the company that created it has stopped developing it further for MOBILE. Which part is everyone missing? Technology moves forward and some things go away whether you like or not. Serial, parallel, scsi, floppies, zips, cassette tapes, beta, vhs, etc

 

[2972renfro]

Could it be that flash is dead for mobile devices because Apple refused to support it with their iphones and ipads? God forbid there is an application they cant control or charge for in the market. With that much of the market share being a platform that can't use the medium of course the vacuum steps in and something else comes up.

No do a bit of research and although Flash does work on non Apple devices it is far from perfect. Battery and resource hog, and Flash was developed for MOUSE driven interfaces not mobile browsers.

 

[Joe Diaz]

Evolve or get the heck out of the way. First Apple, then Microsoft and now the company that created it has stopped developing it further for MOBILE. Which part is everyone missing? Technology moves forward and some things go away whether you like or not. Serial, parallel, scsi, floppies, zips, cassette tapes, beta, vhs, etc

They haven't stopped developing it. Your analogies don't work in this case. I think something closer would be. Corel decides to stop creating a version of CorelDraw for the Mac OS. Does that mean they stopped developing it? No. Does that mean CorelDraw is dead? No. It means Corel believes that, for the time being, it isn't financially viable to continue making Mac Versions of Corel Draw.

Again Flash is much more widely used than most people know. They are just no longer working on plugins for some mobile browsers, not a whole lot has changed here. And Microsoft isn't dropping flash. It's dropping all plugin support on just one of their "light" browsers.

No do a bit of research and although Flash does work on non Apple devices it is far from perfect. Battery and resource hog, and Flash was developed for MOUSE driven interfaces not mobile browsers.

You should redo that research than, because then you would see that similar content developed in HTML5 rather than flash is just as hard on your battery life and resources. And Flash was developed before touch screens, so yes it was developed for mouse controlled interfaces, however later versions of flash started supporting touch devices when touch devices started becoming main stream.

These are the common misconceptions that see over and over in this topic.

 

[signswi]

I think you are confused with how the technology works. AIR is simply a way to deliver things like flash (among other content) to mobile devices and desktops without the need of a web browser and its plugins. "Flash can't do what Air can" implies to me that you think the two are meant to compete. Here is how it works. I develop a game or something in Flash, I than use AIR to package and deploy it. In fact AIR internally uses Adobe Flash Player as its runtime environment. Besides, you are talking specifically about apps, flash plugins for browsers is a different deal.

Thanks for restating my point I guess? I wasn't implying they were competing I was attempting to state that the ecosystem is moving away from Flash on the browser but that it will continue to exist within smartphones as delivered by Air built applications. The only real point to Flash in the browser has been eliminated by WebM and h264 but it's still valuable within the ecosystem. I've built apps with Air. "Flash can't do what Air can" was a way of simplifying the discussion for the non-nerdy but we've gone and muddled that up now haven't we .

 

[Joe Diaz]

Thanks for restating my point I guess? I wasn't implying they were competing I was attempting to state that the ecosystem is moving away from Flash on the browser but that it will continue to exist within smartphones as delivered by Air built applications.

I guess I misunderstood you, you made it sound as though you develop the content in AIR, in a lot of cases you would develop it in flash, Air is just used to package and deploy that content.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I guess I misunderstood you, you made it sound as though you develop the content in AIR, in a lot of cases you would develop it in flash, Air is just used to package and deploy that content.

I was thinking the same thing as you were.

 

[Tony Teveris]

This is what Adobe says -

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatfor...to-more-aggressively-contribute-to-html5.html

 

[TyrantDesigner]

As long as there are sites still using tables or -shudder- frames ... flash will still live.

As long as newgrounds.com still accepts flash ... flash will still live.

Expect flash to 'live' at least another 5 years of online acceptable site options. mobile market ... no ... on the web ... yes.

as for myself ... I dislike flash with a passion and look forwards to html5, don't want to learn it but one day i know i will.

 

[SightLine]

Yup - very misleading thread title. Flash is very very far from dead. As already mentioned they are just not going to develop Flash plug ins for mobile browsers anymore. Also as already mentioned Flash content and apps can simply be packaged in Air to be displayed.

There are so many websites that are 100% flash based and millions more that use large amounts of Flash that it would likely be 10+ years before Flash were to totally be done with if Adobe totally discontinued it today. I'm not arguing that it's never going to go away - I do personally think it never will though. I think it will continue to evolve and probably begin to natively incorporate new technologies like HTML5 while maintaining backward compatability with older versions of Flash.

If one truly masters Flash and it's action script the things that can be created with it are stunning. The top cutting edge Flash developers like Jody Hatton http://www.xdude.com (dig about on his site) or the guy that created sites like Drawball.com (the earlier ball one version has some amazing art) and others are not going to simply change careers if they dont have to. My point being is that Flash can be used to create some pretty stunning stuff. I also agree that the newer stuff like jscript and HTML5 can also create some amazing stuff...

 

[JoshLoring]

Wow. I JUST wrote a blog about flash on NOV 4th.
Please remove this link I it's against terms but for anyone that wants my opinion on flash.. Read here http://loringstudios.com/design-and-graphics-blog/web-development-faux-pas-misusing-flash.html

 

[Locals Find!]

Could it be that flash is dead for mobile devices because Apple refused to support it with their iphones and ipads? God forbid there is an application they cant control or charge for in the market. With that much of the market share being a platform that can't use the medium of course the vacuum steps in and something else comes up.

I don't think Adobe stopped supporting Flash for mobile devices because of Apple. Really apple is a joke when it comes to market share of well anything.

They control less than 5% of the market share for mobile phones & tablets. I don't have the statistics but, I am pretty sure they don't have a significant share of the market on computers either.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I don't think Adobe stopped supporting Flash for mobile devices because of Apple. Really apple is a joke when it comes to market share of well anything.

They control less than 5% of the market share for mobile phones & tablets. I don't have the statistics but, I am pretty sure they don't have a significant share of the market on computers either.

Not so fast

Tablets 75% http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/ipad-market-share-2011_n_1080051.html

Iphone about 10% (multiple sources)

Computer... debatable 8-13% http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/12/apples-share-of-u-s-pc-market-leaps-to-12-9-in-3q-2011/

 

[genericname]

I don't think Adobe stopped supporting Flash for mobile devices because of Apple. Really apple is a joke when it comes to market share of well anything.

They control less than 5% of the market share for mobile phones & tablets. I don't have the statistics but, I am pretty sure they don't have a significant share of the market on computers either.

Actually, I think it's around 25%. Either way, that's still not enough to force anything on anyone, unless your entire company is an unstoppable marketing machi- oh wait. (edit: Wrote this before Vector Doc's reply. I think his lower percentage point actually drives the below point home though)

It's important to note that Apple has a larger single piece of the pie than anyone else, as they don't license out a thing. Also, as far as I'm concerned, their greatest power and influence doesn't come from their percentage of market share, but from their mindshare; their ability to brand themselves, and have their policy known and followed. That's what's burying flash on the mobile platform. People aren't fleeing the Flash camp because nothing supports it. They're leaving because the huge, unstoppable marketing machine is telling they should.

 

[Joe Diaz]

These are the statistics you want to look at:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_mobile.asp

This is where web developers look to see internet trends. Just to put this whole thing in perspective: let's say 2% of web surfers can't view flash (and I could be being generous with that figure), I can remember when many professional web developers stop optimizing websites for 800X600 resolution and began designing them to look best on 1024x768. That was when the statistics showed that 10-8% of users were still viewing sites in 800X600 resolution or less.

 

[signswi]

And now the concept of targeting a particular user segment/resolution/platform is passe which is what the responsive design movement is about .

 

[genericname]

And now the concept of targeting a particular user segment/resolution/platform is passe which is what the responsive design movement is about .

Wooooow. 44.7% Win7 integration. That's crazy, though I think it says more about our hardware turnaround than anything. Not that many people are buying the OS and upgrading, but many more are just tossing old technology and replacing it.

Edit: Meant to quote Joe. Pardon the confusion there.

 

[boxerbay]

As a web designer I always hated flash. Yes, we can but maintaining it and updating it was a pure pita. for ex. client wants a nice flash nav. we build it and then 3 mo later he wants to add another button. one little button. sounds easy? no. You would have to rebuild the art to make 5 instead of 4 buttons fit across then bring it into flash, etc. etc. Took forever. now we do everything css or even better wordpress. want a new button? in wp in about three clicks it is done including all drop downs, flyouts, and links.

 

[dclet]

As a web designer I always hated flash. Yes, we can but maintaining it and updating it was a pure pita. for ex. client wants a nice flash nav. we build it and then 3 mo later he wants to add another button. one little button. sounds easy? no. You would have to rebuild the art to make 5 instead of 4 buttons fit across then bring it into flash, etc. etc. Took forever. now we do everything css or even better wordpress. want a new button? in wp in about three clicks it is done including all drop downs, flyouts, and links.

ignorant...wanna be web designer...if anything took forever in flash then it was poorly done, people don't hate flash they hate "bad flash" unfortunately there is to much of that around.

wordpress ROFL...

 

[JoshLoring]

Honestly I'm glad flash support is being killed off. More then anything! It's simply evolution. Flash was so hot, kind of like the cassette tape. It did its thing- it still "works", but he world moved to CDs.
Now, CDs only hold so much and can only be read by a cd player. (kind of like flash) so.. We evolve to MP3 players, hard drives in cars iPods. (HTML5).
Smaller files, faster response, multiple units can use it with no special plugins. HTML5 is the same evolution and with that we grow. Flash isnt dead yet... But who still uses cassettes? When was the last time you bought a CD as opposed to an easy music purchase download?
Evolution. Move on. If all you know is flash development. Sorry. Grow up and learn HTML5 or live with the cassette tape.