Adobe mobile Flash Abandoned, Impact on PC Flash and Web Design
What is the impact of Adobe abandoning mobile Flash? Actually abandoning Flash for mobile is not really a big deal in itself, what is a big deal is what this move likely means for the future of Flash on all platforms, PC included.
Apple has been a Flash antagonist and Microsoft joined the Flash opposition with IE 10 and Windows 8 declaring it is time for the Web to move on (ouch). With this the demise of the antiquated PC Flash platform can’t be far behind.
In fact, Adobe already has the replacement for Flash in work, Edge which is scheduled for launch in 2012. Adobe has finally embraced web design standards such as CSS, although a bit late in the game. CNET has a great article on this with more details, Adobe Abandons Flash Plugin For Mobile. For a more technical assessment of this see Alex’s post The Internet Progresses as Adobe Abandons Flash.
Flash was amazing when it first launched, it brought animation and graphics to life on a lifeless internet at the time. Since then HTML 5, CSS, and other languages have advanced and made Flash much less relevant and more importantly provided better options for animation and video. Add to the mix that Flash is horrible for SEO and effectively invisible to search engines and there are huge disadvantages and disincentives for using Flash. With today’s announcement from Adobe Flash for website design is now a dead language, like Latin, and it is time to move on to better options.
We use HTML 5, CSS and other SEO friendly languages for all of our website development and applications. In fact we have been very busy lately converting Flash video and Flash animations to HTML for some clients that still have them on their websites so their website will be iPad and mobile compatible.
