Tag Archives | Adobe

Google Chrome to Integrate Flash

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 30, 2010 at 11:27 am

What if Flash felt less like a browser plugin and more like a browser feature? Google and Adobe intend to try and answer that question. They’ve announced that future versions of the Chrome browser will come with an integrated version of Flash. Download Chrome, and you’ll get a preinstalled, ready-to-go copy of Flash; update Chrome, and you’ll get any available Flash updates.

I know that some folks reading this post will have an instinctive negative reaction to this idea–there are definitely those who dislike Flash enough that they want nothing to do with it. But ardent Flash avoiders are a tiny minority, judging from the fact that the vast majority of the world’s PCs and Macs have Flash installed. (They’ll be able to disable the preinstalled Flash if they want.)

Conceptually, I like the idea–but only if it makes Flash more or less transparent. Over the years, I’ve wasted a fair amount of time reinstalling and updating Flash, dealing with odd errors (like demands for more storage), and recovering from Flash crashes. If the integrated version results in a Flash that’s just there, it’ll be a good thing. And it would help make Flash more palatable in a world in which it’ll compete with open, browser-native HTML5 technologies–which is presumably part of the idea.

In related news, both Adobe and Google are working with Mozilla and other players in the browser community to build a new API for plugins–one which will allow for better integration than existing techniques. Again, good idea if it helps us forget we’re running plugins at all…

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The Future of Flash

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 2, 2010 at 12:27 pm

Did irritation with Adobe Flash reach some sort of tipping point over the past few days? Probably not. But the heated debate about the near-pervasive plug-in for video, animation, and interactivity has made for fascinating reading.

When Steve Jobs sat on stage using an iPad that clearly didn’t support Flash, the discussion of Flash and iPhone OS instantly shifted from “Will Apple ever allow Flash on iPhone OS?” to “What does it mean for Flash that Apple will never allow it on iPhone OS?” to, in some cases, “What does it mean for the Web that Flash is on its way out?”

Over the weekend, dogpile on the rabbit syndrome set in. Adobe employees blogged in defense of Flash, but if the software got a stirring defense from anyone else, I didn’t come across it. Even the thoughts from Flash supporters tended to be bleak.

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Why Adobe’s Bum Rush of the iPhone Doesn’t Matter

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 11, 2010 at 8:45 am

Apple has done all it can to keep Flash off the iPhone. It has used about every excuse in the book — too memory intensive, a drain on battery power, what have you — even though Adobe has pretty much addressed most of these issues. Flash is ready for the iPhone but Apple is not ready for Flash.

Either way Adobe is not going to wait much longer. It’s Creative Suite 5 product, now going through private beta, is going to include functionality that will automatically convert Flash applications to ones that are compatible with the iPhone.

This has the potential to be quite the step forward in iPhone development. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld seems to even go as far as suggesting this as some kind of game changer. CS5 has the potential to expand the developer far beyond the 125,000 iPhone developers out there today, considering there’s about two million Flash developers worldwide.

I hate to rain on anyones parade, but not so fast.

For all that we know of this functionality, it appears to just be a port. Essentially the Flash code is translated into what the software believes is the closest match in iPhone code and goes with it. Like we’ve found out in the past with “WYSIWYG” HTML editors such as Microsoft’s popular FrontPage product, this isn’t always a good thing.

What’s the result? Bulky, slow running applications. In the dog-eat-dog world that has become the App Store, that’s just not going to fly.

I highly doubt that Flash developers that have gone to great lengths to create great Flash apps would allow these same apps to become subpar just to get on the iPhone. While no doubt there will be a subset of Flash developers that will use this feature, it’s not going to be as many as people think.

Bottom line? If these developers want to develop for the iPhone, then they should do it the right way.

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The Myth of Platform-Independent Applications

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 17, 2009 at 11:21 am

At Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles this morning, Seesmic announced that its Seesmic Desktop, a popular tool among Twitter power users, is coming to Windows. Finally!

Um, hasn’t Seemsic run on Windows all along? Well, yes, but that’s because it’ s written in Adobe AIR, an application platform that lets programmers write Flash applications that can run outside the browser. (That’s a dumbed-down explanation of AIR, but enough to get the gist across, I hope.) One of the principal selling points of AIR is that it lets developers write one app that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, as Seesmic Desktop does.

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It’s Flash on the iPhone (Well, Sort of)

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 5, 2009 at 1:34 pm

iphoneflashThe iPhone may be the only major smartphone in the known universe that’s unlikely to get Adobe’s Flash Player anytime soon, but there is a bit of iPhone/Flash news today. At Adobe’s MAX conference in Los Angeles, the company announced that Flash Professional CS5, the next upgrade to the Flash developer package, will be able to create native iPhone applications for distribution through the App Store.

This has nothing to do with Flash Player, and won’t let iPhone users view Flash content on the Web–it’s just a way for developers who are comfortable with Flash to build iPhone apps. It’ll presumably be useful when a company’s putting together an app in Flash for multiple devices, and wants to get it onto the iPhone without starting from scratch.

It sounds like a smart way for Adobe to jam its foot into the iPhone door even if Flash Player for the iPhone remains an iffy proposition–but if these tools are worth using, iPhone users should see no signs whatsoever that there’s anything unusual about the apps that developers build with them.

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