Tag Archives: Flash Blog

Adobe to EOL Flash in 2020

Flash made the web spectacular, and video, which can be delivered in Flash format, universally playable since virtually all browsers came with the Flash plugin installed. Before Flash, viewing video on the web required dealing with a mishmash of formats, plugins, and players (a situation that still exists today outside of Flash). But video delivered via Flash could be viewed everywhere, opening the door for video to become the content staple it now is. That is until the iPhone launched.

The iPhone did not ship with Flash and would not play it. Websites, especially YouTube, Flash’s greatest success story, scrambled to find new methods of delivery — specifically open, non-proprietary formats. (In all fairness, Jobs was right about Flash hogging the limited resources available on mobile devices. And relying upon proprietary solutions on the open web is never a good idea). The greater the iPhone’s success, the more certain Flash’s fate became. And so came the recent announcement from Adobe:

Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.

Farewell Flash, you served us well. But open, efficient formats are far better for everyone in the long run.

Read full article: https://adobe.ly/2h0mO4y

European Commission Joins Investigation of Apple’s Flash Exclusion Policies

The anti-Apple bandwagon grows. Is Apple being called out now for taking its shot at “owning” the Web?

The New York Post reports that the European Commission has taken an interest in Apple’s long-standing exclusion of Adobe’s Flash from its iOS devices, as well as its ban on Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler and similar tools designed to allow non-native applications to be recompiled for the iOS platform. The paper was the first to report back in May that U.S. regulators were considering an inquiry into the situation.”

Web Video Is Still a Mess

It looks like no one can agree on what is the best way to deliver video over the web. Why is this important? Because with ubiquitous fast connections and processors now available to most people, video is the preferred medium online for entertainment, and in many cases, information. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a sound is worth a thousand pictures, then video is, well, you get the idea. If this weren’t so, TV and movies would not be at the center of the entertainment world. And because the Internet can deliver these media digitally, it is naturally the best way for consumers to access them. And that equates to big business.

So what do the people who have the power to establish the standards that allow everyone to benefit from video online do? They fight with each other, of course, since it’s much more important to own the whole pie than to create a level field for all to compete on. And the battle goes on.

First, it was Real vs. QuickTime vs. Windows Media. Then Flash stepped in and, because of YouTube’s adoption of Flash and the ubiquity of the Flash plug-in, it became the de facto web video standard. Today, it’s Flash vs. the H.264 codec, which plays without plug-ins in browsers via HTML 5.

So what’s the problem? In brief, Adobe wants to own the world of web video, and Apple doesn’t like this. Nor does Microsoft, which has designs on web media domination with its Silverlight technology. Several patent holders own the rights to H.264 and they can’t agree on anything, especially royalties. And the Firefox and Opera browsers support a format that few have even heard of (Ogg Theora – ugh).

We can only hope this mess resolves quickly, the way the format war between Blu-Ray Disc and HD-DVD did in recent years. But according to this article from Webmonkey, that doesn’t appear to be likely. So in the meantime, keep that Flash plug-in handy — although it won’t help if you own a mobile product made by Apple.

Full article: http://bit.ly/cgxcSu