Flash Mobile and HTML5

The recent announcements by Adobe about the future of Flash on mobile have been interesting though they definitely seem to have caused confusion in various communities.

Going through the original statements by Adobe is worth the time because it fills in the data and, as important, the thinking behind these moves (see the links below).

But I have to say that given the difficulties of making Flash ubiquitous on mobile devises (and its ubiquity being one of its big pluses on the desktop) the decision seems to make sense. And that’s even without taking into account that it apparently would not have ended up in any foreseeable future on arguably the most important line of mobile devices. Given that, it would not support the community at large to segment mobile users and spend time fighting between possible platforms. One could argue that Steve Jobs had a major part in bringing about that market segmentation by excluding Flash in the first place, but no matter who you blame (or credit), the world is going in one direction and it is better for Adobe to support its developers by making sure they stay relevant.

What I didn’t see yet are Adobe’s plans to develop tools to make it easier for developers to create applications in either Flash or HTML5 or both. Obviously, there are differences between the technologies that could make that hard and the lack of a completed HTML5 standard makes for a moving target, but it would be great if Adobe’s tools supported Flash developers using their skillsets to also do HTML5.

Ultimately, most Flash developers probably don’t care about the platform – they have customer business needs to fulfill and the technology is just a means to do that. As a developer, if I can design and build an app that will run on any kind of device and which takes advantage of the technology that device has available, what do I care?

But, there is a political problem right now of how to answer customer questions. Business customers are notorious for spooking easily. If they get an incomplete or wrong message, it makes it hard to keep them on track – and panic is never a really sound basis for making long term decisions.

Adobe could help right now by moving quickly through the “answering questions” phase into a phase of effectively communicating where they are going, how their developers will continue to be relevant, how these changes could actually protect their developers long term by keeping them relevant and how this could even open new markets.

Of course, that all has to be true and plans need to be in place to make it happen. But, Adobe does have a history of predicting or creating future trends and creating technology solutions to get there. That foresight needs to be in play now and, as important needs to be communicated in a way that makes the recent changes an expansion rather than a contraction.

A post from Adobe about the change:  

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html

A longer post Mike Chambers the direction, the thinking and the future:  

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/