Adobe and various members of the OpenScreenProject announced today news about the upcoming release of Flash 10.1, the first Flash version to get released as a full browser plugin for various smartphone platforms.
The new version, to be released sometime next year, includes support for Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian S60, and Palm WebOS smartphones. The only platform missing from the mix is the iPhone, and Adobe makes it clear in their FAQ that this is Apple’s fault for not co-operating.
Other features include graphics hardware acceleration (at least for some Qualcomm and nVidia mobile chipsets), accelerated h.264 video decoding for both mobile and PC/Macs, multi-touch and gestures support, accelerometer input, screen orientation and more.
I for one, being mostly interested in online HD video streaming since videography is my main thing these days, I welcome the hardware decoding addition. I already use CoreAVC Pro for my desktop h.264 needs on my aged Pentium 4, which gives me full 1080p decoding in real time at just ~10% CPU usage, so having this ability via Flash too (for Youtube/Vimeo/Hulu viewing), feels like manna from the heavens.
If this manages to make cumbersome slow jerky flash into something one can stand it could make the closed source Nvidia drivers more popular.
There is already h264 flash acceleration on linux.
Unfortunately it is a really crappy implementation where acceleration is disabled if you have compositing enabled (you have to disable it in xorg.conf for it to work).
It is amazing to me that adobe keeps struggling to accelerate flash when there are so many others that have no problem. Thus whenever a new version of flash comes out with “new feature x” i take it with a grain of salt.
Edited 2009-10-05 12:03 UTC
“The only way Adobe can get Flash on the iPhone is to increase the number of mobile sites that depend on Flash.
Any developer who buys into Flash on mobile is a muppet of the first order.”
BBC iplayer on the iphone works very very well.
Obv you tend to use it in a wifi location as opposed to data due to the transfer required.
flash on a mobile is not silly. the implementation simply needs to match the medium. (a site designed in flash for a 1024 screen wont work well on a mobile screen).
I think for the iphone version of iPlayer the video is streamed via H264 and not via flash, which is why the video is very smooth and looks great.
I don’t care about flash on a portable device, youtube and iplayer both work well on the iPhone. A lot of other flash sites have set sizes for their flash media, usually optimised around laptop / desktop screen size.
I just hope from this version of Flash they finally do something about the performance on Mac’s. Visiting flash sites on a mac is stupid, it requires a lot of processing power for such a simple task, which zaps battery life and slows down other processes.
I had the same experience on my Mac, so I installed ClickToFlash for Safari. I believe there is a comparable version for Firefox as well (Flashblock?), if you do not use Safari.
I think you are correct that the iphone stream is NOT currently flash.
The point I was trying to convey is that flash CAN be efficient. The trouble is, as others have highlighted, flash tends to be developed by designers and not developers. This tends to make the code produced inefficient and often not implemented in the most appropriate manner.
In terms of power Cellphones are about 10 years behind PC’s. Flash has been around longer then 10 years. Even if Mobile flash can do the early flash stuff it would be an improvement.
The point I believe he was making was that flash is horribly inefficient and thus even if it is available on mobile devices it is a waste of resources which in turn represents a waste of power (fairly critical in mobile devices).
Either way the trend these days is away from flash more towards javascript and html5.
If anything just having flash on a mobile could become a pain due to the number of flash advertisements on websites munching away at the cpu.
To be honest I feel that about a lot of flash-on-desktop designers (note that I use the term “designer” as opposed to “developer”).
Particularly those that build their entire site in the stuff.
In my (perhaps somewhat elitist?) opinion, Flash is an Internet parasite.
While sometimes it has it’s uses, mostly it’s just there to animate ads and bring web browsers to a grinding halt.
And Google joins the Open Screen Project:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/teaming-up-with-adobe-and-op…
It’s not Nokia Symbian, it’s just Symbian, there are other vendors using Symbian and Symbian is controled by the Symbian Foundation, not Nokia
True, but didn’t Nokia buy Symbian?
According to wikipedia:
Symbian Ltd. was established in 98 as a partnership between Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Psion.
Symbian Ltd. made Symbian OS, which is the predecessor to Symbian.
Nokia bought the shares they didn’t own in 2008, and the Symbian Foundation was founded the same year.
In 2009, Nokia’s Symbian professional services department,which was not transferred to the Symbian Foundation, was sold to the Accenture consulting company.
The Symbian Foundation is a non-profit organisation, founded by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, NTT DoCoMo, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, Samsung, ST Ericsson and AT&T.
The aim of the Symbian Foundation is to publish the Symbian platform royalty-free under the open source Eclipse Public License.
Edited 2009-10-05 15:09 UTC
I stongly believe that flash has a role to play on the web for at least a few more years, so anything addressing its shortcomings (performance…) is really good news.
Adobe said 10 had GPU acceleration, it was a stretch.
10.1 … there is no details about it.
I already started using Unity instead of Flash, looks good so far.
If Adobe can optimize Flash 10 so it works on a limited computing platform like a mobile phone, why can’t they make full-screen video playback work smoothly on Linux?
Haven’t you noticed that Adobe really only cares about Windows?
In general, people seem to have a reasonably good experience with Flash on Windows. However, Linux and Mac users tend to complain more. That MIGHT mean that Linux and Mac users are more sophisticated and picky, but my personal experience has been simply that the Mac and Linux versions are just not very good.
Think about where a company makes their money, and you’ll see what they care about. With regard to Flash, they make money from licensing the player product in those cases where someone is willing to pay for it (e.g. provider of an embedded platform), and from the authoring tools, mostly the Windows version.
Since most users of Flash are on Windows, Adobe is going to put the most attention towards the Windows version. This is logical. Good for them. But the rest of the world needs to move away from closed formats and poorly supported tools, towards open standards like Javascript and HTML5.
But for that to happen, we need we need the equivalent of Adobe Flash CS for Javascript and HTML5.
Sadly you are correct.
Adobe has maintained flash’s relevance in the face of MS’s silverlight by actually releasing flash for multiple platforms.
All they did was “check the box” which has been good enough for now.
This is a fair complaint. On an app (a fairly sizable one) that I developed recently, the Mac player uses almost 4x as much memory as the same content running on Windows. I haven’t tested for memory use on Linux yet.
Where is flash for android.
Evidently it is possible since it comes preinstalled on some Android phones. It would be nice if it was generally available to all Android phones.
Could it be that it can’t be built using the Google SDK/NDK, so that they can’t be sure that it runs on just any phone, or could it be that there is some business deal with HTC behind it
“Adobe needs full support from Apple beyond what is available through the SDK to enable Web browsing of Flash-based content on the iPhone. While we have been working hard to make the browser plug-in available, without increased co-operation from Apple, it will not be possible. Adobe is therefore focusing our development work on the major smartphone platforms that are working with us to deliver the most innovative and complete web browsing experience.”
Why is that a jab? I call the lack of Flash on the iPhone/iPod Touch as a blessing from above – divine providence if you will. This is one of the few times that Apple has actually blocked an application for good reason. I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about Flash.
Again, how long as it been and they STILL haven’t full opened up the specifications? how long has it been and they still haven’t developed an open source project so that the rest of the known universe isn’t reliant on the crap programming skills of a small clique of morons at Adobe whose only save face from public disgrace is the close source nature of it?
Edited 2009-10-05 17:53 UTC
Here, here. The last thing I want is flash advertisements dragging down the battery life of my iPod Touch. I don’t really like Apple’s app store policies, but if they ban Flash forever I’ll be one happy user.
I would also like to mention that most “developers” would use it as a crutch to not develop native apps. Some may see that as a good thing I don’t. You are still stuck with a proprietary mess at the end of the day.
Or worse, the plugin loaded in the background even after you have closed Safari.
I understand the policies but the biggest issue isn’t necessarily the policies (although the policies are restrictive), it is the inconsistent application of those rules. It reminds me of the flagging policy on YouTube where videos are taken down because of groups swamping movies with a flagging campaign. The problem is that there are movies removed based on no objective criteria; where anti-semetic tracts are kept up yet videos critical of Christianity or Islam are taken down instantly.
What I think developers want is a consistent set of rules that are applied across the board rather than some applications being let through and others not or applications being accepted then within 24 hours they are removed. Although AT&T deny this – I’d have a strong inkling that they put a lot of pressure on Apple to pull it down. AT&T don’t want their business model threatened nor do they want end users utilising their data plans for anything more than email and web surfing. Squeeze as much money out of the customers for the least amount of services provided.
Edited 2009-10-06 00:03 UTC
YES. The web needs to be data made with open standards, and my user agent of choice shall have complete control of what happens to that data once it gets to my device. Browser-specific code makes a mess, but still does not violate that philosophy. Java previously straddled the line between open/closed control, but erred towards developers and end users. Flash stomps on the idea of end user choice, and then has Adobe-ness on top of that, making it all horribly fail the end user. Fittingly, that makes it fail Apple, who sells by making things easy for average-to-above-average humans.
Even Apple’s evil sometimes makes for good.
Edited 2009-10-07 22:44 UTC
Sure, I want Flash to become more efficient for those times when I use it, but I’d prefer not to use it.
Hopefully, with HTML version 5, we’ll see an escape as more sites drop Flash and don’t pick up Silverlight. They can use Ogg Theora or H.264 for video and Java for games and leave the advertising static.
It’s just sad that Adobe values money over excellence in software. They could have made Flash something extraordinary, had they cared.
Oh good, now my smartphone can slow to a snail’s creep along with my laptop, desktop, server, media center, or whatever else happens to be playing craptastic Flash.
Yes, Flash makes you think you need a CPU with 4 cores just to display content that (sometimes) can be easily accomplished with HTML 2.0.