Decoding Adobe's Big Device Push 181
nerdyH writes "Adobe yesterday chummed the waters around Flash and AIR as cross-platform app dev environments for mobile devices. It promised runtimes for several popular mobile OSes, including WinMo, Symbian, Palm webOS, and Android, with future RIM/Blackberry support hinted as well. Moreover, it reiterated its commitment to the Open Screen Project, an Adobe-led industry group that, if you deconstruct its name and look at its membership roster, appears tactically focused on enabling hardware acceleration of Flash/AIR on devices, as part of a larger strategy of making the runtimes ubiquitous as UI development frameworks for essentially every computer-like device with a user interface."
Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:5, Interesting)
With HTML5's video, audio and canvas elements, there will be less and less need for Flash in the future on the web. It seems like Adobe is realizing this as well and has decided to move the focus of Flash from mere embedded objects on web pages to a way of easily creating full, rich and cross-platform applications for both PC's and phones.
This coiuld work out pretty well for them in the end. I must admit clicking a game together using Flash and publishing it to every major platform sounds more attractive than the more traditional ways of developing software, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking this.
Hopefully... (Score:4, Interesting)
...they will learn something from squeezing Flash onto these embedded devices that can be used to help make the desktop edition less resource intensive.
What's the point of Flash today (Score:2, Interesting)
What can you do with Flash that you can't do with html5?
New license (Score:4, Interesting)
Certain projects shouldn't fork. Sun wouldn't open up Java for the longest time, because they didn't want forks of Java, and they didn't want to repeat what they went through with Microsoft.
I propose a new license that operates on a few basic principles.
1 - You can redistribute and modify the source code.
2 - You may compile the original source code, and even compile modified versions for personal use.
3 - You may not redistribute modified binaries.
In this scenario, users can compile themselves, test, fix bugs, write patches, etc. They can submit patches upstream, but upstream still largely controls the project and prevents major forks. You would still attract community developers.
I think a license like this would work well for Flash.
The cross-compilation multiverse (Score:4, Interesting)
I could be wrong, but..
Unity3d.com is probably doing what Adobe plans to already, except they're using .NET. Cross-compiling code into real iPhone applications. I haven't dug too deeply into how Unity3d is doing it, but it seems pretty clear -- you can write your code in .NET with some pseudo-alternative languages like 'Boo' (python), and it makes you a nice iPhone binary that'll pass Apple's deployment criteria.
Considering Adobe has the time, money, and smarts to do it, don't be surprised when their 'Program Actionscript for the Iphone!' system is a very tightly defined API coupled with the iPhone framework that is cross-compiling..
Before I gave up on Perl, the assertion that Parrot would be some fancy answer to everyone's programming problems by allowing you to program in any language you wanted. I somewhat scoffed at the idea, but more recently as I've been working with ARM processors and doing a lot of cross-compiling work I can understand why it's an important idea that will soon be second nature to us.
If I could buy stock in Unity3D right now I would, because those guys nailed it. They just need to scale up and out of just the 3d game market.
Hardware acceleration of an API/bytecode? (Score:1, Interesting)
More attractive for you... (Score:3, Interesting)
I must admit clicking a game together using Flash and publishing it to every major platform sounds more attractive
Slap it together and call it a day!
Never mind it doesn't take advantage of platform specific features. I'm sure users wouldn't care about THAT at all. I'm sure your sales will be just fine...
Sometimes easier things are just easier, not better.
Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:3, Interesting)
The proof is in the pudding... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and Adobe claimed they would have flash on Android this Fall.
October is here. Now they say next year.
I am not hopeful that they can get flash on Android. Possibly they are waiting for better devices so they don't have to shoehorn it into the G1, which could use more RAM, but it is what it is.
In fact, I predict, no Flash for the G1 ever. And many of the other platforms as well. Adoby wants to FUD the developers and keep HTML5 on the shelf as long as possible, since stuff like Canvas will pretty much eat their lunch and dinner if they don't watch out.
Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:3, Interesting)
There is that. There is also the notion that in a few short years most PC users won't be using PC's anymore. If Adobe (or anyone else for that matter) want to remain relevant to that group they're going to have to figure out exactly this cross platform issue before cell phones start driving external displays.
Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:5, Interesting)
With HTML5 not being supported by MS, and only certain codecs being supported by Apple, the video tag isn't worth shit, unfortunately.
Besides, flash video players are all about the bloat - look at youtube/hulu, you've got captions, annotations, ads, menus at the end, etc.
I haven't looked into the other new tags, but flash for video should have died years ago.
Last I checked embed src="file.ext" worked fine, and my browser loaded a plugin/full app to handle whatever it was. (Though it's not actually part of the spec, is it?)
It wasn't pretty, and it just played the video. But that's all I want. Sadly, everyone else loves "teh web 2.0" and demands all the bits and bobs.
We've had streaming protocols for ages that worked directly in the browser, or by opening up a media app. We can always improve the protocol and the codec without touching flash.
The problem is it's not about the content anymore. The content is the lure. No one wants to serve up site.com/videos/video1.mp4 through straight html. They want you to go to site.com, see ads, click around, add comments, see a list of related and sponsored videos, and maybe watch the actual video.
This is why flash (and similar) will live on, regardless of the alternatives.
Re:New license (Score:1, Interesting)
Or just trademark the name and don't allow others to use it.
(Thinking of the whole firefox == iceweasel thing)
Re:How about you get it right on the desktop Adobe (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seems like Adobe is waking up (Score:1, Interesting)
Or there is Club Penguin, which has done something like $50M / year in revenue. Clearly Flash has some (sizable) niches even if a gaggle of internet snobs don't approve of it. I don't see sites like that being rewritten in HTML 5 any time soon.
Re:The cross-compilation multiverse (Score:3, Interesting)
Unity is nice, but the end result is massive bloat. It's a nice way for a developer or company to get into the iPhone market without having to learn Objective C, but I don't think they've 'nailed it.'
I've seen extremely simple applications take 18 - 24 MB space on an iPhone. That's with no textures, no graphics no nothing except basic 3D objects being rendered. An equivalent app developed in Objective C takes 10% - 25% of that.
18 - 24MB doesn't seem like a lot until you think about the fact that all that is all being loaded into the very limited available memory. There's very little room to make something that takes advantage of Unity's framework. And the fact that Unity is trying to do garbage collection in a separate thread means that the performance of the App goes down.
You're right, they're doing some cool stuff -- and the fact that it's cross-platform capable makes it that much better. But personally, I decided to put in the little bit of time it took to learn Objective C and the discipline to retain and release over putting my eggs into Unity's basket (that one was an easy choice).
Re:What's the point of Flash today (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm not so sure that making a good IDE for something that supports nearly the same as flash does for html5 and js WOULD be that big a problem. I used to develop in flash a great deal 3 years ago, but I have been doing web programming since then. (mostly php, mysql, but I am really good with javascript as well)
I don't see why, with all the capability we ALREADY have with javascript and html5, couldn't make an IDE for making similar content in a application that is browser/web based and is nearly 100% html5 and javascript (python/php/ruby would be needed some I'm thinking). If one were to develop a good api for frame-based animation using javascript and html5, why then couldn't html5 and javascript form a good ide interface and "compiling"(scripting language needed here) the necessary javascript/html5 to make your content run?
Would a javascript API be as nice as flashes? no, probably not...as actionscript is actually a decent OOP language in many respects (yes javascript can be OOP, but it's just not the same/equivalent). Do I think the results could be as nice? With some good backing and committed development, possibly. Do I see any reason an IDE as rich as flash's couldn't be developed using html5, js, and maybe some other scripting language like python/php/ruby? No, not really. So, really, if I'm right (most likely I'm not), the only thing holding JS and html5 back is lack of will/means to compete head to head with adobe.
Call me out if I'm wrong...but I think it could be done. (and if anyone wants to hire my help, contact me...heh)
Re:How about you get it right on the desktop Adobe (Score:1, Interesting)
h264 decoding is not the problem. In fact, 80% CPU usage when playing back a simple video is probably the -best- case scenario for Flash on Mac, since there's not very much Flash actually going on. Try some games from armorgames.com and compare your framerates to a similarly spec'd Windows box. On my 2006 MBP, many of those games are simply unplayable due to slide-show level framerates (10fps). The CPU, of course, is pegged at 100% no matter what the application.
I have to install Flash blockers in my browser because sometimes I like to surf the web while on battery, hahaha. Flash alone cuts my battery life in half.
Face it, Mac Flash performance is like every other poorly, hastily executed Mac port: shit poor. I saw an Adobe developer claim on someone's forums they knew what the problem was, but just didn't have the "resources" or corporate will to fix it.
Re:More attractive for you... (Score:2, Interesting)
In general I would like to see Flash to be competitive, hardware acceleration is very welcome but not enough, Adobe should optimize Flash codebase once and for all, theres a lot of old and unnecessary stuff there.
Before I start to crawl under my desk, let me say something, You can hate all that you want that Flash thing, I hate it too when I'd like to see a fullscreen video on my old PIII laptop, I hate it back then when Flash in Linux was a PITA, but Flash is not going anywhere, and I know and you know that nothing good can come out if Silverlight becomes the new Flash, what? the MAFIAA Plugin? No thanks. Just give it a break. Flash may not be open source but you can open source your flash: http://silex-ria.org/
I really hope HTML5 to bring a new paradigm in the streaming video field and a Flash focusing in what it was intended to be in the beginning: a vector animation and interactive presentation/RIA tool.
*crawls under the desk*