It has a future?

How about a highway with a Dead End sign?

Flash will be around for a while, there are a lot of legacy websites that use it, but as to new development who knows.

Flash is on a slow death.  Providers don’t want to maintain two sets of formats (Flash / HTML5-CSS3).  They will go with the direction media is heading, and its not Flash.  The post-PC era is here.

Where’s Bosco to preach to all of us how Flash on non-Apple devices were going to put Apple in its place?

Instead, Linux users will be directed to Google’s Chrome web browser and its built-in Flash Player.

I knew that Chrome had a “built-in” Flash player, but I assumed it was still an Adobe implementation. Does this mean it’s actually a Google implementation?

This story misses half of the story, which is AIR. And sflocal, that’s been the more important thing I’ve been talking about here for nearly two years, but you Flash haters just can’t wrap your heads around the whole of the technology.

Basically, it’s using the Flash API that millions of Flash developers know and love to create real, compiled apps. And that still lives on and is a very important development platform for both iOS and Android, despite Steve’s stupid attempt to kill it and all third party APIs.

Definitely a Flash hater here. Because it ran like crap for so long on my computers. The reason, the REAL reason that Adobe dropped mobile development is that, 5 years into the smart phone revolution that the iPhone sparked, Adobe is STILL unable to deliver a version of Flash player that works well on existing mobile devices. The reason that Steve didn’t want Flash on the iPhone is that there wasn’t a version of Flash that he could put on the iPhone.

Hey, I’m really glad for this; perhaps it means Adobe will start improving Flash Pro’s graphic tools again.

I’ve said before, Flash’s problem is that it’s trying to be everything to everyone. It was a vector based animation program with simple interactivity. Then it took over complex cross-platform interactivity as it absorbed the features of Director. Then it became the multimedia player for the masses in the internet age.

The result is a program that has trail-blazed a number of new fields, but excels in none of them. ToonBoom stole the mantle from Flash as the premiere vector animation tool a while ago. HTML 5 allows video on mobile and Linux without Adobe’s development, and Unity now builds games both cross-platform and for mobile and console systems.

Now that the Flash player has missed the boat on mobile, Flash Pro needs a focus, ANY focus, to maintain any sort of role. Right now the only thing saving it is that it’s “free” with the Creation Suite bundles, making it a sound investment for small studios needing to add a little animation to their web or video workflow. At least with gaming, it helps get back to it’s more foundational roots of cross-platform interactive graphics.

Bosco wrote: Basically, it’s using the Flash API that millions of Flash developers know and love to create real, compiled apps.

The trouble seems to be uses that (presumably less clever) developers designed that were resource hogs that slowed, stopped or crashed the devices on which they were played.