Flash, Chrome and a Mole Hill

In case you haven't heard yet Adobe made a blog post today detailing a new partnership with Google. If you haven't already follow my link above and read Adobe's post - it is only a few paragraphs. I've already seen this news reposted on several open-source news sites and honestly I think it is great deal of fuss over something that ultimately won't matter much.

I have a few reasons for saying this, here is my train of thought on the topic:

1.) We are getting flash 11.2 as a normal browser plugin and then this version will see security updates for five years. A good deal of flash content doesn't break backwards compatibility (heck I still use flash 9.x on my N900 without issues), this means you have at least five more years of using flash in your browser of choice on Linux.

2.) I know, odds are you know it, heck even Adobe knows it - flash is going the way of the dinosaurs with regards to web technology. Does this mean we are going to have a flash free web tomorrow? No of course not. It does mean though that as new, better content gets created for the web it is less and less likely to utilise flash. Five years from now flash not existing for Linux could seriously be a non-issue.

3.) Worst case scenario: Flash doesn't die out and five years from now we all have to install Chrome when we need to access some poorly designed flash-based website. It would suck, but it would hardly be the end of the world.

So for now, lets not make a mountain out of something that very well appears to be nothing more than a molehill.

~Jeff Hoogland

The Flashless Future

Adobe Flash

Those two words have driven fear, annoyance and hate into the hearts of many users and developers for some time now. I am here to say today, in case you had not noticed, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I say with certainty that the days Adobe Flash enjoys as a dominant web development tool are numbered.

Don't believe me? Just take a look at the many popular flash based services that are moving away from the stale technology. Two such examples of this are the music streaming service Pandora (which is now fully HTML5) and the popular video streaming site Youtube (which currently offers a beta HTML5 version). Google+ also display any linked to Youtube videos using the HTML5 technology.

It isn't just websites that are predicting the end of flash though. Microsoft recently announced that it's new version of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 on ARM will not support plugins of any sort. In fact they went so far to state the obvious:

Java script and HTML5 technologies are the way of the future for web design.

While FOSS advocates such as myself have felt this way for some time it was wonderful to hear it come from the king of closed source software.

Finally, the last sign that flash will soon be a thing of the past is Adobe's own "Edge Technology". Edge is designed to help web developers create web content using only Java Script, HTML5 and CSS3. When even the creator of flash realizes their  technology is on the way out I hope everyone else does as well.

~Jeff Hoogland

Adobe: Thank you sir. May I have another?

If you use Linux on the desktop then odds are you know that getting support from big name companies that produce software is typically difficult at best. They tell us we don't have enough market share, they tell us we have too many different configurations, they tell us there is too much fragmentation to create software for us.

Thats fine. Believe whatever lies you want and do as you will - it's your company and your software.

You know what isn't fine though? Giving us the impression you are going to provide support and then slapping us in the face later on. Adobe has done just this - not just once, but twice now!

In September of last year Adobe announced the release of their preview flash player that supported 64 operating systems of all types - even Linux. Since then there has not been a single up to the Linux 64 bit binary. In fact when going to the Adobe download page you are informed that the only version you can still download is the old version from September for 64 bit Linux.


The worst part? Adobe doesn't even have the gall to respond to their users about the lack of updates.

Flash isn't the only thing Adobe plans to screw it's desktop Linux users on though. As of version 2.7 Adobe's Air technology will no longer support desktop Linux. At least the developers at Adobe labs have the spine to tell us the are dropping support for the Linux desktop with Air instead of just leaving us wondering.

All in all just another healthy reminder of why closed source technologies are not ones you should come to rely heavily on. At any rate, hopefully more websites will start adopting the more open HTML5 for steaming content in the coming months - making flash less and less relevant. With respect to Adobe Air - we still have java if we want to run slow, cross-platform code. Guess that will have to do for now!

~Jeff Hoogland