The painful and prolonged death of Flash

1. Adobe said goodbye to Flash Media Player by 2020

If you have been using the Internet for a long time, not only have you used Flash in recent years.Historically, this platform has become a popular platform on the web and without smartphones it can still last today.

Many people add Flash - actually a multimedia platform - to Adobe, but to understand its origin, we have to return to the 1990s. A company called FutureWave Software created SmartSketch.The software is mainly used for vector drawing applications on Windows or OS X but is less well known.

FutureWave was later acquired by Macromedia, a large corporation with many other popular program programs.FutureSplash Animator, a core part of SmartSketch, has been renamed as Macromedia Flash 1.0, consisting of two parts: a graphic and animation editor and a media player.

Strong growth

This software has grown quite popular from 1996 to 2005 and is said to install on more computers than all other media players like Java, RealNetworks, QuickTime and Windows Media Player.

This growth was driven by a strong investment in Macromedia's Flash services improvement, including the addition of MovieClips.Over the years, this platform has transformed from a media creation tool to a web platform.This is the Flash that people think of today.

In 2005, the year when Flash actually developed, Adobe acquired Macromedia and incorporated Flash, Dreamweaver, Director / Shockwave and Authorware.Some of these programs, especially Dreamweaver, are currently being used by the professional community.

Over the years, Adobe continues to develop Flash, which has become an application suite, into a web platform for video, music, games and more.Many computers are preinstalled with Flash for web access.But in 2007, Flash's world was shaking - even if Adobe didn't recognize it at the time.

Jobs's warning

In June 2007, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, introduced the iPhone, a device he deemed to work as a phone, a music player and, most importantly, an Internet browser.The ability eventually brought the iPhone, especially 3G and 3GS, into the hands of millions of users.

Unlike the first versions of Android or Windows Mobile (and later Windows Phone), the iPhone operating system (later becoming iOS) does not support Flash.

"I want to document some of our ideas about Adobe's Flash products for customers and critics to better understand why we don't run Flash on iPhone, iPod and iPad", cited in Jobs' 'Thoughts on Flash' article, written in the spring of 2010 and signaled the death of the platform.

Jobs has made many complaints about Flash, including its monopoly.In fact most websites (even then) have moved to other formats for videos.Flash has a negative impact on the battery life and Flash security profile is relatively poor.

Jobs concluded that: "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and personal computers)".He also mentioned that 'Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools in the future'.

These words partly explain the shortcomings of the Flash platform, the factors that hinder it for many years, make users more at risk of security and significantly reduce power and battery life. phones, tablets and personal computers.

Google is also involved in this process

Google sided with Apple against Flash and transferred all YouTube videos into HTML5 format in 2015. The company also launched a tool called Swiffy to convert Flash to HTML5.

The service was launched last year, recently closed by Google.A blog post from the company has "Today, more users are using the web in HTML5-compatible environments than Flash-compatible environments".In other words, very few people are currently using Flash, so the tools to convert from Flash to HTML5 are no longer needed.

Apple recently announced that the next version of Safari on macOS Sierra, will disable Flash (along with some other online formats) by default.Google has taken a similar approach to Chrome and actually Microsoft is accelerating the collapse of Flash with Edge's new browser.

Mobile game

Of course, Flash still exists and is used frequently in mobile games because there are very few alternative platforms to run.Many games are based on Flash by millions of players such as Angry Birds, Farmville and AdventureQuest.

The Flash platform is and still exists because it is used for older web sites that are mostly used on desktops.In addition, playing games on Facebook, watching videos is enabled by Flash.

However, Facebook does not look at Flash in this direction.Alex Stamos, the company's chief security officer, said: "It's time for Adobe to announce the Flash expiration date and ask browsers to set up killbit (security functions in browsers) on the same day. ".He also put forward the view: "Nobody has time to rewrite their tools and upgrade to HTML5 because they expect Flash to live forever. We need an exact day to convert it."

Limitations of Flash

In fact, there are serious technical limitations to Flash, as Jobs has long emphasized back and this format is not compatible with mobile phones because the touch screen does not use children. mouse as the main input source.

In his article Jobs also mentioned "Flash is designed for computers that use mice, not for touch screens with fingers. Even if iPhone, iPod and iPad run Flash, it will not solve. The problem is that most Flash sites need to be rewritten to support touch devices. "

Flash's death is long, painful and death has not ended, though it has been a great platform to promote the interaction of websites worldwide.Finally, the future will belong to HTML5, available everywhere, unchecked - like the Internet.