Rubénerd!

I got this irritating message on Firefox and SeaMonkey constantly, mostly because I don't have Flash. Fortunately, it's easy enough to disable.

Go to about:config and set this option to true:

plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin

John Gruber on the lack of Flash in Chrome for Android:

Remember when Android’s (and the BlackBerry Playbook’s, and WebOS’s) support for Flash was supposed to be a competitive advantage against iOS?

I was called out by multiple people when I defended Apple's move to not include Flash, and made the case that mobile Flash made no sense. I'm sure it was the same for John; after all, we're just fanboys!

Still, while it's tempting to engage in a little schadenfreude, the pertitent detail is Adobe ceased support for the mobile version of Flash, it wasn't Google's decision. They don't deserve ire, or praise, as a result.

It's just hearsay in the press for now, so let's not celebrate prematurely!

Ah why not? *throws confetti, then vacuums it up*

From a report in Wired:

In an abrupt about-face in its mobile software strategy, Adobe will soon cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers, according to an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening.

I'll be waiting for official confirmation from Adobe on this before getting too excited. If a journalist receiving the email misinterpreted it or jumped the gun in a desperate attempt for a scoop, it wouldn't be the first time.

Still, if its true Adobe really is ceasing development of Flash plugins for mobile devices, it's absolutely fantastic news and hopefully signals the end of this whole sordid debate that has been raging for years.

"Sordid" sounds like a "soggy sword", which makes no sense. Unless they were made of cardboard, which makes even less sense. Why would you have a cardboard sword?

We're being open by facilitating closed plugins!

Apple of course famously didn't include Flash in its iDevices, and copped more heat for it even than folks like me who defended their decision on our blogs. Never mind that Adobe didn't have a working prototype for mobile Flash for years after the iPhone's release, or that half the user interactions weren't possible on capacitive touch screens, or that when it was finally released it worked poorly. As far as the tech press was concerned, this was just Apple being all control-freaky.

Control freaky. Super freak. Super freak. She's super freaky!

Still, that didn't stop the competition advertising their support for it in an attempt to differentiate their iClones, even when they predictably failed to deliver (surprise, surprise!). Google even went as far as to advertise their platform as being more free by including Flash, presumably employing the same reality distortion field that allowed them to claim Android was open source. Hey, they're not Apple, so it's okay!

If this story is true and Adobe are ending mobile Flash plugins, I have new found respect for them. I can haz Flash removed on the desktop too now? :D

Madoka Flashica

As an addendum, I started putting Kyubey in all my posts about Flash; not entirely sure why, he just seemed to fit XD. Anyway, with the end of mobile Flash, we can presume it will cease to be included in Android soon, which means I may need to revert my Kyubey/Android icon too. Darn, more work to do!

Lance Ulanoff quoting a speaker from Google IO:

Android 2.2 2 support Flash and Air. Google: "Part of being open means you're inclusive, as opposed to exclusive."

I call shenanigans!

Your company is supporting (tacidly or otherwise, the effect is the same) a closed file format readable only by one company's software on the same level as open web standards.

Android has so much going for it, don't use it as a pawn to take cheap shots at a company you can't even summon the courage to name (*cough!* Apple *cough!*), and please don't insult our intelligence by saying Flash is part of being an open solution when it isn't.

Your properties such as YouTube have realised Flash is old and unnecessary, and Apple has done much to sway people and old media companies to developing on web standards instead of proprietary plugins; a change that was long overdue. If we all had Android tablets and phones with your open Flash ecosystem instead of the super duper evil iDevices, the latter either wouldn't have happened, or would have happened around 2030.

If it's true that inclusivity equals open, someone should tell Adobe about FreeBSD.

From the very beginning of the first iPhone I defended Apple's position against adding Flash support, and the same went for the iPad. Now it seems their position has finally started to pay off, and you won't even need to be an Apple customer to benefit.

First, the two arguments Flash proponents almost universally take when debating this issue are:

1. There's lots of useful, important Flash material out there
2. Why not include Flash by default, but allow people to turn it off?

Except in a few extreme cases where the developers don't provide an open alternative (and they're disappearing rapidly), the first point is patently false, and the second one ignores the fact that much of Flash wouldn't work on a portable device (how do you hover a cursor?) and would just encourage developers to merely put a warning on their pages telling iPhone users to switch on Flash support. Either way, no progress gets made.

Now it seems pages have started popping up across the net with Flash-free, HTML5 support for Apple's iPad. Love or hate the device (and there's certainly lots of material discussing both sides), both it and the iPhone are making a noticeable difference in the adoption of open web standards over closed, proprietary web APIs such as Flash, and Silverlight if that even mattered in the first place.

The iPhone is better for standards than Android?

What I find ironic is that it took a traditionally closed company such as Apple to get the web moving away from the slow, buggy, closed Flash API with limited platform support instead of the so called open Android platform which either comes with or supports Flash. If we were all using Android devices, we'd probably still be using more Flash.

I am a proponent of free and open source software in general, but what I'm a zealot for is open standards. As far as I'm concerned, a proprietary product that exports, saves, opens and manipulates data in open formats is superior to an open source platform that either pays lip service to closed APIs or approves of them.

That's not to say Android hasn't also done amazing things, one of which was to usurp Microsoft's terrible WiMo and make free(er) software the norm on mobile phones which is unprecedented. Have you ever used Pocket Office on WiMo, ugh!

Related posts

• 2010.01.30: iPad without Flash is Google without IE6
• 2010.01.30 Adobe attacks… with figures!

With all this furore about the iPad not having Flash, I thought I'd share this screenshot. Yes Adobe, I would have begrudgingly installed your Flash drug in the past because I felt as though I "needed" it, but having been forced to give it up when I moved most of my machines to FreeBSD (which you don't support) I was forced to get clean and as a consequence I no longer use it even on platforms you do support!

Friends, don't let friends use Flash.

Adobe has responded to the lack of Flash on the new iPad, that Apple tablet device thingy if you haven't heard of it because you were teleported into the future or have been asleep for a few days.

[...] without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

Three observations I'll observe (observe observations, no, really?) in rapid-fire succession. One, where did they get those suspect figures from? Two, I was unaware YouTube accounted for less than 25% of online video. Three, 98% of irritating online advertisements and 90% of browser crashes are the fault of Flash which they conveniently failed to mention. Four, I created those numbers out of thin air much like I suspect they did. Those were four observations, but number one and four were related you see.

This morning I defended Apple's decision to not include Flash and compared it to Google deciding to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6. So far I haven't had any angry replies to it yet, perhaps it's the timezone difference.

Of all the criticisms of the iPad that have been thrown around since it's launch barely a few days ago, the loudest seems to be the lack of Flash support. I'm going to get into trouble with a lot of people for saying this, but I consider it a feature, and on par with Google ditching support for Internet Explorer 6 on some of their sites.

Flash never liked Apple anyway

It's no secret Adobe has let Flash languish on the Mac for a long, long time, and they don't even acknowledge the existence of operating systems other than Windows, Mac or 32bit Linux (last time I checked a few years ago even 64bit Linux versions were unavailable). On my non-Mac machines that all run FreeBSD, if I wanted to view Flash content I needed to run the Linux version of Flash using the binary compatibility layer, and even then it was buggy even by Flash's poor standards. As a result I started avoiding sites that use Flash, and now I don't use it. Period.

In high school in 2004 I remember working closely with a guy a few grades below me on a site for the school newspaper and he insisted we use Flash. Even then despite the lack of HTML5 I loathed it because sites rendered in it were confusing, broke basic browser behaviour, didn't index properly and were more often than not ugly as heck. To be fair I levelled the same criticisms against Ajax sites back in 2007, but at least in those cases Ajax doesn't rely on a closed, slow, buggy plugin that is bad enough on the desktop let alone a portable tablet device, and the situation has since improved.

Flash must die!

Then of course there are the security and privacy concerns with Flash that the mainstream media and most pundits are refusing to discuss or even acknowledge. Flash cookies in particular are an extremely nasty invasion of privacy that intentionally and misleadingly sidestep all the preferences users have set with regards to sites remembering information about them. It's like somebody finiding a loophole in your restraining order against them that says they can photograph you from their car provided they use film instead of memory cards and wear a Neelix mask.

I like Apple products because they're simple, elegant and just work, but I'm not afraid to call them out when they do something silly. There are a lot of silly things about this iPad, but one of them is not the lack of Flash support.

If anything I applaud Apple for taking a stand by not putting Flash in their iPhone OS in much the same way I applaud Google for no longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 on many of their sites. Replace many of the arguments people make about the iPad and Flash with Google and Internet Explorer 6 (Apple should make it an option, some sites still need it) and the argument quickly falls apart, or at the very least develops some serious cracks in their credibility.

Sidenotes at the... bottom

One sidenote of note (hah!), how would a dodgy Flash application that requires a mouse to hover over it to reveal aspects of its hidden interface and/or to accept input work on a multi touch interface, without a mouse? It makes no sense.

Sidenote two, more of an observation: the stigma attached to sites that not only use Flash but require it to function has existed for a long time now -- I still remember people in 2000 complaining about sites that required Flash and without an alternative.

And as another sidenote, does anyone else find it ironic that many of the people complaining the iPad doesn't have Flash are also the ones who say the iPad is too "closed"? Double standards much? Double standards sounds like a great name for a pastry shop that sells savoury cakes.

I'm done ranting now, whew! Time to have a cup of green tea.

It's been another very busy day today, though admittedly not as bad as yesterday. While waiting in a queue to have my teeth pulled and to deal with a banking teller (I forget which one ended up happening) I was using the Backgrounds application for the iTelephone that does exactly what it sounds like it does. Normally I uninstall anything with advertising on it in a heartbeat, but I enjoy Backgrounds too much. If they had a paid version without advertising, I'd buy it.

Now here's where the silliness starts. While looking for some nice scenery images I came across a page that had a series of night time shots, and below in the advertising slot there appeared a link to a website on sleep. For the first time in many years (at least 5+) I thought an online advertisement looked interesting, so I clicked on it. It took me to a website that was completely designed in Flash.

If the penny hasn't dropped yet, the iPhone does not have Flash... thank heavens! And yet here's a company with a website that's completely Flash driven advertising in a Google Mobile advertisement box that's intended for an iPhone.

It's like when I'm asked if I want new carpet or a patio extension when I'm living in a rented house, or when I visit a social anxiety support group website and the advertisements are for party organisers.