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Athens · Jul 1, 2012, 04:26 AM

Steve Would Be Proud: How Apple Won The War Against Flash | TechCrunch

An Update on Flash Player and Android � Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog

Well it would appear that Flash on mobile is dead. Adobe announced that it will be pulling the flash player from Google play and that it would not support 4.1. Nice article on the history of Flash player on Mobile and how Steve was right that the platform never really worked well on mobile. I honestly can't say I miss flash on mobile. I hardly even use it on the desktop since I have a plugin to block flash. I hardly ever need to allow flash to use websites.

Its to bad Steve isn't around to see how right he was about it.

subego · Jul 1, 2012, 04:40 AM

Rest in pieces.

design219 · Jul 1, 2012, 09:13 AM

Long live html5!

Athens · Jul 1, 2012, 10:25 PM

Now if h264 would just win out the video standards...

P · Jul 2, 2012, 02:17 AM

Originally Posted by Athens

Now if h264 would just win out the video standards...

It has in effect done that. Youtube is not going WebM only, Chrome is not going WebM only, and Mozilla has already added H.264 support to the mobile version of Firefox and discussing doing so on the desktop. Their problem there is that if they just enable OS codecs, that leaves all Win XP users out in the cold, and XP is still some 40% of their userbase. That is a very different problem from their principled stand against all patent-encumbered codecs.

It has also been interesting to view the reactions to this. Mozilla has been very open about the fact that this was a war they lost, and they're now surrendering. Google has not said a word.

Athens · 06:02 PM

A lot of developers are sticking to Flash for video right now because of the possible format war with WebM. Google backing WebM pushed clear adoption of H.264 for the HTML 5 standard back by a couple years at least.

Spheric Harlot · Jul 2, 2012, 03:14 PM

But most Flash video is just a wrapper for h.264!

P · Jul 2, 2012, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Athens

A lot of developers are sticking to Flash for video right now because of the possible format war with WebM. Google backing WebM pushed clear adoption of H.264 back by a couple years at least.

I don't see how. If you already have a Flash infrastructure, it's easy to add HTML5 <video> with H.264. Adding WebM means re-encoding. This is a big reason why H.264 is winning - the transition from Flash is so easy.

andi*pandi · Jul 2, 2012, 03:57 PM

It isn't one or the other. As a developer you have to have support for all formats, including still having a flash fallback.

I've used MediaElement.js - HTML5 video player and audio player with Flash and Silverlight shims and while not perfect, it accomplishes this.

Athens · Jul 2, 2012, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

But most Flash video is just a wrapper for h.264!

Yes, but HTML 5 standard does not use h.264 in a flash wrapper....

Spheric Harlot · Jul 2, 2012, 06:08 PM

Originally Posted by Athens

Yes, but HTML 5 standard does not use h.264 in a flash wrapper....

So?

IANAD, but it would seem utterly trivial to just leave off the wrapper and serve up the h.264 directly, if needed.

P · Jul 3, 2012, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

So?

IANAD, but it would seem utterly trivial to just leave off the wrapper and serve up the h.264 directly, if needed.

Correct - which is what is generally done: try to use <video> with H.264, and use Flash as fallback if that fails.