[Discussion] Would you mourn the loss of Mobile Flash?

• Raveesh Bhalla
• 12 years ago

On Friday we learnt that Adobe would be withdrawing Flash from Google Play in mid-August, after which the only way to get it would be by purchasing certified devices or through other, unofficial means. While they will continue to support it in terms of security updates, it’s quite clear the end of mobile Flash is upon us.

A couple of years ago, when the iPad was launched, there was a huge furore regarding Apple’s decision to block Flash from the tablet. Flash support gave Android an advantage when it came to marketing for quite some time. However, to be completely honest with you, I’m glad to see the end of mobile Flash. And I hope we don’t have Flash for much longer on PCs, either.

The reason is that I find Flash to be extremely resource hungry, and I try to keep it disabled on my laptop. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to currently spend significant amount of time on the web without it. I end up turning it back on, and quite often I end up frying my thighs. Today was, in a sense, the last straw. The Flash plug-in had gone crazy and as I kept scouring the internet for news to bring to you guys, it made a simple task of switching between tabs almost impossible. Once I disabled it, everything ran as smooth as one could desire.

I don’t mean to say I hate Adobe. They’ve been making some good moves as they strategize for the long term. I had spent time developing with PhoneGap prior to the acquisition, and I prefer to see them offer that as a platform to develop apps across various systems as opposed to AIR or Flash. Also, I’m really impressed with their new web-development IDE, Brackets, that I now use on a daily basis instead of Dreamweaver.

TL;DR: I’m glad to see the back of mobile Flash, and I hope to soon see the end of Flash in its entirety. What do you guys think?