If you didn't know, Adobe Flash has been in a war with HTML5 for a while which saw Adobe throw in the towel and stop development of Flash for mobile devices.
Adobe removed Flash Player from Google Play, and unless you've already got Flash installed, you won't be seeing any bug fixes or updates either. Adobe has officially told everyone to forget about Flash and move on.
So why is Flash being taken off Android?
Android Jelly Bean is the reason for this, coupled with Adobes own advice to remove Flash if you're using Android 4.1 because it could "exhibit unpredictable behaviour" and Googles own Chrome browser removing Flash support, you won't be having fun like you used to. Of course, Apple stayed well away from Flash from the very first iPhone, Microsoft never introduced it to their Windows Phones, and development is coming to a complete stop on Blackberry devices too. In fact, the only place you'll find Flash soon is on your desktop PC, and Windows 8 only touts "limited support" for it. Oh dear.
There's good reason too, with many users saying Flash gave choppy playback, and that it was too resource intensive, sapping the life out of your battery in mere hours (not that streaming a video through iPlayer using WiFi, keeping the screen alive throughout would have anything to do with that, right?). From the feedback we've seen from people worldwide, Flash only seemed to be good for watching ad-supported videos of certain TV shows, plus some of the Youtube videos that haven't yet made it to the HTML 5 realm.
What happens now that Flash is gone?
To cut to the chase: Everyone is going to have to adopt HTML 5. HTML 5 as noted on a "what is?" webpage, allows the creator to make a more efficient and intelligent web page. Users will not have to use a Flash plug-in for video and audio content. So in your FACE Adobe, lots of love, the HTML 5 team. HTML 5 isn't just about audio and video but the fact Adobe Flash was outed right there shows it's keen to move on from legacy technologies. From a personal point of view, I found Actionscript (the programming language behind Flash) an absolute chore to use. Also, being able to create interactive content and embed it right into the page with HTML rather than relying on someone having the most up-to-date plugin is far, far better. That's right, no more "to use this feature you must upgrade to the newest version of flash player" every time you come across a brand spanking new Flash advert somewhere.
What will you miss out on if you don't have Flash:
- BBC iPlayer
- BBC Weather
- Some Youtube Videos
- Amazon & any eCommerce website that uses it for product previews.
Reckon you'll still need your Flash fix? You can find download it from the Adobe archived Flash page and install it to your Android device (if you know how to sideload apk's). For those that don't have a clue what to do with their .apk file, Google is your friend. You'll need a bit of techie knowledge, some probably won't bother - if you didn't have Flash before then it's likely you won't find a use for it at all now it's gone for good.
What do we think? Well, we came across this comment that pretty much sums it up...
By someguywholovesflashBOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I bought an Android phone BECAUSE of Flash. This is not cool, Adobe.
