Adobe tries keeping Flash in Web vanguard
There's a major movement afoot to rebuild the Web as a foundation for interactive applications. But Adobe Systems, whose Flash technology already plays that role as a nearly ubiquitous browser plug-in, believes its technology will stay a step ahead of the game.
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)The Web application folks are focused on HTML5, the next version of the Hypertext Markup Language standard used to create Web pages, along with associated standards such as JavaScript for programming. On this agenda is work to let Web applications work while offline, display video without any plug-ins, show accelerated 3D graphics, and churn away at background processing tasks that don't slow down the user interface.
Adobe is fine with that but believes programmers today are better off with Flash. It adopts new technology sooner and with consistency across browsers, said Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.
"Innovation runs rapidly inside Flash," Lynch said. "A lot of HTML5 is looking to Flash and saying can we do that in HTML. That's great. We're able to be a leading agent in terms of exploring what's possible in the Web."
Lynch will make his case more concretely this week at the Adobe Max conference in Los Angeles, where the company plan to announce Flash Player 10.1. Along with the plug-in comes a related technology for Flash applications outside the browser, version 2 of the Adobe Integrated Runtime, or AIR.
Flash gets the Max spotlight
Flash Player 10.1 comes with support for major smartphone operating systems except the highest profile, Apple's
iPhone. AIR 2 gets new abilities to act like a native application that can take advantage of resources on a computer, not just on the network. Adobe plans to release beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2 later this year and in final form in the first half of 2010, Lynch said.
Although the continued work is essential to ensure Flash's relevance, the technology has a position of tremendous power in the browser market. Not only is it installed in almost all browsers, its automatic update abilities ensure the most recent version spreads fast.
"Flash Player 10 has reached 94 percent in less than a year," Lynch said. "That is unprecedented in terms of innovation engine."
To be clear, Adobe isn't opposed to innovation in HTML. Indeed, the company is participating in the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 working group, and AIR employs the open-source WebKit browser engine also used in Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome, Lynch said.
"We see renewed innovation happening in HTML," Lynch said. "There hasn't been as much progress in that space in the last few years, and now there is. We think it's terrific."
But even with Web site design tools such as Dreamweaver in its portfolio, the bulk of Adobe's developer relations activities and programming tools are aimed at Flash and, increasingly, AIR. For example, Mozilla Chief Executive John Lilly said he hasn't seen much Adobe involvement in the HTML5 work.
A consistent foundation
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." But there are plenty of times when consistency isn't foolish. Programming can be one of them, and Adobe believes Flash it has a selling point here compared to HTML.
"If you look at the number of browsers and implementations, historically we've seen a lot of variation," Lynch said. "That variation looks like it will continue to happen, especially as innovation increases. The more expression that gets added, the more challenging it get to keep that consistency."
Lynch didn't mention it specifically, but Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer plays a big role in this new Web application era. Even the new version, IE 8, has slower JavaScript than the faster-moving rivals that are moving to embrace richer Web programming technology. Programmers wanting to reach a broad audience are better off counting on Flash than on the latest Web app technologies, and the unified foundation from Adobe means the application will work the same regardless of browser changes.
"We think there's a lot of opportunity to provide a consistent experience across the browser," Lynch said.
One specific example has been video. Although HTML5 specifies a coding method that lets video and audio play directly in the browser with no Flash or other plug-in, the standard under development doesn't specify which video compression engine to use. Apple likes H.264; Firefox and Opera like Ogg Theora; Google likes both; and Microsoft hasn't weighed in at all.
Flash supports three engines, including the popular H.264, and indeed helped enable video on the Web by smoothing over difficulties that came with other technologies such as Apple QuickTime and Real Networks' RealPlayer.
Flash goes mobile
Taking the spotlight at Max will be Flash Player 10.1, which is getting the ability to run on a wide variety of high-end mobile phones, including those using Google Android, Palm's new WebOS, Nokia Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry's OS--most of the important operating systems except Apple's iPhone OS.
"We are working on Flash Player 10 for all the major smartphone OSes and for iPhone, but we need Apples' cooperation to integrate Flash Player with Safari on the iPhone," Lynch said. "In the market, we've seen a lot of interest. We believe it's one of the top requests for the iPhone still. I'm hopeful we'll be able to bring flash to the iPhone over time."
Flash Player 10.1 also adds support for multitouch user interfaces, which are all the rage for good reason right now because they can enable an intuitive, direct interaction with computing equipment. There have been experiments with multitouch in Firefox, but it's a complicated issue in general since there's some contention about whether the operating system, a browser, or a browser plug-in is in charge of interpreting multitouch commands.
Adobe had a project called Flash Lite for mobile phones with less horsepower, but the future Adobe's focus is on the full version of Flash Player 10.
That poses a challenge for Adobe, because Flash programmers often have assumed the have the full processing power, large screens, and abundant memory of a personal computer. Mobile phones have impressive hardware compared to lower-end phones, but they're feeble compared to PCs, and now programmers must reckon with them, too.
"My view is there is only one Web," Lynch said. Adobe is trying to help, though: Flash Player 10.1 includes a low-power mode that slows video rendering to preserve power; an it's able to use the processor and memory more efficiently in general. For example, graphics are compressed for use on devices with small screens and a more limited colors, Lynch said.
Consequently, one popular AIR application, Tweetdeck, which provides a polished interface to the Twitter service, requires 35 percent less memory, he said.
AIR 2: more desktop integration
For AIR 2, the software foundation is getting closer to reproducing the features that software running natively on a computer's operating system can take employ. Multitouch is one example, since the software has Flash Player 10.1 built in, but another is support for USB mass storage devices--things like digital cameras or external hard drives.
"You can plug in a device like a Flip video camera, and it'll recognize the devices, generate an event, and the AIR application can talk to that devices," Lynch said. "It's further integration with desktop capabilities. That's the soul of AIR."
Also coming with AIR 2 is an ability to hand off files to software installed on a computer. For example, an AIR application that acts as a front end to files stored on Amazon's S3 online storage system could invoke Excel when a person used the AIR application to double-click on the spreadsheet file name.
Adobe plans to follow with broader USB support for other devices such as Webcams, he added. "Mass storage is our foot in the door. That's our start," Lynch said.
AIR 2 also brings the ability to listen to particular network channels called sockets or ports, which means AIR applications can be used for multiplayer games that set up instant-messaging networks among players, he added.
AIR is popular among the active Twitter crowd and boasts a sizable collection of software. And it has potential to spread farther, especially as Net-centric companies in e-commerce, the media, and social networking seek an easy way to bridge across Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Despite some advantages, though, AIR provides is an answer to questions many programmers aren't even asking. Adobe will have more convincing to do before it convinces the world AIR deserves the ubiquitous status of Flash.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
1. WebKit is emerging as the dominant rendering engine for "native" smartphone browsers (i.e. iPhone, Android, WebOS, Symbian, Blackberry (with Torch Mobile) & WinMo (with a 3rd-party browser)).
2. WebKit supports HTML5 & WebGL (recently integrated).
3. Chrome supports NaCl (recently integrated), with O3D to presumably follow soon.
4. Chrome Frame is available to bring WebKit, & its rich support for open web technologies, to IE.
This strategy would enable Adobe to sell web tools, regardless of whether developers build functionality with Flash OR HTML5/WebGL/O3D/NaCl. A win-win solution for Adobe AND web developers.
And so does your dropping battery gauge when you use it.
The mobile platform is an enormous growth area, but Adobe is slow to provide direct support for flash and acrobat. HTC Hero was supposed to be the first Android device with flash built in, coming next week...so what's the problem with getting the entire Android platform up and running? Why are we having to wait until 2010 to get flash support for the rest of the Android platform?
If they keep moving this slow, Google will implement HTML5 support for their native browser in Android and make flash irrelevant.
As for Flash, only reason i'd really use it is for a number cruncher ("web workers") and for handling server stuff that JavaScript can't do yet. (but will be able to in the very near future, yay)
Oh, and anything that IE can't handle, of course.
All the graphical stuff can be done in browsers now.
Then I see comments like Hunnter2k3 talking about permission and configuration settings, so they can 'tune' it for their environment and then Flash/AIR ends up in the same hell as JAVA where there is no way to insure a standardized runtime environment and you can spends literally months trying to deal with the hundreds of combinations of software, settings, and security to make sure your product works.
Maybe Google's Native Client will provide the functionality of ActiveX without the security issues and stigma, but color me skeptical.
HTML 5 promises a lot, but still has a lot of issues to resolve before it becomes even remotely reliable enough to use as a platform for RIA. Even then, the development effort is significantly higher than for a comparable traditional application.
The result is the browser continues to the be an also ran as an application platform and will be for the foreseeable future.
your fans run fast with Flash and Air pollution.
Adobe would *like* to be dominant with this stuff, but it stinks to maintain, and it leaves out Accessibility
If Microsoft can make that work on those computers, bring it on...
- by zeroplane October 5, 2009 12:25 PM PDT
- So whatever happened to the open source version of flash that was using XML, HTML, JavaScript, SVG, and possibly the new video tag?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(24 Comments)I remember reading that goal was to provide similar functionality as flash using HTML in-browser..
To be honest most of the websites use to develop using flash now use JavaScript libraries like jQuery instead. The load times as significantly lower and the performance hit to the client is less.