The writing is on the wall.  Adobe has abandoned Mobile Flash in favor of HTML5.  It is just a matter of time before the Adobe Flash developers switch over to producing HTML5 instead of Flash as a matter of course.  With the move to mobile devices, the dominance of Flash on the desktop will simply not matter anymore. 

I’ve been in this profession for 31 years.  I’ve seen a long list of technologies rise up to be one of the “top technologies” in a space, only to be relegated within a few years to the dust heap.  There is always a tipping point.  Apple pushed, and now, Adobe tipped. 

It is time to add Flash to the list.

By Nick Malik

Former CIO and present Strategic Architect, Nick Malik is a Seattle based business and technology advisor with over 30 years of professional experience in management, systems, and technology. He is the co-author of the influential paper "Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture" with Dr. Brian Cameron that effectively defined modern Enterprise Architecture practices, and he is frequent speaker at public gatherings on Enterprise Architecture and related topics. He coauthored a book on Visual Storytelling with Martin Sykes and Mark West titled "Stories That Move Mountains".

One thought on “The End of Flash”
  1. Everything that can be done with Flash can be done without it now. The only difference is the amount of effort it takes to make things happen. Until somebody (Adobe) puts together software to make HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript as intuitive in construction as Flash, Flash will continue to survive.

    I personally see the shift only happening after the audio/video tags are standardized and there's a graphical WYSIWIG editor for the animation aspect. The last of which won't happen until after the W3 recommended status on HTML5 in 2014. So Flash has a few good years left in it.

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