Adobe is making a big play to make Flash the de facto viewing environment not only for Web apps on your PC, but also on your mobile phone, your TV, and any other screen you can think of. It is announcing the Open Screen Project to make it easier to develop applications across devices—using Flash, of course. David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe’s platform business (which includes Flash/Flex, AIR, and Cold Fusion), says:
We believe it is time for an industry-wide movement for a consistent way to develop across the Web for PCs, mobile devices, and TVs.
To help the project along, Adobe is:
1. Opening up the runtime to its Flash player for the first time so that anybody can create their own customized player. Specifically, it is going to open up the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications. In the past, developers had to sign agreements not to create derivative Flash players because Adobe wanted to avoid the fragmentation that Java experienced during its early years. But now it feels that Flash is a strong enough standard to withstand the introduction of some new evolutionary branches.
2. Removing licensing fees for Flash on mobile devices. While Flash is free on PCs, cell phone makers and other device manufacturers must pay a royalty fee. This was a $52 million business for Adobe last year. (Versions of Flash are on 500 million mobile devices already, and that is expected to grow to one billion over the next 12 months). That business (which represents only 2 percent of Adobes overall revenues) is going away. Starting with the next major release of Flash (and AIR) for devices in 2009, it will be free to device manufacturers. That should help Flash spread even more.
3. Publishing the APIs for porting Flash to other devices. This currently also incurs a royalty fee. By opening it up, there is no reason why every device shouldn’t come with Flash pre-installed.
4. Publishing Adobe protocols for pushing content to devices like Flash Cast and AMF. Adobe will also work with wireless carriers on protocols for over-the-air software updating. (This is actually a hard problem because most software downloaded to a mobile phone gets stored in read-only-memory, where it pretty much stays until the device is replaced. Getting mobile software to update as easily as desktop software is the key to making sure mobile apps keep up with the times.
On the application creation side, Adobe increasingly will be adopting a widget approach. There is not much difference between a widget that runs as a module on a Web page and a mobile app that runs on a small screen. Wadhwani explains:
These things can expand up. Developers are looking to optimize for these small screen sizes. Instead of squashing it down from a desktop experience, it is easier to start small and build up.
The same approach can be used for apps on other devices as well, such as set-top boxes.
The promise of the Open Screen Project to developers is the age-old dream of being able to write an application once and deploy it anywhere across any device. Adobe and its slew of partners in the Open Screen Project (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Toshiba, NTT Docomo, Chungwa Telecom, ARM, Intel, Marvell, Cisco, NBC Universal, MTV Networks, and the BBC) are not alone in this desire. Notably absent from Adobe’s list of partners is Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Each has its own ideas on how this cross-device compatibility will work.
Apple thinks you should just buy Apple products that work seamlessly together (Mac, iPhone, Apple TV). Steve Jobs also notably snubbed Adobe by refusing to put Flash on the iPhone. Maybe his engineers can now make their own version that satisfies their exacting standards.
Google has never been a big fan of Flash, preferring the speed of Ajax in its Webtop apps. On the mobile front, it is betting on Android, its own open operating system. And it also develops mobile apps the traditional way—one device at a time.
But the company with the most overarching and different approach to Adobe’s in this regard is Microsoft. It is pushing its own alternative to Flash: Silverlight. (Although it has licensed Flash Lite for Windows Mobile as a stopgap measure until Silverlight works on mobile devices). More radically, Microsoft differs on how to make apps work across devices. It’s answer ultimately will be Live Mesh. As I wrote last week when Microsoft officially unveiled Live Mesh.:
The basic foundation of Mesh is this feed-centric programming model. A Web developer can build an app using any programming language or tools he likes (Python, Ruby on Rails, Flex) and then sync it across devices and other applications using two-way feeds as the basic data and communication channel. The promise for developers, says product unit manager Abhay Parasnis: “If you Mesh-enable your application, we will let you extend it to other devices.”
In many ways this effort is a counterweight to what we are seeing with Adobe Air or Google Gears, which are efforts to take browser-based apps offline. With Mesh, Microsoft is in effect reasserting the primacy of client-based applications. . . . Developers can customize their apps for whatever device they originally reside on—whether it is a PC, a smartphone, or a set-top box—and then Webify them by syncing them to other applications across the Web.
The more competition we get for ways to bridge applications across devices and screens, the more likely that we’ll actually start to see some of our favorite Web apps on something other than our laptops.
(Photo by AMagill).
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Adobe rocks! Silverlight is stalled big time. Microsoft needs .NET (not just Silverlight) to run on Mac and Linux without Mono, so Mac users can run Visual Studio then maybe it will start to move.
The kudos to Adobe has gone through the roof after reading this post. I’m very excited about this and can see it hopefully really going somewhere.
Worst thing about setting up a machine is more software to install, and if this gets integrated with a browser or the OS… Could take things in a very interesting direction.
Good stuff!
If Adobe really wants to see the usage of Flash take off, they should make it easier for people to create swf. Sure there’s MTASC, haXe and others which work, but it’s quite a bit more complicated than using Adobe’s own IDE. Problem is, $700 for CS3 isn’t an easy pill to swallow for the casual programmer.
Die I phone SDK! Die!
Thanks adobe!!!
You might find that Flex is free for students and only $249US for professionals. Add to that the variety of open source options for editing Actionscript and MXML and Flash seems pretty accessible to just about any developer, casual or not.
BIG fan of Flash and use it all the time in our business, happy to hear this - supporting it!
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
oh yeah I just want flash 9+ on the wii thanks.
This is a good move by Adobe. This way they will stay a step ahead of Microsoft.
Write Once, Flash Everywhere, and Freeze Everywhere.
As Flash is so easy to program, so it is easy to have doggy codes looking cool and hunger for computing power. I wish Adobe can come up with solution for devices come out of haunt of the doggy flash codes.
Joel Spolsky loves Live Mesh
Golf clap. After more than a decade as a propietary runtime for the Web a bit of opening up. Woo! Hoo!
More info here:
http://www.flashmagazine.com/N.....even_more/
J
Ok, does this mean when i turn on my TV, its going to say its loading 4096 different modules and will also ask me to install the google toolbar? Or will my tv have the Adobe update popup everytime i do something?
I will definitely shove this in the ugly face of my IT teacher from years ago when he said that Flash would not survive the upcoming events and that it was nothing then a pesky software to make useless applications. I even bought a Flash 4 Bible and was making some cool projects that he was not hoping to see in my final thesis.
I would love to write on his screen “Who’s the bitch now?”
Thanks Adobe. I love you.
Jota
This is pretty exciting, and I am looking forward to 1 year from now to see where we all are. One quick clerical note. Its ColdFusion not ‘Cold Fusion’.
There’s a great opportunity for Nintendo here as well. Now that they can enable flash video via the Wii, browser-based television can take a large step forward.
@Jota:
I can understand you totally. Hate those guys who just don’t get Flash/Flex/AIR because they never really looked into it.
Adobe is clearly not competing with Ajax. They want to kill .Net and Java on the client side and that’s a damn good thing.
Kudos to Microsoft for coming out with Silverlight. Without the competition, I highly doubt we would have ever seen great developments like this from Adobe.
Too bad when they say PC they mean PC. Adobe Flash support for Macs has been terrible. Flash Media Encoder is now in its 3rd release and it is still windows only with no plans to support Mac users. No On2 vp6 or the upcoming h264 live encoding for Mac Flash users. Apple should just use some of that $20 billion stockpile to buy Adobe to start getting proper Mac support.
Thank you Adobe. There was a question hanging over the mobile industry on what format will be most widely adopted. With this change in strategy by Adobe, and the participation by all the major OEMs, I’ve no doubt now that the Mobile Web will be primarily Flash, with HTML used as glue.
The only remaining question is how quickly we’ll see Flash rolled out on handsets…
Niiiiiiiiiiiiice!
I chose to leave my HTML, CSS, AJAX etc skills behind a few years back and specialise in Flash! I just love to hear news like this.
I’m particularly looking forward to Flash being installed on digital paper!! People will be reading magazines and newspapers on the tube and buses that run Flash!
And then there’s the nano technology phones as recently demonstrated at concept level by Nokia (who are a partner!).
And even then, the chance to create animated interfaces for Washing Machines and Electric Toothbrushes!!! That’s it, I’m all hot under the collar. Need some water. Phrrrowarr Flash Kettles!
@9. Tim…. Flash on the wii was my first thought too…. Even more games on the wii… never mind all the virtual console ones.
Adobe Rocks!
Whomever checks out Buzzword, SlideRocket, Adobe media player, and flash video with h264, is got to be convinced that Adobe has the ace in the next wave of really rich web apps. If they should ever come up with their distro of Linux, full with compiz and virtualbox, that could indeed make Operating Systems irrelevant, and move the game up to the online/offline webspace.
@Jota - couldn’t have said it better myself
Even after years of awesome Flash RIA apps, I had a boss tell me not two years ago that Flex was a “Flash in the pan”…..mwahhahahha!
(my scetchbook “selfportraits”)
just wanted to throw an eye at you
to see how you do and talk about
The Way of Love with you……….
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith,
so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body
to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its
own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they
will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the
perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave
up childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have
been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 ESV
bless you in yeshuas name,
sdg, tjm
@Garet I don’t know where you’ve heard that Flash Media Encoder isn’t on the Mac? I have it on my MBP as part of Flash CS3 and I can encode On2 VP6 as much as I want. I still prefer Sorenson Squeeze because of it’s speed, features and quality.
J
Is this going to allow linux distros to include flash player installed ??
they are going crazy,
very good thank you
Nice and amazing project but how they get rid of abusers? Did anybody know that as of Nov, Adobe Reader Vulnerability Being Attacked and attackers are already planting maliciously crafted PDF files to attack Windows users? Its getting severe now………