Hang on, haven’t I seen this somewhere before you may well be asking. Well yes, in June when I wrote on this very theme. But of course in the world of the wide web, six months is a long time. In June my opinion was that Flash was alive and kicking. In December I have a different point of view.
Apple have steadfastly refused to support app development in Flash on the iPhone.
Now don’t I am not saying that Flash will disappear overnight: there is just so much Flash stuff out there in the form of banners, games and complete websites built on Flash that web browsers will continue to support the Flash plug-in for years to come. What has changed is that there is going to be less and less new stuff developed in Flash. According to ZD Net Adobe have announced they are no longer supporting Flash development for mobiles – due in no small part to Apple’s refusal to support Flash applications on the iPhone. This significant change is not solely down to Apple though. The main reason for this trend is the introduction of HTML5 and CSS3, support for both of which is continuing to be developed by all the major browsers for both desktop and mobile devices; and it’s the native support of animation through HTML5′s new canvas feature with its built in support for SVG (scalable vector graphics) and animation – all progammable in JavaScript – that will supercede Flash. So, not wishing to be left behind, this site will soon be available using the new standards!
But no Flash.