Thursday, March 15, 2012

Adobe Demos Flash Professional Export to HTML5

Back in April 2010, Steve Jobs made it clear Flash Player was never coming to the iOS devices (iPod, iPhone & iPad). With the slow and gradual decline in Flash usage since, it’s easy to forget just how huge this was. Flash was THE way to experience an interactive web. Every streaming video, image slideshow, music player widget, and animation use to be done with Flash.

For years, Flash developers could be confident every computer could run Flash exactly the same way in every browser excluding mobile devices. Even that wasn’t an issue until the iPhone showed us the mobile web didn’t have to be the subpar experience it once was.

The reports of Flash’s death were greatly exaggerated. Now it’s clear that the foreseeable future will have Flash confined to the desktop only.  And, since it’s more and more feasible to create an HTML and JavaScript alternative that will work across different devices, the inevitable finally occurred. The tool we have been using for over a decade to bring richer experiences to the web can do so once again.

Adobe Flash now has the ability to export to HTML5 (and apparently Steve Martin works for Adobe):