Android + Chrome – Flash = ?
I’m clearly not up to speed with Android these days as I thought Chrome had been available for some time on Android (guess not) but today Google made a beta of Chrome available for ICS (Android 4.0) users. Some of the niceties include seeing your browser history/open tabs on your phone exactly as you left them off on your PC. But one of the things lost was Flash. Now that’s not entirely a surprise as Adobe announced months ago that they were ending Flash support for new browsers. There’s just this inherent conflict where Android users love their power and brag of their Flash and at the same time love their Chrome and must embrace HTML5.
Just reading the various blogs about how great the new browser is while glossing over the lack of Flash (their baby) is more than amusing. It’s almost like a social experiment…and the ultimate outcome will be Android users bragging about having a Flash-less Chrome browser on their phone and ignoring their old talking points…good times.
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A big deal was made of the whole Flash vs. no Flash thing, but at the time Flash _was_ relevant. On it’s way out, to be sure, but nonetheless a viable, maintained platform. As such, the desire and ability to install it was a valid issue (and I suspect, for many the issue may not have been Flash itself, but rather more fuel for the choice vs. no choice, customization vs. closed architecture debate).
So now a Chrome without Flash? Meh. Adobe has put it out to pasture, and it’s time to start looking toward an HTML5 world. Besides, as nice as it was to have it, I was really starting to get tired of Flash’s bloat and litany of security patches (for mobile and PC). Good riddance I say.
So all said, while I hear what you’re saying, the situation’s not as comical as you’re trying to make it out to be. Things change, technology moves on. Go ahead and drink your koolaid (mine’s android flavored), but know when to put your glass down.
I don’t play much video in my cell phone browser, I use apps like YouTube and Daily Motion.
Pardon my ignorance, but will apps still play video? I just assume they will.
When I am mobile, at work on break, I just read news, almost never watch video.
But when I am home on WiFi, I enjoy the option to click that video link, and have it play.
I will be happy when all those flash adds are gone.
Will it reduce page load time and increase device performance? Will the amount of data I use be reduced?
Then bring it on.
Peace
@Demaskus – Apps will still work but usually for just that one service. Youtube will only play youtube videos, vimeo app only vimeo videos, and so on… Flash is handy to fall back on when one of these major video hosting services isn’t being used by the website you’re trying to visit.
@JR – you’ll still be able to play most videos as they don’t stream through Flash – it’s HTML 5 or a series of available codecs that are widely supported. The thing you’ll lose are Flash based games/ads/sites. A lot of sites have moved from Flash but there’s still a decent amount of it. Every now and then a site does stream video using Flash and you won’t be able to get past that. Sites like YouTube wills tream fine.
…and there are TONS of other browsers that still work with flash. So if there’s that 1 in 50 site that won’t work in chrome cuz of flash…fire up the stock browser eh?
I assume Chrome will become the stock browser eventually.
But after our last discussion on animated gifs etc… I tried Dolphin browser again. Slowed down my stock browser to a crawl. It just sat there, for several seconds before the progress bar popped up and started to load the page. Sometimes the bar would hang and not progress. I unistalled Dolphin, but the problem did not go away.
Last night I did a factory reset and today the stock browser is working great!
Peace