Adobe’s Flash 10.1 an Instant Success for Mobile!

Daryl Deino from the LA Gadgets Examiner said it best: “For the first time, I feel like I truly have the Internet in my hands.” in his article Adobe proves that Flash can work on mobile devices.

He goes on to say “For the past couple of days, I have been watching content directly from YouTube, streaming Flash videos from CNET, enjoying episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants (okay, laugh at me) on Nickelodian, watching Flash enabled video clips on Foxnews.com, and basically enjoying Flash content all over the web.”

Daryl’s experience is not unique. We’ve been hearing from a number of users who have tried the new Flash 10.1 on Google Android’s newest version and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. The only issue that comes up occasionally is that certain Flash content designed for high-resolution desktops can sometimes take a while to load. One of Flash’s primary benefits is that you can use incredibly high-quality content to improve the desktop user experience – but yes that will certainly present a problem in certain situations on mobile devices. Trying to play a 1080p HD Flash video, or load a number of 2560×1600 jpeg’s may exceed the limits of mobile broadband.

The argument against Flash by the likes of Steve Jobs positions HTML5 as the solution. But as a web development company specializing in heavily interactive websites, I can say unequivocally that HTML5 is not a substitute for Flash. Putting aside the fact that HTML5 is an unfinished spec fraught with its own set of bugs and challenges, it simply does not have anything even close to the feature-set of Flash.

We build immersive, fullscreen, rich interactive experiences with Flash because our customers demand it due to the positive results it has on their business. The fact is people vastly prefer interacting with a well designed Flash site more than a clunky HTML site. Flash sites are limitless because they start with a blank canvas instead of HTML’s blocky structure.

But we have no illusion that our Flash sites will always load quickly over mobile broadband because the content can sometimes be very high quality and large in file size. That is why it’s often a good idea to build a separate version of the website specifically for mobile devices, which you really should do for an HTML site as well if you want to minimize bandwidth usage and prevent pinch and zoom until your fingers are bleeding. The ideal language for a mobile website still remains Flash for all the same reasons it’s successful on the desktop.

The real holy grail here is that developers will now have the ability to develop incredibly immersive and engaging content in Flash for mobile users that can match the branding of the desktop version. Having desktop Flash content run properly over mobile broadband is just a bonus, and one that I’m sure Adobe will perfect over time. This is a .1 release afterall…