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Adobe to bring Flash Player for Ice Cream Sandwich before pulling the plug

Edgar Cervantes — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:05:25 +0000

Adobe Flash Player has been every Android fan’s pride since its release. We love being able to see the web as it is meant to be – with Flash. There has been conflicting opinions since Adobe announced the end of Flash for Android a couple of weeks ago. Some think that it is a great move, since HTML 5 and Adobe Air make up the future of mobile browsing, while others are starting to feel the beginning of a melancholic life, without Flash Player.

Flash Player is a very important part of the Android experience, and Adobe did specify that they would not just pull the plug on it. They will slowly transfer to HTML 5 (and Continue supporting AIR), instead. After version 11.1, Adobe will not be releasing any more successors to the Flash Player, but will continue to bring support for bug fixes and other issues.

If you happen to be planning to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (or already have it!), or any device with Ice Cream Sandwich, we have good news for you. You may have been thinking that your device would be left Flash-less, and such is not the case. Adobe has confirmed to Pocket-Lint that an update with Android 4.0 support will be coming before the end of the year.

Adobe will release one more version of the Flash Player for mobile browsing, which will provide support for Android 4.0, and one more release of the Flash Linux Porting Kit - both expected to be released before the end of this year.SpokespersonAdobe

For now, it appears that devices with Android 4.0 will be taken care of. Updates and bug fixes will keep coming, but will surely start dying off. We can be certain that we will not be seeing Flash Player support for the next version of Android, rumored to be codenamed “Jelly Bean.” Who knows, though? Stranger things have happened.

Adobe launches suite of applications for Android Tablets

Anthony Domanico — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:05:51 +0000

At their Adobe MAX conference in early October, Adobe announced they would be releasing a suite of tablet-optimized versions of their popular graphic design and photo editing tools on Honeycomb tablets. This announcement was widely acclaimed, as it would most notably bring a feature rich version of Adobe’s Photoshop application for the low, low price of $10.

Early this morning, Adobe launched this suite of six applications onto the Android market for $9.99 each. The following applications can now be yours to enjoy on your Honeycomb tablets.

Photoshop Touch

Photoshop is one of the most widely used programs for photo editing in the world, and rightfully so. The Photoshop Touch application allows you to use all the core Photoshop tools to edit and transform your images in a clean and polished application.

Adobe® Photoshop® Touch Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Proto

Adobe Proto lets you create wireframes of websites and applications on your tablet. I’m sure this is the kind of application that makes Clark feel all warm and gushy on the inside. If you’re into wireframes and the like, you’ll probably want to check out Proto.

Adobe® Proto Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Kuler

Kuler is an application that lets you generate color themes that can inspire any design project. Adobe further claims that Kuler is the most powerful color inspiration tool anyone has seen on a tablet device.

Adobe® Kuler® Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Collage

Adobe Collage lets you assemble moodboards by combining images, drawing and text. If you don’t know what a moodboard is, you’re probably not alone. A few of the screenshots in the market show off the kinds of things you can create in Collage, including a cool looking flow chart.

Adobe Collage Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Debut

Debut is a form of presentation tool that allows you to present and capture feedback of designs and other Creative Suite creations with colleagues and friends virtually anywhere from the comfort of your tablet. This is perfect for you on-the-go designer types. (Here’s looking at you, Angie).

Adobe® Debut Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Ideas

Ideas is a digital sketchpad application that allows users to create drawings using vectors, layers and color themes. Ideas allows you to fully zoom in on your creations, perfecting the level of detail necessary to produce your creation at almost any size imaginable.

Adobe® Ideas Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Final Thoughts

All of Adobe’s new applications serve a unique purpose that is sure to capture the imagination of the designers who will be purchasing them. Each application allows you to sync your creations to the Adobe Creative Cloud for further edits/perfections using the Creative Suite on your Mac or PC.

Since I’m not a graphic designer by any stretch (though I do have a lot of interest in this field), I’ve only found myself confident enough to purchase the Photoshop program. Adobe has a knack for putting together fully featured, beautiful applications out to market, so I probably will be expanding my repertoire very soon.

Which of these applications are you guys going to purchase? Any of you out there who don’t currently have an Android tablet now planning to purchase one because of these powerful new tools?

Adobe product manager says Apple is one of the top reasons they abandoned Flash Player mobile

Dustin Earley — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:15:00 +0000

The end of development for Flash Player mobile has been a hot topic these past couple days. Adobe announced that HTML5 was the future of mobile media, and that the company needed to put their efforts into that and Air. But is that the only reason?

Adobe product manager Mike Chambers took to his personal blog today to lay out the reasoning behind the move away from Flash Player for mobile browsers. HTML5, Air and “differences in how users consume rich content on mobile devices compared to the desktop” were all cited as valid reasons, but the first thing Chambers mentions is the fact that Flash Player for mobile would never be as popular as Flash Player for desktops.

This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops.

Just to be very clear on this: No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple’s iOS anytime in the foreseeable future.Mike Chambers

As you can see, Chambers also lists market fragmentation (different OS vendors, hardware manufacturers and component manufacturers) as a deciding factor in Adobe’s move, but Apple’s refusal to adopt Flash left Adobe in a tight spot. The amount of resources that go into development were overwhelming, and the demand for Flash on mobile devices was nowhere near that of desktops.

If Apple had allowed Flash to run on Safari mobile, would things have turned out differently? There’s a good chance they would have, but that’s all in the past now. Android’s browser is well suited for HTML5, and there’s still a recent version of Flash available to combat any short-term compatibility issues. Whatever the future holds, Flash or not, Android will be ready for it.

News Flash: Adobe to focus on HTML5 and Air for mobile

Taylor Wimberly — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:53:04 +0000

Are you tired of Adobe Flash Player slowing down and crashing your Android browser? This morning Danny Winokur of Adobe made a blog post to announce the future of Flash Player for mobile. ”We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.”

Going forward, Adobe’s focus for mobile devices will be placed on AIR and HTML5, which they admit is the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. Adobe said they will continue to work with key players in the HTML community like Google in order to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

Flash won’t be completely going away from Android just yet. Adobe will continue to “provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations”, but they didn’t say how long they planned to maintain support.

Adobe debuts new Touch Apps; Photoshop Touch leads the way

Dustin Earley — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:56:37 +0000

Today at Adobe MAX, the company announced the next steps for their insanely popular photo editing software Photoshop: an Android version of the application, called Photoshop Touch.

Featuring a ton of touch- and tablet-optimized controls, Adobe Photoshop Touch aims to be your one-stop-shop for photo editing on touchscreen devices. Currently in production for Android tablets, Photoshop Touch possesses both well-known and upcoming features that amateurs and professionals alike will be able to take full advantage of. Not only will Photoshop Touch bring layers and filter brushes to tablets, but you’ll also be able to utilize any built-in camera for things like fills, custom selection tools, edge aware painting, edge refinement, color adjustment, text, Photoshop-compatible file formats and an abundance of social integrations.

You can select photos to edit from Facebook and upload them to back to the service where you can view comments from inside the Photoshop app. There’s also integration with Google Image search and Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Creative Cloud allows you to upload your work from your tablet and make additional changes through Photoshop CS5.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Photoshop Touch is the price. It’s only going to cost $9.99.

Photoshop Touch isn’t the only Adobe Touch application in the works, but right now it’s playing center stage. Adobe Debut, Proto, Collage, Ideas and Kuler will all be released for Android at just $9.99 in the near future. No exact release date has been made public, but it shouldn’t be long now.

You can find more Photoshop Touch videos here.

Gallery

Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR3 set to debut tonight sans Stage3D

Anthony Domanico — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:16:38 +0000

A few weeks back, we reported that the new version of Adobe Flash Player (Flash 11) could be 1,000 times faster than Flash 10, and that the update would be available sometime in “early-October.” At their Adobe MAX 2011 conference today, Adobe announced that both Flash 11 and AIR 3 (the tool that allows for easy installation of applications) will be available for download tonight at midnight eastern time.

What greatly fuels the increased performance is Stage3D, a new method of 2D and 3D rendering. Sadly, the mobile versions of Flash Player 11 will not feature Stage3D until a later update, so it’s unclear how much of a performance improvement Flash Player 11 will bring until the update.

Regardless of what exactly the updates will bring for mobile devices right away, Adobe’s Flash platform is embedded in many of the things we do on our Android devices. Whether or not you stay up until midnight to get your hands on Flash Player 11, you’ll certainly want to update to the latest version over the next few days.

To read more about Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, check out Taylor’s original post about the platforms (including some video content), and/or head over to the following Adobe sites:

Adobe Flash Player 11 Adobe Systems PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Adobe Flash could be 1000x faster on Android next month

Taylor Wimberly — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:06:24 +0000

If you think Adobe Flash Player and Air performance sucks on Android devices, wait till you see what they have planned for the next major updates. Today Adobe announced Flash Player 11 and Air 3, introducing a new architecture called Stage 3D that allows developers to create apps using a mix of Flash, HTML 5 and native code.

Adobe is so confident about this release, they’re calling it the “next-generation console for the web.”

Accelerated 2D and 3D graphics appear to be the highlight of this release focused on gaming. Adobe makes some big promises when it comes to performance. “Full hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D graphics enable 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2.”

It’s quite an achievement that Flash games could get 1000x faster, but that kind of makes you wonder why they are so slow right now. I love my Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, but my biggest gripe has to be when the browser crashes on Flash-heavy sites.

Another pretty awesome-sounding feature is Air Native Extensions, which will allow developers to “tap into unique software and hardware capabilities including access to device data, vibration control, magnetometers, light sensors, dual screens, near field communications (NFC) and more.”

Finally, developers will now be able to automatically package AIR 3 with their applications, simplifying the install process for Android users.

Check out what some sample games might look like in the videos below. The graphics aren’t on the level of current native Android games. But this is the first release for Adobe, and we can expect they will improve.

Could Adobe’s gaming solutions challenge other popular game dev platforms like Unity 3D or the Unreal Engine? They might not be able to match their graphic prowess, but the easy implementation of Flash content and social connections could give it the upper hand.

Adobe claims 70% of the games on Google+ are powered by Flash, so they might have already won. They also note that Flash Player delivers an audience “11 times larger than that of the best-selling current generation game console.” (Yeah, that’s about 1 billion!)

Look for Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 to be publicly available in “early October.” I have a feeling part of this release could be tied to Ice Cream Sandwich, so hopefully we’ll learn more in a couple weeks.

Show Press Release

Adobe Enables 3D Games With Flash Player 11, AIR 3

Milestone Release Delivers Major Advancements for Gaming, Media and Data-Driven Applications

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sep 21, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe(R) Flash(R) Player 11 and Adobe AIR(R) 3 software to enable the next generation of immersive application experiences across devices and platforms including Android, Apple iOS (via AIR), BlackBerry(R) Tablet OS, Mac OS, Windows(R), connected TVs and other platforms. As the game console for the Web, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 allow game publishers to instantly deliver console-quality 2D and 3D games over the Internet to nearly all PCs and many other devices. Media companies can take advantage of new features to seamlessly deliver protected feature-length, cinema-quality HD video through the Web, in mobile apps, and even with surround sound for connected TVs. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 provide a cross-device entertainment platform, enabling the best in online gaming and premium video while helping content publishers to reach the broadest possible audience with highly-leveraged development investments.

Dozens of new features in Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 allow developers to deliver a new class of gaming and premium video experiences, as well as sophisticated, data-driven applications with back-end systems integration across devices, including the iPhone and iPad via AIR. AIR native extensions add support for unique device features and native code libraries, empowering developers to freely choose the right mix of Flash, HTML5 and native code to provide powerful user experiences across PCs and devices. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be publicly available in early October. Flash Builder(R) and Flex, Adobe’s open source framework for building mobile, Web and desktop apps, will offer support for the new features in an upcoming release before the end of the year.

“With this milestone release Adobe pushes the envelope of what is possible on the Web with a typical PC and opens up a new world of immersive, high-performance gaming experiences,” said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of Platform, Adobe. “Flash offers the best way for content owners to deliver their most demanding experiences, including games, premium video and sophisticated data-driven apps, to all of their users, while HTML 5 tools such as Adobe Edge and Dreamweaver(R) are ideal for building interactive Web pages, rich ads, branded microsites and general-purpose mobile applications.”

Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 offer dozens of new features including:

– Accelerated 2D/3D Graphics: Full hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D graphics enable 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2. Developers are able to animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver console-quality games on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions. A pre-release brings these same accelerated 2D and 3D capabilities to mobile platforms including Android, Apple iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. A production release for mobile platforms is expected in the near future. For examples of 3D games for Flash Player, visitwww.adobe.com/go/gaming .

– AIR Native Extensions: With support for thousands of highly-optimized, open-source libraries, developers are able to tap into unique software and hardware capabilities including access to device data, vibration control, magnetometers, light sensors, dual screens, near field communications (NFC) and more. Native extensions also allow developers to more deeply integrate AIR applications with other business software.

– Captive Runtime: Developers can automatically package AIR 3 with their applications to simplify the installation process on Android, Windows and Mac OS in addition to Apple iOS. Users no longer have to download and update AIR separately on any of these platforms, or BlackBerry Tablet OS, which includes AIR built in. In addition, with the captive runtime option developers can manage version updates to their application independent of general AIR updates by Adobe.

– Content Protection: Premium video content can now be protected using Adobe Flash Access(R) 3 across all supported platforms, including new support for mobile platforms.

– HD Video Quality Across Platforms: Full frame rate HD video can now be displayed within AIR applications on Apple iOS devices using H.264 hardware decoding. Rich applications on televisions are also able to deliver HD video with 7.1 channel surround sound.

– Rental and Subscriptions Support: With support for Adobe Flash Access and Adobe Pass, content publishers can take advantage of rental and subscription options for more flexible business models and offer TV Everywhere content to more than 80 percent of U.S. pay TV subscribers.

– Compatibility: 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS and Windows ensures a seamless experience with the latest 64-bit browsers.

“Zynga’s mission is to connect the world through games by bringing play to everyone, everywhere,” said Cadir Lee, chief technology officer, Zynga. “In order to do that, we’re committed to building mainstream entertainment across all devices, platforms and applications, whether it’s through Flash or HTML5. We look forward to the release of Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3 as next-generation applications to help bring Zynga games to our players worldwide.”

“We strive to bring games to our customers wherever and whenever they want to play,” said Mark Vange, vice president and chief technology officer, EA Interactive. “The ubiquity of Flash helps EA to bring our chart-topping games to a broader variety of platforms and connect with consumers across a wide range of devices.”

“In ‘Petz World,’ players can adopt, train animals and take them on exciting adventures around the world,” said Shara Hashemi, senior international brand manager, Ubisoft. “It’s important the animals in ‘Petz World’ act as if they are alive and behave like their real world counterparts. Flash Player 11 with fully hardware accelerated 3D graphics allows us to deliver the same high-quality animations and 3D models on the Web that our players have loved for years on consoles.”

“The opportunities for casual gaming on desktops, tablets and other mobile devices are endless and without Flash we wouldn’t have been able to create such beautiful, rich and interactive animations,” said Jakub Dvorsky, game designer and director, Amanita Design. “It’s absolutely crucial for us to reach the widest possible audience without having to start the development work from scratch for each platform. With Flash, we were able to revamp Machinarium in a matter of weeks and bring it from the Web to the iPad as an app in less than two months with other platforms like Android and BlackBerry following soon.”

“Adobe Flash Player with 3D lets us render a tremendous number of buffered triangles quickly with excellent performance and stability,” said Michael Plank, co-founder, Pro 3 Games. “It was clear from the beginning that Adobe Flash was the perfect solution to deliver browser-based, console-quality games with powerful visuals and interactivity. The develop once, deploy anywhere capabilities enable us to engage gamers everywhere across Web browsers and sets us up nicely to move into the mobile space.”

“Adobe Flash makes it easy to extend the reach of our brand and our games because of the deep market penetration of Flash Player and that worldwide ubiquity is critical for us,” said Anton Volkov, chief technology officer, AlternativaPlatform. “Adobe Flash Player 11 with Stage 3D provides unique functionality, including native 64-bit support and asynchronous bitmap decoding, to allow us to leverage both 2D and 3D components for the best gaming experience possible.”

Flash Player is supported on more than 98 percent of Internet connected PCs today and by the end of 2011, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets including Apple iOS devices to support Flash based applications via Adobe AIR. By the end of 2015, the number of devices that will support Adobe AIR is expected to increase to 1 billion.

Adobe AIR, a superset of Flash Player, enables developers to leverage existing code to create and deliver standalone applications across devices and platforms. Thousands of Flash based applications have already been created and made available on Android Market, iTunes App Store, Samsung SmartTV Store and BlackBerry AppWorld(TM) today.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 is confirmed for March 18th

Sean Riley — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:47:00 +0000

If you are fortunate enough to have a phone with Android 2.2 or above (most of you) or a tablet with Android 3.0.1 or above (few of you) then set your calendar for March 18th as that is the day Adobe has selected to bestow upon you the new Flash Player 10.2 hotness.

You Xoomites (Xoomerians?) should be the most excited by this news as you are being delivered from the desert of Flashlessness that some tablets will wander blindly through forever. Just remember to update to the recently released 3.0.1 in order to be ready when the 18th rolls around. Adobe is putting a beta tag on this first release for Honeycomb tablets, but are promising additional updates in short order that will rip that tag off.

New features (beyond just enhanced performance) being touted by Adobe for Flash Player 10.2 include:

Hardware acceleration for H.264 video (Honeycomb only)
Deeper integration with the Android browser rendering engine (Honeycomb only)
- Improved scrolling on web pages
- Support for HTML and other content composited over Flash Player content
Automatic soft keyboard support

If you want some additional details you can hit the source link, but if you aren’t particularly worried about how the magic happens then just rest assured that next week Flash will be getting better (or will be added) to your mobile device.

Motorola Xoom update rolling out tonight, Flash Player 10.2 coming soon

Taylor Wimberly — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:50:11 +0000

Starting tonight, Verizon will begin rolling out a software update for their Motorola Xoom tablet which will prepare the device to receive Flash Player 10.2. Back in February Adobe said Flash Player would be available for Honeycomb tablets within a few weeks after the Xoom launch, so it looks like they will meet their goal.

If you unlocked your Xoom, it will need to be restored. According to the Motorola support forums, you can receive the update over 3G or WiFi if your device has not been modified.

Google and their partners have pushed Flash Player as a big advantage of Honeycomb tablets over the iPad 2, so they had to be disappointed that it was not ready for the Xoom launch. Honeycomb has been in development for a long time and everyone knew this big launch was coming, so my guess is the blame lies with Adobe.

When it comes the availability of Flash Player 10.2, Motorola says to “stay tuned as we’ll have more info regarding availability very soon.”

More information on the contents of the update can be found on Motorola’s site (pdf).

Update: Adobe has confirmed that Flash Player 10.2 will arrive in the Market on March 18th.

Motorola tweets about update.

Official Flash Player 10.1 coming to Motorola Droid tomorrow

Taylor Wimberly — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:55:15 +0000

Verizon will deliver a new OTA update (build FRG22D) to the Motorola Droid starting tomorrow which will finally bring Flash Player 10.1 to the device, according to our friend Kellen over at Droid Life.

Unlike the recent HTC EVO update, Flash Player 10.1 will not be bundled with the 1.6 MB software update. Instead users will have to search the Android Market for “Flash Player 10.1″ and install it from there, similar to how the Nexus One received it.

If you absolutely can’t wait till tomorrow, there is a leaked version of the latest Flash 10.1 floating around that works with the Droid as long as you already have Android 2.2. It is the same version that’s available for the Nexus One (10.1.92.8) and those who installed it report it works, but I would suggest waiting another 24 hours and downloading it from the official Market.