Is there a Future for Flash?

Things have moved on so quickly in the past couple of years that it's easy to forget that only a couple of years ago when it came to writing a Rich Internet Application Adobe Flash was king, with Microsoft's upstart Silverlight vying to make up ground. While at the same time the specification for HTML 5 was being  developed and browser makers were starting to latch onto parts of the specification and include it in their offerings, and it was beginning to be hyped.

Back then developers were being told that the 'only' way to make a Rich Internet Application was to use Flash or Silverlight in Microsoft's case. The other option was to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript along with AJAX to create an 'interactive' web site, but in comparison to what you could do with Flash or Silverlight there was no competition especially for those already using those technologies.

Then Apple released the iPad which quickly sold in the tens of millions off the back of the popularity of the iPhone. Flash was banned from being installed on the iPad, whilst Microsoft didn't bother to support it with Silverlight, that was when the first chink in the armour of Flash's dominance first came to light.

The latest news is that Flash is no longer going to be available through the Android store as Adobe has decided to stop developing Flash for that platform. On Windows the future of Flash is less clear, Microsoft and Adobe announced soon after the release of Windows 8 Release Preview that a version of Flash was built in to the Modern UI (or Metro) version of IE, which was a surprise as it was originally expected that it wouldn't be supported. But there was a catch, as Flash would only run for sites white listed by Microsoft, but Flash runs as before on the desktop version of IE.

What does this all mean for the future? Well, unless there is a very good reason for it (such as a game) it's unlikely that we'll see many new sites built using Flash, especially now that the latest browsers supporting HTML 5 can do many of the things that Flash could do including animation. Indeed even its role as a game platform is under pressure as JavaScript based games such as Catch the Rope are showing what can be done within the confines of browser. As for existing sites, I think we'll see those slowly move away from Flash, perhaps as changes are introduced as part of the sites natural life cycle, especially given that HTML 5 can pretty much do the same thing and is supported by the iPad and on Android.