LEAK: ADOBE HALTING WORK IN MOBILE FLASH; CONCENTRATING ON HTML 5

Sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company’s future development plans have revealed this forthcoming announcement:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Additionally, the e-mail briefing to Adobe’s partners says "Adobe is Stopping development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile." Adobe will concentrate their efforts on three main areas

• Applications for mobile
• Expressive content on the desktop (in and out of browser)
• Increasing their investments in HTML5 in general

The full content and scope of the announcement is expected to be posted on the Adobe web site in the next day or so.

MICROSOFT SCRAPS FLASH, WINDOWS 8 METRO IE10 TO BE "PLUG-IN FREE"

The tablet-optimized Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 will be a "plug-in free experience," as the company follows Apple's lead in abandoning Adobe Flash in favor of HTML5 on tablets.

Microsoft revealed Wednesday on its Building Windows 8 blog that the Metro version of IE10 will drop plug-ins because the experience that they provide is "not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web." The company will, however, continue to support Adobe Flash and other plug-ins on the desktop version of Internet Explorer 10.

IE team lead Dean Hachamovitch wrote in the post that going plug-in free in for the Metro version of IE10 "improves battery life as well as security, reliability and privacy for consumers." Hachamovitch further stated "Plug-ins were important early on in the web’s history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI,.

GOOGLE DOODLE LETS YOU PLAY AND RECORD A GUITAR RIFF

Have you been to Google's home page recently? Do it, you've got less than 24 hours to check out its guitar-inspired doodle celebrating the birthday of Les Paul. The "Google" script is highly interactive thanks to a combination of JavaScript, HMTL5, CSS, and even Flash (providing the audio). Click the compose button at the base of the second "g" and begin recording your own 30 second tribute to one of music's most innovative pioneers using your keyboard to play specific notes or mouse for virtual strumming. Unfortunately, the recording and sharing aspect appears limited to US Googlers. Impressive stuff from a typically impressive company.

RIM ANNOUNCES BLACKBERRY OS 7

The BB OS 6.1 update that grew too big for its name has just been made official by RIM as BlackBerry OS 7. Its ambassador into the wide world of smartphones will be the newly minted BlackBerry Bold Touch, which is expected to arrive "this summer."

The user experience is promised to be both easier and faster, voice-activated searches are available for content both on your phone and the web, and the browser has been "significantly enhanced" with new features like a JIT (just-in-time) JavaScript compiler and HTML5 Video support. BlackBerry Balance is also part of the new OS, allowing you to compartmentalize your personal and professional lives into neat and separate piles of content.

ADOBE HELPING HTML5 CONVERSIONS

Adobe, the company behind Flash, has created an application that will help convert Flash to HTML5. It seems a bit odd that a company would help a competitor, especially with the ability convert their product to the competitors. Adobe openly admits that the initial goal for the new tool will be to help convert animated banner ads so that they work on the iOS platform.

W3C UNVEILS HTML5 LOGO

The logo you see above is the final design the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has decided upon to represent HTML5 use going forward.

The W3C wants to encourage everyone who is using or supporting the use of the open web platform to use the logo on their websites and services.

There’s a dedicated website with the logo proudly displayed at the top. Underneath there are details as to what the logo design is all about:

It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.

There’s also a badge builder allowing you to create a customized logo for your site using the “Badge Builder 5000″. There’s an example of the badge below, which shows the logo along with a range of icons denoting what you use HTML5 for:

The icon choices include the following categories:

• Offline & Storage
• Connectivity/Realtime
• Multimedia
• Graphics, 3D & Effects
• Device Access
• Performance & Integration
• Semantics
• CSS3/Styling

SKYFIRE IS BACK IN APPLE'S APP STORE

Skyfire, the browser that converts flash video into HTML5 to be viewable on the iPhone, has been re-released into the App Store. After upgrading the backend to handle the onslaught, Skyfire will be releasing the browser in batches. The CEO has confirmed via a blog post that Skyfire will "open batches of downloads for new users over the coming days." It'll be first come, first serve, so you know what to do there. In related news, he also affirmed that it's still available to US downloaders for now, but that "additional country support" would follow shortly. [Engadget]

SKYFIRE BROWSER LETS iPHONE USERS WATCH FLASH VIDEO

Skyfire, an iOS browser, transcodes flash video into HTML5 on the fly. Apple has approved the browser for the Apple App Store and it can be downloaded now through iTunes.

Other iterations of Skyfire have been known to be clunky, but their new $3 app works as advertised: when you come across a site with a Flash video element it'll send that video out to its servers, transcode it into iPhone-friendly HTML5, and pipe it back to your iPhone. It takes 10 seconds or so to get itself situated, but once it does, the videos look pretty good. Skyfire's magic doesn't work with Flash games or Flash apps, or some premium sites like Hulu, but for the most part you'll be able to get at all the Flash video you come across while browsing, or the Flash videos you discover with the built-in Skybar feature. [Gizmodo]

ADOBE DEMOS TOOL TO CONVERT FLASH TO HTML5

Although Adobe will deny it, Flash is in trouble. After Steve Jobs notably declared Flash a dying technology, Flash usage on the web is on the decline: a study released this week shows that since the beginning of the year, Flash video on the web has gone from being almost ubiquitous to having less than 50% share compared to HTML5. HTML5 is also continuing to gain momentum in other forms of interactive web content where Flash used to be favored.

For Adobe to remain current, then, the company needs to somehow embrace HTML5 by encouraging Flash developers to transition to the new standard while continuing to purchase Adobe products. Unsurprisingly, then, Adobe has just unveiled at the MAX conference this week a new tool that converts Flash animations to HTML5.

It’s just a demo, of course, and it may never become a real product… but clearly at least sections of Adobe are seeing the writing on the wall for Flash. It’s true that Adobe is making a strong push to bring Flash 10.1 to pretty much every platform under the sun, but this week’s announcements show they are no longer willing to put all of their eggs in the Flash basked: Adobe’s Air platform, for example, is now slated to run on everything from tablets to televisions, and this tool — should Flash finally be declared D.O.A. — could at least squeeze some last drops of revenue out of the dying standard by allowing developers to translate their old, complicated Flash animations to the new de facto web standard. [Geek]








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CHROME VERSION 6 RELEASED

Google has given everyone a present on the second anniversary of it's Chrome browser.  Version 6 hits the interwebs today with a slightly tweaked UI, extension syncing, form autofill and autofill syncing.

The UI has some slight updating.  The wrench and page icons have been brought under one, single drop down menu.  The "bookmark this page" has moved from the left to the right side inside of the address bar.  For the most part the Chrome team concentrated on making their browser more stable and even faster.

The browser also has built-in Flash as well as HTML5 support.