It’s not that I always hated Flash totally, but I did mostly. Back in the Halcyon days of the dot-com bubble it was cool, hip, a look at the “future” of interactive web content, and there was nothing else like it. It was also, even then, buggy, crash prone, a resource hog, and authoring as well as end-user updates were a pain. Not much has changed, but now Adobe has announced the end of Flash altogether by announcing the end of mobile Flash development.

I say don’t let the digital door hit you on the overweight, bloated ass on your way out Flash. No offense to Adobe, but good riddance.

 

Instead of working on Flash for mobile platforms, Winokur says that Adobe will focus on improving its HTML5 tools and letting developers write native apps for mobile platforms using the company’s AIR technology. And, of course, Adobe plans to continue developing Flash on the desktop, where it will work hand-in-hand with HTML5, the next generation of underlying technology for creating websites.

But it’s impossible not to see this as a loss for Adobe, especially when it comes alongside layoffs and a restructuring plan. With Flash’s departure from the mobile platform, it’s impossible not to ask what this means for the future of the technology as a whole.

I can ask, and answer; dead in the water. Flash was cool. In 1997.