Google wields a lot of influence on the web as the developer of the most popular desktop browser in the world. As detailed in a draft proposal (via Venture Beat), the company wants to effectively kill Flash by blocking the plugin and prioritizing HTML5 by the end of the year.
Google has been working with Adobe to improve battery life drain caused by Flash and today flipped the switch on a new Chrome feature that does exactly that. The new feature aims to detect Flash on a webpage that is actually important to the main content and “intelligently pause content” that isn’t as important. The result is to hopefully make the web experience with Flash more power efficient to improve battery life on your laptop. Here’s how it works:
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Adobe announced it abandoned mobile Flash last fall, but the company just confirmed to the masses that Google’s new Android 4.1 OS does not have certification for Flash. It is also stopping access to Flash Player updates and installations from Google Play on August 15, but security updates will continue for existing users.
Check out the full presser:
An Update on Flash Player and Android
We announced last November that we are focusing our work with Flash on PC browsing and mobile apps packaged with Adobe AIR, and will be discontinuing our development of the Flash Player for mobile browsers. This post provides an update on what this means for ongoing access to the Flash Player browser plugin for Android in the Google Play Store.The Flash Player browser plugin integrates tightly with a device’s browser and multimedia subsystems (in ways that typical apps do not), and this necessitates integration by our device ecosystem partners. To ensure that the Flash Player provides the best possible experience for users, our partner program requires certification of each Flash Player implementation. Certification includes extensive testing to ensure web content works as expected, and that the Flash Player provides a good user experience. Certified devices typically include the Flash Player pre-loaded at the factory or as part of a system update.Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options. There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1.
Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.
The easiest way to ensure ongoing access to Flash Player on Android 4.0 or earlier devices is to use certified devices and ensure that the Flash Player is either pre-installed by the manufacturer or installed from Google Play Store before August 15th. If a device is upgraded from Android 4.0 to Android 4.1, the current version of Flash Player may exhibit unpredictable behavior, as it is not certified for use with Android 4.1. Future updates to Flash Player will not work. We recommend uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1.
For developers who need ongoing access to released versions of Flash Player for Android, those will remain available in the archive of released Flash Player versions. Installations made from the archive will not receive updates through the Google Play Store.
As always this and other Flash runtime roadmap updates can be found in the Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes white paper.
Google’s Chrome browser has long released with a built-in Flash Player plug-in—the result of a technology partnership between the Internet giant and Flash maker Adobe. Though Adobe still allows customers to download a standalone Flash Player plug-in for Windows, OS X or Linux, the company announced today that the Flash Player plug-in for Linux after version 11.2 would only be available with Chrome browser distribution. The Linux plug-in will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. While one could suspect this news foreshadows broader policy changes on Windows and OS X, Adobe insisted that is not the case.
Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-”Pepper” plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux.
Additionally, it will continue supporting Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for years to come. “Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release,” wrote the company in a blog post…
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Adobe today announced in a blog post that it will updated its Flash Player and AIR platform with new capabilities allowing for rich 3D-accelerated graphics across desktop and mobile devices. The company boasted top to bottom 3D acceleration on supported hardware and said developers will be able to take advantage of native code libraries and tap specific hardware and software features of a target device, such as NFC, accelerometers, light sensors, magnetomeres, device vibration and what not.
2D graphics will also see significant performance enhancements with overall rendering faster up to a thousand times. AIR 3 apps can be packaged with the embedded AIR run-time and can be updated separately of the AIR runtime updates. They believe that under-the-hood tweaks will enable Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 to power console-quality games on any mobile or desktop platform and the company made compelling demos to prove their bold claims.
Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be available across Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BlackBerry Tablet OS, Android and other platforms. The release candidate versions are available for download here. The company also noted it partnered with Microsoft to bring Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 to Windows Phone software. Needles to say, support for iOS is planned only for AIR 3. Go past the fold for more impressive tech demos and features.
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