Adobe Confirms It Won't Support Flash On Android 4.1

Adobe was very public about dropping mobile Flash last fall. In case that wasn't clear enough, the developer just drew a line in the sand: Android 4.1 doesn't, and won't ever, get certification for Flash. The company is stopping short of saying that Flash won't run, but it's evident that Adobe won't help you if the web browser plugin doesn't install on that Nexus 7. Just to underscore the point, the firm is also halting new installations of Flash from Google Play as of August 15th. Security updates and other vital patches will continue on for existing users. Any fresh downloads after that fateful day, however, will have to come from Adobe's mausoleum for old versions. The company had already said that HTML5 was the way forward on phones and tablets.

Flash support arrives in native version of Firefox for Android

Figured we'd do our best to asplode the Internet in this one picture. That's Firefox for Android running Flash. On a Kindle Fire. Yeah, yeah, Flash is dead on mobile and all that. But the fine folks at Mozilla are still baking support for it in the new version of native Firefox, and it's avaliable now as a nightly build. That's not to say it's without bugs -- nightly builds are like that, of course. But it's very cool to see Mozilla bake in support for what's still -- and what will be for some time -- a very desired feature.

Adobe calling Flash Player mobile quits

While we all know BlackBerry smartphones have no use for Flash, the BlackBerry PlayBook does rely quite heavily on it so the information of Adobe's Flash Player for mobile no longer being supported is an interesting one. As reported by ZDNet from a purported debriefing document sent to developers:

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.