Does this signal the beginning of the end for Flash Web Design?

To some it may came as a shock, but to others it was inevitable.

Adobe, the makers of the much loved Flash Technology announced today that they will no longer be supporting Flash for mobile devices.

But what does this recent announcement mean for websites owners who spent thousands of euros developing their exciting, cool and animate Flash website?

If you’ve been keeping an eye on recent developments from the Adobe camp, this is probably what you’ve been expecting to hear sooner rather than later.

In fairness, the warning signs have been there all along and very obvious. It’s only a month or so since Adobe bought Nitobi. Nitobi are the company that develops PhoneGap which is an open source, mobile development framework that allows developers to create mobile apps using HTML5 and Javascript. And since Adobe own the industry standard HTML editor, Dreamweaver, it was fairly obvious that they would most likely take the HTML5 route to mobile app development.

As you were probably aware, Flash has been unavailable on the iPhone since its inception*. There was never any suggestion that it would appear on the device, to the contrary in fact, especially if the late great Steve Jobs had anything to do with it. I think it’s fair to say that Steve Jobs loathed Flash and the though of Flash being used on a mobile device was something Jobs was totally opposed to (you can read his reasons why here).

For those of you with a flash website, you’re probably well aware at this stage that your website doesn’t look or perform too well on a mobile device and you’ve probably already acted on a solution for mobile devices.

But does this move mean that flash will start to fade away from our desktops too? If recent study’s and industry speculation are anything to go by, it appears that the need and usage for Flash from a user perspective will quickly disintegrate.

They reckon by 2014 that most people will be browsing the web via a mobile device. Therefore, the number of people able to view your Flash website will be pretty low. Of course there will be alternative ways of viewing these sites – but will Adobe want to keep supporting a piece of software that no-one really wants anymore?

I personally think it’s the beginning of the end for Flash – in it’s current state. There’s very little you can’t do with HTML5 that you could achieve with Flash. So for that reason “Flash – you are the weekest link – Goodbye!”

*You can download third party apps to allow you view flash websites etc

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