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back to article Adobe axes 750 jobs to focus on HTML5, cloud

Adobe has confirmed it is slashing 750 jobs across its enterprise licensing biz and focusing on HTML5 work as part of a restructure to pump up its digital media and marketing software. The proposal to cut around seven per cent of its workforce came as the maker of reassuringly expensive graphic design software reaffirmed …

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  1. Pamplemoose
    Trollface

    But...

    Without Flash on my phone how will I get the full internet experience??

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Finally Adobe came to their senses. If only they had invested on HTML5 more from the very start they would be in a great position now.

    Good companies should know when it's time to let go of their old baggage.

    Do feel for the Android tablet marketing staff, how can they differentiate their stuff now.

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    1. Spearchucker Jones
      Reply Icon

      Eh?

      Not sure if coming to their senses is the signifcant event.

      Adobe missed the boat badly with Flash - it could've been for mobile generally what Silverlight is to Windows Phone. Or, for that matter, what PhoneGap is now. Which makes the Nitobi (makers of PhoneGap) aquisition ironic.

      If they disregarded the idea of Flash as a mobile apps platform, they might at least have considered optimising Flash for mobile. Android fans love claiming their phones do Flash - but they don't like to talk about the 60 second wait for an animation to download over 3G.

      Mobile is a huge missed opportunity for Flash (and Adobe). One that I think heralds Flash's gradual demise.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    only the other day

    they were saying how committed they were to Flash. Thought at the time it was a bit hollow in the face of HTML5...

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  4. Rob Davis

    HTML5, Media, Canvas, Jquery and SVG...

    can probably do all that Flash can do. And they're open standards - the ethos of the original web specification.

    I believe Adobe was trialling a Flash to HTML5 converter. Perhaps it would make sense to develop this further.

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  5. Ru
    Meh

    And with that...

    ...the only working implementation of "write once, run anywhere" gets the penultimate nail in its coffin.

    Like it or loathe it, Flash does/did at least *work*, by and large, even if it provided a vector for a million remote exploits and awful animated adverts.

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  6. Jon Press

    Halting development of Flash Player for browsers on handhelds

    Guess Android's going to have to look for another USP.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >Flash will instead home in on PC gaming rather than mobile platforms, ZDNet claims.

    Flash Player is not Flash. By which I mean, some of the highest earning and most popular Apps on iOS are developed using Flash.

    ...the focus on AIR and native packaging has been obvious since CS5, spinning this into Adobe's current batch of redundancies doesn't really make much sense when you look at where they're making them.

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  8. StChom

    I can see the giant finger of Steve, given from beyond. The whole industry, punditry, geekery pointing it at him at the time...

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  9. John Styles

    Where does this leave BBC iPlayer on mobiles? Specifically Android ones where they use Flash

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    1. chr0m4t1c
      Reply Icon

      Presumably they'll dish out the mp4 files that they do for the iPhone instead.

      Mind you, just because it's discontinued, it doesn't mean it will automatically be uninstalled on all devices, so there's plenty of time for transition.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    looks like Steve called this one right then.....

    flash for mobiles and tablets suck and HTML5 is a far better approach, pity it took adobe so long to see it ....

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Strange headline....

    ... not mentioning that mobile Flash has been scrapped.

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    1. StChom
      Reply Icon

      ... well, this one is kind of a hard swallow for the pundits who claimed for years the full internet experience needed flash. It will be great fun to see the whole geekery go blue...

      Here, the employment concern was a good, if not very brave, trick.

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  12. gujiguju

    Thoughts on Flash

    You mean after years of screaming and hand-waving and belly-achin', I don't have to read another pathetic paragraph about Steve Jobs' Stalinist tendencies at crushing and humiliating patriotic, freedom-loving Flash users everywhere and their beloved blinking ads & Windows-only GPU-accelerated, 99%-dual-CPU, gale-force-fan, 45-min-battery-life-sucking whining and cheesing...?

    Being in the software industry, I've never seen a more pathetic public display of "It Really Works!" tech reporting, cringe-inducing, "woe-is-me" antics with "Look Here!" vaporware, Flash-on-mobile YouTube videos.

    How much farther along wouldwe be with HTML5, SVG, CSS3, & ECMAscript relating to non-desktop web design be if Adobe had been less juvenile in 2007 about Flash on mobile...?

    There. I got it out, hyphens and all. ;)

    (And El Reg, knowing better, buries the lede in this article. Nicely played.)

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  13. BillG
    Mushroom

    Macromedi... uh, Adobe?

    Adobe Flash was buggy since they bought out Macromedia. It kept getting buggy and bloated, a sure sign that the original developers took the highway while the less-than-talented stayed on.

    I will never forgive Adobe for breaking Flash's backwards compatibility. I had a money-making online eLearning business built on complex Flash lessons that all suddenly stopped working when Adobe introduced Flash 10. My income suddenly dropped to zero.

    Goodbye, Flash.

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