Flash on Android and iOS – still hanging in there?

There was a time when websites attempted to distinguish themselves with landing pages.

The online equivalent of a book’s dust jacket, landing pages added nothing to the content within, but they were intended to look pretty.

This was an age before search engine optimisation, when the homepage of your website didn’t need to contain a well-judged array of keywords and long tails.

And despite the yawning loading times of many Nineties and Millennial websites, a number of landing pages sported Adobe Flash animations, displayed using a web browser plugin.

For a time, Flash was seen as stylish – elevating a webpage above the static text-and-images content amateurs could assemble in Macromedia Director.

By the time the iOS and Android mobile browsers arrived, Flash was already in decline, but its incompatibility with these new operating systems certainly hastened its demise.

Viewing Flash content on Android handsets has been impractical since 2012’s Jelly Bean OS update, with no native support.

And while this aligned Android with Apple’s iOS, where Steve Jobs had always harboured hostility to Flash, it’s caused inconvenience and frustration to many users over the years.

Happily, there are still ways to view Flash content on iOS and Android handsets – for now, at least…

1. Install a dedicated web browser

The Puffin web browser adopts an ingenious approach to displaying Flash content on Android and iOS devices.

It runs Flash in the cloud, rather than locally, effectively treating it like any other remote-hosted content.

As such, it’s possible to enjoy Flash animations, games, video clips and more.

However, European consumers should be aware that Puffin’s servers are based in America.

Page response times are comparatively slow, and geolocation restrictions may apply depending what content you’re attempting to view.

2. Look for an app

Recognising that a treasure trove of Adobe content would otherwise be unviewable, some third-party software developers created Flash players which run on smartphones.

This provides access not just to Flash videos (FLV and F4V formats) but Flash games as well.

The Photon Flash Player offers web browsing capabilities, while serving as a VPN to dodge geolocation restrictions and protect your anonymity.

Adobe still offers Flash Player as a downloadable app in its own archives, though it can only be installed on Android platforms predating Jelly Bean.

The most recent update was released in 2013, meaning the software has seven years’ worth of unresolved vulnerabilities.

That places user devices at heightened risk of attack or infection.

Some reviews have suggested Photon quickly bogs down on iOS devices, so Apple users might be advised to stream from their Macs instead, using Parallels Access.

Gone in a Flash

The development of the universal HTML5 standard heralded a more streamlined way of displaying animations and transitions.

Its subsequent adoption by every major tech firm and software developer put another nail in the coffin of the Flash Player, which required a dedicated plugin to run.

Flash content is already blocked by default in web browsers including Chrome, Edge and Safari.

Adobe has since switched its attention to its Creative Cloud service, hosting over 20 desktop and mobile media apps including the iconic Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat.

It will pull support for Flash entirely in December, and is currently urging owners of Flash-based content to convert it into other formats.

If you want to view Flash content on Android or iOS devices, do it while you still can – and prepare for a life without it.