I think the author's missing one major point: Microsoft is heavily pushing the "touch" interface on Windows 8. I've tried imagining using Flash with a touch interface, and I think it'd be extremely painful.

Why? What is it about Flash that makes you feel it couldn't work well with a touch interface?

You don't even have to imagine, just grab an Android tablet.

Flash - as it is used on the web today - is difficult and unpleasant to use via touch. This is mostly due to the movies being optimised for mouse, not touch. If you include Flash in a new tablet, it certainly shouldn't be for its existing uses.

Even in september 2011 Flash doesn't work well with keyboard and mouse.

If you have clicked inside a Flash-box then you can forget using the keyboard shortcuts your web browser offer.

Edit: I really think one shouldn't be able to down-vote without first writing a comment explaining why...

Though it is indeed very annoying that Flash grabs all keyboard input, I don't think that has anything to do with the matter at hand, considering that touch interfaces are infinitely more like mice than keyboards. I just don't see the same problem occuring.

The problem with Flash is that it is a plugin, and not part of the browser. Being a plugin, flash has no real way of communicating with the browser (yes, an extension can, but a plugin is not an extension). So the browser leaves a space for the plugin, letting it do what it wants, and shares exclusive focus locks with the plugin. This means you are either in Flash's context, or the browser's context. So by design, flash can't do anything but grab all the keyboard commands.

Then we get to html5. This is a part of the browser. The browser can suspend execution, ensure gestures work before the program responds or any other kind of integration.

As for mouse vs touch screen, I would find a flash site designed for a mouse quite annoying to use with a touch screen. Mouse environments are designed with elements close together, so you don't need to drag your mouse far. You can also use 'hover' effects, where your mouse hovers over an element. This is opposed to a touch screen, where I can easily move my hand/finger across the screen and can't 'hover' over elements. A touch screen also requires bigger hit targets, as you have less accuracy than a mouse.

I wholeheartedly agree that applications which use the idea of hovering will not work well on a tablet. That is not a flaw that's inherent of Flash, though. It's as true of Flash as it is of HTML5/js and native applications. Hovering can therefore not be the reason why Flash does not work well with tablets, because if it were, the other approaches would work just as badly.

Any reason for Flash not to work on touch based devices must be not also be applicable to other environments, like HTML5 or native, nor can such reasons be valid if they also apply to different kinds of hardware, for example desktop computers.

I don't have a tablet, nor access to one, so I hadn't thought of the swiping feature that was mentioned in another comment in this thread, which is one such reason. Flash's jail-like environment precludes cross-boundary swiping. Swiping is a feature that's almost unique to touch-based devices. Mouse gestures come close, but I don't believe they're widely used. The problems with it are also unique to browser plugins like Flash, because it does not exist in HTML5-based applications, nor native ones.

I'm having a hard time accepting that is the only reason, though. Is swiping really that important that it and it alone is enough to doom Flash and browser plugins in general?

Most flash apps today heavily rely on hover-over events. Try using any current flash app without sending hover-over events -- it's difficult. On youtube, you the volume control and time scrubber are hidden from view until you hover over them.

This problem also exists for web apps heavily javascript driven, but seems to be less of a problem compared to flash apps. It's probably because flash apps are constrained in a small space so the interface needs to be more compact & hover driven.

Flash developers usually get a fixed chunk of space to work with and any trick they can use to squeeze 'more UI' out of that same space will be used. If hovering is no longer an option you can expect the size of these blocks to increase to offset the extra real estate required to accommodate all the bits and pieces of the UI.

What is more likely is that the user agent will be detected and that if it is determined that the user has no mouse that either some fall back mode will be used or that there will be an alternative UI preserving the basics will be presented, or a UI that will use the first 'tap' on the screen as a substitute for a hover.

That's not inherent to Flash, it's just an idiosyncrasy of Flash developers. It can and probably will change.

I can imagine similar issues, like gestures that span both flash and web.

Can't edit my post anylonger so I'll reply to myself.

The issue is probably common to all browser plugins.

The title's a bit misleading, implying that there's more than one IE10 (Metro and ?), and that IE10 will not support plugins. It will, but they won't be available with the Metro UI enabled. If you need them, you press one button ("Use Desktop View") to switch UIs and you have them.

I don't know how Metro IE and Desktop IE are separate or one and the same, but from what I read, only Metro IE would be available to some devices, most notably ARM tablets.

AFAIK, Metro is always available, but desktop IE is only available on x86 (or the like).

That hasn't been confirmed and probably isn't true. John Gruber came up with that theory based on what he felt were hints from Microsoft but that seems to be dis-proven by this ARM tablet running Windows Desktop: http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/14/nvidia-kal-el-windows-8-t...

This has pretty serious implications for Adobe (captain obvious). Adobe isn't stupid though. The recent "HTML5 gallery" shows that they're serious about making tools that work with new standards-based web technology, but the big variable will be timing. Can they move quickly enough to stay ahead of it? There is no Adobe product that is the "de facto standard" for HTML5/JS/CSS3 authoring like Flash became in the nineties.

The article is infoq is more balanced http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/09/Metro-Plug-ins

The fact that MS may abandon Silverlight and other Windows technologies is far more significant that the "look, look Apple are right again" angle.

Does this mean IE10 finally supports CSS3 animations like firefox/webkit?

How about CSS3 text-shadow and a dozen other CSS3 rules?

IE9 is still holding back the web, especially since it won't run on XP at all.

IE10 supports lots of things - e.g. animations and text-shadow.

http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie+9&b2=ie+10

I don't get how you conclude that the browser is holding the web back. I think its the people who resist upgrading a decade old operating system or moving to a different browser.

... or webdevs/companies who continue to support legacy platforms (and thus not force people to update). Clients are clueless anyway.

Anyone and anything still using IE6 should be taken out back and shot.

Whilst I'd love to agree, lots of people in my world (the UK insurance industry) don't get a choice.

When reporting issues I often say "Can you upgrade your browser?" to which I get the reply "No, it's what the IT department put on all of the machines, I use (BrowserX) at home though."

I suspect this is common.

Does that include the 5% of my customers that bring in over £100,000 GBP per year? I don't think so.

I don't know about you, but I certainly can't afford to throw away 100k every year.

Maybe because Metro IE10 runs on WinRT rather than Win32? Just a guess.

And I suppose that means no Adblock, no Noscript, no Lastpass.

Welp. I know what browser I WON'T be using when Win8 lands.

The plugin-free aspect is only for their windows metro-style apps. The IE10 browser will still allow plugins.

Considering how precious bandwidth is on mobile networks, the lack of adblock is killing me. I don't understand why the mobile OS makers wont open up a browser API for plugins. I guess I can root it and put in a giant hosts file that blocks ads, but that seems that it could lead to issues. I browse full-sites, not mobile, on my tablet, so when I use 3G, I'm still downloading large animated gif ads and other useless bandwidth hogs.

I have an android tablet and an android phone. I rarely use flash, but when I do its when there's no alternative. It works crappily, but it beats sitting there and thinking "Oh well, I better go find a desktop."

Die Flash...Die

no flash, no silverlight, NO USEFUL

Perhaps Microsoft is finally beginning to realize that Web developers are moving on from IE because Microsoft was trying to do their own thing while all the other browsers were moving in a different direction, and now they are trying to catch up to get usage and respectability back.