theregoesdave

Yesterday we covered the impending arrival of Flash on Windows Mobile which was demonstrated at the Adobe Max developer conference in San Francisco. However, news broke later on in the day about a few special guest appearances that we weren’t quite expecting yet.

Andy Ruben of Danger Inc fame, who also happens to be the genius behind Google’s Android mobile phone operating system, was on hand for the conference. The real special guest for the occasion was Flash 10 coming to the Android platform. Andy did the demo himself, which marked the second major handset platform that is about to start supporting Flash animations.

This move could position Android phones to surpass the web-surfing capability of the iPhone and here’s how…

The iPhone has been the only kid on the block to provide good handling of complex Javascript or AJAX interactive events with its mobile browser. Although Apple doesn’t seem interested in supporting Flash plugins, up to this point it’s provided the best support for Rich Internet Applications on a mobile device.

However, Google built Android’s browser using Webkit for full AJAX support. And now it’s vaulting ahead of the iPhone in supporting interactive Web applications by being the first mobile platform to support both AJAX and Flash. At least, that’s once the plugin is officially pushed to handsets.

Now my diatribe about Steve Jobs shooting himself in the foot by banishing Flash from his precious handset platform doesn’t seem nearly as far-flung. Granted, Android does have a long way to go in terms of integrated and smooth user interaction, but hopefully Jobs won’t sit back and watch Android fly past the iPhone.

Via I4U

• Full Flash comes to Windows Mobile
• Will Steve Jobs shoot himself in the foot by disallowing Flash on the iPhone?
• Call for Mobile Web Standards