I have good news and some bad news. The good news is that Flash is dead on mobile devices

Adobe is stopping development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile

This is the summary from an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening that was obtained and first reported on by ZDNet. The other good news to come from this is that Adobe will be putting more money into their HTML5 aspirations. I have really enjoyed working with the free previews of Adobe Edge, their HTML5 animation software. Adobe should be releasing the commercial version of Edge in 2012. I am hoping more resources will be devoted to its development

Here is the bad news from an Adobe press release

In order to better align resources around Digital Media and Digital Marketing, Adobe is restructuring its business. This will result in the elimination of approximately 750 full-time positions primarily in North America and Europe

I hate to see so many people lose their jobs. I have been downsized before and not just after a cold shower. I know what all of the Adobe employees who might be affected by this are feeling today. My hope is that many saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and planned ahead. I would imagine many started working on their HTML5 skills in 2010 after Steve Jobs released his thoughts on Flash where he said that Adobe should drop Flash and focus more on creating great HTML5 tools

Original article at html5blog.org

As more people use phones and tablets to browse the internet, interest in having mobile-friendly sites has exploded. With good reason too! According to our friends at Mashable, one half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices and by 2014, mobile internet usage will be greater than desktop usage. Unfortunately, there's been a dramatic increase in ugly, useless mobile sites too

Here's how you don't do mobile

Before we dig into our preferred strategies for mobile websites (which just so happens to be our next blog post topic), let's look at some mobile approaches and why we do not recommend these

m.website.com or mobi.website.com

If you regularly use a mobile device to browse the internet, you've probably found yourself on sites like "m.cnn.com". It's not that you tried to go to m.cnn.com, you were just redirected there when you tried to go to cnn.com from your phone<

Here's why we have beef with this practice:

• It bizarrely and unnecessarily fragments the site into two sub-sites. Using other techniques, it's possible to dish out mobile styles and content without changing the URL. It violates the "device independent" nature of the Web to the extent that it has been publicly lambasted by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web)
• It increases visitor confusion when it comes to interacting with the content, such as posting comments or sharing. "If I post comments on the mobile version, will they show up on the regular version as well?" "If I email a link for this article to a friend, and he's on his laptop, will he still see the mobile site?" "Does this article even exist on the desktop version?" These are things that a visitor should never have to wonder about

Dumb down the site for mobile visitors

Mobile sites don't have to be stripped down versions of a homepage. Gone are the days when just having a logo and giant navigation buttons are considered optimal for a smartphone

That kind of design loses the motivating power of a good website. Branded language and compelling visuals are made for a reason and go a long way to promote engagement. Visitors accessing a website from a mobile device still want an appealing, engaging experience

Finally, "streamlined" mobile websites make assumptions about what mobile users are looking for on the site. Sometimes these guesses are correct, but they aren't always. People commonly assume that mobile users are on the go and most likely looking for directions and contact information, but even this isn't a safe assumption considering 60% of mobile traffic happens when users are at home

Original article at rise.net