In the last few days I have been visiting new websites that use Flash technology. I Have flash installed but have been tortured by notices to update the flash version. Suddenly to me flash is not so appealing anymore. I never had to do these upgrades before.

I am not against having to upgrade Flash now and again. But in the last 6 months it there has been a trend towards forcing me to update and for me to to the update manually by downloading the falsh player exe. Now if I have to do this then it means that the advertised "90% of all web browsers" that Adobe is pushing actually means that the "90% of all web browsers" statistic is falling. Stats like this don't really mean much if the Flash player that is installed is totally useless and has to be upgraded.

This new trend is making for openings for the competion. Silverlight has the same requirement for manual download and install as does Java for JavaFX. The difference being that once they have been installed the upgrading is only a matter of approval by the user. Flash upgrades in nearly all browsers requires that I surf to Adobe and download a new package. The auto download and installation for Internet Explorer, Fire Fox and Opera has been broken for so long that I cannot remember the first time I had to do it manually.

So unless Adobe does something very quickly to assure that users get the latest version of the Flash player quickly and effortlessly, they stand to lose a good amount of percentage points to JavaFX and Silverlight.

Happy Publishing!

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