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Adobe will soon be making beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Android available, Lee Brimelow, a platform evangelist, wrote on the FlashBlog April 17.
Right now, Adobe is conducting private test of both of these technologies. Those interested in testing out the beta version for themselves can sign up for the notifications, wrote Brimelow.
“There are going to be so many interesting things that you will be able to do on Android,” wrote Brimelow, “and there are also going to be many new skills that you will need to learn, especially if you are new to mobile design.”
The embracing of Flash by Android, Google’s open-source mobile operating system, is a major differentiator from its rival, Apple’s iPhone OS. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made no secret of his distaste for Flash, calling it an “old technology” and working to convert major institutions, such as the Wall Street Journal, on the benefits of switching its Website from Flash-based video and animation to the H.264 video-compression standard.
While some sites have gone out of the way to make themselves friendly to the iPhone OS, many more others haven’t. In his review of the Apple iPad, for example, New York Times tech critic David Pogue complained that “thousands of Websites show up with empty white squares on the iPad – places where videos or animations are supposed to play.”
FlashBlog’s Brimelow said that the betas would be a big help for those wanting to learn more about optimizing content for mobile devices. He added that he can’t offer information on when the betas will become available, but that anyone interested in testing them should visit the separates sign-in pages for each Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0.
PCWorld reports that Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told the Fox Business Network on April 13 that Google, Research In Motion and Palm will all release devices with versions of Flash in the second half of 2010 – which is a push from its original target date in the first half of the year.
While Apple’s iPhone is the dominant mobile OS in the United States, according to data from AdMob, Google’s Android is the fastest growing.