This, of course, comes a day after the launch of the Galaxy Nexus, which runs this version of Android.

The release doesn’t come with any major features, but it does come with some bug fixes in addition to the new compatibility. Adobe lists known issues as:

- Seeking while video is paused will not update the frame on ICS device
- StageVideo using On2 and Sorenson does not work on ICS devices
- PHDS content plays with audio pops
- OS does not prioritize incoming call – audio remains playing before and after call is received
- Enter key does not work on the multi-line text input field

Some are ready for Flash to go away:

Adobe announced its decision to do away with Flash for mobile last month. At the same time, the company emphasized that it is increasing investments in HTML5. They also cut about 750 jobs. Adobe’s statement said:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Adobe reported its Q4 earnings yesterday. Profits were down 35%, but they beat analyst estimates.

You may recall the big back and fourth between Adobe and Apple over Flash last year. Remember the famous letter from Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash?

I won’t rehash the entire thing here, but the conclusion said:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

It appears that they are doing just that. Adobe outlined its growth strategy, and that includes greater investment in HTML 5. Just take a look at iPhone and iPad sales, and it’s not hard to understand why.

ZDNet shares the following announcement from the company:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

Here’s what some people have been saying about it on Twitter.

That last one is a story on its own. In a statement, Adobe said:

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.

The company will report its Q4 earnings on December 15.

The company says it’s adopting an open development methodology for Edge, so it is available earlier than usual in the development process. It’s been released through Adobe Labs. Users will be able to contribute feedback, and influence the final product.

“Over the last year Adobe has delivered on several significant HTML5 milestones including contributions to jQuery, submitting code to WebKit, and enhanced HTML5 output in Creative Suite® 5.5,”said Paul Gubbay, vice president of Design and Web Engineering at Adobe. “Now, with Adobe Edge, we’re taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months, as we refine the product.”

Adobe EdgeEdge Preview 1 is finally here! Create animated content using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript with a slick, easy to use timeline-based interface. Download it now for free on Adobe Labs. 11 hours ago · 35 likes · 6 comments

Adobe explains:

The Adobe Edge preview works natively with HTML. It enables users to add motion to existing HTML documents without hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also enables users to easily create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3. Users can import standard Web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files and style them using CSS3. The design stage utilizes WebKit to enable design, preview and manipulation of content with incredible fidelity. The innovative timeline feature is both familiar for creative professionals and breaks new ground in animation productivity to enable users to define and customize motion applied to HTML elements with extreme precision.

The content created with Edge is designed to work with modern browsers, including those on Android, BlackBerry PlayBook, iOS, HP webOS, as well as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE9.

Edge will be updated regularly to add new functionality, Adobe says. It’s free of charge for the preview version.

It lets you reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (ie: iPhones and iPads).

You may recall a similar tool from Adobe, called Wallaby. Here’s what Google has to say about that:

Wallaby is an installable tool that converts .fla files, whereas Swiffy is a web-based tool that converts .swf files. Wallaby focuses on reusing parts of a Flash file in HTML, and thus produces code that can be edited by the developer, whereas Swiffy generates an efficient format that is not that easily editable.

Adobe is pleased to see the Flash platform extended to devices which don’t support the Flash player. The result is that anyone creating rich or interactive ads can continue to get all the authoring benefits of Flash Pro and have the flexibility to run the ad in the Flash Player or HTML depending on what’s available on the system. Google and Adobe look forward to close collaboration around efforts like these.

Google has provided a Swiffy gallery showing side-by-side original Flash animations and their Swiffy conversion counterparts here.

To use Swiffy’s output on your own site, you can simply save the HTML file that is generated, and include it on your site using an iframe tag. You can preview the output on a mobile device as well.

Google says Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari.

Google says it is not sure whether or not Swiffy will be open source.

While that may be, the infographic in question, provided by Periscope.com, reveals this upcoming changeover has a ways to go before Flash is rendered obsolete. First, the infographic, resized for presentation purposes. Click the image for a bigger version, which measure around 1.2 megabytes worth of file size:

Blame YouTube, I guess.

Another area of interest lies in the browser-ready section. For the Internet Explorer crowd, only IE9 supports HTML5. Firefox has had HTML5 support since version 3.6 and Google Chrome has supported the format since version 10. In the mobile device territory, support for the newer format is surprisingly high, with the exception of the Nokia and BlackBerry environments. Of course, if either company wants to keep up with the Joneses — Google and Apple, apparently — then such expect such a distinction to change in the near future.

Of course, HTML5 is still in its fledgling stage, so expect these numbers to be a little different in a few years. An area discussed by Periscope includes iPad proliferation. It seems Apple is pushing developers who want to design for the “iEnvironment” to focus on the iOS format:

If your goal is to develop content in HTML5 so that it can be viewed through both a web browser and the iPad, (to reach the largest amount of people), you might be a little disappointed. Content developed in HTML5 for the iPad has the least available features and performs the worst out of all HTML5-compatible scenarios.

Periscope concludes their post with the following heads up, “from a purely analytical point of view, the best option for developing a feature-rich dynamic data visualization right now still seems to be Flash.” Just as long as a standard-format iPad user isn’t part of your intended audience.

The feature does encourage webmasters, or at least SEOs to pay greater attention to design (as if they didn’t already have enough reasons to do so). If you have an ugly site, the user can now see that before they click through to it. Anyhow, with that in mind, Google announced today that the Instant Previews now support Flash.

“In most cases, when the preview for a page is generated through our regular crawl, we will now render a snapshot of any Flash components on the page,” explains product manager Raj Krishnan. “This will replace the ‘puzzle piece’ icon that previously appeared to indicate Flash components, and should improve the accuracy of the previews.”

“However, for pages that are fetched on demand by the ‘Google Web Preview’ user-agent, we will generate a preview without Flash in order to minimize latency,” adds Krishnan. “In these cases the preview will appear as if the page were visited by someone using a browser without Flash enabled, and ‘Install Flash’ messages may appear in the preview, depending on how your website handles users without Flash.”

Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced Instant Previews for AdWords (which could actually save advertisers money, as the preview clicks are free).

Flash support here could be crucial for landing pages that make use of Flash. You certainly wouldn’t want potential customers seeing preview of things not working.

Other recent improvements to Instant Previews include integration with Google Quick Scroll and support for .doc and .ppt files (as well as video). Mobile support was also launched in March.

“This allows you to reuse and extend the reach of your content to devices that do not support the Flash runtimes,” Adobe explains. “Once these files are converted to HTML, you can edit them with an HTML editing tool, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, or by hand if desired. You can view the output in one of the supported browsers or on an iOS device.”

“Please note that not all Flash Professional features are supported in the HTML5 format,” the company adds. “The Wallaby Release Notes describe what features are supported, what differences we have already discovered between the various browsers, what device variations have been found, and any currently known issues.”

The list is pretty big, so I’ll let you peruse that on your own. It is only available in English currently.

“Having come here specifically to build standards-based Web animation software, I’m delighted to see this release and a ton of other HTML5 initiatives from Adobe,” says Adobe’s John Nack. “As long as the company puts solving customer needs ahead of politics, I predict good things.”

Adobe stresses that Wallaby is not currently part of either Adobe Creative Suite or Flash Professional. Wallaby is available as a free download on Adobe Labs.

"In March, we announced that we would be bringing improved support for Adobe Flash Player to Google Chrome," says Product Manager Jeff Chang. "Along with driving the development of a next generation browser plug-in API, this integration will eliminate the need to install Flash Player separately and reduce the security risk of using outdated versions. In the near future, we will extend Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content to further protect users from malicious content."

"We have been testing the integration in Google Chrome’s dev and beta channels over the last few months in order to ensure a quality experience for all our users," adds Chang. "Over the last week, we have enabled the integration by default in the stable channel of Chrome."

On a somewhat related note, Google launched Chrome FastBall today. This is a YouTube-based game, which is described as a "race across the Internet". I’ll let you get the details about that here.

"We’ve witnessed a strong resurgence in the display ad market over the past several months, with the number of impressions up 15 percent vs. year ago and average CPMs also continuing to rise," said comScore senior vice president Jeff Hackett. "One of the several drivers of strength in this market has been the innovation occurring with respect to ad units, as larger and more engaging creative ad formats are employed. We are excited to provide our clients with greater visibility into the use of different ad formats and sizes with the new comScore Ad Metrix Creative Summary report."

According to comScore, in April, about 60% of U.S. display ad impressions were GIFs and JPEGs. GIFs represented 14.1%. Here are a couple charts worth looking at:

Banners accounted for 23.1% of impressions, followed by rectangles (22.7%) and non-standard units (22.1%).

Pop-ups and pop-unders now represent less than 1% of all display ad impressions, comScore says. Newer OPA ad formats, such as the 970 x 418 pushdown and 468 x 648 XXL box currently account for 0.1% of impressions.