How do you get Adobe Flash Player on an Android?

On August 15, 2012, Adobe pulled its Flash Player from the Google Play Store. What a way to celebrate the birthday of my friend in Vermont, I'm sure you're thinking. No? Just me? .... Oh, ok.

Until recently, if a website had media-rich interactive content, it needed add-on's like the Adobe Flash Player and JavaScript to make the content display and function properly. Now HTML5 (HTML, hypertext markup language, is the language websites are written in) has that function built into it, rendering an add-on redundant. Clearly this is much more streamlined, but RIP, mobile Adobe Flash Player. Actually, Adobe is behind HTML5 as well, so they replaced their own product... much less solemn.

The question, then, is why would you want the Flash Player on your phone, if it's been replaced by HTML5 so smoothly that developers expect few to notice the change? Because many websites are not yet on HTML5, and still have Flash content that is hidden or malfunctioning on our mobiles, without Flash.

This is not one of those complicated delve into your command prompt scenarios; it's really easy. Go to this page of archived Flash Player versions, and page down about 5 times, until you reach the Android versions. Find your correct version of Android (as always, let me know in a comment if you need help) and click to download that Flash Player version. Your computer will probably pop up a message saying it doesn't know what program to use in opening the file, after the download is complete. Dismiss the message, and navigate to this site. Click Browse Files, and in the box that pops up click Downloads, in the top left corner. Make sure this page is sorted by most-recent first, so the file you downloaded will be the first. Click that top file, which ends in .apk. The website will then convert your file into a format that can be installed on your phone. Use your phone's code scanner to scan the QR that the website will produce after a few minutes of processing. At this point, the Flash Player is downloading on your phone.