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Flash coming to most smartphones, but not Apple's iPhone - Page 5

post #161 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:15am
I imagine somewhere over at Apple there is a mobile Safari build that had Flash enabled and I bet this is what they found:

- It brought the iPhone's processor to its knees
Flash is a holder for all kinds of content (vector art, images, sounds, HD video, and with v10 limited 3d) and it can be a challenge to get these elements to render well on a 3ghz Intel processor.
I would guess that there isn't a single Flash based game out there right now that would be playable on an iPhone.

- It doesn't intelligently scale
I imagine the experience of browsing a Flash site is a lot like viewing a complicated PDF - not a lot of fun. While Flash is scalable, designers (like myself) usually work at a fixed pixel dimension, we never design thinking "what if someone zooms in 300%?"

- No Mouse or keyboard issues
Every single Flash game out there now wouldn't work for this reason. There are also a bunch of sites that capture mouse movement that would make for an unpredictable experience.

Each of those issues are going to be extremely difficult to overcome. If you aren't going to reliably view current Flash content on your iPhone are you asking Flash devs to maintain mobile vesions as well?
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post #162 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shunnabunich View Post

That doesn't necessarily mean that Flash will still be popular or widely used at that time. Apple's goal in that respect is to set a precedent, on the mobile side, for using open standards as opposed to Flash, so that by the time smartphones do become the dominant Web-browsing platform, they'll be on the right track and "used to" doing things using those standards. (Naturally, whether it'll pan out like that remains to be seen.)

Agreed on all points. I just don't see it happening. My vision of the future is that Flash and Silverlight will be on mobile phones and offer developers a common way to makes mobile apps essentially giving those platforms free app stores and developers ubiquitous development tools. There is no reason all of this can't be accomplished by HTML5/JS/CSS and webkit I just don't see it happening.
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post #163 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:17am
I've read most of the opinions on this topic and most are short-sighted and uninformed.
First, lets agree on the obvious:

1. Flash ads are annoying
2. A huge Flash development community exists
3. Flash in its current form is a resource hog
4. Flash has a significant presence on the web.

Steve Jobs does not want Flash on the iPhone for 3 major reasons.

1. The Flash experience is not consistent from platform to platform
2. Flash would drain the iPhone battery because it does not run efficiently
3. MOST IMPORTANTLY - Flash Apps would rival the Apps in the App store and Apple would not have control over this.

So, lets think like a visionary for a moment and step out of our own personal whines and gripes:

Apple and Adobe have some of the brightest software engineers on the planet and they are well aware of all that I mentioned above. Apple made a move with HTML 5, do they expect for the Flash development community to embrace HTML 5....No....however, HTML 5 is a necessary progression anyway for the mobile space. Adobe has made their move to secure 19 out of the 20 prominent companies to support Flash in the mobile space. This will be the end result IMHO:

Adobe will compromise by opening the the Flash format and they will buy a little company called MDM. MDM has an application called Zinc that wraps Flash SWFs into real applications for Mac, Windows and Linux....MDM is waiting for Adobe to open the Flash format so they can....YES....wrap SWFs as iPhone Apps...what does this mean for Apple and Adobe you might ask:

Flash developers will swarm to create iPhone Apps and post them to the App store.... now Adobe will sell more Flash development tools because of the ease and speed of development AND Apple will in turn have the BEST apps from the best Flash developers available on the app store. This means that Apple would still be able to control revenue flow and eliminate the challenge that free Flash based games would have created in the web mobile space. In turn, Apple will be more accommodating to Flash as a web experience on the iPhone Safari browser....and of course, you will be able to enable/disable it dynamically in settings...EVERYONE WINS!

MDM...oh my......did I just give you a potential future stock tip?
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post #164 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mick View Post

If you aren't going to reliably view current Flash content on your iPhone are you asking Flash devs to maintain mobile vesions as well?

We are already maintaing mobile versions.
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post #165 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by starnyc View Post

Do you really want to download 100-200k of obnoxious blinking flash ads whenever you hit a Webpage? How about ads that cover content that you can't close because they don't work with multi-touch?

HTML5 has 3D and animation elements that will be much harder to disable. They wont be as resource hungry, but they will just as annoying to view.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

You think HTML5 will kill flash? I know you didn't say that exactly, but it won't.

It doesnt have to kill Flash. Window 7 wont kill WinXP and you can still buy PCs with VGA connectors on them. What may happen is that in HTML5 video tags and secure HTTP streaming may start to get used more for mobile devices. This is a fast growing segment and this promise of GPU accelerated Flash 10 on mobiles is still just vaporware at this point. Even when does come to fruition who knows if it will be viable for these small devices. The open technologies are considerably more resource friendly.

Hulu is apparently designing an app for the iPhone, but I cant see that getting approved for anything other than WiFI, so they may have to go web-based with this open standards instead. It doesnt have to kill Flash to hurt it, just take away a key use for using Flash in the first place. Adobe has already lost out with YouTube video for being too lazy to get Flash to work well on Macs, mobiles, add H.264 support or HW acceleration (the latter two only added after MS Silverlight added it).
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post #166 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz View Post

Actually, thats not true. They CAN however be built with HTML 5, CSS 3 and Javascript. Or at least close enough, which would actually be fine by me, if IE supported all this as well. But then, it doesn't really, so the only way to do this kind of stuff in ALL browsers is flash.

ok right. Strictly speaking HTML5 is only the HTML syntax definition, but since HTML itself is useless for anything but the simplest websites, I tend to lump JavaScript and CSS in with it since the HTML syntax definition supports those technologies far more directly than it does proprietary technologies like Flash (which doesn't have a single mention in the HTML5 specification).

Anyways, I think that as Firefox continues to make inroads as the standard browser on Windows by making technical advancements much more quickly, being able to support a greater percentage of websites, and educating/promoting the benefits of installing it, the need to worry about IE compatibility will decrease. Again, these things just take time. The more people push/demand, the quicker it will happen.
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post #167 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:25am
Flash Reborn!
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post #168 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


As for click to play/pause I mean clicking the actual video, not the play/pause button.

Jeesh, isn't that kind of , I dunno, picky?

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post #169 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz View Post

You probably don't realize it, but most of the websites you LIKE to visit are created by developers who are ALSO developing flash content for other sites. So the idea that the "flash developer" only knows how to make eye candy is inherently flawed because there are very few people who can actually make a living ONLY developing flash. Most developers create sites that use ALL of the available technologies including flash.

*Correct Answer

As I have mentioned before. Just because someone told you that HTML5 will replace Flash doesn't mean it is true. Have you even read the specs for HTML5? Have you tried to code anything remotely animated with HTML5? It is primitive compared to Flash.

But I'm not arguing that the phone should have Flash. The notion that common desktop Flash content would instantly become available, repurposed for a mobile touch interface with no changes is just plain wrong. Existing Flash apps almost 100% rely on hover or drag or both and that cannot be done on a touch interface[.]

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post #170 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:40am
I'm so glad that many people have finally come around and see Flash as a (mostly) unnecessary resource-hog. For me personally, what's even worse than that is the animated crap on the screen that makes it impossible to even read the articles. So disabling it is a must for me, although I do use ClickToFlash for the occasional video.

So here's the flaw with the "choice argument" when it comes to Flash.

With something like matte/glossy, having a choice does not affect anyone else negatively in any way. No matter the blend of matte/glossy screens in the world, I can still use my computer to do everything I want.

But, having more Flash-enabled devices in the world will lead to more Flash-only web sites. And that means lack of accessibility for those of us who either don't have Flash at all (iPhone/Touch), or use laptops and don't want to destroy our batteries.

This is the same reason why Macs almost disappeared from the face of the Earth not that many years ago. When a majority of developers write Windows-only applications it drives users to the Windows platform (still does). Which causes more developers to ignore the Mac, rinse, repeat cycle. For a few years, unless you were a pretty devout Mac user, the pull to the dark side was pretty strong.

In both cases, whether it's an OS or something like Flash, we're talking about a technology layer in the developer stack, and therefore one person's "choice" is often another person's "restriction".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazda 3s View Post

Well, that's your CHOICE and you made it. You have the tools to view Flash, but you choose not to use them.

It'd be one thing if a site operator made a Flash site and didn't provide you the tools to use it, but the tools are readily available to use Flash.

Not on the iPhone / iPodTouch. Which means that whenever a developer (or client) decides to use Flash they've cut off a significant chunk of the web-viewing audience. It doesn't matter who is to blame for the lack of ability, at the end of the day, the users cannot visit the site, period.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazda 3s View Post

Now whether Flash is a resource hogging whale; that's up to you. I use it on my 13" MacBook Pro and don't have any issues.

I would agree that on a desktop it's less of an issue, but with a laptop that's bordering on the unbelievable. Or do you not consider it an issue when Flash sucks your battery dry? Also, by causing extra cycles on the battery, the longevity of the battery itself is significantly reduced.

Do you monitor your CPU/battery usage? It's extremely common to have the CPU usage (and fan) go through the roof when Flash crap is onscreen. How is it that you're able to avoid what the vast majority of others see? This is a serious question.
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post #171 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz View Post

Addendum, Windows Mobile 7 will come out and will be adopted by many users, it doesn't use webkit and it will matter. Microsft isn't just going to rollover and play dead, although I'm sure many of of wish they would.

Steve Balmer said Microsoft would look into using WebKit for future versions of Mobile IE. Either way Microsoft will have to support these new open web technologies or they will get left behind. Google Frame on the desktop side is a clear indication of where Google is heading. They are going to use their power and influence (and market share) to dictate what standards are used on the web. Apple, with the highest mobile Internet market share, is doing the same. Throw in a few other big players like Facebook and it's hard to see how Adobe & Microsoft have any future skirting away from open standards. We've seen many, very fast, shifts away from proprietary technologies in the history of the Internet so far. As soon as a reasonable alternative open solution exists it takes off pretty quickly. I imagine in 2 or 3 years at most Flash will start to become a legacy platform. In another 2 or 3 years after that it won't even be something most people bother to install.
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post #172 of 224
10/5/09 at 10:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tundraBuggy View Post

I've read most of the opinions on this topic and most are short-sighted and uninformed.
First, lets agree on the obvious:

1. Flash ads are annoying
2. A huge Flash development community exists
3. Flash in its current form is a resource hog
4. Flash has a significant presence on the web.

Steve Jobs does not want Flash on the iPhone for 3 major reasons.

1. The Flash experience is not consistent from platform to platform
2. Flash would drain the iPhone battery because it does not run efficiently
3. MOST IMPORTANTLY - Flash Apps would rival the Apps in the App store and Apple would not have control over this.

So, lets think like a visionary for a moment and step out of our own personal whines and gripes:

Apple and Adobe have some of the brightest software engineers on the planet and they are well aware of all that I mentioned above. Apple made a move with HTML 5, do they expect for the Flash development community to embrace HTML 5....No....however, HTML 5 is a necessary progression anyway for the mobile space. Adobe has made their move to secure 19 out of the 20 prominent companies to support Flash in the mobile space. This will be the end result IMHO:

Adobe will compromise by opening the the Flash format and they will buy a little company called MDM. MDM has an application called Zinc that wraps Flash SWFs into real applications for Mac, Windows and Linux....MDM is waiting for Adobe to open the Flash format so they can....YES....wrap SWFs as iPhone Apps...what does this mean for Apple and Adobe you might ask:

Flash developers will swarm to create iPhone Apps and post them to the App store.... now Adobe will sell more Flash development tools because of the ease and speed of development AND Apple will in turn have the BEST apps from the best Flash developers available on the app store. This means that Apple would still be able to control revenue flow and eliminate the challenge that free Flash based games would have created in the web mobile space. In turn, Apple will be more accommodating to Flash as a web experience on the iPhone Safari browser....and of course, you will be able to enable/disable it dynamically in settings...EVERYONE WINS!

MDM...oh my......did I just give you a potential future stock tip?

Who is going to wake him up from his dream and does he have shares in MDM
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post #173 of 224
10/5/09 at 11:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by newbee View Post

Jeesh, isn't that kind of , I dunno, picky?

No. Ease-of-use isn't being picky. For now, Flash is fundamentally more useable on YouTube.

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post #174 of 224
10/5/09 at 11:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

It doesnt have to kill Flash. Window 7 wont kill WinXP and you can still buy PCs with VGA connectors on them. What may happen is that in HTML5 video tags and secure HTTP streaming may start to get used more for mobile devices. This is a fast growing segment and this promise of GPU accelerated Flash 10 on mobiles is still just vaporware at this point. Even when does come to fruition who knows if it will be viable for these small devices. The open technologies are considerably more resource friendly.

Hulu is apparently designing an app for the iPhone, but I cant see that getting approved for anything other than WiFI, so they may have to go web-based with this open standards instead. It doesnt have to kill Flash to hurt it, just take away a key use for using Flash in the first place. Adobe has already lost out with YouTube video for being too lazy to get Flash to work well on Macs, mobiles, add H.264 support or HW acceleration (the latter two only added after MS Silverlight added it).

Good point.

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post #175 of 224
10/5/09 at 11:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by teckstud View Post

Well that reasoning didn't work for MMS , nor glossy screens , nor SD slots, nor Blu-ray. And it won't work here either. you'll see.

Well I could reply it worked
with USB and aac. But you miss the
point. Apple is the
smartphone market
maker now. No major portal can NOT be on the iPhone for long. Either they create their own app like CNN just did or they have to add h264 or HTML media support to their site. It's
already happening. Jobs has adobe and MS outflanked and is looking fo win.
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post #176 of 224
10/5/09 at 11:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DKWalsh4 View Post

You forgot to somehow or another tie in how hot the ATV is and how it doesn't have an on/off button. You're off your game this morning.

no. it was there. just nobody took the bait so far...
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post #177 of 224
10/5/09 at 11:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yawnstretch View Post

Sorry guys but it'd be easy enough to deactivate flash if the phone supported it. In the meantime every website that has any kind of video uses flash so its a serious problem whether you want to admit it or not.

I love my iphone but having flash would make be upgrade immediately.

Mmmm... YouTube re-compresed its video library to h.264, giving higher quality, lower bandwidth and ability to bypass the Flash plugin, to support the iPhone. Others who see the potential of 40 million active mobile web users will, likely, follow suit. For example, the LiveCasting site, Stickam, has just released an iPhone app.

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post #178 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:01pm
Loads of websites use flash for menus and site navigation. It well entrenched. It makes no sense for Apple not to accommodate.
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post #179 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xgman View Post

Loads of websites use flash for menus and site navigation. It well entrenched. It makes no sense for Apple not to accommodate.

Really? that just seems to be bad design then. when their clients are going to see the need to cater to all those iphone and ipod touch users, you're going to see a shift away from that nonsense.
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post #180 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:08pm
Here is some fun and related news:

http://newsticker.welt.de/?module=smarthouse&id=949121


Apparently at least some iteration of flash is coming to iPhone via CS5
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post #181 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tofino View Post

Really? that just seems to be bad design then. when their clients are going to see the need to cater to all those iphone and ipod touch users, you're going to see a shift away from that nonsense.

It kind of depends on the particular site. Some companies are already designing a mobile version of their site so it doesn't really matter if the "standard" version utilizes flash or not.
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post #182 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:11pm
Presumably, Adobe is hoping that getting all the other smart phone manufacturers on board will pressure Apple to adopt Flash. But Apple is notoriously stubborn and, I believe, will hold out. The iPhone may not account for the largest number of smartphone sales, but it does account for the biggest share of mobile web usage. If you're a mobile web developer, this announcement does nothing to make Flash a viable development platform for the mobile web. This is why, for example, so many web sites still only work well with IE6.

What's more, Apple has made is abundantly clear that they do not consider Flash a first class citizen on the Mac. Apple excised every Flash animation from its website years ago. Personally, I believe this is motivated in large part by the historically low quality and inattention Adobe has paid to Flash on the Mac.

And finally, Apple has always had a tendency toward the not-invented-here syndrome. It's clear that Apple despises being dependent on others' products. (Is Blu-Ray really a "bag of hurt", or does Apple prefer selling movies in the iTunes Store that play on any Apple device?) Being the control freaks that they are, it is unlikely Apple would ever cede control over such an important part of the iPhone experience to a third party.
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post #183 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:11pm
Flash sucks in many ways, but HTML5 is a long ways away, and in the meantime there are few alternatives.

Apple should implement Flash on the iPhone as soon as possible.

Battery life, annoying ads, and so forth would be non-issues as long as Apple had a setting to turn Flash off...ideally it could be fully off, fully on, or toggle for specific websites. Another option is for Flash only to load when an embedded SWF is actually clicked on. If this were the case, those of you complaining about Flash wouldn't be affected by it at all.

However for some of us, we need Flash to access specific content that is only available in Flash. And while I'll support the argument that developers *should* provide iPhone compatible alternatives to Flash, the fact of the matter is that many don't, so if Apple can't make everyone come to them, they need to provide the access to those that won't play along.

This is a lot like the MMS argument. It's easy to say that MMS sucks and just use email, but when you received an MMS, it sucked that the iPhone didn't deal with it properly.
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post #184 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz View Post

[LEFT][/LEFT]

How does it barely work? Works fine for me.

I have been doing web development and design for a living for the past 10 years now, on a mac, using all the same tools everyone else does, PHP, XML, XHTML, CSS, JS, AJAX and AS. I personally think Flash has come a long way in recent years and that AS3 was a significant step forward for them. I don't have near as many problems accomplishing what I want to with Flash as I used to, and frankly there are times where the fact that it is proprietary is actually helpful because I can assume a certain amount of cross platform performance that I can't always get from complicated CSS, XML and JS.

Seriously, if you believe that ALL flash does is produce web banners and youtube you obviously aren't in the web development business at all. The fact of the matter is banner ads were annoying well before flash. Remember animated .gifs? Furthermore, while there is no shortage of annoying flash web content, the truth is there is plenty of flash content that people DO want to see. video game sites, movie sites, children's games, all of these make A LOT of money and have a HUGE consumer audience. An Audience that WILL buy a phone that has flash.

Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.

Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.

The bottom line here is, there is a use for flash, and there is flash content people want to see, and there will be for AT LEAST 5 more years. So the need to display flash content isn't going anywhere soon, and consumers WILL notice if they cant view the content they want on one platform and can on another. And they WILL buy the product that lets them view the content they want.

Obviously you will take what I am saying however you want, but this is my real world experience working in web and what I have seen to be true. For what it's worth I personally believe that Apple will add flash when the time comes and they are forced to do so in order to stay viable, and this entire debate will be a non-issue. I also believe that those of you who are saying you will get rid of your iPhone when that happens are idiots. Of course you wont. If you did, you wouldn't have a smart phone at all. Because they will all have flash.


On my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac 24 with 4 gig RAM-- Snow Leopard and all updates.

I did not have any Safari windows, with Flash, currently open (though several YouTube windows had been used, but were now closed).

I got the following (and I can duplicate it with ease):



Notice that second line! Once I force quit the Flash plugin task it was like giving a constipated person an enema.


On the Mac, Flash stands for "Rich, Reach, and Retch".

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"So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."
– Alan Kay –
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– Alan Kay –
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post #185 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Booga View Post

My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail at their core competency, which is merging in with people's technological lifestyle. If iPhoneOS 4.0 doesn't support it I suspect the platform will start to stagnate.

This is incorrect, if the iPhone does not support Flash, it will be Flash development that will stagnate.
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post #186 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:28pm
Bottom line: at this point, Flash needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash.
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post #187 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post

On my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac 24 with 4 gig RAM-- Sow Leopard and all updates.

I did not have any Safari windows, with Flash, currently open (though several YouTube windows had been used, but were now closed).

I got the following (and I can duplicate it with ease):



Notice that second line! Once I force quit the Flash plugin task it was like giving a constipated person an enema.


On the Mac, Flash stands for "Rich, Reach, and Retch".

*

Thank you for bring back sanity to this thread.

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post #188 of 224
10/5/09 at 12:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by aduzik View Post

Bottom line: at this point, Flash needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash.

Finally, someone gets right to the heart of the matter.

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post #189 of 224
10/5/09 at 1:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

No. Ease-of-use isn't being picky. For now, Flash is fundamentally more useable on YouTube.


Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.

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post #190 of 224
10/5/09 at 1:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by souliisoul View Post

Who is going to wake him up from his dream and does he have shares in MDM

LOL....did you see todays announcement for Flash CS5 at Adobe Max....you can export compliant iPhone apps natively.....who's dreaming now??
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post #191 of 224
10/5/09 at 2:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by newbee View Post

Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.

Er, what? It actually is easier. It treats the video as a big honking button, which, by virtue of being bigger, is a whole lot easier to hit. Very similar argument to the debate of menu bars attached to individual windows (Windows) vs. a single menu bar that occupies the entire top edge of the screen (Mac OS). The Mac's menu bar is a bigger target, especially vertically, making it dead easy to hit compared to a Windows menu bar.

That said, that usability debate doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the merits of using Flash. All anyone (say, Apple with WebKit/Safari) would have to do is add code to their browser so that HTML5 video objects displayed on a page can be clicked anywhere in the video area to play/pause them, and boom. Usability issue solved. (If they do it.)
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post #192 of 224
10/5/09 at 2:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by monstrosity View Post

Fair point but sites such as playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com will bend to better technologies eventually.
It's really in your and your kids best interest that Flash stays off the iPhone you know.

Likewise, kids will grow eventually and those sites will be irrelevant by the time they dump Flash (in this case). As we can't freeze kids growing until we have non-Flash Play House etc., only other option, unfortunately, is using different device. Shame.

I'm all for Apple pushing HTML5, but until it becomes mainstream and actually does replace Flash, I'd like to have Flash on my iPhone, thanks. Maybe with simple ON/OFF switch in iPhone Settings, but I really want to have an option to use it if I need it.

In all his wisdom, Steve doesn't know better what I need.
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post #193 of 224
10/5/09 at 2:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by auxio View Post

Flash development tends to attract programmers who didn't have the attention span to learn proper programming practices in college/university or people who want to pretend they know how to do programming so that they can make a bit more money without actually taking the time to actually learn how to do it properly. That's part of the reason why most Flash applications suck so bad.

Really, if people just used Flash for what it's best at -- easily creating simple videos out of mixed media sources and then exporting them to a format which is good for web viewing -- rather than trying to create complex games and other large applications which would be much better if developed in programming languages which were designed for those tasks by people who have proper training in how to structure large applications like that, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Unfortunately, people have just gotten used to a substandard computer experience (ala Windows and bargain basement PCs), and so they don't even notice that Flash apps have horrible usability, non-standard user interfaces, leak memory, cause your computer to bog to a crawl and/or crash your web browser, etc, etc. It just blends in with how everything else looks and feels on their computer. And now, because those people are in the majority, they are demanding the same craptacular experience be replicated everywhere.

I'm sorry if I refuse to accept that experience, and I'm glad Apple hasn't either. I prefer to support proper software craftsmanship, usability, and design. In a world where people are starting to demand better quality food products and better designed, fuel-efficient automobiles, maybe people should also take a look at their computers and demand the same level of quality?

I think perhaps someone needs to launch a technology TV channel which promotes technology quality awareness (via people who are passionate and knowledgeable about it) the same way that FoodTV promotes food quality awareness via chefs who are passionate about good food.

LOL....you my friend are an idiot....I develop firmware for DSPs and microcontrollers in C and Assembler and the GUIs are developed in either C++ or C#. I'm fluent in multiple object-oriented languages. I say this not to boast but merely to post a qualified opinion on your uneducated rant.

I use Flash to control hardware via the raw binary-socket exposed in the API for Los Alamos National Labs for quick prototypes. Flash can serve as a virtual UML for future applications (You've probably seen pictures of the Labs in your picture books). Flash is an interesting and unique platform. AS3 is an object-oriented language that allows for direct control of timeline based animations packaged as objects. The environment exposes both graphical and code-based management of resources concurrently. The possibilities are endless...its the best of both worlds. Adobe has accomplished a stellar achievement in an IDE and they continue to improve upon it.

So, before you criticize other developers, just know that there are Flash programmers out there who are much smarter than you or I doing amazing things with the platform..at the same time, the environment is easy enough for kids to play with programming and graphics which encourages them to continue to learn.

Get off your high-horse and educate yourself before posting idiotic comments.
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post #194 of 224
10/5/09 at 3:02pm
Alkrantz, what evidence do you have that consumers will notice when flash content is missing and will therefore factor that into their device purchasing decision? I'm one of those so called normal customers/users with an iPhone you are talking about. I for one have not been impeded in ANY way by the lack of iPhone flash support in over three years of use! Stop guessing what you think other people are experiencing and trying to speak for them (and then try to use that as evidence for another point). There is enough BS floating around out there. We don't need more!
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post #195 of 224
10/5/09 at 3:18pm
Desktop does not equal Mobile when it comes to browsing.

These sites are free to ignore that some 40% of Worldwide mobile web browsing is done on iPhones, but I think they will continue to use "a bit of everything" to reach that audience, don't you?

Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz View Post

[LEFT][/LEFT]
Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.

Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.

"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.

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"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.

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post #196 of 224
10/5/09 at 4:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by newbee View Post

Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.

Stop being so picky then.

DaHarder just got banned. Let's crack open the champagne.

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DaHarder just got banned. Let's crack open the champagne.

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post #197 of 224
10/5/09 at 4:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dalasc View Post

Alkrantz, what evidence do you have that consumers will notice when flash content is missing and will therefore factor that into their device purchasing decision? I'm one of those so called normal customers/users with an iPhone you are talking about. I for one have not been impeded in ANY way by the lack of iPhone flash support in over three years of use! Stop guessing what you think other people are experiencing and trying to speak for them (and then try to use that as evidence for another point). There is enough BS floating around out there. We don't need more!

I'm not entirely sure what your even talking about.....BUT

If you really think no one cares that flash content is missing from the iPhone, and are looking for evidence that people are in fact impeded by it not being there, than you need to reread this thread, because there are multiple people in it stating they wish flash was on the iPhone in order to have access to content they currently can not see. So I'm not really "guessing". Besides, claiming that you represent the "so called normal consumer" is in fact making the same presumption you claim that I am making.

Regardless, I dont care if you believe me or not. The greatest evidence for the idea that consumers will flock to the device which offers the features they desire is how well they sell, and on that point time will tell.

I am simply saying that there are users who care about flash and I am predicting that those users will buy phones that support flash when they have the chance. Can I prove it? Well no, considering smart phones with flash don't currently exist it would be impossible to prove. But I cant prove that WWII genocide happened to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei either, that doesn't mean it isn't true.
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post #198 of 224
10/5/09 at 6:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

Flash would kill the battery and iPhone has a YouTube app. I would have said you were right when the iPhone came out, but after owning two of them I now see this argument as dead-wrong. YouTube has become the internet standard, and on the web wherever there is a YouTube video the iPhone OS can play it. Around 1/3 of the internet use YouTube everyday, we don't need no stinking Flash.

This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
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post #199 of 224
10/5/09 at 7:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by success View Post

This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?

Google are the ones doing the conversion. Everything uploaded to YouTube is initially available as Flash video; meanwhile, YouTube's machines convert it to H.264 behind the scenes. Once that's done, the H.264 version becomes available to any device that wants it, such as the iPhone. Flash isn't involved at all on the iPhone's end. It's a resource-intensive operation, but Google has computing horsepower oozing out their pores, so it hardly matters.
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post #200 of 224
10/5/09 at 7:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by success View Post

This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?

No conversion. YouTube started using H.264 a few years ago. Flash can play the H.264 codec. You an chexk Wikipedia tonsee when that wa added to Flash.

On my Mac I have ClickToFlash installed with it set up to load QuickTime X as the player on YouTube. This uses considerably less processing power.
Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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