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iPads, Flash, and Flash's dependence on mice

Mike Chambers (the article was linked above) ina previous post - Flash Player content, Mouse Events, and Touch input



Also, interesting points made by Ted Patrick on Flash as a platform:

Flash - An open interactive medium[/QUOTE]

As a content creator, you should focus on creating content that provides a good user experience across all platforms that you are targeting. However, even though most Flash content on the web today is not designed with mobile viewing and touch input in mind, my experience has been that existing content works surprisingly well when viewed on a mobile device with touch input.
Click to expand...

What's good enough? Or useful enough? I think there is some value in Flash on a phone. Doesn't mean it's highly valuable for many! We'll see if the Flash argument on smartphones is a "Flash in the pan" ;)


If the content creators were realising that the website designers were not providing graceful fallback to HTML, and it was Flash or nothing - I think they might soon wonder if that's the best strategy.

What's the number of Full version of competent, non-battery draining Flash players on smartphones currently?

Exactly. Flash has a dominant position in desktop, but is not in smartphones.

"most Flash content on the web today is not designed with mobile viewing and touch input in mind" says it all. And why is it surprising to Mike that it worked well?!

Ted Patrick:
Flash is an open interactive medium.
Click to expand...

Easy now, open is a word used with specific meanings. Flash is Adobe's. It's not open as in open source. It's closed as in proprietary.

In creative hands it can....[do stuff]
It was a success historically
It's been around

It's the "wild west of interactivity"
"This freedom has allowed Flash to create simultaneously both the best and worst user experiences on the web."
"Many users have a negative experience with web advertising"
"Many developers push Flash to its technical limits and fail to optimize their content in regards to CPU and memory consumption."

Ted's letting Adobe take credit for the good, but blaming developers for the bad.


Now, what's the battery usage of Flash 10.1 ?
 
t0mat0 said:
What's the number of Full version of competent, non-battery draining Flash players on smartphones currently?

Exactly. Flash has a dominant position in desktop, but is not in smartphones.
Click to expand...

At the moment, there are a few Android Smartphones running Flash 10, but it's currently not optimized for mobile platforms. Flash 10.1 on the other hand, is a different story:
"Mobile platforms that will support the full Flash Player include Android, the BlackBerry platform, Symbian OS, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile," said Wadhwani.
Click to expand...
Sources:
Flash 10.1: Full Flash for Everyone But iPhone, Actually Playable HD Vids
Adobe touts Flash 10.1 at Mobile World Congress
Flash 10.1 coming to webOS in first half 2010, says kinder, gentler Adobe page

t0mat0 said:
"most Flash content on the web today is not designed with mobile viewing and touch input in mind" says it all. And why is it surprising to Mike that it worked well?!
Click to expand...
Of course it's surprising. We're talking about Flash content developed originally for a mouse and keyboard interface. Native touch event support is being included in 10.1, but now previous Flash content will still function on touch display devices. That's a plus, and always a challenge for old content on new technology.

t0mat0 said:
It's the "wild west of interactivity"
"This freedom has allowed Flash to create simultaneously both the best and worst user experiences on the web."
"Many users have a negative experience with web advertising"
"Many developers push Flash to its technical limits and fail to optimize their content in regards to CPU and memory consumption."

Ted's letting Adobe take credit for the good, but blaming developers for the bad.
Click to expand...
At the end of the day, if the Developers don't take the time to optimize their code, and perform proper QA, the end result will be inefficient software, and a poor user experience, regardless of the platform, be it Flash, or OS X.

t0mat0 said:
Now, what's the battery usage of Flash 10.1 ?
Click to expand...

There are the initial battery performance reports from Adobe back in October 2009:

thumb_450_adobe-max-3.JPG
 
FCDP said:
At the moment, there are a few Android Smartphones running Flash 10, but it's currently not optimized for mobile platforms. Flash 10.1 on the other hand, is a different story:

Or to twist the quote

"Mobile platforms that will support the full Flash Player include Android, the BlackBerry platform, Symbian OS, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile," said Wadhwani.

Cheers for the links. I think Adobe may have some teething issues on this, but we'll see. Having heard a likely wrong battery claim (that it had drained 25% within minutes), thought it'd be interesting to check. Will 10.1 get simultaneous release over different released handsets?

Reason I asked about battery life - http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24133/
25% gone in 6 minutes. Now that needs some optimising or battery calibrating if it's one take and is indicative (which as the above post describes is likely not - even a GPS can't suck juice that bad).
Click to expand...
 
bozzykid said:
Of course they pushed web apps. They knew there was no way in the world you could create a compelling app with it. It's been reported they were working on the app store well before the iphone release. They were holding it back and they knew people would jump right on it compared to developing html apps. And no, those apps were not HTML5 apps because the HTML5 technology kits didn't even exist at the time.
Click to expand...

Uh… Mobile Safari on the iPhone has been the browser with the most HTML 5 support, and that includes when the iPhone first launched. It's always had incredible HTML 5 support.
 
EssentialParado said:
Uh… Mobile Safari on the iPhone has been the browser with the most HTML 5 support, and that includes when the iPhone first launched. It's always had incredible HTML 5 support.
Click to expand...

No it hasn't. Mobile Safari today, still only includes limited HTML5 support. In fact, there are very few desktop browsers that support HTML5 completely (and Safari isn't one of them).
 
t0mat0 said:
Cheers for the links. I think Adobe may have some teething issues on this, but we'll see. Having heard a likely wrong battery claim (that it had drained 25% within minutes), thought it'd be interesting to check. Will 10.1 get simultaneous release over different released handsets?

Reason I asked about battery life - http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24133/
25% gone in 6 minutes. Now that needs some optimising or battery calibrating if it's one take and is indicative (which as the above post describes is likely not - even a GPS can't suck juice that bad).
Click to expand...

Flash 10.1 will go full at the same time across all platforms it seems, deployment though is a different matter, as that part is a bit up in the air. Android is said to be over the air, as well as WebOS, but it may not be available on those two at the same time. Same for the other mobile OS' that are support Flash 10.1. It will be released on the desktop first for Windows and OS X no doubt.

As for the performance video on the Nexus, yeah I saw that. I'd say that's related to the beta status of Flash 10.1. Beta 3 was just released that includes support for gpu acceleration from a large of family of chips. I hope they work out those kinks before release ;).

EssentialParado said:
Uh… Mobile Safari on the iPhone has been the browser with the most HTML 5 support, and that includes when the iPhone first launched. It's always had incredible HTML 5 support.
Click to expand...
Actually No. Mobile Safari has not always support HTML5, and only began supporting it after the release of Safari 4 on OS X. Remember that HTML5 is still a working draft, and not ready for full deployment.
 
t0mat0 said:
Reason I asked about battery life - http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24133/
25% gone in 6 minutes. Now that needs some optimising or battery calibrating if it's one take and is indicative (which as the above post describes is likely not - even a GPS can't suck juice that bad).
Click to expand...

Interesting tidbit about that, the FlashBlog posted this video of the Flash 10.1 running on the Android with video:
Flash 10.1 might just not be a battery hog on Android

One item they mention is that over the course of 17 minutes, the battery drops 6% while watching video on youtube.

Also, the previously mentioned Beta 3 of Flash 10.1 is out:
Flash 10.1 beta 3 released, adds support for Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD chips (Update: 1080p Flash on a netbook!)
 
The uses of Flash are so prevalent that most non-web developers have no idea that they're using Flash. The mouse thing is but one aspect of Flash. We all know of videos, such as Hulu. This is not mouse dependent. There is also Flash navigation that is not totally mouse dependent. The mouse dependency is for hover buttons mostly.

I just re-designed a website to eliminate Flash navigation so that it would be more compatible with Apple's iPhone OS. I was doing great eliminating Flash. But then I had to have a file upload page. Wouldn't you know it, Flash. It had to have a Flash script to do the upload. Well, the likelihood of an iPhone uploading a file to this site is pretty low, so I'm not too concerned. But my point is that Flash is in about 85% of website to one degree or another. To have the iPad not be able to handle Flash will restrict it's use to a significant degree.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of Flash. My upload site worked well on Windows machines, but would not work on Macs. It took a while and a lot of trial to find a solution. It was a bug in the Mac version of Flash player. But as I have said before, Flash is here today and it will be here tomorrow. I will be glad when the day comes that we don't need Flash. But HTML5 is not here today. The iPad is a crippled web device - today.
 
bozzykid said:
No it hasn't. Mobile Safari today, still only includes limited HTML5 support. In fact, there are very few desktop browsers that support HTML5 completely (and Safari isn't one of them).
Click to expand...
I never said it supported it "completely", there are no browsers that support every last piece of HTML5 yet, but mobile Safari has the most HTML5 support of any other browser, followed by Chrome/Safari on the desktop.

The HTML5 support isn't "complete", but it doesn't need to be to develop HTML5 websites and web applications to work on the iPhone, you simply cannot use a few of the upcoming HTML5 features (yet).
 
EssentialParado said:
I never said it supported it "completely", there are no browsers that support every last piece of HTML5 yet, but mobile Safari has the most HTML5 support of any other browser, followed by Chrome/Safari on the desktop.
Click to expand...

Again, you are wrong. Chrome has more complete HTML5 support (including h.264 and Ogg Theora video). And Mobile Safari did not ship with HTML5 support like you said. Safari on the desktop is still behind Chrome in terms of HTML5 support.
 
bozzykid said:
Again, you are wrong. Chrome has more complete HTML5 support (including h.264 and Ogg Theora video). And Mobile Safari did not ship with HTML5 support like you said. Safari on the desktop is still behind Chrome in terms of HTML5 support.
Click to expand...

h.264 and Theora have nothing to do with the HTML5 spec.

Here is a comparison of HTML5 & CSS3 support between browsers, and the following links show the advanced features mobile Safari supports:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/apple-holding-back-on-web-based-3d-graphics.ars
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/13148/mobile-safari-advanced-features/
 
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