Linked by David Adams on Mon 22nd Feb 2010 08:37 UTC
While it's been a low-level grumbling for years, the issue of Flash on mobile devices (and particularly the iPhone/Touch/iPad ecosystem) has reached fever pitch over the past few weeks, with Steve Jobs as self-appointed Flash basher-in-Chief. The OSNews crowd, that is, dyed-in-the-wool technologists have, by and large, not been big fans of Flash, with its spotty availability and performance on alternative platforms, resource hogging, and instability. And though it's quite useful for web video and other specialized interfaces, it drives the tech savvy crazy when it's used for utterly superfluous multimedia bling. So we've had a lively discussion of the pros and cons of Flash, and whether device users should be free to make their own decision about whether it's worthy to install on their iPads. But we're leaving out an important detail. As Daniel Eran Dilger, a Flash developer, points out, almost all the important existing Flash infrastructure won't work anyway. Update: A worthwhile rebuttal to this point of view.
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Member since:2006-08-02
Member since:2006-12-15
Being a programmer myself for years, I highly doubt it's that difficult to make existing apps compatible with both traditional mouse input and new touch devices. It's centainly WAY easier and faster to just modify the existing Flash apps than reimplementing everything with totally different technology that isn't even ready yet and lacks good tools to create.
What I have seen so far from the early versions of Flash Player for Android and webOS looks pretty solid. Sure, there will be things that don't work. But an awful lot of stuff will work and work with Flash only. I've got an iPod touch and missed Flash several times, already.
Member since:2009-10-04
I write Flash based RIAs for a living. The lack of mouse move/mouse over/mouse out would change my development a little bit, but I could certainly create very usable applications without it.
Of course. New Flash applications could easily be designed to work on touch screens. But do you really expect all the zillions of Flash applications out there already to be rewritten?
Member since:2005-07-07
Exactly, this kind of mouse based animation should be banned from iphone! http://tinyurl.com/nsfqd4 #canvas
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Member since:
2006-03-18
Flash won't work because of the lack of tool tips and mouse over effects? B.S.
I write Flash based RIAs for a living. The lack of mouse move/mouse over/mouse out would change my development a little bit, but I could certainly create very usable applications without it.