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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#331

Post by tomlin »

potatolicious wrote: post #297
tomlin wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices. This is precisely what I am talking about. We slice the pear in the middle and somehow end up choosing o…

> "based on miscreant use" That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use". Here's my impression of the different sorts of Flash use, based on my journeys on the web: - Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking a…

> That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use".

The vast majority of websites in general are poor. It would be no surprise to see that the majority of Flash sites would also be poor. Both sides have exceptions, though.

> Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking addon (e.g., Ctrl+T while focused on a Flash applet = no new tab), and much better battery life on mobiles.

I don't disagree. I am grateful that HTML5 can handle this, but it took a "standards" committee several years to roll this into a questionably viable model. The immediate fanfare for the slow implementation raises my eyebrow a bit. We're all happy about having something we've needed for years. The company that created the fold so we could have sites like YouTube today? The devil.

> - Crappy restaurant websites and other crimes against humanity: These should just die, and HTML5 will hopefully inspire better design ethic than this.

It won't. Cheese is forever. If HTML5 can accomplish cheese, people will create cheese. We're all hopeful, but the human condition comes into play.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#332

Post by Terretta »

Psyonic wrote: post #277
dcurtis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you remember that Apple was first trying to force everything on the iPhone to be done on the web?

We all remember, but they changed their minds and now fully embrace the app store, and even use it as a major marketing point. Suggesting we go back to it now is a bit pre-mature, I think. JS simply doesn't run comparably to native apps, so if they want to talk battery life, they should discuss it there as well.

He did. In the very next sentence:

> Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards.

Not too many words there between 'JavaScript' and 'low power'.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#333

Post by prodigal_erik »

marknutter wrote: post #47
qeorge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little tired of the "IE6 is holding back the web" meme. Lots of hand-waving, no examples.

As a developer who has many times decided not to implement a killer feature that works in a modern browser because I will have to come up with some graceful degradation or alternative implementation in IE6, I can say that it isn't hand waving.

Good, I prefer those features not exist. It's bad for the Web to depend on anything not thoroughly designed enough to gracefully degrade and be usable on all the browsers you don't happen to care about.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#334

Post by chc »

tomlin wrote: post #327
chc wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is saying "Flash has problems, therefore putting Flash on your platform will expose it to those problems" a fallacy of composition? I don't see it at all. It's not wrongly attributing an attribute of one small part of Flash to the whole. Or are you saying the fallacy is somewhere else?

In this respect, I am not arguing for or against Flash on any device. Just that the argument against it is just as flawed as the argument for it.

But you don't appear to have pointed out any specific flaws in the argument against it. So you're not making an argument, just an unsupported assertion.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#335

Post by wfarr »

ThomPete wrote: post #112
wfarr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't understand why you reacted so strongly to the roll over argument. Jobs didn't state roll overs as the raison d'etre for not including Flash." This is why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

"Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover." Flash don't care. You are not forced to use rollovers in flash you can but you are not forced to…

No — they don't have to use rollover. But the fact of the matter is, particularly with games but also to some extent websites (navigation), that many (perhaps the majority) do. Apple is speaking about the state of things as they are, not how they could possibly be if people so chose for them to be that way.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#336

Post by Zev »

tomlin wrote: post #289
potatolicious wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours." We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this. To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running F…

> a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices. This is precisely what I am talking about. We slice the pear in the middle and somehow end up choosing o…

Hover isn't used for navigation in Flash. Its used for controls in games, a lot of the time. You click to start, then move the mouse to play.

// note: Deleted this comment and readded it, since I originally replied to the wrong comment. Whoopsies.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#337

Post by wfarr »

cynicalkane wrote: post #278
billybob wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to recap, legally being a person and being a person aren't, legally, the same.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person "This legal fiction does not mean these entities are human beings, but rather means that the law allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes ..." Emphasis mine. This stuff isn't even on topic, but when people insist on insulting my intelligence with snide pseudo-logical comments, I will insist on correcting them.

The comment was a jab at the court's decision to move in the direction they have. I'm sorry that wasn't clear to you.

Beyond that, I find it incredibly silly that you find your intelligence so easily insulted. Perhaps it's time to take a chill pill.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#338

Post by kevinh »

danudey wrote: post #301
tomlin wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we? Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours. Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that…

"But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we?" I would argue that that's a reasonable point to make. Steve Jobs doesn't have a vested interest in seeing Flash die, he has a vested interest in seeing the iPhone platform succeed. If he saw any way Flash could help that, I'm sure he'd be all for it, but he's seen how Adobe's behaved in the past (late with PPC versions, late with OS X versions, late with Intel vers…

The very moment flash was not included in the iPhone, Steve Jobs had a vested interest in seeing Flash fail. If Flash expands, user satisfaction with the iPhone goes down. If Flash fails completely, one of the strongest negative components of the iPhone disappears.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#339

Post by ra88it »

For me there is one single data point that shines brightly through all this noise: we are well into 2010 and nobody has Flash running well on a mobile device. Not even the mobile companies that want it.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#340

Post by efsavage »

zefhous wrote: post #312
efsavage wrote: post #155

Flash is closed, Apple is open. Huh? I can build a flash app entirely for free, legally, with zero restrictions, forever, on the tools I used to write it, or where I can deploy it to. Adobe has bent over backwards to make players (also free) backwards compatible. That's pretty open. I must pay to build an iphone app, which I can only do on a computer owned by the same company, running an OS owned by the same company.…

Can you really build flash apps for free? Honest question — I thought you needed to have Flash. If you do need Flash, you have things backwards. For one, he's talking about web apps, not iPhone OS apps. Web apps are entirely open and Apple is huge on pushing what you can do with the web. Also, building iPhone OS apps is absolutely free. The entire SDK and documentation is free of charge, you just need a Mac to develo…

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK;js... http://www.libming.org/ http://www.swftools.org/
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