Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

blog.laptopmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 194 posts

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#81

Post by commandar »

sethg wrote: post #69
cookiecaper wrote: post #23

Adobe is seriously doing it all wrong. They have to open-source the Flash Player and everything around it now. They can keep the IDE proprietary if that floats their boat, it's just a premium authoring tool, but the only way to save Flash is to open-source like NOW. HTML5 is still young enough that an open Flash Player and standard and protocol (RTMP) would effectively kill it. Open-sourcing would open so many doors.…

Open-sourcing would open so many doors. Apple could modify Flash until it worked on iOS properly, Google could modify until it worked on Android. If Adobe has spent years growing the Flash player code on the principle “make it work well on Windows, and then hack it as necessary to make it work tolerably on other platforms”, then even after it is open-sourced, developing a Linux- or iOS-compatible Flash player may be…

>Remember the long gap between Netscape open-sourcing its browser and Mozilla becoming a usable platform.

Not sure this is the best comparison. Netscape open sourced Communicator 4.0, yes, but what we know as Mozilla was a total rewrite after they decided to scrap 5.0.

EDIT:

Unless your point is that the Flash codebase may be similarly bloated. :)

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#82

Post by mryall »

WilliamLP wrote: post #25
warfangle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the typical gripes about this keyword behavior? Once you understand how scope works and how to force scope, and what exactly constitutes an object.. it makes quite a bit of sense.

From the Google style guide: "The semantics of this can be tricky. At times it refers to the global object (in most places), the scope of the caller (in eval), a node in the DOM tree (when attached using an event handler HTML attribute), a newly created object (in a constructor), or some other object (if function was call()ed or apply()ed)." The pragmatic answer is to limit its use except when absolutely required (as…

Avoiding something you don't understand might seem like a good idea when programming, but if it's a core part of the language you're using -- like 'this' in JavaScript -- trying to understand it and use it appropriately is actually a much better approach.

I've seen JS code that tries to avoid using 'this', and it often ends up a lot more complicated and tightly coupled than code which uses it appropriately.

The behaviour of 'this' in JavaScript is different to Java and other OO languages, but it isn't that complicated to understand.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#83

Post by daten »

tptacek wrote: post #64
ck2 wrote: post #26

For a blog called "the geek's geek" it sure sounds like the guy needs some technical support because many others report a completely better experience. Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check!

If native optimized HTML5 video plays smoothly and Flash doesn't, nobody cares that it's not fair to compare the two. The "fracking mobile phone" point is irrelevant. Either Flash plays smoothly or it dies.

How many phones support HTML5 with all of the features Flash provides for a direct comparison?

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#84

Post by tensafefrogs »

"But much worse was that, even when these titles loaded, there was no way to control most of the action. Most games required keyboard or mouse actions I simply could not perform on my phone, even with its QWERTY slider. One shooter wanted me to hit the CTRL key to fire; another asked for the left mouse button."

Is this guy serious? He goes to play a game that was clearly built for a computer and blames Flash because it's not playable on his phone that doesn't have a keyboard?

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#85

Post by bigiain »

cookiecaper wrote: post #16
IdeaHamster wrote: post #4

I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?

HTML5 is cool but it's not the end-all. You have a whole set of new issues to deal with when you use HTML5. You have to worry about cross-browser compatibility and specific rendering bugs, whereas Flash authors don't. You have to rely on the slow JavaScript VMs included in even the fastest browsers (even the "fast" JS VMs are still rather slow), and then you have IE, which is still used by > 50% of internet users, of…

"If you want your thing to work for most people, you are going to have to write in Flash anyway."

Some of the big sites I'm involved with are on track to hit 10% mobile use before the end of the year. And most of that is iOS.

The assumption that "most people" are windows desktop users is becoming less and less valid.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#86

Post by bruceboughton »

jcl wrote: post #74
cookiecaper wrote: post #23

Adobe is seriously doing it all wrong. They have to open-source the Flash Player and everything around it now. They can keep the IDE proprietary if that floats their boat, it's just a premium authoring tool, but the only way to save Flash is to open-source like NOW. HTML5 is still young enough that an open Flash Player and standard and protocol (RTMP) would effectively kill it. Open-sourcing would open so many doors.…

You are assuming that the only thing preventing Flash from working on mobile is that it hasn't been "optimized" enough -- that opening the source to Google and Apple will unlock performance otherwise unattainable by Adobe. But suppose Adobe's programmers are not completely incompetent? Perhaps Flash's execution model is genuinely unable to be optimized further. Or perhaps most Flash content in the wild runs at the li…

Rubbish! Most moderately advanced HTML5 demos run hideously, if at all, on mobile hardware.

The difference will be if HTML5 can replace 80% of Flash uses in a performant manner. The video tag makes up a huge block of that 80%. The other 20% will always run like a dog on mobile hardware, no matter the technology.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#87

Post by nanairo »

daleharvey wrote: post #58
cookiecaper wrote: post #23

Adobe is seriously doing it all wrong. They have to open-source the Flash Player and everything around it now. They can keep the IDE proprietary if that floats their boat, it's just a premium authoring tool, but the only way to save Flash is to open-source like NOW. HTML5 is still young enough that an open Flash Player and standard and protocol (RTMP) would effectively kill it. Open-sourcing would open so many doors.…

its already far far too late for adobe, if they had open sourced 10 years ago, there wouldnt be a html5 video and canvas, flash would be the standard. open sourcing it now will help them stay relevant for longer but it will be a band aid, proprietary tools will be replaced by web standards on the internet thats more obvious now than it ever was. flash can innovate by raising the limit on what you can do, but there is…

I may be wrong, but I think Adobe 10 years ago was pushing for things like html5 video and canvas... because Flash was Macromedia's. It was a case of: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (They were also one of the first big companies to push SVG from what I remember).

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#88

Post by dasil003 »

naturalized wrote: post #66

I actually doubt that Adobe has the competence to make high quality software, that would be required for mobile Flash (due to serious optimization that is required). There is probably not enough engineering culture in the company for that. I also think that a proper software company cannot be located in San Francisco itself, otherwise they tend to attract programmers that are too cool/have to many outside interests t…

"Too many outside interests to write high quality code"?

You need to get the chip off your shoulder and distinguish between genuine passion for hacking, and escapist basement dwelling. Outside interests refresh your mind and body and give you new inspiration.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#89

Post by nanairo »

tensafefrogs wrote: post #84

"But much worse was that, even when these titles loaded, there was no way to control most of the action. Most games required keyboard or mouse actions I simply could not perform on my phone, even with its QWERTY slider. One shooter wanted me to hit the CTRL key to fire; another asked for the left mouse button." Is this guy serious? He goes to play a game that was clearly built for a computer and blames Flash because…

a) his phone has a keyboard... it just doesn't have a full keyboard with CTRL key and everything;

b) _that_ is exactly his point. That most games, and most content was built on Flash with the "PC" as the target system. Quote: "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers." Hence even though Flash may have been ported to mobile phones now, most of its apps won't, because the developers were always thinking of Flash as running on a PC ('cause that's what it did).

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#90

Post by daleharvey »

nanairo wrote: post #87
daleharvey wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its already far far too late for adobe, if they had open sourced 10 years ago, there wouldnt be a html5 video and canvas, flash would be the standard. open sourcing it now will help them stay relevant for longer but it will be a band aid, proprietary tools will be replaced by web standards on the internet thats more obvious now than it ever was. flash can innovate by raising the limit on what you can do, but there is…

I may be wrong, but I think Adobe 10 years ago was pushing for things like html5 video and canvas... because Flash was Macromedia's. It was a case of: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (They were also one of the first big companies to push SVG from what I remember).

heh not the first time I have made that mistake, when I say "they" I mean macromedia / whoever happened to be in charge of flash at the time of whatever incidence we are talking about.
Post reply on HN