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Well, I don't know about the content of this article, but I'm glad it alerted me to the availability of flash. I just installed it, and while it's not ideal, it's adequate for practicing Chinese on skritter, which is exciting.
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…
ActionScript is just JS plus some extra sugar. JS implementations have gotten hundreds of times faster in the last three years, while Flash has gotten slower. Slap a modern JIT on there and we should get some improvement.
"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 we…
Assuming Adobe had infinite time and resources, could they make Flash run well for all content on every mobile device? Of course not, they are hamstrung from legacy support as well as variances in hardware and software stacks they have to deal with. But just like Microsoft they are beholden to their legacy software and deploy base.
Meanwhile when Apple decides to go mobile they start from scratch. They design the hardware, the software, using open technologies where appropriate, but rolling their own closed-source secret sauce. Then they play hardball with Adobe and any other potential heavyweight partners because they own the entire product stack from design to retail. If some low-level tester finds a choppy video on a prototype iPhone, it takes about 5 minutes to escalate the issue to the people who can fix it directly. Meanwhile, if there are hardware problems with Flash, Adobe has to go talk to whoknowswhat podunk handset manufacturer and hope that they listen.
Looking at this way it's basically impossible for Adobe to craft a consumer experience like Apple. Microsoft has a similar problem. Pure SaaS helps with the legacy problem, thus making it possible for pure software companies like Google and Facebook to at least iterate quickly.
1) Flash as it is currently implemented is for the desktop.
2) Flash for mobile (10.1) should really be called FlashMobile 1.0 and will need a lot more time and development to give mobile users an optimal experience. This will also require Flash developers to code for mobile.
With regards to 1) It is extremely powerful and can create sites/services/applications/designs that cannot be viewed on a mobile device. This aspect does not negate its value. And with regards to 2) that's no different from many websites you visit in a mobile browser and they are not optimized. Just try visiting HN on an iphone. Brutal! But load it up through Google's mobilizer (http://google.com/gwt/x=) and it becomes actually manageable.
So now, who is to blame? Adobe? Nah. They just need more time to advance the mobile Flash code. The Developers? Nah. They just needed Adobe to come out with a decent mobile flash platform and now will need more time to optimize for it.
What is really to blame? Impatience. People see shiny "smart" phones and think they should do absolutely everything right out of the box just like their 17" laptop does. These things will come in time.
(ahem, that said, I've no issues with all the flash sites that work beautifully on my netbook... that cost half what an iPad does).
Is Flash the FUTURE of the web? Of course not. But it is the here and now. And by not having it available you will miss out on a lot of current content... and will for awhile yet.
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.…
Flash was supposed to be canvas, but Macromedia/Adobe chose not to join the standards process, so browser makers just rolled their own. After all the effort on canvas, they'll just drop it all and replace it with Flash or work on both?
It just seems impractical. I don't think Google is interested in Flash beyond integrating it with NativeClient. Maybe they could improve it, they may have more engineering talent, but these are ultimately strategic decisions, not technical ones.
As far as other companies besides Google, MS and Apple, why would they commit themselves to Flash when Canvas is already open source, can be improved, etc..?
I think Adobe is screwed with their current plugin either way. Their path of piling on features, ensuring perfect integration with authoring tools seems more reasonable. That's where their focus should be. They won't lose much if they lose the plugin, it's not a big deal if they could do the same things the plugin does through JS eventually.
The plugin is just an insurance policy and if NativeClient becomes a standard they won't have to worry about penetration when they come up with a better plugin eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We're talking about Google, a company who wrote their own cleanroom Java implementation and reverse-engineered ActiveX to create a ChromeFrame implementation still compatible with anything that ever worked in IE. I think they could speed things up a bit. ActionScript is just JS plus some extra sugar. JS implementations have gotten hundreds of times faster in the last three years, while Flash has gotten slower. Slap a…
Unfortunately, much of that content is what causes the problem. Using the artist tools (Flash CS3), you can generate content that simply fumes memory, without writing a single line of code. I'm not sure you can even fix those issues without re-authoring the art content.
What makes this worse is that anyone can embed one of these crappy SWFs in a webpage, causing the browser to fume memory too.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It's really this simple: Flash's bid for relevance on mobile phones is only going to work if they can make desktop Flash video work reliably.
They don't even need to make the games and stuff work properly. Stipulate that they fix that. They still fail if everyone shakes off the Flash video lockin.