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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#371

Post by Qz »

smallblacksun wrote: post #320
mbreese wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are talking about two different scenarios that aren't really that related. Point 1 is in reference to the lack of Flash within Safari. Point 5 is in reference to banning applications originally written in Flash.

Or, more cynically, Point 1 is in reference to a non-Apple product Point 5 is in reference to an Apple product

Exactly. Apple vs non-Apple (or more generally, things a company controls vs things a company doesn't control) is the only relevant point here. Everything else about open standards and performance woes is just spin.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#372

Post by qeorge »

Psyonic wrote: post #313
qeorge wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side point: why is supporting IE6 mandatory? Its been retired since 2005. We support IE6 wherever reasonable, but if you're building something that needs , I'd just do it. What was the feature in this case?

Retired? By Microsoft, perhaps, but not by a large chunk of users. Still large enough to matter, for most sites.

I agree with you, and that's why we usually decide to support IE6.

But there's some things that just can't reasonably be done in IE6, and I think its OK to drop support in those cases instead of canning the feature entirely.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#373

Post by bastardlee »

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…

Although i agree that there are a lot of issues wrong with Flash, some of the things you mention aren't entirely accurate. For example, you can link directly to interior Flash content with SWFAddress (http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/). Also, there have been greater strides made in crawlers so that Flash content is more easily indexed by crawlers.

I will be the first to admit there are a lot of poorly designed Flash sites, but from an interactive design perspective, Flash still gives you the most freedom to create more innovative ways for user interaction. IMO this isn't something that should be dismissed so quickly.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#374

Post by Jeema3000 »

Unfortunately for Apple, the average user doesn't care about any of this. The average user just want to go to a website and have it work. IJW technology: It Just Works.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#375

Post by vetinari »

astrange wrote: post #213
vetinari wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me, how long it took Apple to move Finder and iTunes to Cocoa? (Answers for those that don't keep score: 10.6 and not yet). You have to remember, that Apple tried multiple rewrites of MacOS in 90' and OSX was yet another 'this time it will work out, I promise' project. If you were Adobe, would you bank your company on yet another promise? I know I wouldn't.

What promise do you mean? Cocoa has existed for 10 years now. It was never going to go away at any point. Finder was kept in Carbon as a demonstration that large codebases ported from OS 9 would still be supported (it would take quite some time to rewrite them, after all). iTunes's lack of a rewrite is probably due to having to run on Windows without having to immediately do the extra work needed to port Safari, but…

Apple had several failed attempts to establish new APIs/OSes in 90's (OpenDoc, Taligent). Why would anyone rational believe, that another project (OSX) is going to be success?

So during introduction of OSX, Apple had to include Carbon there, if they wanted to have ISV support for their new OS. Nobody was going to put significant effort to port entire codebase for new, unproved OS+frameworks+language put out by someone who has history of failures.

And do not forget, that Adobe CS is much larger project than Finder, iTunes and Quicktime together.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#376

Post by orangecat »

emontero1 wrote: post #34

"We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash." I can attest to the veracity of this statement. My MBP's processor spikes whenever I get on YouTube or any other Flash-based site. I've had a couple of major crashes on both Firefox and Chrome while using Flash. I've also heard other users express similar views with these and other browsers on Ubuntu.

The only kernel panics I've had on my Macs in the past year have happened while loading or watching Flash videos in Safari. Of course this indicates that both Adobe and Apple have critical bugs to fix, since there's no way Flash should be able to take out the OS no matter how buggy it is.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#378

Post by Zev »

tomlin wrote: post #365
potatolicious wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the cheese I object to - but that the Cheese breaks the internet in fundamental ways. Example: We just wrapped up Restaurant Week here in Seattle where a bunch of local establishments offered up prix-fixe specials for a couple of weeks. The website for this event was done up all in Flash, and made it impossible to crawl for a search engine, or even to link or bookmark a particular restaurant for later retrie…

> What did we exchange for this cheese and gimmicky design? Everything. I agree that if you don't follow the proper protocol you will end up with an undesirable site. I can't argue that Flash == HTML in terms of accessibility. There are ways within Flash to harness some accessibility but it is up to the developer to implement these. An informational site in Flash is a bad choice. I would never suggest the use of Flas…

"Selectable text" is an option in any Flash text field.

Is copying/pasting it to the OS (or app) pasteboard an option? If so, will it use the same UI as native apps have? Or will it force a funky widget of its own in the middle of an app that otherwise looks like the rest of the OS?

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#380

Post by Sindisil »

rjurney wrote: post #110
ThomPete wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called control over the experience something that really shouldn't be a surprise for Jobs. There are literally millions of experiences out there that can't be done with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. if you want proof, go to theFWA.com and have a look around. For every bad flash solution out there, there are some quite fantastic ones. Flash gives you control of the experience in ways that by any metrics outcompete H…

You mean the Flash app linked to on the front page of theFWA that took 30 seconds to load and almost crashed Chrome on a late model Macbook Pro 17? Is that the kind of mobile experience you're after?

"almost crashed Chrome"?
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