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Flash on a Tablet

You would think that reviews like this one might shut some people up about the need for Flash on the iPad. But I won't hold my breath...
 
Articles like that seem half blind at times.

Touch programming problems with rollovers, scrolling and other strange behavior... not to mention small touch targets... are widespread across the web.

And that goes for many HTML pages, not just their Flash sections.

I compared about a dozen HTML5 games with Flash versions, and both had similar difficulties. The HTML5 versions actually had a bigger problem in many cases, because holding down your finger often causes a context menu (copy, send, save, etc) to pop up when all you wanted was to fire a weapon.

OTOH, if a developer writes with touch in mind, both HTML5 and Flash can do fine.
 
Half blind, maybe, but still, there are some very good points made about the fact that the current implementation of Flash for Android doesn't respond well to the touch interface. It goes beyond questions of the UI being designed for a mouse. Of course, that is an issue that goes back to the developer, not Flash. And, of course there are HTML base sites that exhibit similar issues. The real issue is that Flash doesn't really play nice with the touch UI in general, and, despite the promise that 10.2 would be different, Adobe has yet to address this issue.

Nw, I'm not one to say that Flash is the root of all evil. But I've never had too much use for it, either, apart from the occasional free Flash based game, and what streaming video is out there that I happen across from time to time. I've most often found that Flash based ads are more annoying than anything. And I've been annoyed by websites that over-utilize Flash to the point where as soon as I open their home page my processor spikes to 100%. All of that said, I've seen some very nicely done websites using flash, too.

All in all, I will remain a Flash skeptic until I can see some compelling reason why Flash would be useful on a mobile platform.
 
Snowy_River said:
Half blind, maybe, but still, there are some very good points made about the fact that the current implementation of Flash for Android doesn't respond well to the touch interface. It goes beyond questions of the UI being designed for a mouse.
Click to expand...

I'm open to your thoughts. Got an example?

--

Again, much of the article is off base. For example, complaining about confusing touch commands for navigating a page.

Well, duh. The same goes for how mobile Safari had to add the "secret" two finger scrolling method for divs etc. Most people NEVER figure that one out on their own.

So sure, if a person has to use two fingers to scroll the Flash part, that will be just as confusing.

In both cases, user training is unfortunately necessary.
 
Flash works perfectly fine on my android phone, I don't understand why it would be so difficult to do the same on a tablet. :confused:
 
^ On the other hand

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If someone can get flash to play nice on tablets without draining the battery then Apple will probably allow it on iOS devices. That just hasn't happened yet.
 
I use flash on the iSwifter web browser for 3 things.
View the weekly BestBuy ad, watch some hulu content not viewable on my iphone, and use google maps to send destination links to the car. So far not too many issues with flash, except what others have noted already regarding the touch scroll feature.
 
gonnabuyamacbsh said:
My bad, I meant flash videos work flawlessly. I've never even tried flash games or anything else. Good enough for me.:)
Click to expand...

Flash video is also flawless on my samsung captivate. I'm getting some pretty good use out of iswifter on my ipad, the last update they did really streamlined it, much better than skyfire.
 
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