Marketing 101 says differentiate your product, from its competitors.
Not exactly. Marketing 101 says that you must
effectively differentiate your product form the competition. If you make a claim that Flash makes your product "special", but you fail to deliver on something far more fundamental like Apps, your marketing campaign actually
detracts from your product. RIM managed to sink a bunch of bucks into buying ads (and paying $$$ to Queen) that did nothing to aid in the success of their product.
We are discussing the contemporary perception of what makes the full internet.
Actually, I was asking what the Adobe marketing phrase "full web experience" or "full internet experience" actually means. Adobe has managed to put the phrase "full web experience" on their website
over 2400 times, so it's
got to mean something, right? Interestingly, Adobe never offers a definition. You offered a definition:
Full interent is not marketing, it is the entire internet. Its viewing any site you want without having to resort to work arounds.
Back to the current discussion:
Full internet currently does not mean 20 years of legacy plugins as you argued.
I never argued that; I was noting the absurdity of your "viewing any site you want" definition above. I deconstructed your definition in
this message. My point is that the phrase "full internet experience" or "full web experience" is essentially meaningless; it's just a codeword for "Flash".
Once you had the iOS cross-coded Flash app installed, you could just use the task switcher to move between the app and the browser. You can then use a gesture to move between the browser and the Flash app. Simple.
Stopping what you are doing to go through all the steps required to install an app is a huge interruption to your flow [...]
Actually, installing the frequently-used code as an app is the
creation of a work flow. Earlier in the discussion, you had noted the value in apps:
Flash did not make or break the Playbook, missing apps did.
Now, you seem to have changed your tune. Could you please sort that out for us?
I don't think you understand: Flash does not provide any way to use the accessibility widgets on the iPad. No matter how good the programmers are, they cannot access the accessibility widgets.
You are correct, I have never had to allow for extended accessibility so I don't understand Flash's role in that regard.
You don't need to have implemented an app with accessibility features to understand why they are needed. All you need to do is to
see accessibility widgets in action before you understand their profound value. Accessibility APIs is part of what Jobs noted as the most important reason why Flash isn't allowed on their iOS devices in his 2010
Thoughts on Flash. I have emphasized the pertinent words from his memo:
Steve Jobs said:
Sixth, the most important reason.
[...]
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Many people have read and commented on Jobs's memo, but few seem to remember what he cited as
the most important reason for excluding Flash. You don't have to be a programmer to understand his point. Did
you remember that Jobs called out that most important reason? The Adobe Flash lowest-common-denominator approach is a terrible thing for accessibility and a terrible thing for UI in general. It is a bankrupt approach.
darngooddesign said:
Two finger might belong everywhere, but its a new UI element that is only three or so years old. There are other iOS conventions that are new as well. If a site doesn’t allow two finger scrolling, but does have a scrollbar, its really not a big deal. One might be preferable, but not having it isn’t an argument against Flash.
Oh, my. That is a distressing attitude. Any objective user would completely disagree: of course it's an argument against Flash! If Flash were an open standard and runtime versions were available from multiple vendors, would you pick the version that kept up with the UI or the one that operated in lowest-common-denominator mode?
Three years isn't long enough for you to be outraged that a UI feature hasn't been integrated into Flash. How long would it take you to be upset? Five years? Ten years? Twenty?
Since you haven't seemed to notice, I'll tell you something about scrolling and Flash: Flash has "worked" with two-fingered scrolling for at least six months, but there are two tremendous limitations:
1. The semantics for scrolling are different than the native Apple UI.
2. The Flash apps
must be re-compiled and redeployed before two-fingered scrolling. If a developer hasn't bought the latest tools from Adobe or they are apathetic, their Flash apps will
never get the enhanced feature.
In the past, users had to deal with two different kinds of two-fingered scrolling: Flash (broken) and non-Flash (working). Now they have to deal with three different kind of behaviors: non-Flash (working), neo-Flash (working, but in a different fashion), and old-Flash (totally broken). Of the Flash-sites, you never know which is which
One must ask: is this really an improvement?
My "twenty years" question above was rhetorical, but that absurd possibility is a reality. Twenty years from now, internet archaeologists will fire up ancient web browsers; they will find Flash code that *still* doesn't honor two-fingered scrolling.
Perhaps those archaeologists will see if they can locate those Flash developers and ask them why they never #$!! updated their code.
Once you understand how much Flash constrains both the standard UI and the accessibility widgets, you'll have a big part of the picture why Apple Computer decided that Flash did not belong on their mobile devices.
There has been much discussion -- perhaps too much discussion -- about the security and resource-consumption shortcomings in Flash. In my opinion, Flash's UI problems may be the biggest reason that Apple decided to ditch Flash for iOS devices.
That's incorrect. Many of the UI issues you mentioned are not the reason Flash wasn't included.
It most certainly is correct. Steve Jobs's memo
spelled it out: the failure of Adobe's Flash to provide access to APIs was
the most important issue why they kept Flash out of iOS.
Now, do you have any
factual basis for your "That's incorrect" claim?
Adobe's failure to provide prompt access to enhanced APIs like scrolling and accessibility APIs is
the most important reason why Apple excluded Flash from their iOS devices. Indirectly -- and especially because of the runaway success of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch -- Apple's actions has accelerated the extinction of Flash from
all webpages.
We have different opinions on the matter and all we are going to do is go round and round trying to prove our biased points (my bias is pro-flash yours is against).
Do you have any
factual basis for your "That's incorrect" claim?
BTW: the purpose of the "Edit" button is to make small changes in a message. If you publicly post a 3-line message, adding 50 lines to that message is an abuse of the editing capability of the forum. Please don't do that again. Thanks.