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Looks like Flash is coming

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I can finally watch redtube on my iPhone. My wishes have been granted.
 
What about the interface?

I'm skeptical.

Flash apps rely on things like dragging and dropping and custom controls. You can't drag and drop on an iPhone. Dragging your finger around scrolls the screen. And how can you mouse over something on the iPhone?

Also, when you select something such as an html drop-down selection menu, the iPhone's version of Safari displays its custom menu picker on the bottom half of the browser. In Flash, a programmer has thousands of different ways to code a drop-down menu or any other interface you can dream up, so there's no way to make the iPhone recognize the type of control so that it can substitute a more touchscreen-friendly alternative.

Sure, you could create a special spec for developing Flash apps that work on the iPhone, but that would go against the cross-platform philosophy of Flash, and it would leave all the Flash apps that are already out there in a non-functional state.

The only way I can see them pulling this off is to have a toggle switch somewhere that changes the phone's input from the current pinch/squeeze/pan functionality to a more mouse-like mode that lets you do things like drag-and-drop as well as mouse over an item and still be able to click on it. I just don't see this happening, as none of it sounds very intuitive.

Everybody needs to stop substituting the words Flash Video whenever they see the word Flash.
 
Yeah!

This would so enhance the iphone "full internet" experience and move the iphone into a category that many more people would want! :apple:
 
lectro33 said:
The only way I can see them pulling this off is to have a toggle switch somewhere that changes the phone's input from the current pinch/squeeze/pan functionality to a more mouse-like mode that lets you do things like drag-and-drop as well as mouse over an item and still be able to click on it.
Click to expand...

Interestingly, I use a program called PIE Plus on a WM phone that enhances IE. It has a button at the bottom that flips its interface between fingertip panning and selection for dragging, cut&paste etc. Works pretty well for me.

Re: Flash. That new Skyfire browser for WM (and Symbian, soon) might have the right idea... using a proxy server to render things down for the mobile. It's damned fast, too.
 
Then there's the possibility it's just rumors intended to smoke out whomever leaked 1.1.3 before Stevie could show it off.

It's a time honored technique. Give a different piece of false (or real) news to several suspects, then watch to see who goes public.

"Okay, tell this person we're going to have Flash soon. Tell that guy the SDK is going to be delayed. We'll figure out who's the leak." Oh darn, they all are!
 
hobbbz said:
Adobe AIR is also finalizing and coming to 1.0 status in late February.
I would love to see that these two things were related as I just went to a small conference where the Adobe rep said hitting the mobile platform was a goal of AIR and is part of the reason they chose WebKit as their HTML renderer. Nokia and iPhone use WebKit and these were both mentioned by him.
Click to expand...

Bump!

How many people have read the Computer world article yet - basically it's saying that Silverlight, Adobe's AIR, and a Mozilla alternative are all looking to compete in getting the internet compatible and useable on mobiles
  • "to tap the best attributes of a browser but without the browser"
  • "to take some of their rich Internet applications to the desktop."
  • "tools to help companies build and run next-generation rich Internet applications that run on the Web and desktop systems."
  • "a bridge between the traditional gap between Web and desktop applications"
  • "Adobe described AIR as a runtime environment for building rich Internet applications in Adobe Flash, HTML and AJAX. The package includes the Safari WebKit browser engine, along with application programming interfaces to support desktop features such as native drag and drop and network awareness, Adobe said."

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) next month - so what better than to demo on a tablet and or 3g iPhone that is awaiting FCC permission?

Hell - if the NASDAQ is jumping in on this for in house use, i'm sure other places will take that as a sign. Apart from AIR, there are other emerging products that promise to let companies run Web applications built using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) tools on desktop systems. Shipping next month by all accounts. What's the betting their is some Adobe Flex development tool set behind the SDK - Why put in Flash, when you can build your SDK around it's successor by all accounts?

Others:
Microsoft's Silverlight, aimed at providing Web applications with desktop-based animation, interactive features and video.
Mozilla's Prism software, that'll let Web users strip a Web application from the browser and use it as a traditional desktop program.

http://www.computerworld.com/action...ewArticleBasic&articleId=9058878&pageNumber=2

  • Tech aims to enable web developers to build desktop applications, and cut the need for expensive programming talent. Flash programming knowledge helps.
  • Ability of AIR to re-create client/server applications built using fourth-generation languages or Microsoft's VB tool set. as Web-desktop applications.
  • "AIR ...will run faster, feel more lightweight and give them the impression that the Web application will behave more like their desktop apps"
  • Will provide offline synchronisation - ever sicnce Gears atr least for Google this sort of thing has been really requested.
  • "Having access to your data in an offline capability would be a huge boon."


tobin said:
So Adobe AIR is having it's official coming out this month:

Not based on any concrete facts, but I suspect that the iPhone SDK will be in the form of Adobe Flash. Sandbox, large developer base that's cross platform, proven technology that will go mobile. It'll sadden me if this is the case, but it will most likely create an instant line up of popular applications.

Now for the kicker... Apple to announce the acquisition of Adobe on Feb 28th. (Not based on any factual information, purely speculation).
Click to expand...

Will help allay lectro's skepticism - the whole point of the new tech above is to not have problems with drag and drop, custom controls, mouseovering when not applicable, problems with drop down menus etc

The truth is - sites are going to have to redesign if they want iPhone etc market. Look at the N96 - Surely the canny site owners are going to make more money from making compatible sites for these devices, and the Silverthrown brethren. Back compatibility is mute really, some will port, some might not.
hel - if sites can already determine what browser you're using, and redirect you to the apporpriate one, why not use that as a quick fix whilst a decent AIR or similar site is knocked out?
The iTablet I imagine will have a function swap mode to change between pinch/squeeze/pan functionality and a more mouse-like mode that lets you do things like drag-and-drop as well as mouse over an item and still be able to click on it.
 
As a mobile developer, I'm naturally attracted to any cross-platform solution ;)

But AIR and Silverlight aren't on mobiles yet. Mobile Flash is still pretty slow, at least when I tried it last year and it's not on Blackberries.

Java (J2ME) comes closest right now. I can write an app that runs on Blackberries and any Windows Mobile smartphone or PDA (if you download a midlet manager). And on many others such as Nokia if I wanted to. So I hope someone ports a JVM to the iPhone. (I think there is one, but not officially.)

As for websites supporting all mobiles, that's too much work for them. We could use a global web browser or at least several that are truly compatible.
 
Daring Fireball

If you haven't seen it yet, Daring Fireball is pretty negative on the possibility of Flash for iPhone:
http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus

His reason: Flash isn't a standard expectation of the mobile web now, so why should Apple enable Adobe to get a foothold there?

Makes sense. If you look at everything Apple is doing, it is all about AJAX and generally about using the web to make one's operating system irrelevant. Why would they want to go back on that Windows-killing strategy?
 
Toe said:
If you haven't seen it yet, Daring Fireball is pretty negative on the possibility of Flash for iPhone:
http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus

His reason: Flash isn't a standard expectation of the mobile web now, so why should Apple enable Adobe to get a foothold there?

Makes sense. If you look at everything Apple is doing, it is all about AJAX and generally about using the web to make one's operating system irrelevant. Why would they want to go back on that Windows-killing strategy?
Click to expand...

Gruber's second post on flash in two days...

I give you this:

http://www.screenplaysmag.com/tabid/160/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/835/Default.aspx

Adobe is very aware that they need to bring Flash to mobile. For both video and for mobile applications. Those saying that Flash isn't ready for mobile yet, be assured it's going to happen. If performance is an issue, the iPhone has a 620mhz ARM processor (including a floating point unit). I think that's pretty darn fast for something that's sitting in your pocket on your train/bus ride home.

In a simple view of mine, AIR represents a runtime environment for running Flash applications outside of the browser. Like using the Java Runtime Environment to run Java applications. This doesn't mean that your existing browser based Flash app is going to run on the iPhone, but for developers it means they can quickly create applications for the iPhone by being able to reuse existing code.

The human interface of the iPhone has different limitations and capabilities than our desktops do. That being said, I feel that if flash would become the iPhone SDK that it would be with a slimmed down subset of the UI framework. The framework will be slimmed down regardless if it's Cocoa & Obj-C, Flash, or Java. Similar to what danger had done with their Java SDK for the hip tops/sidekicks.

That said, developers can still utilize their business logic that is agnostic agnostic to any UI framework. This would allow to quicker time to market for those wanting to create their application on different platforms. Another not on efficiency, compiled applications can also possibly be optimized for the platform they are being compiled for. Look at how the Java Native compilers are used for Java desktop apps.

I for one would like to see Cocoa & Obj-C, however my feeling is that it's going to be Flash.

Still speculating acquisition too, but don't get me wrong... it's not like I'm going out and piling up on ADBE.

t.
 
If performance is an issue, the iPhone has a 620mhz ARM processor (including a floating point unit).
Click to expand...

Just a note: the iPhone cpu is throttled to around 400 MHz, probably because it doesn't have an extended battery available.

My Samsung i730 runs at 500MHz with overclocking available to 700MHz, and Flash for PPC still runs pretty slowly on it.

I do agree that mobile Flash will get faster with each version, and will become a viable application environment.
 
tobin said:
Gruber's second post on flash in two days...

I give you this:

http://www.screenplaysmag.com/tabid/160/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/835/Default.aspx

Adobe is very aware that they need to bring Flash to mobile. For both video and for mobile applications. Those saying that Flash isn't ready for mobile yet, be assured it's going to happen. If performance is an issue, the iPhone has a 620mhz ARM processor (including a floating point unit). I think that's pretty darn fast for something that's sitting in your pocket on your train/bus ride home.

In a simple view of mine, AIR represents a runtime environment for running Flash applications outside of the browser. Like using the Java Runtime Environment to run Java applications. This doesn't mean that your existing browser based Flash app is going to run on the iPhone, but for developers it means they can quickly create applications for the iPhone by being able to reuse existing code.

The human interface of the iPhone has different limitations and capabilities than our desktops do. That being said, I feel that if flash would become the iPhone SDK that it would be with a slimmed down subset of the UI framework. The framework will be slimmed down regardless if it's Cocoa & Obj-C, Flash, or Java. Similar to what danger had done with their Java SDK for the hip tops/sidekicks.

That said, developers can still utilize their business logic that is agnostic agnostic to any UI framework. This would allow to quicker time to market for those wanting to create their application on different platforms. Another not on efficiency, compiled applications can also possibly be optimized for the platform they are being compiled for. Look at how the Java Native compilers are used for Java desktop apps.

I for one would like to see Cocoa & Obj-C, however my feeling is that it's going to be Flash.

Still speculating acquisition too, but don't get me wrong... it's not like I'm going out and piling up on ADBE.

t.
Click to expand...

great post, very informative.
 
kdarling said:
Just a note: the iPhone cpu is throttled to around 400 MHz, probably because it doesn't have an extended battery available.

I do agree that mobile Flash will get faster with each version, and will become a viable application environment.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the note. I wasn't aware that it was throttled to 400mhz. I remember the days of 60mhz 486 processors, but I remember playing a lot of great games on it at the time that did some pretty amazing things with such a limited set of power and memory. Granted a lot of the code was optimized for the processor and written in 8086 Assembler.

In the meantime we're all going to speculating and wondering what's going to happen at the end of February.
 
specops said:
the only problem i have believing this is that the iphone safari browser already has problems loading pages and crashing as it is, so i how could they possible run flash on it stable?
Click to expand...

Sony's PSP has no problems running Flash. :p

shadowfax said:
Good luck with that. According to Steve Jobs, "nobody uses Java anymore."
Click to expand...

I hope Steve made a joke.

joshcampbell115 said:
I'm still waiting for 802.11n, Flash, and iChat along with SMS before I'll get an iPhone.
Click to expand...

802.11n won't happen so soon, it consumes too much power.
 
Thank goodness. Several sites I go to daily use flash and not having it on the iPhone was becoming an annoyance. Not a pain but just slightly annoying. :D
 
Toe said:
If you look at everything Apple is doing, it is all about AJAX and generally about using the web to make one's operating system irrelevant. Why would they want to go back on that Windows-killing strategy?
Click to expand...

I thought that part of the AIR / Prism / Silverlight concept (or AIR's at least) was the it'd play real nice with AJAX? AIR et al are there to make the OS not irrelevant, but seamless, and in the background - unobtrusive is possibly a good way of describing it.

If AIR et al help make it easy to port over older work, make the development time quicker, make more useful widgets and programs, etc, why not embrace it?
Apple can be about embracing certain indurstry standards, and throwing in it's own too when it wants. It's either use Flash, use it's successor, or convert to iPhone friendly format, right?

Edit: Oops - so Apple's duking it out with Adobe over Flash usage...
 
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