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Skyfire browser, flash finally!

spinedoc77

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Yeah yeah I know, cue the "I never use flash when I'm browsing" people, let's go ahead and get that out of the way now. :rolleyes:

Patiently waiting here for this Skyfire browser to be released:

http://mygadgetnews.com/2010/11/03/...oved-brings-flash-for-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/

It will be nice to have flash, I've seriously been considering ditching my ipad for an android tablet, even though I dearly love my ipad. At least in my personal browsing I'd say I run into a flash dead end wall on virtually every site I visit, from gadget blogs to medical research sites to media blogs and news sites I will invariably find a flash video on the vast majority of them.

Crossing my fingers that this is a viable solution. Skyfire is really taking the flash video and reencoding them to HTML5 on their site, on the fly, and streaming it to the device, pretty ingenious way to get past Apple's approval process. But in practice we will have to see if it works well, but at this point I'd rather have a half ass solution than nothing.
 
LouieSamman

LouieSamman

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2008
909
9
Orlando, Florida
So in understanding this correctly, They make a browser app that is submitted with no flash in it but have something in the code of the app that allows any flash encoded website to switch to HTML 5 by streaming it?

Sounds pretty cool and hopefully would work great.
 
E

elwood58

macrumors member
Oct 26, 2010
92
0
California
There is an app out now called CloudBrowser that works in a similar way, although it virtualizes the entire browser session. It is not upscaled for iPad, and runs pretty sluggish, in my opinion. It will be interesting to see if this new solution is better, as it seems they will only virtualize the imbedded Flash.
 
andybno1

andybno1

Suspended
Nov 6, 2007
3,643
38
Liverpool, UK
I cant say I see much flash content when I browse on my iPad, I cant really seeing myself buying this for the price it is set to launch at, maybe if it was the bottom end price of 59p I would consider it but like I say I don't come across much flash content.

off top of head only thing that pops to mind with flash is youtube but as everyone knows theres an app for that lol

I guess theres hulu for US peeps..... top of head I cant really think of much use for flash I think the need for flash is dying off and people are moving to html5..... this is just my thoughts really
 
L

leons

macrumors 6502a
Apr 22, 2009
662
344
WILL this app/browser be able to handle Hulu?

UPDATE: NM, Just checked. Hulu is specifically blocked! :-(
 
S

scar88

macrumors member
Jul 3, 2009
63
5
London
guys its out, can someone try it on the ipad? ive installed it on my iphone works well but havent got my ipad with me
 
spinedoc77

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
scar88 said:
guys its out, can someone try it on the ipad? ive installed it on my iphone works well but havent got my ipad with me
Click to expand...

Sweet, going to grab it right now and Ill report back on how it is on the ipad.
 
jeme

jeme

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2009
409
73
I only see a native iphone version - bummer nothing for the ipad.....
 
jeme

jeme

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2009
409
73
I would only pay for this if they had an ipad native version.
 
maturola

maturola

macrumors 68040
Oct 29, 2007
3,863
3
Atlanta, GA
scar88 said:
guys its out, can someone try it on the ipad? ive installed it on my iphone works well but havent got my ipad with me
Click to expand...

I dont see it available for the iPad, I only see the iPhone version and it doesn't seen to be a universal app (at least not yet)
 
spinedoc77

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Initial impressions not good:

First of all it's an iphone app, which means it runs in much lower resolution than the ipad takes. I'm going to assume it's not even a retina display app, but I haven't tried it on my iphone 4 yet. You can do the 2x mode, but it looks horrible on the ipad, extremely pixelated and it doesn't come close to filling the screen, so you get about a 2 inch black border around the program. I tried to use FullForce with it, but it doesn't work.

The browser itself seems very simple, tabs work like Safari does, there is a private mode, there wasn't much more to it than that. I was having issues opening links which open to new windows, they just didn't open and I had to press hold to copy the url and paste it into the url bar.

Ok what you've been waiting for. Tried it on only a couple of Flash videos and it does what it's supposed to do with a couple of caveats. It takes a bit of time to cache the video, but not bad at all, maybe 10-15 seconds so far on what I've tested. The video looks horrid, but I'm sure that's because it's in iphone 2x mode. You cannot pan through the video timewise, so as far as I can tell you are stuck watching the video from start to finish.

That's about all I've tested as I'm at work and supposed to be working on reports. Would love to hear more feedback.
 
spinedoc77

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Update, tried it on my iphone 4 and MUCH better results. I went to Comedy Central and loaded up the latest Daily Show AND IT WORKED! Still the same caveat you can't scroll thru the video time, but you do get a 30 second replay button which is kind of cool.

On the iphone 4 you can definitely notice the reduced quality of the video. It looks very much like Slingbox video over 3g, just for the record I'm using this setup at work on wifi. The video is very acceptable, but it certainly won't win any awards for looking great.

Overall a HUGE thumbs up for iphone use, finally Flash! A conditional thumbs down for ipad use knowing it's not an ipad optimized program, here's hoping they port it to ipad soon, I'll definitely pay again for a HD version in a heartbeat.
 
spinedoc77

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
No Hulu, even on desktop mode I get an error message that Hulu is not available on the iphone.
 
S

shotts56

macrumors 6502
Sep 23, 2008
391
64
Scotland
Doesn't work with the football videos on the BBC website, the only reason I bought the app.

There's £1.79 I'll never see again.
 
S

scar88

macrumors member
Jul 3, 2009
63
5
London
shotts56 said:
Doesn't work with the football videos on the BBC website, the only reason I bought the app.

There's £1.79 I'll never see again.
Click to expand...

seems to work only on the interview videos, just watch harry redknap talking about last nights game
 
I

imacken

macrumors 65816
Feb 28, 2010
1,232
127
DeusInvictus7 said:
It's in the Canadian App Store too. Wasn't there supposed to be an iPad version of it? So far there's only the iPhone version in the app store.
Click to expand...
A bit concerning. I'm sure their web-site has changed since yesterday. Pretty sure yesterday it said coming soon for iPhone, iPod and iPad. Now, it just says iPhone.
 
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