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Flash will never work on the iPhone/iPad – says a Flash developer
February 21, 2010 | 2:24 pm
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By Paul Biba
There’s been a lot of controversy about Flash on the iPad/iPhone, but maybe this will put it to rest. I can’t think of anyone more authoritative than a developer who makes his living from designing Flash apps. Here’s an excerpt from the always excellent Roughly Drafted Magazine. Lots more detail in the article. I must admit I never knew any of this:
I’m biased. I’m a full-time Flash developer and I’d love to get paid to make Flash sites for iPad. I want that to make sense—but it doesn’t. Flash on the iPad will not (and should not) happen—and the main reason, as I see it, is one that never gets talked about:
Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.
That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.
Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
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Which makes me wonder, why didn’t Ballmer get asked this question?
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39973681,00.htm
I see no reason why a developer who makes his living designing Flash apps would be particularly authoratative on why Flash “won’t work” on the iPad. Most Flash developers do not have broad experience with the full Flash ecosystem.
As for his argument, a) there are a lot of Flash apps out there that would not have the mouse hover problem (YouTube being one obvious example, and about a zillion web sites’ menu systems being more), and b) Flash has done very, very well on other mobile devices without mouse pointers, such as Japanese mobile phones.
Also, I don’t find Roughly Drafted to be all that excellent. While they’re usually entertaining, and I do frequently agree with some of what they say, they are clearly an Apple apologist. If they ever give a truly balanced view of anything, it’s only in cases where Apple was right and their counterpart in that particular argument was egregiously in the wrong.
The JooJoo is a 12.1 inch (multi)touch color screen tablet that claims to support Flash 10.1 and Java. There is an 8-10 week preorder lead time.
https://thejoojoo.com/sites/
If this really works then the argument cited in the original article is suspect. On the other hand, if the Flash interface on this and similar devices really ends up being problematic, then there might be something to the guy’s story. I guess we’ll know soon.
Mouse clicks are still the primary way to navigate and do things in a Flash page, so I don’t see how this would be a deal breaker.
I don’t know how Adobe is implementing Flash on mobile devices, but an easy solution would be to drag 2 fingers to move the cursor and simulate a hover and 1 finger for a click or for scrolling.
If not for Apple, I may have had the terrible experience of playing free Flash games and watching free Flash videos on my iPad…..
Apple Saves Us from Burden of Choice
http://ikidnot.blogspot.com/2010/02/apple-saves-us-from-burden-of-choice.html
And what is about the new Multitouch Gesture Support in Flashplayer 10.1 Beta. Have you checked it out on any device?
Here is an article about user interaction in Flash Player 10.1.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/jchurch_flashplayer10.1.html
So far I did not develop an application with this feature but I wonder if anyone give it a try.
This was a real mind opener. I have known that Apple does not support flash on it’s devices, but real reasons behind this have been blurry to me. This post contained a lot of interesting facts. Great great great and many thanks.
Assuming the info is true… it still sounds like a limitation with Flash at present. It doesn’t mean this limitation can’t be addressed in future versions, and handled on Macs by future browsers.
And I’d much rather hear Adobe’s take on that.
Once again: that’s not even a limitation on Flash *at present*, at least on tens of millions of mobile devices in Japan over the last five years. It works very well here.
(By the way, that’s not to say I’m trying to promote Flash. I may find it technically very interesting, and I’ve even written and sold an authoring tool for it, but I think we’re all (except perhaps for Adobe–but possibly even for them, too) better off with something more open.
@Steve Adobe’s take
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse-events-and-touch-input/
Now this isn’t to say that you can’t go out and code something in flash that won’t work on a touch screen device. You can.
However this isn’t strictly a Flash issue either. There are plenty of websites out that do hover actions with JS/HTML (AJAX style coding) that also won’t work well on a touch screen device.
This is garbage. To say that the reason existing flash sites wont work on iPhone is because of Mouse Overs is ridiculous. The iphone version of flash can just disable mouse over functionality.
Everyone knows the reason for a lack of flash support is because of a long time feud between Apple and Adobe.
Personally I wish they would get over it and think of the developers for a change.
@Jim: After watching the video, I agree: The claim is largely without merit.
This is especially good for magazine producers, because it opens up the possibility of their developing Flash-based interactive magazine content similar to what the Apple/Adobe video, and the Bonnier concept video, has demonstrated… and they can do it for a browser interface, so they don’t need to wrestle with Apple or Adobe to do it.
James, perhaps they are thinking of the developers. There are quite a few developers out there (including me), who would prefer to work in an open system with a wide range of tools, both free and commercial, rather than a proprietary one.
Consider one point of view: to build a basic web page costs you nothing for the tools, not even for the operating system. To build a basic Flash application costs about a thousand dollars for the OS and tools, and you need a considerably more capable computer as well.
@Curt: Building a web-based Flash site costs a few hundred for off-the-shelf software, and maybe buy a manual. And there’s no reason the magazine interfaces we’ve seen demonstrated so far can’t be done as websites.
It’s “a few hundred dollars” for a fairly large value of “a few.” And for many people in this world, even “a few hundred dollars” is quite a huge sum of money, especially compared to the alternatives.
At Amazon Adobe Flash Pro CS4 is over $650, and Windows 7 Home Premium is $180. That’s $830, which is the vast majority of a month’s wages for someone in Chile. It’s also considerably more money that the cost of the computer you need to run the software, a computer that could just as well be running Linux and The Gimp. (Actually, that would probably result in a faster computer, or you could by a less capable computer to get the same effective speed.)
Because there’s little competition in the Flash design tools market (due to Flash being a proprietary system), Adobe can charge more than they can for design tools for open standards. This means that they can engage in a behaviour economists call “rent seeking”; they can charge more than they could in a free market for such tools. That difference in price is effectively a tax on developers: it’s money that they must pay to enter the Flash ecosphere that serves no useful economic purpose, because nobody really gets anything extra for it.
Adobe will of course use any arguments they can to try to convince you that they’re providing some sort of value over HTML5. If someone had been giving you a thousand dollars a month for doing nothing, and they tried to take it away, you’d probably come up with some objections, too.
HP Slate will support Flash, so I do not understand the difference
Flash is yesterday’s news, RIP. Html5 is the open platform for the future. I don’t want Flash on my iPhone or my PC where I have it turned off permanently.
I read where it said flash sites suck with touchescreens, while that is kind of true, I have the EVO 4G with Android 2.2, And I went on tinychat which is almost entirely flash, and it worked pretty well, without lag even. So I’m js, it’s possible, maybe not for the ipad but flash on touch screen is not an impossible idea.
To say that (a major) reason why flash should not be on the ipad/phone is because of mouse hovers is incredibly short sighted. I believe a ridiculous number of websites use dropmenus which (last time I checked) required mouse hovers for them to work properly. Does that mean that websites should not be on the ipad/phone as well?