Symbian runs on nearly every POS phone out there, many of which can't download apps and are all but useless for web browsing. You wouldn't put these in the same category as an iPhone or a Droid:
The web usage numbers, which track how much traffic mobile browsers cause, is a better way to track command of the market. The iPhone owns about half the global market, more than Symbian and Android combined:
That's for the entire world. Consider that Apple makes just one phone, and no one else makes phones that use iPhoneOS, and yet they still own half the world's usage share. As modern smartphones go, Apple is Godzilla and everyone else is Tokyo.
If I was Adobe, I wouldn't release any future CS versions on Mac. Let the hipsters use Gimp.
That would make for some interesting industry news Adobe can't really do that, though - they'd be giving up millions in revenue each year out of spite, and pissing off a consumer base that has been using their software for years. Apple makes more money now off music and phones than they do computers, so they'd probably weather that storm better than Adobe would.
Maybe Adobe could just release their products unoptimized for the Mac, so they run reeeeal slooooow, and blame it on Mac hardware or OS X
That would make for some interesting industry news Adobe can't really do that, though - they'd be giving up millions in revenue each year out of spite, and pissing off a consumer base that has been using their software for years. Apple makes more money now off music and phones than they do computers, so they'd probably weather that storm better than Adobe would.
Maybe Adobe could just release their products unoptimized for the Mac, so they run reeeeal slooooow, and blame it on Mac hardware or OS X
Awesome idea
The irony is of course, that Flash player DOES run significantly slower on Macs than PC's. Adobe have said it's because they won't give them low level access to the Mac OS/hardware to optimise it. Why apple wouldn't want Flash player to run as fast on Macs than PC's I have no idea.
Anyway, your description does make more sense than what I was thinking. That might work, if the Apple emulator thingy just automatically created a cursor wherever you touched, tipping off the rollover state at the same time you pause the show. Well done, sir - I'll use my secret Apple hotline and pass that idea along!
I'm still not sure why you seem so hung up on rollover states. Most flash apps don't actually require rollovers, and can operate just fine without them. At the end of the day, all you really need is click, drag, and release. If you have that, the vast majority of flash programs are usable, even if you never see any rollovers. I know for a fact that I never make my event listeners in AS3 dependent on rollover states.
A touchscreen is as close as you can get to a mouse without actually having one available. That doesn't strike me as much of a stumbling block.
Brother, you are preaching to the choir. I've been pushing back on this for over a year, and even citing those exact numbers from Adobe, but the resistance is always the same - there may be one user out there that we reach who has Flash 8, and we don't want him to miss out on a banner ad. We can use newer versions with actual sites, since we can implement version checking in the preloader and redirect them to upgrade, but banner ads don't allow for that.
The hardest part for me is retaining a separate working knowledge of both AS2 and AS3, depending on the media I'm creating. I'll be writing an AS3 app and accidentally drop in an AS2 GetURL call, and then spend ten minutes trying to figure why in the hell it's not working. On the upside, being required to deliver 15-second banners in 40kb and using AS2 has made me a bad motherfucker at file optimization
That is one dilligent employer
You should say to them, using that logic, where do you stop? Publishing to Flash Player 6 perhaps, using AS1? Which be probably be another 0.01 installation % and possibly 1 or 2 extra viewers.
On the other hand I can somewhat see their point, if update prompts aren't feasible with banner installations, and you either see it or you don't, I guess you're going to want to maximise your ad budget. If you did include a prompt with swfobject, as if someone is going to be inclined to update to see an advert anyway.
I wouldn't want to go back to AS2 either. Horrible handling of classes compared to AS3, and literally 20 times slower. It still amazes me that AVM2 really does run that much faster than AVM1, you would imagine that kind of speed increase would have to come from offloading the rendering to the GPU but no, still 100% software/CPU based.
I'm still not sure why you seem so hung up on rollover states. Most flash apps don't actually require rollovers, and can operate just fine without them. At the end of the day, all you really need is click, drag, and release. If you have that, the vast majority of flash programs are usable, even if you never see any rollovers. I know for a fact that I never make my event listeners in AS3 dependent on rollover states.
A touchscreen is as close as you can get to a mouse without actually having one available. That doesn't strike me as much of a stumbling block.
Go to Hulu. Start a video. Attempt to access the navigation without rolling over.
Millions of people being unable to interact with an exceptionally popular site (just picking one example) is a stumbling block. Every site, app or banner that is dependent not simply on rollovers but on mouse position doesn't work, keypad input doesn't work, etc. If you don't think that's an issue... /shrug. Maybe you develop for clients with different expectations.
You should say to them, using that logic, where do you stop? Publishing to Flash Player 6 perhaps, using AS1? Which be probably be another 0.01 installation % and possibly 1 or 2 extra viewers.
On the other hand I can somewhat see their point, if update prompts aren't feasible with banner installations, and you either see it or you don't, I guess you're going to want to maximise your ad budget. If you did include a prompt with swfobject, as if someone is going to be inclined to update to see an advert anyway.
I wouldn't want to go back to AS2 either. Horrible handling of classes compared to AS3, and literally 20 times slower. It still amazes me that AVM2 really does run that much faster than AVM1, you would imagine that kind of speed increase would have to come from offloading the rendering to the GPU but no, still 100% software/CPU based.
Our largest client is Procter & Gamble, currently ranked #23 on the Fortune 500. They all but invented the marketing of consumer goods in America. We make our cases with them, but they know their business and they call the shots. If the media vendor they hire says Flash 8, we develop for Flash 8.
AS2 does have some upsides in short turn banner work. Not needing to write five lines to link to an external URL is nice, and dropping code directly on movie clips for last second tweaks can be a time-saver when something needs to go live ASAMFP. AS3 is clearly better when you have the time and budget to develop correctly, but in advertising, sometimes you have to slit a few throats to hit your deadline and AS2 definitely lets you play dirtier than AS3.
*edit*
On a mostly unrelated note, Plants Vs Zombies on the iPad is fucking addictive.
Go to Hulu. Start a video. Attempt to access the navigation without rolling over.
The Hulu player will pause and un-pause the video if you click the spacebar. It will also do the same thing if you click once anywhere on the hulu player area. With a touchscreen, you could easily pause and un-pause hulu videos without having to worry about mouse over states at all. Also, it seems that whenever you click-pause the video, the "mouse-over" controls pop up automatically. So you could have access to those as well without actually having to mouse over anything.
It seems to me that Hulu is one step ahead of you TomDunne. This example that you've been holding up has clearly already considered touch-screen interfaces, and adapted their video player accordingly.
The Hulu player will pause and un-pause the video if you click the spacebar. It will also do the same thing if you click once anywhere on the hulu player area. With a touchscreen, you could easily pause and un-pause hulu videos without having to worry about mouse over states at all. Also, it seems that whenever you click-pause the video, the "mouse-over" controls pop up automatically. So you could have access to those as well without actually having to mouse over anything.
It seems to me that Hulu is one step ahead of you TomDunne. This example that you've been holding up has clearly already considered touch-screen interfaces, and adapted their video player accordingly.
The iPhone doesn't have a spacebar.
When you "click once anywhere on the hulu player area", you've already rolled your mouse over the area and initiated the nav. If you've tested this in the last hour or whatever on a touchscreen and believe it works, let me know and I'll try it here myself a bit later.
Even in the best case scenario, you're requiring a pause of video that's not necessary on any system with an input devices.
If you don't agree with my opinion, awesome - keep on rocking in the free world.
In the event that Hulu isn't a sufficient case, here are a few others:
Those are all Flash-based sites or interfaces on the sites of global brands. None of them will work as presently built on a touchscreen, because they depend on input devices that touchscreens alone won't provide. It only took me about 10 minutes to look them up, there are thousands and thousands more.
*edit*
As far back as last June, someone else was making the point that Hulu didn't work on touchscreens. If it works now, it means that they've rebuilt it to do so. If that's the case, it supports my point - a lot of Flash sites, as currently deployed, won't work on touchscreens without investing the time and money to update it.
I did check Hulu on our Win7 touchscreen here, and you can pause by touching the screen,. However, that only works because it literally translates the cursor to the position you touch. Windows and Mac OSes have real cursors, but the iPhoneOS does not. The iPhone architecture would have to be rebuilt to create or emulate an actual cursor in order to work, whether for Hulu or any other rollover-based site. I'm not giving my opinion, that's coming from the primary iPhoneOS dev here at work.
I did check Hulu on our Win7 touchscreen here, and you can pause by touching the screen,. However, that only works because it literally translates the cursor to the position you touch. Windows and Mac OSes have real cursors, but the iPhoneOS does not. The iPhone architecture would have to be rebuilt to create or emulate an actual cursor in order to work, whether for Hulu or any other rollover-based site. I'm not giving my opinion, that's coming from the primary iPhoneOS dev here at work.
Tom, you continue to split hairs over a minor technical issue. The fact of the matter is that the Flash Player can be adapted for use with touchscreens. Yes, we understand that there are quite a few major commercial sites that haven't bothered to do this. But that is their decision, and their problem. At the end of the day, there is no reason why Apple couldn't have a version of the Flash Player on their mobile devices. Hell, the Android OS already implements Flash, and most of the devices that use it are touchscreen-only.
Making the Flash player available on a hardware platform doesn't place any additional financial burden on Apple. They don't have to go out and re-build media players or websites to work properly with it. There is no technical excuse for them to hide behind.
Making the Flash player available on a hardware platform doesn't place any additional financial burden on Apple. They don't have to go out and re-build media players or websites to work properly with it. There is no technical excuse for them to hide behind.
...
In my first post, I didn't say anything about Apple's reasons for blocking Flash. I said:
Enabling Flash for the web on an iPhone/iPad is pretty much an impossible task, because so much Flash content is dependent on having an actual cursor. A website or app that uses simple rollover states to initiate interaction won't work on a touchscreen because they can't detect when your finger wants to engage the rollover action instead of the click action. Think about anything with a rollover-based dropdown menu - you'd never be able to get the menu to expand on an iPad, because you have no way of rolling a cursor over the Flash element.
In reply to someone who didn't realize my point wasn't about Apple, I followed with:
I didn't say that Apple refused to support Flash because of issues like rollover functionality, I just said that Flash, as currently deployed in millions of locations on the web, wouldn't work well on Apple's products. They're obviously resisting Flash in order to protect their own interests.
When someone else still didn't realize I'm not talking about Apple, I wrote:
For what I think is the third time, I'll say again that my point isn't about Apple's motives. I haven't heard any Apple rep use Flash touchscreen incompatibility as a reason for not supporting it. What I'm saying is that nearly everyone clamoring for Flash on their iPhone/iPad doesn't realize they're going to get a broken experience.
And now, for the last time: I did not say this was a financial burden on Apple. I did not say this was an excuse for them to hide behind. What I said, and all I am continuing to say, is that enabling Flash for mobile touchscreen devices is not as simple as 'allowing Flash' on a mobile browser. Lots of content, content that's cursor dependent, won't work correctly on a device that has no cursor. It would require millions of dollars and hours of labor to retrofit all of what's out there to work on a very select number of devices, and it's highly improbably that will happen. If you think that's not important, well then praise Jesus and pass the potato salad.
What I said, and all I am continuing to say, is that enabling Flash for mobile touchscreen devices is not as simple as 'allowing Flash' on a mobile browser. Lots of content, content that's cursor dependent, won't work correctly on a device that has no cursor. It would require millions of dollars and hours of labor to retrofit all of what's out there to work on a very select number of devices, and it's highly improbably that will happen. If you think that's not important, well then praise Jesus and pass the potato salad.
Yes, but that is still S.E.P. (Someone Else's Problem) If you port the Flash Player over to a mobile device, you don't have to go back and revise all of that content. The people who created that content have to go back and revise it. And technically, they don't NEED to revise it. It would just be a good idea for them to do so. Since it is a case of SEP, there is no reason for the mobile browser designer to view this as a sticking point. At the end of the day, its not their problem.
There are already mobile touchscreen devices that DO support Flash. So the situation you are describing already exists. You don't see those major companies sweating bullets over it. Most of them probably have conditionals in their web code to replace flash elements for portable browsers anyway. Hell, I know that I lot of them create mobile-specific versions of their sites that don't use Flash at all. (for compatability with non-smartphone cellular devices)
You can't get hung up just because of SEP. Especially not with 3rd party internet plugin standards. If you're going down that road at all, you have to be prepared to not have 100% compatibility.
What you're saying is that having every site with flash elements be forced to disable that content for the iPhone and iPad's browser, is better than having a few of those site's content not work quite as well. You're saying that the complete absence is better than having to tweak some code.
What you're saying is that having every site with flash elements be forced to disable that content for the iPhone and iPad's browser, is better than having a few of those site's content not work quite as well. You're saying that the complete absence is better than having to tweak some code.
Jesus Christ... Really? That's what I'm saying? Show me the sentence I wrote anything like "complete absence is better than having to tweak some code". Actually, show me anywhere in this thread where I personally advocated any mobile policy. And don't go 'reading between the lines' or some shit - I've been extremely clear that I'm talking about the difficulty of current Flash implementation and not about how Apple or Adobe (or I myself) might handle it.
On second thought, if you want to continue discussng this, PM me. Don't imagine anyone is interested in reading more of this.
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
It sounds like apple is expecting the mouse to slowly disappear... weird.
old stevie can say what he wants but I would never support a company that has repeatedly tried to monopolise and control its userbase the way that apple does.
Replies
Symbian runs on nearly every POS phone out there, many of which can't download apps and are all but useless for web browsing. You wouldn't put these in the same category as an iPhone or a Droid:
The web usage numbers, which track how much traffic mobile browsers cause, is a better way to track command of the market. The iPhone owns about half the global market, more than Symbian and Android combined:
That's for the entire world. Consider that Apple makes just one phone, and no one else makes phones that use iPhoneOS, and yet they still own half the world's usage share. As modern smartphones go, Apple is Godzilla and everyone else is Tokyo.
That would make for some interesting industry news
Maybe Adobe could just release their products unoptimized for the Mac, so they run reeeeal slooooow, and blame it on Mac hardware or OS X
Uh indeed
Jobs, in one talk, saying that apple is a mobile company, rather than a computer company. Times are changing...
great then stop making computers ! hahaha
Awesome idea
The irony is of course, that Flash player DOES run significantly slower on Macs than PC's. Adobe have said it's because they won't give them low level access to the Mac OS/hardware to optimise it. Why apple wouldn't want Flash player to run as fast on Macs than PC's I have no idea.
I'm still not sure why you seem so hung up on rollover states. Most flash apps don't actually require rollovers, and can operate just fine without them. At the end of the day, all you really need is click, drag, and release. If you have that, the vast majority of flash programs are usable, even if you never see any rollovers. I know for a fact that I never make my event listeners in AS3 dependent on rollover states.
A touchscreen is as close as you can get to a mouse without actually having one available. That doesn't strike me as much of a stumbling block.
That is one dilligent employer
You should say to them, using that logic, where do you stop? Publishing to Flash Player 6 perhaps, using AS1? Which be probably be another 0.01 installation % and possibly 1 or 2 extra viewers.
On the other hand I can somewhat see their point, if update prompts aren't feasible with banner installations, and you either see it or you don't, I guess you're going to want to maximise your ad budget. If you did include a prompt with swfobject, as if someone is going to be inclined to update to see an advert anyway.
I wouldn't want to go back to AS2 either. Horrible handling of classes compared to AS3, and literally 20 times slower. It still amazes me that AVM2 really does run that much faster than AVM1, you would imagine that kind of speed increase would have to come from offloading the rendering to the GPU but no, still 100% software/CPU based.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/apple-delays-ipad%E2%80%99s-international-release
Go to Hulu. Start a video. Attempt to access the navigation without rolling over.
Millions of people being unable to interact with an exceptionally popular site (just picking one example) is a stumbling block. Every site, app or banner that is dependent not simply on rollovers but on mouse position doesn't work, keypad input doesn't work, etc. If you don't think that's an issue... /shrug. Maybe you develop for clients with different expectations.
Our largest client is Procter & Gamble, currently ranked #23 on the Fortune 500. They all but invented the marketing of consumer goods in America. We make our cases with them, but they know their business and they call the shots. If the media vendor they hire says Flash 8, we develop for Flash 8.
AS2 does have some upsides in short turn banner work. Not needing to write five lines to link to an external URL is nice, and dropping code directly on movie clips for last second tweaks can be a time-saver when something needs to go live ASAMFP. AS3 is clearly better when you have the time and budget to develop correctly, but in advertising, sometimes you have to slit a few throats to hit your deadline and AS2 definitely lets you play dirtier than AS3.
*edit*
On a mostly unrelated note, Plants Vs Zombies on the iPad is fucking addictive.
The Hulu player will pause and un-pause the video if you click the spacebar. It will also do the same thing if you click once anywhere on the hulu player area. With a touchscreen, you could easily pause and un-pause hulu videos without having to worry about mouse over states at all. Also, it seems that whenever you click-pause the video, the "mouse-over" controls pop up automatically. So you could have access to those as well without actually having to mouse over anything.
It seems to me that Hulu is one step ahead of you TomDunne. This example that you've been holding up has clearly already considered touch-screen interfaces, and adapted their video player accordingly.
The iPhone doesn't have a spacebar.
When you "click once anywhere on the hulu player area", you've already rolled your mouse over the area and initiated the nav. If you've tested this in the last hour or whatever on a touchscreen and believe it works, let me know and I'll try it here myself a bit later.
Even in the best case scenario, you're requiring a pause of video that's not necessary on any system with an input devices.
If you don't agree with my opinion, awesome - keep on rocking in the free world.
In the event that Hulu isn't a sufficient case, here are a few others:
American Airlines - nav elements dependent on mouse position:
http://www.theflagshipexperience.com/default_en.html
Adidas - nav elements dependent on mouse position:
http://www.adidas.com/de/campaigns/outdoor/outdoor_relaunch/content/
Coca-Cola - gameplay dependent on keyboard:
http://www.cocacolazero.com/index.jsp#/rooftopracer/
Sony - nav elements dependent on rollover:
http://www.sony.com/index.php
Mini - nav elements depdendent on rollover:
http://www.miniusa.com/#/build/configurator/minis-m
Those are all Flash-based sites or interfaces on the sites of global brands. None of them will work as presently built on a touchscreen, because they depend on input devices that touchscreens alone won't provide. It only took me about 10 minutes to look them up, there are thousands and thousands more.
*edit*
As far back as last June, someone else was making the point that Hulu didn't work on touchscreens. If it works now, it means that they've rebuilt it to do so. If that's the case, it supports my point - a lot of Flash sites, as currently deployed, won't work on touchscreens without investing the time and money to update it.
http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/06/why_you_shouldnt_care_about_se.html
*second edit*
I did check Hulu on our Win7 touchscreen here, and you can pause by touching the screen,. However, that only works because it literally translates the cursor to the position you touch. Windows and Mac OSes have real cursors, but the iPhoneOS does not. The iPhone architecture would have to be rebuilt to create or emulate an actual cursor in order to work, whether for Hulu or any other rollover-based site. I'm not giving my opinion, that's coming from the primary iPhoneOS dev here at work.
Tom, you continue to split hairs over a minor technical issue. The fact of the matter is that the Flash Player can be adapted for use with touchscreens. Yes, we understand that there are quite a few major commercial sites that haven't bothered to do this. But that is their decision, and their problem. At the end of the day, there is no reason why Apple couldn't have a version of the Flash Player on their mobile devices. Hell, the Android OS already implements Flash, and most of the devices that use it are touchscreen-only.
Making the Flash player available on a hardware platform doesn't place any additional financial burden on Apple. They don't have to go out and re-build media players or websites to work properly with it. There is no technical excuse for them to hide behind.
...
In my first post, I didn't say anything about Apple's reasons for blocking Flash. I said:
In reply to someone who didn't realize my point wasn't about Apple, I followed with:
When someone else still didn't realize I'm not talking about Apple, I wrote:
And now, for the last time: I did not say this was a financial burden on Apple. I did not say this was an excuse for them to hide behind. What I said, and all I am continuing to say, is that enabling Flash for mobile touchscreen devices is not as simple as 'allowing Flash' on a mobile browser. Lots of content, content that's cursor dependent, won't work correctly on a device that has no cursor. It would require millions of dollars and hours of labor to retrofit all of what's out there to work on a very select number of devices, and it's highly improbably that will happen. If you think that's not important, well then praise Jesus and pass the potato salad.
Yes, but that is still S.E.P. (Someone Else's Problem) If you port the Flash Player over to a mobile device, you don't have to go back and revise all of that content. The people who created that content have to go back and revise it. And technically, they don't NEED to revise it. It would just be a good idea for them to do so. Since it is a case of SEP, there is no reason for the mobile browser designer to view this as a sticking point. At the end of the day, its not their problem.
There are already mobile touchscreen devices that DO support Flash. So the situation you are describing already exists. You don't see those major companies sweating bullets over it. Most of them probably have conditionals in their web code to replace flash elements for portable browsers anyway. Hell, I know that I lot of them create mobile-specific versions of their sites that don't use Flash at all. (for compatability with non-smartphone cellular devices)
You can't get hung up just because of SEP. Especially not with 3rd party internet plugin standards. If you're going down that road at all, you have to be prepared to not have 100% compatibility.
What you're saying is that having every site with flash elements be forced to disable that content for the iPhone and iPad's browser, is better than having a few of those site's content not work quite as well. You're saying that the complete absence is better than having to tweak some code.
Jesus Christ... Really? That's what I'm saying? Show me the sentence I wrote anything like "complete absence is better than having to tweak some code". Actually, show me anywhere in this thread where I personally advocated any mobile policy. And don't go 'reading between the lines' or some shit - I've been extremely clear that I'm talking about the difficulty of current Flash implementation and not about how Apple or Adobe (or I myself) might handle it.
On second thought, if you want to continue discussng this, PM me. Don't imagine anyone is interested in reading more of this.
An interesting read:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
It sounds like apple is expecting the mouse to slowly disappear... weird.