Comments on: We don’t need Flash on the iPad, we need better tools to build HTML5 sites

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:11:08 +0000

yeah, well the blackberry tablet has flash now :)

By: android music player

android music player — Thu, 19 May 2011 12:12:06 +0000

” And that’s why I think Flash Player will never really work on a mobile device.”

I totally disagree… candytunes works awesomely well on the HTC Evo.

By: trevor jordet

trevor jordet — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:33:49 +0000

html5 is pretty good, but it has nowhere near the power or browser penetration that flash has.

also, apple doesn’t allow html5 to perform to it’s full potential. they disable javascript calls to the audio elements for one.

IMO they do not want any technology to threaten their app store business. I’d gladly build iphone apps if there weren’t so many restrictions on what you can build. why spend months or even years building apps that could be denied by apple.

I don’t like wasting my time or being censored.

I love apple desktops. I wouldn’t use anything else for developing, but they need to let creativity and innovation be more free on their mobile platforms.

By: trevor jordet

trevor jordet — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:26:01 +0000

“Flash needs too many system resources.”

I think the reason this is an issue is because of poor programming. sue flash uses more resources, but it does WAY more than other technologies.

if a developer writes clean code that includes clearing out your objects and events when you are finished with them, this should not be a problem.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:47:50 +0000

rmunix, to be fair JS libraries these days do a good job of abstracting browser idiosyncrasies away. When people talk about how JS has “matured” what they really mean is there are libraries to battle the mess, JS itself hasn’t changed for ten years. Libraries aren’t ideal if you’re after high performance though.
But still, yes… HTML devs spend a lot of time working around detail issues with layouts and CSS in various browsers.
HTML development generally tends to be more expensive than Flash.

By: rmunix

rmunix — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:09:00 +0000

To all you HTML5 newbies, it is AJAX all over again. People said AJAX will kill flash and here we are not one of your posts talks about AJAX. The problem with HTML5 is vendor implementation. You end up having to debug your app for each an ever single browser and browser version. Been there done that. But you if newbies want to try it be my guest. I am sticking with Flash.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:09:15 +0000

I found a fun piece of code for iPad. It is an example of how to swap a Flash SWF with an image if your user agent is an iPad. http://www.combsconsulting.com/ipad-replace-flash-with-image-java-script-example/

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:53:52 +0000

@Dorian
I know what you mean and you may be right. Or not. I don’t know. ;-)
You’re talking about the future now but that’s speculation, none of us has a crystal ball.

I merely wanted to point out that today Flash is a lot faster.
Exept on Macs but that’s old news.
There’s a lot of misinformation spread about this these days.

I think us media pros have an obligation to cut through the hype and provide a balanced view.

Both browsers and Flash will continue to improve, they’re all under competition. We might well see one browser becoming really fast and maybe catch up with Flash, but what about the other browsers then?
At least Flash currently means consistency for the largest possible audience.

> (and maybe even MS)

Quite nonchalant ;-) that’s 50% of your audience.

Totally agree that all technologies have pros and cons and you should pick the right tool for the job. But if you’re after a rich experience today and recommend against Flash cause tomorrow browsers might catch up.. that seems adventurous.
And the meaning of “everyday apps” is constantly shifting, today it’s video, tomorrow it’s HD video and so on.

Cheers, Dan

By: Wim Duivendrecht

Wim Duivendrecht — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:11:20 +0000

Your remark that flash needs to many system resources is not entirely correct.

For one thing: Mac OS X does not (yet) provide direct access to the video card/gpu, and that’s why the flash player on the mac uses so much CPU. Flash player 10.1 promises to fix a lot of these mac os x cpu problems.

But more importantly: a full-fledged application with many running processes and complex interactions cannot be compared to a static text-based web page. Of course the application will use more CPU!

When HTML5 becomes more capable of building real applications, you will see the same increase in CPU usage. I even read somewhere that HTML5+javascript+CSS3 actually needs MORE cpu to accomplish the same functions as flash.

Another problem with the increasing complexity of HTML5+Javascript+CSS3 is the wild variety of standards, and the lack of a real application development environment.
As long as you’re building static text pages this isn’t a big problem, but when you build a complex app in html, the code really becomes quite inaccessible.

By: Joseph Silverman

Joseph Silverman — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:46:39 +0000

There are TOO tools for doing the kinda of things you do in flash in dhtml. Check out http://www.openlaszlo.org/ . This includes animation, complex GUI interaction, etc.. Though we don’t suggest you do so, my company’s flagship producs, webtop, written in openlaszlo, works pretty well on the iphone – albeit SLOW and not particularly well optimized for use on that platform.