iPad Why Flash Is Fundamentally Flawed On Touchscreen Devices

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by nekokami

kacir did a good job covering this.

In my case, it's simple: Flash navigation is not usually ADA-compliant. (I work for a public university, where this is critical.) Also, see Jakob Nielsen (my favorite usability guru) on Flash usability:

Flash: 99% Bad

...

Some interesting points, but as I was reading the excerpts, I kept thinking, wow! some of this is straight from the 1990s. Then i clicked on the link, and wow! again, it was from 2000.

While some of of observations are still valid, conventions have evolved significantly, as has Flash. Things will continue to change, and I expect that HTML5 will gain momentum and be widely accepted for many things in the coming year or three, but Flash will still be an important part of the web (including for touch devices).

Anyway, my whole point about Flash is not to defend Adobe, but to point out that Flash is very widely used, and any device which does not support it cannot be deemed a good web-browsing device, since a good portion of the web will not be accessible with it.

To me, defending Apple for not including Flash on the iPad is similar to defending the lack of Search, or Copy/Paste on the iPhone.

Given the recent stories about the chip in the iPad being based on the older Cortex A8 design, Apple may have been worried about maintaining the feeling of "speed" on the iPad. Also, it is likely that there was no time to optimize Flash 10 for the iPad, given Apple's secrecy and reluctance to provide needed information.

But whatever the reason, bashing Flash is not going to change the fact that the iPad, in its currently rumored state, has some serious shortcomings.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Anyway, my whole point about Flash is not to defend Adobe, but to point out that Flash is very widely used, and any device which does not support it cannot be deemed a good web-browsing device, since a good portion of the web will not be accessible with it.

Very true, but you (and I and others) could probably be a bit more cautious in our wording so as to not offend the people who truly don't need it and won't have their personal web browsing experience lessened. This is an avid reader/bookworm site. Many have made it clear that they do little with their free time but read--and their net use is thus largely text for reading. And that's fine.

But whatever the reason, bashing Flash is not going to change the fact that the iPad, in its currently rumored state, has some serious shortcomings.

But I agree 100%. That's it's not a shortcoming for them, doesn't mean it's not an objective shortcoming of the devices. It is an objective shortcoming that many web pages that rely on flash won't display properly. That it doesn't matter to them doesn't mean it's not a flaw.

Every device out their has flaws, and it's silly to let company loyalty lead you to defend those things as not really being flaws just because they don't effect you personally.

Everything has flaws. All we can do as consumers is find the devices that work the best for us and don't have flaws in areas that are critical to our personal needs for the device.

It's silly to argue about what is or isn't a flaw, to have any loyalty to these companies who's only interest in us is how much of our money they can get us to fork over etc.

Use what you like, and don't worry about whether it does or doesn't fit someone else's needs IMO.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by nekokami

kacir did a good job covering this.

In my case, it's simple: Flash navigation is not usually ADA-compliant. (I work for a public university, where this is critical.) Also, see Jakob Nielsen (my favorite usability guru) on Flash usability:

...

Flash 10 made some progress, and now works with screen reader technologies like JAWS, supports keyboard navigation, captioning etc. Of course the Flash author has to know how to design and test for accessibility.

Adobe Flash CS4 Professional accessibility overview

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Some interesting points, but as I was reading the excerpts, I kept thinking, wow! some of this is straight from the 1990s. Then i clicked on the link, and wow! again, it was from 2000.

While some of of observations are still valid, conventions have evolved significantly, as has Flash. Things will continue to change, and I expect that HTML5 will gain momentum and be widely accepted for many things in the coming year or three, but Flash will still be an important part of the web (including for touch devices).

Anyway, my whole point about Flash is not to defend Adobe, but to point out that Flash is very widely used, and any device which does not support it cannot be deemed a good web-browsing device, since a good portion of the web will not be accessible with it.

To me, defending Apple for not including Flash on the iPad is similar to defending the lack of Search, or Copy/Paste on the iPhone.

Given the recent stories about the chip in the iPad being based on the older Cortex A8 design, Apple may have been worried about maintaining the feeling of "speed" on the iPad. Also, it is likely that there was no time to optimize Flash 10 for the iPad, given Apple's secrecy and reluctance to provide needed information.

But whatever the reason, bashing Flash is not going to change the fact that the iPad, in its currently rumored state, has some serious shortcomings.

Granted, these conclusions were drawn 10 years ago. Are you familiar with Jakob Nielsen's work? He is one of the most highly regarded usability experts for good reason-- his recommendations are backed up by solid empirical usability lab research. He regularly revisits earlier findings to see if they still hold. If you search his site, you'll find more recent articles coming to the same conclusions, again based on empirical research.

I'm not bashing Flash. It's fine for many things, and I know support for vision-impaired readers (for example) has improved. I just don't think it's appropriate as a primary navigation method for most websites. (And even Rowling's website, about which I cited Nielsen's remarks above, has a text-only method in parallel with the intriguing Flash interface.)

I don't know what Apple's reason is for avoiding supporting Flash on iP* devices is. I don't think any of us know (unless someone here is a closet Apple employee). I've heard a lot of claims attributing Apple's motivations to technical security, performance, app store protectionism, personal dislike on the part of Steve Jobs, etc., but I haven't seen a link pointing to a verifiable quote from an Apple representative on the matter. Similarly, I don't know that Apple won't support Flash in the future, and I have seen no links to official word from Apple on that.

In the absence of this evidence, I think further arguments are pointless. We can speculate, and that can be fun, but let's keep the "heat level" low.

[danegeld]

I have a much different perspective on the whole Apple/Adobe/Flash thing. Adobe is a company on a suicidal downward spiral and Apple knows it. Flash is just a symptom of a much larger problem. Adobe used to be an innovative company that produced the best graphics tools in the world. As the years went by, they became more bloated, inept, and more concerned with Wall Street than with their customers. Try getting any customer service from them at all. About a year ago, Adobe moved its customer service (if you want to call it that) to India and made it adversarial instead of cooperative. If you use Adobe's flagship products, it's hard not to notice that the company rarely, if ever, releases bug-fix updates to their products. Their idea of a bug fix is for the customer to buy the next version. At the same time, they've also implemented draconian and error-prone DRM. When you p*ss off and ignore your customers, they don't upgrade and will jump ship at the first viable alternative. Every designer I know has no plans to upgrade to Adobe's CS5 products when they're released. I know I won't. I don't trust Adobe to fix anything that's wrong with them and I know from years of first-and experience that I can't expect any service from them whatsoever.

At the same time they've been neglecting their core competency, they've been delving into the web and Flash. Without really knowing what they're doing and just expecting people to put up with bloat, bugs, and crashes. Eventually, that reaches a tipping-point and I think that's exactly where the Apple vs. Adobe conflict sits right now. As a company, Adobe has proven over and over in recent years that they're incapable of producing reliable, nimble products. There's already open revolt among web developers who are refusing to implement any more Flash. Even if Adobe fixes it, Flash's days are numbered. So are Adobe's as an independent company. It will be bought out in the near future. It can't continue the way it is and survive. I'm hoping Apple is the one the buys them, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by danegeld

... Adobe is a company on a suicidal downward spiral and Apple knows it. ... If you use Adobe's flagship products, it's hard not to notice that the company rarely, if ever, releases bug-fix updates to their products. Their idea of a bug fix is for the customer to buy the next version. ....

What exactly do you base any of this on? Because I am not sure any of it is true.

Adobe updates its products regularly, including bug-fixes. Have you ever looked at the Adobe updates pages? Here is an example of the updates page for Acrobat Pro, which is fairly typical for Adobe's products.

For what it's worth, Adobe generally seems to respond much quicker than Apple (which is notoriously slow at fixing OS security holes, including taking 6 months to fix a major Java vulnerability last year).

Adobe has it's problems, but they generally make good products and this all-out war, just because Apple has a major shortcoming in iPad's browser, is unfair and unwarranted.

[vaughnmr]

Boy, there is some serious Adobe-phobia in the Apple world! I've never had any problems with Flash, myself BTW.

[clockworkzombie]

I guess a lot of mac users do not like flash because it is has always been inferior to the windows version.

Slower and crashes more often. I have not had crashing problems with flash for a couple of years but certainly my web browsing is a nicer experience since I installed a flash blocker and I can still click on video clips to watch them if I want.

I would call it flash dislike rather than Adobe phobia, most mac users I know are happy with their other Adobe applications.

[Tamara]

Originally Posted by clockworkzombie

I guess a lot of mac users do not like flash because it is has always been inferior to the windows version.

Slower and crashes more often. I have not had crashing problems with flash for a couple of years but certainly my web browsing is a nicer experience since I installed a flash blocker and I can still click on video clips to watch them if I want.

I would call it flash dislike rather than Adobe phobia, most mac users I know are happy with their other Adobe applications.

I think you nailed it .

[tomsem]

I'm a Mac user, and rarely have problems with Flash. I'm more likely to have a problem with Safari and certain web sites, but unrelated to Flash. And I really couldn't say if it is 'slow', even though I use Windows frequently also.

[clockworkzombie]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I'm a Mac user, and rarely have problems with Flash. I'm more likely to have a problem with Safari and certain web sites, but unrelated to Flash. And I really couldn't say if it is 'slow', even though I use Windows frequently also.

If you right click on the Safari toolbar on the same level as the close buttons about an inch away from them you will get the option to customise toolbar.

There you will see a bug report item. When I used to get crashing problems a few years back I would submit a bug report with the url and it would be fixed in a few weeks.

It is certainly worth trying.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I'm a Mac user, and rarely have problems with Flash. I'm more likely to have a problem with Safari and certain web sites, but unrelated to Flash. And I really couldn't say if it is 'slow', even though I use Windows frequently also.

This is my experience as well. Safari is just a not very good browser, and very resource intensive compared to Firefox, as well as to Chrome (also webkit). I used to have Safari as my default browser on every machine, but a few months ago, after a consistent crashes (mostly due to Java issues), I switched to Firefox.

At the time, I tested CPU and memory utilization with the different browsers on a couple of pages I use often (including my iGoogle home page), and Safari consistently came in by far the worst (the current version is better, but still not great).

I really don't have, and have never had, any Flash problems with any of my macs, including an old 1.4 Mini, which has problems doing full screen 720p H.264 video. I think some people blame Flash for unrelated problems they have with their machines, or with Safari.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Sonist

This is my experience as well. Safari is just a not very good browser, and very resource intensive compared to Firefox, as well as to Chrome (also webkit). I used to have Safari as my default browser on every machine, but a few months ago, after a consistent crashes (mostly due to Java issues), I switched to Firefox.
.

Interesting, I used Firefox almost exclusively on macs until a few months ago. Then I got a new mac and found Safari wasn't so bad, and haven't seen fit to install another browser yet, despite the occasional problem.

I use Firefox mostly on Windows, but it's not without problems there, and even today, for some sites, only IE will do.

[danegeld]

Originally Posted by Sonist

What exactly do you base any of this on? Because I am not sure any of it is true.

Adobe updates its products regularly, including bug-fixes. Have you ever looked at the Adobe updates pages? Here is an example of the updates page for Acrobat Pro, which is fairly typical for Adobe's products.

For what it's worth, Adobe generally seems to respond much quicker than Apple (which is notoriously slow at fixing OS security holes, including taking 6 months to fix a major Java vulnerability last year).

Adobe has it's problems, but they generally make good products and this all-out war, just because Apple has a major shortcoming in iPad's browser, is unfair and unwarranted.

I base it on nearly 20 years of daily use of Adobe products. There have been no bug-fix updates to Illustrator CS4. There's been one minor update to Photoshop CS4 and that didn't fix much. There were never any updates to Photoshop CS3. When was the last time you tried to get any customer service from Adobe?

[fugazied]

Flash is shocking on the CPU.
The basic problems of Flash CPU draining the battery and crashing the OS are what kept it off the iPad. If you look at the capabilities of the iPad and what publishers have already done (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/...demonstration/) it doesn't 'need' flash for anything.

Also most OS X crashes are from flash crashing a web browser. One of the reasons Jobs hates it.