Why Flash Is Fundamentally Flawed On Touchscreen Devices 521
An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Roughly Drafted:
"I'm a full-time Flash developer and I'd love to get paid to make Flash sites for the 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 to 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. ... All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work."
That's okay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Current Flash-heavy sites do not work well on any other device either.
Welcome to the problem of confusing "web site", "application", "advertisement" and "art installation".
Re:That's okay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Straight up. Sites that use flash or javascript for navigation are an abomination.
Why do you post on an abomination? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sites that use flash or javascript for navigation are an abomination.
In that case, Slashdot is an abomination. It (optionally) uses XMLHttpRequest to load pieces of the comments page without requiring a refresh of the entire page. So why do you post on an abomination?
Re:Why do you post on an abomination? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use the "old style" Slashdot interface, and reading a few comments back in my posting history would inform you on my opinion of changes Slashdot has made to this site (including changes to the interface and fundamental changes to the (meta)moderation system) in the name "Web 2.0."
You must be new here ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be new here ;)
By looking at their UID I'd agree.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely a "new" poster is one with 7 digits?
Re:Why do you post on an abomination? (Score:4, Funny)
And get off my grass!
Re:Why do you post on an abomination? (Score:4, Funny)
God damn kids filling up my internets with all their blewray torrents!
Re:Why do you post on an abomination? (Score:4, Informative)
In that case, Slashdot is an abomination. It (optionally) uses XMLHttpRequest to load pieces of the comments page without requiring a refresh of the entire page. So why do you post on an abomination?
A: Slashdot has interesting content.
B: Slashdot is an abomination. Pagedown goes too far because the bar at the top steals precious real-estate for no reason. Accidentally navigating away and back loses all box text, despite years of tools which save that state for just such eventualities. It runs incredibly slow on iPhones, despite being basically a static page with a reply box. It has a bunch of "Web 1.5" stuff hanging around in the options which hasn't really done much in years. It took about 2 years after the site refresh before it would serve consistently across all browsers.
Hooray for pushing the envelope for sake of pushing the envelope's sake. But if every website were coded like Slashdot, the web would be a far more painful place.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem in TFA actually isn't about Flash(TM) itself, the real problem is the direct coupling of the mouse to the user interface experience via the web. "Hover" is a mouse-specific capability. Flash supports this capability, as well as javascript and other languages, (although Flash sites seem to rely on it more often than others.)
Too many web designers assume a mouse is present, leading to all kinds of human factors problems, not the least of which is handicapped accessibility.
Of course the idea that
Flash only? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not into Flash development, but how would that be different from javascript hover and mouseover features? I think this is a flaw for any advanced interaction feature on any touch enabled device, which means it is not limited to the Flash technology in particular.
Re:Flash only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Roughly Drafted (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. And it's important to bear in mind the source of this editorial: Roughly Drafted.
If Steve Jobs said all Apple users should throw themselves off a cliff, Roughly Drafted would provide a semi-spirited defense of suicide.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Spot on.
Searching for the rationale in an apple fanboi's statement is an exercise in futileness.
It's possibly worse with javascript ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... as the different touch-enabled browsers treat touches a little bit differently:
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/02/do_we_need_touc.html#more [quirksmode.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tested the desktop script ( http://www.quirksmode.org/m/tests/scrollayer2.html [quirksmode.org] ) on google chrome and firefox, and it's weird. Say I hold down and drag and then _stop_, even if the mouse pointer is complete stationary when I release the mouse button, the stuff still moves. If I leave the mouse stationary and just press and release the mouse button it jumps...
Does the actual problem he's complaining about show up when you use a touchscreen or when you use a mouse?
My initial impression is it's when you use
Re:Flash only? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not into Flash development, but how would that be different from javascript hover and mouseover features? I think this is a flaw for any advanced interaction feature on any touch enabled device, which means it is not limited to the Flash technology in particular.
Safari already supports Javascript, that's the difference.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is trying to say that some content relies on hover - something which is obviously impossible to achieve with a touch screen. So half of the flash content would be broken
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are definitely thing that just don't work well on iPhones.
Personally, I'd have touch represent click events, touch-and-drag represent mouseover / general mouse movement events, and touch-twice-and-drag represent the comparatively rare click-and-drag event. That should be sufficient to cover 99% of use cases.
Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most flash apps don't do anything interesting with hovering, so it would be perfectly fine if the implementation just did clicking, or hovering with some weird gesture.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok. Don't work to hard to understand the article because it's complete bullshit. I use flash all the time on my tablet PC using my finger. I've never ran into a problem. It would be a problem in a game where something follows your cursor but I personally find flash much more often used for video/interfaces etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But there's no mouse.
I'm not a big fan of touchscreens, I'm not against them per se but I don't see them going beyond the phone/kiosk due to the physical limitations of using a touchscreen so they wont supplant the Mouse and Keyboard on the PC, at best they will become another peripheral (mouse, KB, Joystick and now touchpad).
Now correct me if I'm wrong but is it not the job of the operating system to interpret user input from whichever input de
Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's anything I've taken from all the Apple talk on its multitouch technology, it's that gestures are everything. What if when Flash is in use, dragging your finger across the display results in "moving the cursor", while a single touch results in a click? Or why not make it function much the same as how laptop touchpads work, where a double-tap+hold equals a click and drag? I can't see that being terribly difficult for Apple or anyone making a touch-based device to implement, really.
I mean, perhaps there's more to it than that, but I can't see the concept of mouseover/hover being a huge showstopper for Flash support on touch-based devices. There are definitely ways around it, and for that matter, there's also CSS/JS mouseover/hover that works the same way. How is this handled on devices like the iPad? Is this also unusable?
Re: (Score:2)
I've been playing with the Nokia N900 recently and it has flash. Works fine *except* when I tried to play a flash game that required click and drag to draw lines. I couldn't find a way to do it that didn't just end up with the page being dragged around rather than the line I was trying to draw.
It might just be that I don't know how to operate it properly, or it could be that there are a few input-related hurdles to get over, but fundamentally flawed? Don't see why at all.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Informative)
the mouse pointer that one can activate by dragging onto the screen from the lower left edge didnt help?
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, that helped, thanks.
It's a bit unwieldy, but it does work.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How would you distinguish between drag and hover in that case? A touchpad has no buttons; it's not a trackpad.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
If the object under the start of the drag is draggable, then it's a drag. If it's not, then it's a hover. Just like trackpads, single finger interactions should not be a scroll action (I know they are, and that's the fundamental problem, not something endemic to Flash). You should use two fingers to scroll, one finger to drag/hover.
Trackpads have solved all of these problems a long time ago, they are not unique to "touch" interfaces, except that touch interfaces have undone many of the solutions already discovered.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Google maps breaks your proposition; as you pointed out, it's using drag to scroll.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No. I would tell Steve Jobs not to dictate technology by banning its use. If HTML5 is better, the market will migrate toward it on its own. Don't be fooled: Apple is trying to maintain app store lock-in, and insulting us by trying to claim this is a technological stance. It's pure greed, not technological purity.
If HTML5 can do everything Flash can do (it can do a lot, but not everything), then all the complaints people have about Flash will simply shift on over to HTML5. Whatever abuses of Flash exist
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Well, you can actually use a trackpad without buttons, too. A quick tap is a single click, a double-tap+hold is a click and drag.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Drag your finger over the button and then remove your finger from the touchscreen?
Re:Not entirely true (Score:4, Funny)
This is all theoretical of course. I doubt there would actually be any demand for these "virtual hand" devices.
Re: (Score:2)
From my understanding of Apple's capacitive sensing, it should be able to simulate variations in pressure by reading the rough diameter of touch. A light touch would have a small contact area for mouseover, a "click" could be a somewhat heavier touch or tap.
Re: (Score:2)
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do
Does this guy really think he's smarter than the engineers at Apple and Adobe?
Sounds to me like a defeatist attitude... The authors microwave probably flashes 12:00.
I can think of a very simple fix - don't let the cursor hover over flash when a finger isn't on the screen.....move it off the animation. Dragging across the flash can activate the hover actions, releasing from a drag can act as click if hovering over a button immediately followed by moving the cursor off the animation. Wham, bam, he's wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Simply do your animations on mouseDown and activate it on mouseUp like most sane people. I've also been doing flash (consequently, on 40,000 mobile devices for the company I work for) and I've been able to make flash work on a touch screen mobile device. I agree with your statement about being defeatist. It sounds like a rigid thinking programmer who took a course on how to do something and can't wrap their heads around alternative solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
Flash is one of the main languages used to develop Surface tables-- and those are nothing but giant touchscreens.
I think the real point here doesn't have anything to do with Flash itself, it's just "applications built for a mouse won't necessarily work on a touchscreen." Which is... duh. (Also true of DHTML applications that make use of rollovers.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a very simple reason why this might technically work, but Apple will not allow it: It's unnatural. Touching the surface is not equivalent to the actionless pointing that the hover event represents. When the user touches the screen, that is already an action event and consequently it's usually mapped to what would be the start of a drag or click interaction on a mouse desktop: "Finger touches the surface = mouse button down." But note that the latter is not the cause but the consequence of touching i
Re: (Score:2)
How can scummVM be on iphone? It would let you run untrusted code.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:4, Funny)
How can scummVM be on iphone? It would let you run untrusted code.
You must be new here.
Never? (Score:5, Insightful)
"current Flash sites could never be made to work well on any touchscreen device"
Really? Never? Just off the top of my head, I could envision a button that put the device in "pointer" mode, maybe with scroll buttons where appropriate, and then used the movement of your finger on the touchscreen as either 1:1 or some kind of relative movement of the pointer. There are probably issues with this approach, yes, but it took me seconds to cobble together. Saying that something is impossible as a matter of user interface is silly. You can always change the UI in some way to make it possible, or even good.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm a Mac fanboy who also does some extremely bad flash design (http://adamsi.com/). I can't figure out how to make the silly, and unnecessary, rollovers on my site work on an iPad. I'm believe everything Apple does is brilliant so their decision to exclude Flash must also be brilliant. Therefore I have to conclude that Flash could never, ever, work on a touchscreen device."
Serious bunch of BS in my opinion. For one, a large number of Flash sites, like the author's, seem to use mouse over for nothing more than effects. Fine, but hardly essential. If all that is transmitted is clicks, they still function ok. Second, the big reason people are up about Flash these days is videos and the like. For better or worse, Flash has become THE web video standard. That may eventually change, but no time soon. As we all know, standards change extremely slowly when there's something works and, well, Flash works. It's not perfect but on most computers, it works just fine for seeing a video of a silly cat jump in a box. Finally, if a site didn't work properly, oh well, shit happens. As it stands all Flash sites are GUARANTEED not to work at all.
I don't buy this as a legit argument at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that the current trend by Apple fanboys is to claim that Apple engineers are completely incompetent. Not long ago, it was
What??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I thought it strange at first that it used a virtual cursor instead of just tapping on an object on the screen but it actually ended up working better and they were able to use
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Absent is definitely worse. Consider the Nokia N800/810/900; touchscreen-based devices (for the 8x0, at least, it's resistive sensing; no multi-touch, though stylus works) with working Flash. Yes, playing Flash games can be hard (some don't require anything other than clicking, but some require keyboard input too which is tricky on a phone-sized device, especially the N800 which lacks a hardware keyboard). On the other hand, long before Pandora had specialized apps for things like the iPhone, I could load h [pandora.com]
Agreed, and the mouseover is elsewhere too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Agreed, and the mouseover is elsewhere too. (Score:4, Insightful)
I could likely click and hold to get that functionality, but I sort of just figured that out while typing this.....
andylim (Score:2)
Not to defend Flash, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in no way a supporter of Flash, but how is this any different than anything else in the browser with a :hover state? With the advent of HTML5 and the Canvas element, which does work on the iPad et al, you're going to run into the same issues if you program them the same way. Now I get his concern that Flash devs would have to rewrite a lot of their already written stuff to work on the iPad if it allowed Flash, but I fail to see how this is any different from the multitude of websites that use hover drop downs for navigation and the like.
The point that we shouldn't be relying on hover states because of the push towards touch devices is a good one but it's not an exclusive problem to Flash. The reason Flash shouldn't be on the iPad, etc, is because it's a horrible bloated and proprietary plugin, and Canvas, HTML5 video, etc can do the same thing. Flash is now a dead end technology. It's only a matter of time before it's phased out altogether.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
give the guy a +1. Hover issues exist, even without flash. I have seen several pages that use html, css or something similar to trigger drop down menus on hover. The better ones allow access to similar resources via a sub page accessed by clicking the trigger spot, the bad ones do nothing...
Title too long (Score:5, Funny)
The title of the article should have been: "Why Flash is Fundamentally Flawed."
Wrong subject. (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to figure out how to properly implement hovering on devices that physically don't allow you to hover. Otherwise it's going to take years until web development catches up with the reality of half the users not being able to access half the features.
could you be any more dramatic? (Score:2)
Thank you for spelling out the conclusions Apple likely made (internally) leading up to the decision not to support flash on
it's initial release and brain storming some possible solutions. I don't see why the problem you've defined is anything more
than just another engineering challenge. The web is a pretty elastic place, I'm sure it'll evolve as touch screen interfaces
become more mainstream. I encourage you to view this as an opportunity to make a ton of money instead of a crisis.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, this isn't it. Their decision process goes more like this: "Flash allows people to run software on their phone that they didn't buy through the App Store. We have to reject it, but start thinking of reasons that don't sound so much like 'we are greedy bastards.'" Otherwise, where is Java? Hover is certainly not uni
Bullshit (Score:2)
First, the amount of hover usage in flash isn't that great. There are tons of completely static animations that don't have any interaction of any sort. And there are plenty games that just require clicking in place. A lot of flash content that gets passed around is stuff like the Kenya and Magical Trevor animations.
Second, the lack of hover is simply a lack of imagination on Apple's part. On my N900 for instance, I can have a pointer that works for flash by starting to drag from the border of the screen. No
Multitouch (Score:2)
Most new devices with capacitative screens also support multitouch. Interpret touches with two fingers as mouse hover, and one finger as a click/click & hold, or vice versa, depending on what's more intuitive and better for accuracy. There, issue solved, no new hardware required.
Or switch to digitizing technology for the displays which support better resolution for pressure. Interpret light touches as mouse hover.
Not to mention that proximity detecting screens that Apple, of all companies, patented a wh
Touchscreen is limited (Score:2)
The real reason is flash would cost Apple $ (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ding ding ding ding ding ding!
I love Apple's products as much as anyone, but the above comment's assessment of the situation is dead-on. They *could* make it happen, they certainly could make it an imperfect option, but the real fact is that Apple wants to keep a tight control the delivery of downloadable music, video and games on this platform.
Re: (Score:2)
But ummm.... (Score:2)
One is tempted to divide the flash world in two -- the majority of the flash apps are advertising plug-ins, while a minority are useful applications like games and such.
The former should simply not be used on mobile devices. Most web pages are too filled with crud as it is, flashing ads that I don't ever look at are nothing more than a waste of space, time and power. On a mobile device this moves from annoying to a real problem.
The games, on the other hand, I'd love to have. Sadly, in this case I agree full
Flash rethink? (Score:2)
Whatever reason Apple has for not liking Flash (I have yet to see a definitive explanation) all this negative press about Flash, coupled with the Flash/HTML5 debate can only be a good thing. In my view, Flash has way more things wrong with it (breaking the semantic web) than the benefits it brings to the table. If all this discussion either prompts Adobe to fix all that, or something better is suggested instead (HTML5?), it can only be a good thing.
To many free flash games?? (Score:2)
The free games take away from the locked in app store.
The App Store (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. The AppStore makes a fair amount of money, but for Apple, it's just above break-even once they've taken bandwidth, marketing etc.
What the AppStore is add value to the product; it sells hardware, much like iTunes does for iPods.
So yeah, it would affect the bottom line somewhat, but that'd probably be bolstered by the fact a lot of good apps would be in the AppStore without any of the trivial crap-apps (iFart etc.).
In addition they'd also be able to talk abut excepting Flash, which some people th
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the available apps could easily be mimicked using Flash
Indeed. I'm shocked at how frequently Slashdotters will offer technical reasons as to why Flash isn't on the iPhone, without realizing this. It makes me wonder if there was ever an article posted here on this.
Re:The App Store (Score:5, Informative)
The real reason why Apple would never allow Flash to work on one of it's mobile devices is simple. The App Store. Most of the available apps could easily be mimicked using Flash, and made easily available. This would not be a good thing for Apple's bottom line.
As noted above [slashdot.org], this rationale is easily disproved by Apple's encouragement of offline HTML5 [apple.com] web apps.
I don't understand the hate. (Score:2)
I don't understand the massive criticisms Apple gets for not including Flash on the iPhone/iPad. These are not desktop computers; they are mobile devices with limited resources for limited purposes. If the iPhone came with Flash support, people would be complaining to the hills about their web surfing being SO SLOW and their batteries getting drained to the max.
Many people (I'd even bet on saying most people) use Flash for viewing video, and HTML5 + H.264 take care of that quite well and much more efficient
That's not why iDevices don't support flash (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's not why iDevices don't support flash (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple are in support of HTML5, even as an app development market. Flash is off the iPhone/iPad purely for licensing cost reasons and secondarily due to the UI issues - it's got little to do with competing with the app store itself. They make the bulk of the money on hardware sales, the app store breaks even/has small profit.
Article is fundamentally flawed (Score:2)
The article boils down to one argument: Many current Flash applications expect mouse hover, and since mouse hover is not supported on the iPad, all Flash applications will not work. Let me tear this down quite simply.
1) This problem has nothing to do with Flash. It applies to all development tools. By his reasoning, no programming tools should be ported to the iPad.
2) This problem has nothing to do with the iPad. It applies to almost all hand-held, portable, or touch-screen devices. By his reasoning, n
That’s a stupid idea, and you’re a stu (Score:2)
At the risk of sounding like flamebait... allow me to explain.
There is absolutely nothing unique about Flash that makes it “fundamentally flawed” on a touchscreen. You have the same “problem” with ANY application on such a device, whether it be native code, Java, javascript/ajax, or Flash.
It’s only a “problem” when you INSIST on using mousover effects, which are usually redundant and annoying anyway... and you’re an idiot if you design an application which can
Really? (Score:2)
Roughly Drafted - The Lunatic Fringe of OSX Fandom (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously people, this is Roughly Drafted we are talking about here. Sure the zealot in charge has now toned down the abusive comments and graphics on the page and made it look somewhat sanitised, but this is a site that is the Apple equivalent of Little Green Footballs in its heyday. Memorably referred to as the "lunatic fringe of Mac fandom [google.com]". Pretty much any article on that website is guaranteed to be slanted so much in favour of the Apple Party Line that to expect rational, even analysis is pointless. Flash has worked on dozens of touchscreen devices for years now. Many of these devices have come up with UI and/or gesture cues to invoke the rollover/mouseover state that Flash and Javascript like using (often involving a "pointer mode"). Because of Adobe's new push, Flash will soon be working on hundreds of new devices. As a result, I am sure that both the workarounds and new gestures to replace and to augment rollover will become both more usable and more common.
Opinion of a UI Game Developer who leverages Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
This entire story is FUD; I took the bite though...
I'm a user interface lead at a game studio which is leveraging a Flash-based solution that could target consoles. I already did this once before on CnC3:Kane's Wrath (a title with PC and 360 SKUs), and have done contract work creating a Flash Lite application for the Sony Mylo 2 (touch screen.) Besides all this I also teach Introduction to Interactive Media at a local college which has a successful curriculum based around Flash, and yet touches on aspects of touch-devices and alternate input (non-browser) environments.
All that said about my qualifications I make this statement:
Flash works in it's existing form on these devices.
Its my professional opinion that it would work fine on an iPad or iPhone and the non-technical agenda Apple has is what's preventing it from manifesting itself on those platforms.
The title of this article is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
I find it interesting that the title is why "Flash is fundamentally flawed on touchscreen devices" and not "Why Certain Touchscreen Devices (aka iPad) are limited and will not work with Flash". This is obviously an attack on the Flash framework as a way to redirect criticism away from the iPad. Apple has clearly mistepped here and now they are trying to do damage control. My understanding is that other touchscreen devices that are coming out in the market place will support Flash (e.g., HP Slate), and it will probably be seamless. I was quite interested in the iPad when the news came out but now that it won't support Flash, and locks users into the monopolistic "App Store" I am no longer interested. Only Apple would try something like this... they seem to be stuck in the monopolistic 90s.
The iPhone handles mouseovers already (Score:3, Informative)
... well, to some degree anyway.
It does this by essentially transforming the mouseover event to a intermediate click event. For example, if you have a link that has a popup menu displayed on :hover, clicking the menu item will first show the popup menu. Clicking again follows the actual navigation. Although this doesn't address the issue of mystery-meat navigation and over events that are less obvious, it does seem to work well. I don't see why Flash couldn't do the same.
To me, the issue with Flash is all about playback experience. Adobe can't even get the player to be efficient and smooth under OS X on decent hardware, so having it on my iPhone sounds tortuous.
Ignore RoughlyDrafted (Score:5, Interesting)
RoughlyDrafted is nothing but an Apple apologist site. This is the same site that told us why we didn't want apps on the original iPhone (never mind that apps have now made the iPhone a huge success), how Android was doomed to fail (despite the fact that it's taken a significant share of the smartphone market in under two years), and how the iPad doesn't need HDMI (apparently a VGA output that does 1024x768 is a good substitute).
To RoughlyDrafted, any problem with an Apple product is a problem with us, not with the product. No apps? We don't really want them. No HDMI? We didn't really need that anyway. No real multitasking? We didn't want that either because it opens the door to "viruses and spyware that run in the background".
What a bunch of crap. Not even Mossberg is that bad.
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what my friend here is trying to say is that perhaps it is the touchscreen input that is "fundamentally flawed." The same argument could be applied to CSS hover and javascript mouseovers. Should Apple simply dispose of Safari on the iPad, because it is "fundamentally flawed?" There are lots of sites that use css hover menus. Poor iPad users will have a bad experience with those sites, so should we then remove the browser?
We all know Apple bans Flash because it would allow third party apps that don't have to forfeit 30% of revenue to Apple. Plain and simple. All other explanations are just someone's absurd mental gymnastics to justify Apple's stupid and shortsighted iPhone OS policies.
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:5, Interesting)
I really wish I had mod points, you're exactly right there.
The reason that inability to hover "never gets talked about" is that everybody competent knows that if something is important, don't hide it behind hover - it's almost always bad for usability and accessibility. Any website or web application that relies on hover effects is, quite frankly, broken. Sure, it may look nice and be convenient, but there should always be an alternative accessible way to navigate through an application.
If my 3 year old N95 runs Flash and can display content reasonably, there's no technical reason that the iphone/ipad can't too. Apple's decision to miss out Flash has nothing to do with performance or usability, and everything to do with money. Anyone who claims differently is a deluded apologist Apple fanboy.
Not standard is bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
if something is important, don't hide it behind hover - it's almost always bad for usability and accessibility. Any website or web application that relies on hover effects is, quite frankly, broken. {...} there should always be an alternative accessible way to navigate through an application.
Well, the same arguments could apply for Flash menu themselves. In fact, the same argument would apply for anything which isn't done 100% using an open standard such as HTML5/CSS.
Given the recent crop of environment and device which lack support for flash (well, until Gnash improves and gets ported), there's currently a lot of websites which will suffer from not being accessible enough.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> Anyone who claims differently is a deluded apologist Apple fanboy.
And if she floats she's a witch.
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:4, Insightful)
Clarification: The decision to not allow Flash is on Apple, but the problems with Flash are not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We all know Apple bans Flash because it would allow third party apps that don't have to forfeit 30% of revenue to Apple. Plain and simple. All other explanations are just someone's absurd mental gymnastics to justify Apple's stupid and shortsighted iPhone OS policies.
And how do you reconcile this opinion with all the effort that Apple has put into making it possible for offline HTML5 apps to act indistinguishably from native code apps ... and, indeed, for the first year after the iPhone's unveiling, it bein
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How about for "years", we substitute "right now"?
http://www.yourappshop.com/ [yourappshop.com]
for instance.
Flawed Logic in OP (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. With the OP's logic, half of the internet should be banned from the entire i* line of products. However, there are two hardware solutions that could solve the problem for all touch screen devices.
1) Add proximity sensing. Not just for your whole face, but to sense when a finger is held near the screen. It is capacitive touch after all.
2) Add active stylus input. The main thing I miss on my Droid vs my old Palm Handheld is the fine grain control afforded by a stylus. I know Palms were just pressure touch sensitive and so had the same hover issues. But I also have a Table PC and I can hover the stylus over the screen to move the pointer without ever touching the screen. Then a tap on the screen is the same as a click. I don't care what Steve Jobs says, I like having a stylus.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I looked into the styluses for capacitive touch screens. They are just as big as the end of my pinky finger. I want something with a point about the size of a regular pencil. Just like I have on my Tablet PC and had on my Palm.
As to touch sensitive regular screens. I used to retrofit regular monitors for touch-screens as part of a job I once had. That worked for the environment where they were to be used but I would never use a touch screen on my regular desktop. I have so much more control with a mouse. I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, actually detecting the finger hovering over but not touching the screen might be pretty problematic. There have already been two ideas that I think are much better than mine. The solution used in the Storm seems the most intuitive. Slide your finger to hover, press harder to click. That would also prevent all the accidental taps I get on my Droid.
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't make much money off that 30% cut. The iTunes store brings in just enough money to cover their expenses on it, as reported every quarter in their results. They make their real profit off the hardware they sell. So I doubt Apple is blocking Flash just to keep that 30% coming in. Flash apps (if they were really all that important) would be helping to sell more hardware for Apple, without the overhead of hosting peoples apps.
Apple bans Flash because they are tired of dealing with Adobe. Only now is performance suddenly important to them, over half a decade after buying Macromedia. Only now is it critical for Adobe to try and bring real Flash to the mobile space (and not the crippled/useless Flash Lite), even though smartphones have been around a while. And Adobe is the only company that can make Flash better, since it's not an open internet specification.
Javascript/HTML rendering on the other hand was something Apple could improve without having to wait on some other company. So Apple was able to launch their iPhone product years ago with a great browser, and bring in more hardware revenue. Had they also wanted to include Flash and held back the device till it was ready, the iPhone still wouldn't have shipped. Why? Because Adobe still hasn't made a mobile release (not beta/alpha/whatever) version of Flash for any mobile device/platform. The only way real, true proper, non lite flash works on phones now is with browsers dependent on a server somewhere doing the heavy lifting.
This may just be "absurd mental gymnastics" to you, but I've at least backed part of my comment here with actual information on what Apple does with their 30% (IE, not make money with it, just using it to cover expenses), instead of speculating it's some big important thing for Apple's bottom line.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know what else could cover the expense of running an app store? Opening the platform so people can install apps from other places.
The app store gives them more than just income - it gives them control over what runs on the platform. This is a dangerous trend, and that's the real problem with this whole thing.
Re:Eat my balls! (Score:4, Informative)
Apple bans Flash because they are tired of dealing with Adobe.
This seems more likely to me. The Apple/Adobe relationship has seemed a bit strained lately. Adobe often provides better and more support to Windows users, and they've been very slow to move to Cocoa. Meanwhile, Apple has been competing with Adobe in the audio/video realm.
Plus, Steve Jobs has been reported as saying that Flash sucks, is too slow and unstable, and takes up battery life. This is true. It's annoying on Windows, but on OSX, Flash is a disaster. It seems like this should be a case where Slashdotters could support Apple; they're essentially saying, "This stuff should be done according to more open standards like HTML. Let's work on HTML5 to get it to do the things we need and get rid of Flash."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple bans Flash because they are tired of dealing with Adobe. Only now is performance suddenly important to them, over half a decade after buying Macromedia.
And the response from the minority party, presented by Tinic Uro of Adobe:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html [kaourantin.net]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
People keep talking like the appstore is hugely profitable for Apple: Do the math, it's quite likely not. I'm not saying it's irrelevant but hardware sales dwarf the appstore revenue by such a wide margin that the appstore just cannot be anythi
Re:Stupid explanation from someone with no creativ (Score:2)
I have my PHYSICAL hardware not behave as expected very frequently when attempting to navigate Flash-based sites - my scroll wheel almost never works, and forms often don't respond to hitting enter as expected. If Flash devs can't get that basic level of functionality working for completely standard hardware, I can't imagine how much it would suck trying to make it worth with a plethora of virtual devices. And of course, any sort of hack to simulate mouseovers on a touchscreen device is going to be, well,