Well it is apparently beta, so it’s not been properly released. No doubt a bit of pressure was applied to shove it out the door. It will be interesting to see how Flash copes in a tablet environment. I say this because a touch interface is very, very different to a traditional desktop set up. There are a few things that need to be addressed:

1 - Keyboard access. A lot of Flash content - certainly games - rely on keyboard input. If there is no physical keyboard which is polled regularly by the system so that it can be handed off to the app, then your games that rely on “press space to fire” etc. may well fail (as will other Flash stuff which relies on such interaction). Having a soft keyboard on the screen all the time will, obviously, reduce the screen area that Flash has to be displayed in. Keyboard control for YouTube videos are going to be affected this way too.

2 - Events. Not all events that you get from a keyboard/mouse arrangement are supported. There is likely not to me the equivalent of a mouseover state, for example. Mouseover is an event supported in browsers and Flash which is triggered when you move the mouse pointer over an item. With touch interfaces, there is no mouse, and no pointer. The moment your finger comes into contact with the screen, a “click”, or to be more accurate a “tap” event is created. This is analogous to clicking with a mouse.

3 - Target areas. If you are using a pointer device (mouse, trackpad, etc), then your click happen on a pixel. Your buttons can be small, and this is true about HTML as much as it is with Flash. Thing is, with a touch device your finger does the interactive input, and the area hit is more than one pixel. It’s probably more like 32x32. Now, if the tablet’s OS is clever enough, it may be able to determine that the target area is a smaller sub area of the finger input area, and will offer that information up to the software requesting the information. It will be up to the app in question to take that data and interpret it. Flash may do that, OR it may pass all the data on to the ActionScript code within Flash to do the work. We don’t know how this works yet.

These problems exist because of the very, very different ways one interacts with the differing kinds of devices. Flash was designed in the 1990s, and has not changed much in its approach. It still assumes a mouse and a keyboard - it has yet to respond to the demands of a touch based device. That is Adobe’s problem.

However, any fixes that Adobe implement to support a touch device will not magically happen on your favourite game or web experience. It will be up to the developer to implement the new fixes in their software and update it. This will obviously require updating the development environment to the latest version of Flash - and if the developer is no longer concerned about that particular item, then what good will it be on a tablet?

Yes, you may be saying “but Flash is a video format - that’s why I want it”, and that would be a reasonable demand (apart from the fact that Flash is NOT a video format - it is merely a delivery system). The problem will be that once Flash IS on a tablet, then it will be expected by the user that points (1) (2) and (3) above will be fixed, and quickly. It will be interesting to see how the tablet handles keyboard input within a Flash file. It will be interesting to see how Flash will be developed to handle a touch interface, with gestures, etc..

Tablet device are very different to desktop PCs. I hope that the Flash experience on tablets is more refined than just ensuring it runs within the smaller resources on offer, and can play 720p video. Personally, I fail to see why the clamour for it is there. If my observations are correct, or just close to the money, then it would be better to drop it and let HTML5/CSS/JavaScript (which Flash developers will be comfortable with because ActionScript is very, very similar). Adobe’s Wallaby project shows that it is considering a flash free world. If they can create a rich development platform around web standards than a proprietary format, then I’ll be interested.

Isn't it funny that with Flash, the version you want is always just round the corner? Any time now...

I agree but the Flash is ever present and I personally feel I that the web experience cannot be complete without, whether we like it not. You can be in a strop all you want, shouting how rubbish it is but I wouldn't want a tablet without Flash. And 480p is better better than nothing...

Maybe for you. For me it's never present on my mobile devices and only present on the desktop when I bother to double-click the 'clicktoflash' box, which I very rarely do. Amazingly, I generally manage to operate on the internet without it.

Impossible! Apparently the internet is run on Flash, or something.

+1. I've used a Flash blocker for the last four or five years.

Steady now. I don't read anything stroppy or shouty in Paul's post.

Not having a strop at all. Just sharing the benefits of almost 15 years in the web design industry, as well as my intererst in human/computer relations. I really don't think that there is a Flash future unless Flash itself is radically altered to work within the touch/gesture environment. That does not just mean that Flash itself has to change, but also the existing content on the web has to be updated. Not to do so would impact adversely on the user experience. That's the fact of the matter.

I didn't mean that literally you have a strop...

And again, I agree with you.

But I am saying it is here, in the present. So people can go with out it, some people can't. It is good to have an option to be able to run it if I want to. There is an app for android called "flash on demand" so it is not like you HAVE TO have flash running all the time. You can run it if you want to run it...

That, I suspect is very true.


Now when are they going to have a version for iOS?


All it will need is to be stable, secure and low on battery consumption.


"Soon" maybe?

What would be the point?! You all are giving me the impression that I am the only person in the whole world who actually wants flash. Maybe I am using a different internet than you guys

+2 Flashblocker (Firefox and Chrome) or ClickToFlash (Safari)

I also use NoScript (Firefox) for block all JavaScript from sites I don't know, or don't want tracking me - for example google-analytics is not allowed to run its scripts on my machines.

You know flash will be allowed on an iOS device over Jobs dead body. Anything that could take away from the razor wire walled garden and divert people away from filling the cash coffers even more will be actively discouraged.

Even if Adobe came out with a super secure low power usage mobile flash version it still won't be allowed.
So Jobs speaks, so shall it be done.

Amazon is best hope of a viable alternative to iPad

With or without its own tablet, Amazon can cause problems for Apple

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/20 ... e_to_ipad/

Good article

Wishful thinking at it's best. Take the fact Amazon compete with Apple in certain markets (digital music, ebooks) and then extrapolate it to assume Amazon are therefore going to compete in all the other markets Apple are in, do much better than they might in all of those markets and that Apple will stand still in the meantime. Amazon have expressed no interest in getting into the markets where Apple make most of their money despite having had ample opportunity to do so over an number of years.
Clue : Apple make most of their money selling hardware, Amazon virtually give the Kindle away.

Jon