Flash on the iPhone, and some thoughts about HTML5

Edmonton Web Design and Photography

Ok, It has been what 3-4 years and flash as yet to be on the iPhone. It has been quiet for years until the release of the iPad and the announcement that they would no longer accept apps compiled with third party compilers. This isn’t speaking to Adobe directly but since Adobe had a Flash App bundle set to release about 2 weeks after the iPad was announced it set the pace for the Brand wars.

Steve Jobs released a public letter “Thoughts on Flash”

Adobe launched an ad campaign We love Apple

A few facts.
Most if not all flash on the net is designed for mouse interaction meaning anything with that requires hovering will suffer on the iPhone only because it was not designed as the designated device for delivery.

This could be addressed by every website that uses hover states.

Why is this an issue?

Let me paint the picture.

You load up the website in question. It is not Mobile optimized meaning the width is probably set to 960px wide. you have a navigation system that uses flashes hover state to navigate the drop down menu.
The text is more than likely to small to read, and then put your finger over top.

This could be fixed for the mobile devices if flash developers stop using Hover or if the iPhone Flash plug-in modifies the code.

What if Hover is used to rotate an object? OK more issues.

More facts.

There are plenty of non-mobile accessible websites on the Internet. I don’t think that having a flash plug-in is going to increase the likelihood that you would come across a flash site as it is. Your search habits will probably be the same. For me I don’t come across to many websites that use flash in as a integral part of the site. If it is then the site in my opinion chose to not be as fully accessible as it could be.

Apple has the right to say what does on their phones.

Apple made the iPhone/Pod/Pad and they can choose what apps they allow on it. If people want a more open system then they should develop for one maybe the Android.

As Steve said about the SDK if there are to many platforms being used the development of core features suffers and I agree.

Flash on Android demo crashes twice. Speaker says “What site would you like to see?” Someone says “Hulu.” Speaker says, “Hulu doesn’t work.”

Via: @jcroft

The people upset are not iPhone developers nor are they really the users of Apple products; they are the flash developers and community.

I feel that Adobe has not put together a game plan (that I have scene) that would address the shortcomings of flash on the mobile web using Apple products.

There is no good way to secure a good user experience on the web with or without flash.

Steve Jobs listed the reasons why Flash isn’t on the iPhone and Adobe has done nothing to change that. The way they can prove that is for Apple and Adobe to work together on this.

I think people are ill informed when they say well HTML5 will solve online animation issues. I’m sure it can! HTML5 will still rely on JavaScript and unless the iPhone processes JavaScript using hardware acceleration I don’t think the animation will be any better. Have you ever tried using the web version of Google maps on your iPhone or a simple jQuery modal pop up? Not so fast is it.

BUT

HTML5 is not a standard and inst set to become a standard for 10 years! Not to mention that their isn’t an application out there that offers a GUI for HTML5 and JavaScript Animation. Even for CSS3. Its like the days of making animations in DOS(that thing that Apple used to run on.) using QBasic

What can be learned from this? Well maybe Apple and Adobe should speak to one another instead of having a teenage spat over the Internet. This isn’t Canadian politics based on he said she said and name-calling.

Make a Mobile Flash standard and show some Initiative Adobe.

GROW UP both of you!

More Reading
http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2010/may/08/android-flash-demo-flashcamp-seattle/

Posted in: Technology, Web on May 13th, 2010

by: Adam Patterson

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Empire Avenuetive

One of Edmonton’s new social networking websites and its really addictive!

Welcome to The People’s Market on Empire Avenue, where you can have fun buying, selling and trading shares in your best friend, your favourite blogger, that band you like or even your mom… anyone! Best of all, it’s totally free.

Via: http://www.empireavenue.com

EAVB_FWPVRIILEB

Posted in: Edmonton, Web on April 29th, 2010

by: Adam Patterson

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pulpTunes – The Web Server for iTunes

This handy application turns your iTunes library into a searchable, sortable online music center. I have been using this at work and streaming music from my home PC with great results.

http://www.pulptunes.com/

Posted in: Music, Software, Web on April 2nd, 2010

by: Adam Patterson

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New in WordPress 2.9: Post Thumbnails!

With the latest update to WordPress 2.9 you now have access to a few new functions to handle thumbnails for blog posts.

I will keep this quick as it is a simple process.

You will need to let wordpress know that your theme supports thumbnails. For this we need to open functions.php and declare thumbnail support. For this we add the following line of code.

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

We will need to set the thumbnail dimensions now.

set_post_thumbnail_size( 80, 80);

It should be noted that this method of resizing will produce an image no larger than 80×80 and will not distort the image.

If you choose to crop for square thumbnails then you would enable Hard-Cropping. This way your image is exactly the size you want. This method will crop the image center out.

To enable Hard-Cropping you would use the following line of code.

set_post_thumbnail_size( 80, 80, TRUE);

My functions.php now looks like this.

if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) {
	    add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
	    set_post_thumbnail_size( 80, 80, true );
	}

Read on..

Posted in: Web, Wordpress on January 2nd, 2010

by: Adam Patterson

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