Posts tagged flash
Adobe Flash gives up on iPhone, gives out on Android?
Aug 21st
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has told Telegraph that, since Apple’s just not that into Flash, he and his almost ubiquitous plugin are moving on:
“We believe in open systems. We believe in the power of the internet and in customers making choices and I think a lot of the controversy was about their decision at that point. They’ve made their choice. We’ve made ours and we’ve moved on.” [Telegraph]
The part about openness, of course, is Eric Schmidt-level disingenuous. It has nothing to do with corporate philosophy and everything to do with trying to pander for sympathy from a large, active user base. Unfortunately, it tends to work so if you’re feeling any FOSS-pangs on Adobe’s behalf, remind yourself that what they and their complaint to the FTC are all about is preventing developers getting locked into Xcode so Adobe can lock them into CS 5, and preventing video getting moved to HTML 5 so Adobe can keep it in Flash. And that’s all fine, that’s all great — it’s what a company should be doing for their products. It just shouldn’t be wrapped in “openness” buzzwords, it should be wrapped in great, jaw-dropping, must-have technology.
Which brings us to the one mobile device OS Adobe has actually managed to ship Flash on some 3 years after everyone was demanding it on the iPhone — Android 2.2. Android Central has given it fairly positive reviews. Laptop Magazine’s Avram Piltch on the other hand was somewhat less than thrilled with the shipping version, given his headline:
Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right [Laptopmag]
He’s referring to Steve Jobs’ open letter on Flash and subsequent comments at the D8 conference. The headline is sensationalistic for certain (though who am I to judge, see above), but then Adobe’s John Dowdell, after the reading the article, seemingly intimated Piltch was using an illegitimate version of the software on a hacked device (which he wasn’t). [Macalope]
I’ve used Mobile Flash on my Nexus One and it’s… okay. If this was 2007, it would even be promising. As it is, in 2010, Adobe can certainly move on from Apple, but it seems mobile is rapidly moving past Flash.
Adobe Flash gives up on iPhone, gives out on Android? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Updated: Frash brings Flash to iPhone Jailbreak
Aug 9th
We’ve seen Frash, the Jailbreak port of Android Flash, on the iPad but now it’s making its move over to iPhone courtesy of Comex who coded it and Grant Pannell who compiled it.
Ally is going to look at this more in depth later in the week, but if you’re Jailbroken and you’ve just been dying to get some Flash on your iPhone, there’s now an alpha for that.
I’ll just note here, however, that I’ve turned the official Flash 10.1 mobile off on my Nexus One since it didn’t really rock my world (maybe I’m just used to not having it?), and while they complain about Apple like whiny kids on a forced march, Adobe still hasn’t shipped a working version of Flash for webOS or BlackBerry — two platforms that really, really want it.
All that to highlight just how alpha and unofficial this Frash build is, and remind you to keep an eye on your resources. (Or check out Comex’s tweet longer…]
Update: Ben Miller let us know that you can now go to his Cydia repo, repo.benm.at, to install Frash more easily.
[DigitalDJ.net, thanks everyone who sent this in]
Updated: Frash brings Flash to iPhone Jailbreak is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
New style YouTube embed for Flash-free iPhone video
Jul 25th
YouTube is experimenting with a new i-frame based embed style that would server up good ole’ Flash video for machines that support it and new fangled HTML5 video for Apple’s iOS devices, iPhone and iPad:
An enhancement to our video embed capability is now available through a new embed code style. This new style uses <i-frame> and looks like this:
<iframe type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0"></iframe>
So, somewhere down the road, you’ll be able to play the YouTube video you want, in-line on the website you want, on the device you want, Apple and Adobe be damned.
Example after the break.
New style YouTube embed for Flash-free iPhone video is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
CBS.com to Serve HTML5 Video for iPad?
Mar 25th
The Other Mac Blog and MacRumors have discovered and confirmed that CBS.com is at least testing iPad-compatible playback ahead of Apple’s magical new device launch on April 3.
This new version of the video does not yet work but appears to be based on HTML5. The css files reference HTML5 and have a number of “webkit” specific calls. Webkit is the browser engine used in the iPad’s mobile safari. While the videos don’t currently play, the “fullscreen mode” reportedly already works in the iPad simulator.
UPDATE: 9to5Mac has several examples up of the site in the iPad simulator.
The iPad, like the iPhone and iPod touch, doesn’t support the Flash plugin that CBS.com uses for computer-based browsers. More and more sites, including YouTube are testing HTML5 as an alternative, however, so It will be interesting to see if CBS.com pulls the trigger on it, and how many other big media properties follow suit. Hulu anyone?
CBS.com to Serve HTML5 Video for iPad? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Flash CS5 Can Compile iPhone Apps, Launches April 12
Mar 24th
Adobe has announced that their CS5 suite, the latest version of their industry leading content creation tools like Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, will be launching April 12 (with availability likely to follow at a point that is later).
The big news for iPhone developers is that Flash CS5, as previously reported, will allow ahead-of-time-compiling that should allow for easy (or easier) porting of Flash apps to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
So, if you prefer developing in Flash rather than Xcode and don’t mind the lack of interface builder tools, you can stay in Flash and spit out iPhone binaries. (Just please — please — make them awesome).
Though not specifically iPhone related, Adobe is providing some sneak previews of other CS5 apps, including one I still don’t — nay, can’t — believe is real: content aware fill for Photoshop (embedded below, but watch it on as big a screen as you can.)
Now if they were to add this to an iPad version of a PhotoShop.com app…
Flash CS5 Can Compile iPhone Apps, Launches April 12 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Flash-Free Versions of NPR, Wall Street Journal Web Sites Coming for iPad
Mar 17th
All Things Digital is reporting that NPR along with The Wall Street Journal are just a few of the big-name media outlets preparing Flash-free versions of their respective sites specifically for Apple’s new iPad.
While National Public Radio is scrambling to have their iPad application available for the iPad release date, they are also putting the finishing touches on their app alternative solution for users to listen to their programming directly from the iPad on April 3rd.
“Use the iPad’s browser to visit NPR.org, which will detect that it’s being viewed with Apple’s device and serve up a custom-built site. This means no trace of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, which is used to power graphics and media on the site.”
The Wall Street Journal will also have their Flash-free, iPad specific, front page in a few short weeks. However, the deeper you click into their site you will find that Flash does still exist. That’s certainly understandable given how large the site is and how deeply Flash content, especially video and advertising, has been integrated. Detecting iPad Safari’s unique user agent string might be easy enough (that’s how so many sites detect and deliver iPhone optimized web sites already), but setting up complete mirrors absent Flash is by no means a simple task and may not be a viable solution for those sites out there that depend on Flash to display most of their content. (Though hopefully it will cause sites that use Flash for no reason — we’re looking at you restaurants! — to rethink the decision and switch to more basic, searchable, and friendly standards based technologies).
As the battle between Adobe and Apple over Flash continues to heat up, it’s interesting to see where the chips are falling. Is not having Flash on the iPad or iPhone still a concern to you? Let us (and them) know how you feel in the comments!
Flash-Free Versions of NPR, Wall Street Journal Web Sites Coming for iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Android, Flash 10.1, and battery life
Feb 25th
There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about Nexus Ones running the Desire ROM from Paul at MoDaCo, which includes Flash 10.1. We’ve seen demonstration videos, and lots of speculation about Flash’s drain on the battery. But Adobe caught wind of the hubbub and decided to clear a few things up. First of all, they say the ROM employs an alpha version of Flash Lite, and not Flash 10.1. They also put together a long test video to give us all a better idea of the battery life we can actually expect with the final version of 10.1, and if this demonstration is representative of the final product, we should be able to watch a full movie before the phone croaks. Vid after the break:
Via Engadget
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