Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Accepts Flash For Windows Mobile
Ian Lamont writes "Despite Microsoft's aim to take on Adobe Flash with Silverlight, the company has decided to support Flash on Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft has also licensed the Adobe Reader LE software, so owners of Windows Mobile devices will be able to view PDFs. The two companies are working together on integration and OEM distribution, but Microsoft is still mum on when consumers will be able to use Flash or Silverlight on their Windows Mobile phones. The article points out that Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG already support Flash, but only Nokia has announced Silverlight support, and only on some models starting later this year. The other major handset maker — Apple — doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future."
What will it take to replace both Flash and Silverlight by a genuinely open standard (that has a Free Software implementation)?
Not implementing the industry standard while putting in their own competing product would have serious anti-trust implications.
I didn't think there was a version of silverlight for mobile devices? Perhaps I just missed it.
And the deal is for FlashLite, which supports a crappy / old set of API's and is only of use to people developing specifically for it. Getting the real flash player on phones would be a whole lot more useful, but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.
One rumour is that Adobe want Apple to switch to their PDF reader on the iPhone before they'll make Flash available.
Sensibly, Apple don't want to use Adobe's bloated reader application when they have their own fast reliable lightweight PDF reader already.
Flash Lite is also rather useless, there's not a lot of compatible content. I bet adverts are compatible however.
Flash and Silverlight are fully documented, and there exists free implemenetations: Gnash and Moonlight, respectively.
miss all those flash ads on my iPhone.
Hmmm...don't know why this is news:
Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/downloads/player.html
PDF: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrppcdload.html
I've had these installed since 2005.
Note that some flash videos like youtube videos, won't run in this implementation of Flash (so perhaps the article is referring to a version of Flash that *will* run streaming video). The widgets that web site designers tend to embed in their bloated websites do load for me with Windows Mobile 2003.
The "news" part of this may be that it's MS supporting this, not Adobe as it currently is, which may mean a better implementation.
Now burdened with Flash!
Gee. My phone ALREADY locks up, when browsing ("I TRIED to answer your call!), What'll YouTube do to it?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I have an iPhone. I'm *GLAD* it doesnt support flash. Flash is used:
1. For entertainment/cartoons videos. Not terribly important to me.
2. To overcomplicate access to various types of media (mainly so its harder to directly download the media, which makes it impossible to save it an play it offline)
3. By incompetent "webmasterz" to make websites hard to use and look like shit, preventing any possibility of changing the font sizes or colors (becuase they are always incredibly tiny and fuzzy, and in horridly hard to read garish colors), or to copy/paste the text, and to make all the forms and controls as slow and as bloated as possible.
I take it you haven't used Adobe Reader LE on a mobile device. It is a fast, reliable, lightweight PDF reader, especially when you compare it to the competition (I'm looking at you, Clearvue).
Agreed on Flash though, doesn't work for crap.
"The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future." Since when did the tiny install base of a closed platform start competing with Windows Mobile, S60 or RIM? This is just stupid. The iPhone will never be a major player for businesses as long as Emperor Jobs keeps the platform locked down. It can't even multitask.
That's because everyone will switch to Quicktime! Oh yes! It's catching on like wildfire.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Remember that funny "get a Mac" web ad that has the PC on the ladder, attempting to repair the broken Vista signage? That was a Flash-based ad. And millions of iPhone users couldn't even see it. Or hear it.
Without Flash support, many web sites lose important advertising revenue. The lack of Flash support is a true shame, taking power away from customers who have repeatedly asked for this powerful technology. Flash has turned the web into a true capitalist marketplace. Now Apple is stripping the web of the one thing that makes it so great.
In Sarcasm,
LanceJ
It certainly wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to not include it (short of any technical reasons, that is). If Microsoft didn't include it, they certainly wouldn't see more sales. (Depending... some people are quite against flash -- but in a lot of cases those same people are also against Microsoft). Silverlight is similar, but of a much different flavour. In all honesty (to me), it seems as though they just decided one day "Lets try to dip into this market and see where it takes us." I don't seem to see any real force on Microsoft's part to have it completely obsolete Flash (but then again that could just be the AdBlock addon).
If people want it on there it's going on weather Micro$oft likes it or not. Just like with apple's iPhone
Finally, a Slashdot comment worth reading.
I keep hearing contradictory claims about the platforms supported or not supported by Flash Player or Flash Lite... Adobe's website is uninformative. Even their wikipedia articles are imprecise. AFAIK:
Could someone knowledgeable clarify ?
I have a Windows Mobile phone right now (T-Mobile Dash a.k.a. HTC Excalibur) and I can't wait for some sweet Android based mobile phones to come out!!!
I think that software patents are bad as well; however, it's also stupid to say that they are bad because RMS said so.
There is a cult of personality built up around RMS, and there's nothing more frustrating than talking to someone who thinks that old hippy is some kind of "visionary" whose ever word is true. The guy wrote a port of emacs and some dogmatic diatribes on how he thinks software development should work, but people treat him like he is the Jesus of open source.
I've witnessed the confusing litany of name changes and double switches that has occurred with Windows Mobile. It's gone from Windows CE to The OS Formerly Known as Windows CE, to Windows Pocket PC: Pocket Edition for Pockets to, I think, encompass any device with a touch screen that now runs Windows Mobile 5/6. And would I be correct to assume that still excludes "smartphones?"
Palm shows no signs of having Flash on their phones either AFAIK. Which bums me out kind of, but since they work with YouTube in a similar fashion to iPhones, it's not as bad as I guess it could be.
I like music
I have Flash Lite on my phone. I don't think it supports video.
For Windows Mobile phones, it's standard to use TCPMP to play video, since it supports a huge number of codecs.
I guess Microsoft felt left out of the Apple party and wanted a spinning beach ball/wheel of death for Windows Mobile.
Flash is guaranteed to bring a windows mobile device to its knees.
-ted
The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future.
Sometimes I think there's hope for Apple after all.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I just had a horrific vision of me as schoolkid with Bill Gates stood by my front door in a padded dressing gown, giving me a peck on the cheek, putting my schoolcap on my head and saying "Bye, dear, have a nice day at school!"
And Steve Ballmer as my dad waiting in his car by the school gates as I climb into the passenger seat after a hard day at school. And as he turns the key in the ignition, he looks at me and says:
"Son, I think our holiday photos are ready so on the way home I'm going to make a quick stop at the DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS", bouncing up and down in his seat with spittle coming out of his mouth and bashing his bald head against inside of the vinyl upholstered roof of the car...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Consider taking the cock out of your mouth next time you post.
for all the knocking that microsoft takes, at least they can make a machine that is able to surf the internet properly.
it just makes me laugh that even though your toy-making godhead is turning from computers to something he can do a lot better (i.e. portable jukeboxes & phones) he can't even seem to get that right - where's the high speed internet? where's the flash plugin? where's the keyboard?
talk about selling crap to idiots! you could hardly make it up!
You sir have missed the point of Slashdot entirely. CORNING indeed!
Rather simple, yes it's been available for years; but this is Microsoft's way of saying "Hey look, our phones are able to run Flash... now they will by default, what's up Steve, is your phone a pussy?". The browser as of Windows Mobile 6 is a big improvement in terms browser speed/support (And this is the 3rd Windows Mobile phone I've had with a new OS) so it's not an unreasonable thing. The phone will pick up while browsing and while Windows Media player is playing music at the same time without a problem. The main problem in this area is usually vendors who spend too little time on their Windows Mobile software stack before releasing.
.NET, Java (with a JVM) or Native development gives Microsoft a huge head-start advantage on things like Flash support. If Microsoft ever pulls their head out and gets behind their product and forces a tighter vendor certification for handset providers then it will be the best mobile platform out there.
But the big thing is that it's been easy to develop for (+free) and deploy software on to the Windows Mobile phone for a while now. The support for
Also, I'll add, Silverlight isn't there to take on Flash. Silverlight is there to get rid of the abomination which is AJAX.
Flash Player--up to version 9--still supports Mac OS X on PPC. There is/was a full Flash player (v7) for Windows Mobile. It was bad.
Flash Lite 2.0 doesn't support video and is more or less compatible with ActionScript as implemented in Flash 7. Flash Lite 3.0 is very new and does support video and parts of Flash 8's ActionScript. It works on S60/Symbian, BREW and WM5. I don't know what processor architectures it supports. It will run in a browser on WM5/6, but the experience is really unpleasant (though, really, this is WM, so unpleasant is de rigueur.)
I suspect Apple isn't including/adding/supporting Flash or Flash Lite on the iPhone is precisely the reason above: it really does suck. Apple would rather have a clean, if lobotomized, platform, then a interoperability clusterfuck that it Symbian or Windows Mobile.
--srj/mmv
Yeah, just what my Moto Q9c needs - it's sluggish enough with EVDO Rev 0 with a rather friendly implementation of IE to boot....
Until handset vendors can get an ARM processor or equivelent that has some real horsepower and a memory footprint to support it, I'll leave the Flash on my desktop....or not.