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Why Flash Is Fundamentally Flawed On Touchscreen Devices

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."

7 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Title too long by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Funny

    The title of the article should have been: "Why Flash is Fundamentally Flawed."

  2. Re:Not entirely true by localman57 · · Score: 3, Funny

    How can scummVM be on iphone? It would let you run untrusted code.

    You must be new here.

  3. Re:Not entirely true by T+Murphy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Easy. Use an optional peripheral that acts as a "virtual hand"- it controls where the "virtual finger" is at all times, so the cursor always has position information. This "virtual hand" could have buttons on it to perform "virtual clicks", and with multiple buttons it could perform both "virtual left clicks" and "virtual right clicks". The simplest implementation would track movement by having a ball on the bottom, so that it must be dragged on a surface to move it. With the right technology, an optical version might be feasible, reducing the number of moving parts.

    This is all theoretical of course. I doubt there would actually be any demand for these "virtual hand" devices.

  4. Re:Eat my balls! by k2r · · Score: 2, Funny

    > Anyone who claims differently is a deluded apologist Apple fanboy.

    And if she floats she's a witch.

  5. Re:Why do you post on an abomination? by Psion · · Score: 3, Funny

    Seven digits?! What do you kids *do* with all those extra numbers?

    And get off my grass!

  6. Re:Why do you post on an abomination? by juuri · · Score: 3, Funny

    God damn kids filling up my internets with all their blewray torrents!

    --
    --- I do not moderate.
  7. Re:Roughly Drafted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    but the only apple users who would get to read it is those who chose a short cliff...