Slashdot Mirror
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."
My 5800 from Nokia supports Flash - might not be perfect, but it's there for when I do need it.
And in response to the article - for heaven's sake! The Ipad isn't even released, and now people talk about it as if it was the definitive touch screen device! Doing this for the Iphone was bad enough, when there were companies with larger market share. Now we have a product that has obviously zero market share being portrayed as the single market leader...
Sure, it's a valid argument for why the Ipad is of little interest in a market filled by (far cheaper) netbooks that have a real keyboard and where Flash works fine. But the spin doesn't seem to be why "Here's why touchscreen only devices are bad for Flash" but rather "Here's why Flash is bad for touchscreens, and the almighty Apple are so wonderful for not allowing it!"