'Adobe is lazy' says Steve Jobs

[tomsamson]

It would be cool if i could post the last few things i said there before i was thrown out.
Since i´m not allowed to do that its a moot point to reply to you, all i can do is say that´s at best partially true.

[Sietjp]

I understand Flash not being supported on an iPhone/iPod, but I feel that the reason why it's not on the iPad is more political than technical. Anyway, I do'nt think that Flash will play a role on the success/failure of the iPad. The key question is "do I really need an iPad at home?". My answer right now is "no, because I have already a laptop", but I could change my mind after I try it.

[Incrue]

What about director, unity or java, does this i thing suport it?
nevermind, found the answer already
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/02/01/...e-ipad-cometh/

[tomsamson]

yeah, it doesn´t support any third party browser plugin, so any tech that should go on there and can´t be done without needing a browser plugin has to have a deploy path to be turned into a native app so one can as developer use it on the own devices or submit it to the app store so that everyone can use it on his/ her device.

No matter if one likes it or not, Apple has a pretty straightforward approach regarding tech they see as outdated or not good enough: They just cut it or don´t include it in their newer devices.
They were for example one of the first to leave out floppy drives from their desktop machines, still don´t add bluray drives and release things like the Air which doesn´t come with any optical drive.

[MikeMD]

Apple has a pretty straightforward approach regarding tech they see as outdated or not good enough: They just cut it or don´t include it in their newer devices.

If that were true they would close shop because everything they sell is outdated and behind times compared to the PC side. Take mac book pro for example, it's ridiculously behind times compared to what one can get on the PC side. i7 chips, better, newer video cards with more options, and so on.

iPad is an already obsolete technology and it's not even out yet ( a $500 - $1000 device that runs just one app at a time, doesn't let you view 95 % of web that requires any kind of animation, games... )

Apple just wants to control what and who makes money, that's all. They don't see flash as outdated, they see it as competition to what they want to do.
Same with blue ray. They want it do die so people are eventually forced to use iTunes and Apple store instead of blue ray DVDs.

[tomwood]

The other thing HTML 5 can't provide is an easy way to distribute a project, such as the .swf file for a game. You'd have to distribute all the HTML 5, javascript, sounds, graphics, etc instead of one nice compact file.

Hope it's okay to add on to this thread since it addressed some of the issues I am concerned about when I did a search.

I publish a webcomic that is basically a slide show of about 20-25 panels, each with text and images in a single Flash SWF. The panels are not JPG images with text because Google is pretty good about reading the text inside the Flash SWF.

With the coming of iPad I did some research on alternatives to Flash, and the quote above captures what seems to be the consensus with HTML5. Which makes it pretty clumsy for me since I would have to manage a much more complicated file system just to build the slideshow. And since I'm updating three times a week, that very quickly turns into hundreds of files to manage.

So, from what I've gleaned from CS5, is it true that CS5 will end up providing Flash on the iPad? I'd much rather stick with Flash than try to do my webcomic in HTML5. And wow, I just got pounded on Boing Boing for saying so!

[flashisland]

So, from what I've gleaned from CS5, is it true that CS5 will end up providing Flash on the iPad?

That's partially right. CS5 doesn't actually publish it in Flash but converts it to an iPad/iPhone application. You'd then need to give away/sell your application in the App store for users to view it. Keep in mind that you'll need to be an Apple developer to do this though, which does cost some money.

[tomwood]

Hmmm...

That seems clumsy too for a webcomic since it kills the serendipity of finding things by surfing around.

I guess I'm back to a slideshow then. I think I'll export an image sequence from Flash and use MooTools or JQuery to set up the slideshow. Now I'll also have to add a browser detector and a new section of my webpage just for the iPad. Thanks Apple.

[dandylion13]

tomwood,

Maybe even CS5's iPod/iPad export option would be OK in this case? I imagine a simple slideshow as you've described it would not be too performance intensive, so it might just be the perfect candidate to export from Flash to iPad/iPod.

There is a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about HTML 5, so don't let those steampunk-ukulele cultists at Boing Boing get you down HTML 5 can't replace Flash for web apps, and no one has yet figured out the video codec licensing issues, which could be its achilles heel. Plus, Google is backing Flash:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/fla...in-api-coming/

[tomwood]

Thanks dandylion,

The CS5 export sounds promising. I'll be honest and say I haven't followed its development too closely so I'm not aware of all the features yet.

The webcomic is linked in my signature if you want to see what I'm doing. (Not trawling for hits, but it is there.) It's a pretty basic slideshow.

[Alluvian]

But the cs5 export creates an app though, right? A one time standalone app. So it would be making one app for each webcomic the way he is doing it now, which would be silly and mean each one would have to go through the apple approval process, insane.

So unless you use html5/javascript, ipad just isn't going to be reading your webcomic. Or quite possible I don't understand what the ipad export does...

Ipad owners have to realize that their device is lacking, not the website. The reasons to not allow flash really boil down to greed, if people could use flash on the device, 90% of the appstore would be redundant. This will become pretty obvious to the market if another high profile tablet comes out that handles flash just fine, like the HP slate. Courier looks awesome, but probably won't be a very good web device, more a notebook productivity replacement for the office.

[dandylion13]

But the cs5 export creates an app though, right?

You could make a reader app for your comic series and then just send it content when it comes available. You wouldn't need a separate app for each comic.

Tomwood, looking at your comic, you could very easily build a web-based reader for it with just a dozen or so lines of javascript. That might solve your problem easily. No need to worry with Flash plug-ins or apps

[tomwood]

I looked into Javascript slideshows and this one based on MooTools looked the most promising:

http://mootools.net/forge/p/slideshow

Mainly because it can swap DIVs in addition to images. (Others may also, this one was explicit about saying it could.)

My Flash SWF is about 45KB for a 20-25 panel comic. The only way I see to keep the total file size in the same range is to NOT use a series of JPG images for each panel, which would be about ten times the KB.

What I'd need to do is set up the blue background in a DIV using a 1 pixel wide rectangle with the blue gradient and use x-repeat in the background CSS.

Then set up my two heads as PNG image files (with alpha) that are used over and over in alternate DIVs so it's just two files for the images.

Then, the tricky part, set up DIVs for each of the text blocks and float them left or right. The crappy part here is that I'm forced back to Dreamweaver so I can preview the text layout like I can in Flash.

Sound like the right approach?

Lots of workaround work here! This is going in the wrong direction!

[programicks]

I have noted that the new html5 can play video, but a video file like an mov, mp4 is not a load of assets loaded with js, it's a single container secure from anyone opening it in the same way as a js for a game to look at the code.
Therefore, if html5 still needs to launch a single container file for video, why not html5 launch a single file format like swf with all assets including the code for a game? Better still, games and videos. If they could make sure html5 loads in their file format for video rather than mp4, mov then they can secure Flash?
To play video in Firefox, don't you need to install an addon to play video anyway?
So, html5 is just replacing the download of one thing with another. The download of video codec instead of flash plugin?

[BlinkOk]

google ports quake 2 to html5
http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/

[flashisland]

So, html5 is just replacing the download of one thing with another. The download of video codec instead of flash plugin?

That's a really good point. Everyone is complaining that Flash isn't open source but neither are these video codecs. Essentially it would be the same as if HTML5 could play flash files without the Flash plug-in.

BlinkOk, I saw that port a few days ago. From the video it looks very impressive, so clearly you can make games using HTML5. The question is whether you'd rather mess around with HTML5 at this point or just use a technology that already exists (Flash). Just because you can make games in HTML5 doesn't mean that you should or that it would even be cost-effective from a development standpoint. However I can see these type of HTML5 games taking off if Apple continues to play their game at refusing Flash on their devices. Basically you're "solving" a problem that Apple created, when actually the existing solution (Flash) is a better technology to begin with.

[BlinkOk]

apple doesn't want any games to run in the browser. they don't make any money off it.

[redjag]

The Quake port utilizes WebGL which gives hardware accelerated graphics, so in that respect HTML5 has one up on Flash.

[scheletro]

Im a MAC user, and I love it!

Never crashes and never see a virus, is a great system and I aslo run PC in the same computer (just to play battlefield heroes and run 3D MAX)

I love MAC and I love FLASH, so I have to blame both companies for what they are doing, fighting! No one is perfect, both of them arent, they have to fix too many things, I think they toghether can make huge thinks (also I can add google tecnologies to this team), so they need to stop fighting and fix their problems in their products and between them as companies

I wont stop using flash, but ill take a look to html5, as i did with unity or java, and im exited about CS5 to make some ipad apps

[Incrue]

Im a MAC user, and I love it!

Never crashes and never see a virus, is a great system and I aslo run PC in the same computer

I supose you run Windows isnt it?