...did you really not understand how this could work?

http://theflashblog.com/?p=2027

Emon, are you calling Steve Jobs a liar?

HOW DARE YOU! *slap*

Even though it's false, I'd rather have the masses believe it so people will stop making flash sites.

Err that's how tablet PCs work already

I think they meant you can't have hovers as in have hover activate by moving your finger over a spot without touching it (which you can do with an active digitizer in a tablet PC -- you move the mouse by hovering and you click by tapping. Whereas with a touchscreen you would have to move by dragging)

I actually think the real issue here is that dell or microsoft or whoever made that tablet just maps touches to mouse events (you can see the cursor jump around and such). Apple's devices (ipod, ipad, iphone) never had a mouse interface and thus it's not about mapping between touch -> mouse. Using the iphone SDK, you directly get touch events. There's no mouse layer in there at all. Since adobe made flash and since flash is a mouse-sensitive environment, the burden would be on Adobe to figure out how to map touch events to whatever mouse handling they have inside. I don't think Adobe would have a problem taking responsibility for this.

This "hover" thing isn't really about flash anyway -- lots of sites use hover effects (and hover menus) that don't really work the same on touch devices. Big deal, web site owners either tweak their js or serve a different mobile version.

That's standard Windows 7 touchscreen behavior, nothing special's been done by the manufacturer of the tablet. My HP TM2 behaves the exact same way.

Right. But a lot of people insist that Flash just can't work with touchscreens.

I've insisted a few times it can't work well i.e. without needing thinking about.

Also, that video shows touchscreen mapping of a cursor. iPoopies, Incredibilies, Droidles and the like don't have a cursor to map.

Except there's no reason to think it won't work exactly as pictured on those devices. Just because there isn't an arrow there doesn't mean it isn't keeping track of a position.

Also, Martyn, I'd say it works perfectly well without thinking about it. Based on what they showed, if you have to think about how to use those flash apps, you would have to think about how to use ANY app on your phone. The usage is nearly identical.

They don't have the concept of a "hover" at all. If I use my ipod touch and visit a site with a "products" menu that you can either hover over and get a slider to pick a specific product, or click directly and go to a detailed list of products on a different page, I can't do the former, only the latter.

.

#1 - Flash has a few ways to register a click. Hovers can work well, and already seem to be doing fine.

#2 - Could someone please explain to me the anti-flash sentiment? I mean sure, flash intros suck. They're awful. But what is it about modern flash websites that warrants the destruction of the medium?

Matty - how does it differentiate between a scroll gesture and say a drag a box round something in a flash RTS game? Tap and drag maybe? I dunno.

Do you have to click into a flash game window like activating a background window in XP? How do you click out if the game fills the whole touch screen?

I'm not saying it's impossible - I'd like everything to just work - I'm saying it will be very hard to deliver a truly consistent interface if you have to identify that something is flash, then change the way you interact with your phone whilst using the flash area to prevent accidental scrolling, then change back to the way you normally use your phone.

My only massive complaint with Flash is the massive amount of processing power it requires to simply play video. Compared to SilverLight it's just atrocious (of course I'd say SilverLight is better than Flash at most things, but Flash has the better marketshare by far).

Flash sucks: http://flashsucks.org/

My personal problems with it:

can't bookmark individual pages inside a flash site
flash scrollbars only sometimes support the scroll wheel
flash scrollbars are often styled such that I can't fakking see them w/out a magnifying glass
flash sites make it so I can't select and copy text
flash is really slow on my older computers, which I still use (thanks to flashblock)
flash stores cookies and other info on filesystem w/out being deleted when I use my browser controls to clear cache/cookies
flash seems to crash and make stuff unstable
flash makes noise when I don't want noise
back/forward buttons don't work properly on flash sites
absolutely FULL of security holes which stupid adobe takes months to patch

... to name a few.

I don't have any problem with it for things like the following:

videos (although it does eat up a lot of cpu -- my p4 3.0 ghz can't show low-res YOUTUBE w/out stuttering)
animations/comics
games (samarost 2, fantastic contraption)
apps that run outside the browser (like balsamiq mockups)

I hate it for:

full-page flash sites
flash-based site navigation (verizonwireless.com)
ads

I'm basing my points around Flash being used by competent designers and developers. Anyone can make a ****ty flash site, they can also make a ****ty HTML site. I also agree that flash shouldn't be used for everything. Doesnt mean it cant be used for things though
Numbered for convenience:

1. Developer was lazy. totally possible to bookmark individual pages.
2. Developer was lazy.
3. Designer sucked.
4. HTML sites also deny right click sometimes
5. Ok fine, new software doesnt work well on old machines. I cant imagine complex JS or html5 will do well.
6. No clue about your browser cookies.
7. Thats kinda vague. I can definitely blame my recent browser crashes on quicktime and other unresponsive scripts
8. What
9. Lazy Developer
10. Adobe takes a while to fix bugs in actionscript, but I'm pretty sure they're more quick about security holes.

Flash 10.1 runs video fine for me.

still unsure whats wrong with a fullpage flash site

I agree that flash shouldnt be used for standard navigation.

Ads? You're blaming flash for Ads? what about Gifs, or apples amaaaazing new iAds?

Goddamn, there are Flash ads? That's not right. I mean, I'm fine with ads in magazines, on TV, in movies, video games, and on the radio; I don't mind ads on public walls, on the side of the road, on buses, and in the sky; ads on cars, ads on trucks, ads on shirts, jackets, and hats...

but Flash ads on websites? That's going too far! **** that ****!

I'm not blaming flash for ads, I'm blaming flash ads for being worse than flashy gif ads because gif ads can't play sound.

All the stuff you blame on lazy/sucky people is 99.99999999999999999% of the flash sites I ever visited. I can't name even one full-page flash site that doesn't suck.

4. HTML sites also deny right click sometimes --- selecting and copying text is left mouse button + shortcut key
5. Ok fine, new software doesnt work well on old machines. I cant imagine complex JS or html5 will do well. --- complex js hasn't been a problem for me yet (gmail is most "complex" app thing I use), html5 video -- no idea
6. No clue about your browser cookies. --- I'm not talking about browser cookies, I'm talking about flash cookies which get written whether you want them to or not, browser settings can't affect what flash is doing. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/ (flash also keeps a list of all flash sites you've visited, and this list doesn't go away when you clear your cache/history either)
7. Thats kinda vague. I can definitely blame my recent browser crashes on quicktime and other unresponsive scripts -- flash is literally the only plugin I even have enabled, but yeah, it's vague
8. flash plays SOUND like MUSIC and SOUND EFFECTS and stuff
10. Adobe takes a while to fix bugs in actionscript, but I'm pretty sure they're more quick about security holes. --- if a week to a month is "quick" then okay, but for a technology that is probably on 99% of computers that still leaves a lot of time for bad **** to happen

HTML5 video is pretty much terrible right now. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. Firefox doesn't support h264, chrome refuses to do fullscreen, both play videos at CPU loads that are just as high as Flash (in fact, much HIGHER than Flash 10.1 thanks to GPU acceleration in flash).

Complex JS/CSS can be very slow. The mere act of moving a large image in the background of a site (such as slowly moving clouds) can bring browsers like Firefox to their knees, and even make Chrome wimper. I won't even mention IE.

Flash does play sound, that's an upside. Because HTML5 audio, just like video, is a goddamn crapshoot. There is not a single audio codec that every browser supports (even when leaving IE out).

I don't expect HTML5 to be anything good anytime soon. Hell, browsers still can't agree on how to make a fakking rounded corner!

Meh, I'm mostly saying that most of your complaints should have been focused on lazy/bad designers & developers. I'm not saying they're unfounded.

Maybe you're just visiting bad flash sites too often Then again, I also know some very talented flash devs so I guess it's all relative.

Name one good flash site that gets it all right!

zombo.com

To be fair, you can't do that with a frames site, either.

html is the biggest, most steaming pile of **** humanity has ever had to munge together out of the schizophrenic offal of history's most corpulent and inept design committee. html is ****ing doomed and eventually it's going to collapse under its own rotting, feces-smeared bulk, crushing the thousands of talentless trendwhores who were stupid enough to put together an entire career based on a waste of time.

javascript is a god awful abomination too, but at least flash will get you consistent results. apple's doing things ass-****ing-retard-backwards. we should replace html with flash.

To be fair, HTML5 is MUCH better. It really does promote document structure over physical layout.

au contraire:

http://www.massassi.net/display.cgi?page=/levels/files/323.shtml

(but seriously, I made that in 1997)

wow man

Here here! I hate Javascript with a passion. jQuery makes it tolerable. I want to kick every single Netscape employee who engineered Javascript in the balls. It's grossly inconsistant. It makes any form of intellisense wholly non-trivial. I want to see something like C# made into a scripting language for browser-side scripting needs. I don't see why it wouldn't work. OOP for browsers!?

No because you're just going to ***** and moan about something trivial.

I thought IE did support script/c#

javascript does support oop.

in the same way perl does. I mean literally, in the same exact way. **** Perl, **** Javascript.

JavaScript is actually a pretty powerful language (though there are a LOT of utterly insane design decisions), the problem is that most people try and write C/Java style code which is the wrong approach entirely. jQuery does nothing to JavaScript 'the language', it just puts an abstraction layer on the DOM which is a different subject entirely. Even if you could use C# in the browser, you'd still have all the major problems that currently affect JavaScript developers and you'd still need a library like jQuery to fix it.

I have a book called 'JavaScript: The Good Parts', you can read it in under an hour and it basically tells you what subset of the language to use for the path of least resistance. What's even better is that JSLint can act as a validator for this subset in tools like Aptana which makes it much harder to adopt bad habits.

Mb, the problem with sound in Flash is that it is isolated from the browser settings for sound, which means any flash site is free to blast obnoxious sound in your ears. This problem is made worse by the fact that there's no way to tell which one of my 35 tabs is making the goddamned noise short of clicking through every single one.

I still want to know how navigation works >_>

A. Probably by dragging to scroll, or hold then drag to make a selection box. Or yes, the tap and drag. Don't see how this is a Flash issue, any non-flash app would have to overcome the same issue. Go look at an iPhone RTS with the functionality and see how it works.
B. The iPhone is the only smartphone device without a back button. For an iPhone version there would have to be an onscreen button, but that would be identical to any other iPhone app.
C. To be honest, the ONLY interactive difference would be the "enter/leave" flash window. But you know what? That's also not Flash's fault. If a website were to have ANY sort of interactive window, be it made in JS, Flash, or something even more proprietary, it would need to do the same thing.

Long story short, you have a lot of issues with Flash that aren't issues with Flash. They're things you've been dealing with for a long time now. And things that will be a problem for the iPhone in the future regardless of what triggers it.

Totally agree with the "not necessarily Flash" thing. It's about getting in and out of a state where you are controlling the "flash" (or whatever) feature and getting back into driving the phone (or tablet, whatever).

It still needs a good solution though. You could use a hardware button like the home key, but it's not intuitive.

And re: the tap and drag - it's the same thing - it's about the device knowing how to interpret your tap and drag as a "box" rather than as a "scroll".

All the stuff underneath this (Steve's attitude etc.) is completely asinine. You should be able to code however you like as long as the end result is ok.

See, I'm not a total fanboi

It'd be intuitive for everything except the iPhone, since the iPhone is the only one that has no sense of going back from a hardware standpoint. It literally requires every single application to have a back button on the screen; something that many Apple users complain about on a regular basis.

The Pre is interesting in that regard in that they use gestures to achieve it (the gesture area is directly below the screen). I actually wish this was on more devices, I'll miss it when I switch. In fact, the new Pre Plus's don't even have a button on the face of the device at all. It's all possible through gestures.

Funny, I was just thinking this morning how I use more multi-touch gestures on my MBP than I do my iPhone. I guess having extra hardware buttons is against Apple's minimalist design philosophy. One screen, one input method. It may not be perfect, but damnit it sounds good.

Oh the Pre's gestures don't use multitouch (there IS multitouch for things you'd expect like zoom and rotate, but that's not what I was describing).

It has an area below the screen where the touch part still works. Swiping back and forth does back/forward (with a light to show it recognized it). A full swipe switches apps in that direction. Swipe up goes into card view (Switching apps), swiping up again shows the full launcher (or you can press the launcher icon).

Yeah, I know - sorry I wasn't clear there - I meant exactly that: I use MT gestures on my MBP for navigation all the time (separate from the screen... obviously) and that works well for me. However on my iphone, I rarely find I'm using navigational gestures outside of scroll and swipe.

Maybe there is something to be said for separating the two...