

Android gets Flash support - stevejalim
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/htchero.html

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pierrefar
If Android Flash is as bad as it is on the desktop, it's game over for battery
life, browser speed, and memory usage.

I just hope it doesn't get forced down our throats (i.e. installed by default)
and that if it is forced on us, there is a simple way to cleanly and
completely remove it.

On an interesting side note, does this beast support AIR?

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apgwoz
I just hope there's a way to disable it, or uninstall it without too much
trouble.

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mnemonik
I would rather have something similar to Firefox's FlashBlock. It disables all
the flash content on a page, if you want to activate it, just click on the
handy placeholder button that replaces the flash content.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433>

EDIT: Of course, you should be able to uninstall it easily if you should so
choose...

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apgwoz
That would also be acceptable, and maybe better for most. I'd just actually
prefer it be entirely gone. :)

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tyohn
Why does everyone here hate Flash so much? I agree that Flash has
weaknesses...but the combination of animation tools and concepts - combined
with software controlled interactivity is a direction I wish the entire web
would embrace. Flash is visually appealing... some of the movie sites like UP
(<http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/main.html>) are simply amazing.

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pj
Here's why: When I go to that link you provided, I get this:

 _You need the lastest version of the Flash plugin to view this site._

I have Flash installed, yet can't see that site because it's not the "correct"
version. The problem with flash is that it is not a standard technology. It
does not work in all browsers. It holds users up. It trains them to install
software on their computers that could be virus ridden. It's not very good
with respect to performance. Video plays much better when optimized to the
hardware and Flash -- Adobe in general -- doesn't care about the hardware,
they use custom algorithms for _everything_ so their code runs slower than any
software designed for a particular platform. Go to a website that offers video
in both Flash and, if you are on windows, Windows Media player and then play
the videos full screen, one at a time while watching Task Manager's
performance tab and you'll see the CPU utilization for Flash is much higher
because it doesn't know how to use hardware acceleration features.

It's also another vector for trojans. It's reliant on a single company to
support it, when the web is for _all_ of us. Unlike the browser where you
could argue IE is as bad as Flash, there are competing products in the browser
space, but is there a Flash engine that isn't written by Adobe?

In general, what you'll find is that a hacker will sacrifice good looks for
longevity, maintainability, "open-ness," standards, and cost. Adobe's Flash
loses on all of those.

Sure, it's pretty and looks nice, but it fails on all the other tests.
Furthermore, much of what Flash can do _can_ be done with HTML and JavaScript.
It is often the designers turned programmers who came from the
Photoshop/Illustrator circles who learned to use Flash first and so they
didn't take the time to learn how to do the same things with web standards.

And if you go back far enough, flash was designed and used primarily in the
beginning to build Flash Ads to replace animated Gifs and since then, the
"flashy"ness of ads has taken off. They slow down the loading of sites. They
take over our machines with their slowly running code and generally make the
web experience worse for all of us.

just my $0.02

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tyohn
When I read your comment - I was thinking Flash is the like the dumb blond of
the internet looks great, a lot of fun but...

I agree with a lot of what you are saying from a programmers point of view.
But from a typical users point of view it "seems" to function and look great.
Although I disagree with you about longevity and maintainability - I haven't
had any trouble with those factors. I also disagree with you that HTML and
JavaScript can do what Flash does. Don't get me wrong I love JavaScript but it
doesn't do animation anywhere near Flash.

I totally agree with you about cost and closed standards.

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teilo
I can hear the tweeners whining already, "But I want flash on my G1! Waaa!"

Honestly, this is all we would hear in app comments in the Marketplace, app
after app after app. (Thank goodness Google finally added a "Mark as Spam"
featuree.)

I seriously doubt the G1 has the memory and speed to handle flash adequately.
We'll see.

EDIT: Hero vs. Dream has double the RAM and a larger ROM by about 90MB, which
will likely be offset by a larger system image. CPU is the Qualcomm 7200A,
which supports 30 FPS VGA video encoding (vs. 20 on the 7201A in the Dream).
But no slide-out keyboard. So, I'm thinking the limited memory of the Dream is
what will prevent it from running flash.

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peregrine
I just hope its not only available for the hero. Not only that I hope they
push those UI modifications and multitouch to G1 or Mainline.

