5 ms·

Android gets Flash support

20 points by stevejalim 17y ago

apgwoz 17y ago
I just hope there's a way to disable it, or uninstall it without too much trouble.
- mnemonik 17y ago
  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 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...
  - apgwoz 17y ago
    That would also be acceptable, and maybe better for most. I'd just actually prefer it be entirely gone. :)
peregrine 17y ago
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.
pierrefar 17y ago
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?
tyohn 17y ago
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 http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/main.html) are simply amazing.
- proee 17y ago
  I don't hate Flash, I hate Adobe.
- pj 17y ago
  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
  - tyohn 17y ago
    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.
teilo 17y ago
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.

20 points by stevejalim 17y ago

apgwoz 17y ago

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

mnemonik 17y ago
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 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...
- apgwoz 17y ago
  That would also be acceptable, and maybe better for most. I'd just actually prefer it be entirely gone. :)

peregrine 17y ago

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.

pierrefar 17y ago

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?

tyohn 17y ago

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 http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/main.html) are simply amazing.

proee 17y ago
I don't hate Flash, I hate Adobe.
pj 17y ago
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
- tyohn 17y ago
  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.

teilo 17y ago

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.