Examples of Flash Content Running on Android

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On Friday I gave the Keynote at Flash Camp Seattle and as part of that keynote I tried to show off Flash Player 10.1 running on Nexus One. Unfortunately the demo didn’t go well and it got some attention around the web. I’ve had a great experience with Flash on my Nexus One but in this case I was running an interim Flash Player build, one I probably should not have installed, and one that I definitely should not have used for any public demos

After I saw Jeff’s blog post, I sat down, upgraded my Flash Player, and went through and tested some of the sites I use on a regular basis. The experience was fantastic. Everything from the Eco Zoo to the NHL video site runs almost flawlessly. While it won’t make up for my mistake at Flash Camp, I recorded a video so people could see an experience that will be much closer to the final experience with Flash Player on Android.

It’s been cool to see so many Flash sites work on mobile devices. However because there is such a variety of Flash content out on the web, it’s important to understand that not all of it is going to run on devices like the Nexus One, both because of lower hardware capabilities of devices and because of user interface design.

A lot of people are clearly interested in Flash Player on mobile devices. It’s a big issue, and I feel terrible that my unpreparedness ended up being a strike against Flash on mobile devices. We’ll be releasing a public version of Flash Player 10.1 at Google I/O and would love to hear how your Flash sites perform. You can always submit issues by using the open Flash Player bug base.

Related posts:

  1. HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support
  2. AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices
  3. Flash Lite and Monetizing Mobile Content
  4. HP’s Flash-enabled Tablet
  5. PhysicalFoursquare – A Flash Player 10.1 Demo App Using the Foursquare API
  • http://blog.leefernandes.com leef

    Glad to see the update works better. Journalists are doing little more than repeating Steve Jobs, and many executives see the success Apple has enjoyed and don’t question his thoughts on Flash either. HTML5 barely works for RIA’s on the iPad, or iPhone, but Steve said it’s the future, so that’s what they are quick to believe.

    How about doing a couple videos that compare the rich interactive experience that HTML5 can provide, in contrast to what Flash can do. People need more clear examples.

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4

  • http://www.mcmoyer.com Marlon

    On my mbp pro, when I started the video, my fan was running at 2000rpm. By the time it was done, my fan was running at 4700rpm. So really, how would not kill the battery on an iPhone or iPad?

  • http://www.brooksandrus.com Brooks

    Keep your chin up. Live demos of beta software is a high wire act–you’re going to fall from time to time.

    If you’ve been in the software game for long you start to appreciate what a miracle it is that the stuff runs at all. ;-)

    …written on a macbook pro that hangs freezes and crashes at a pretty good clip (she gets rode hard and put away wet though).

  • DjacK

    Apple sucks the big one. Flash on!

  • Baz

    This is quite a sensitive and critical subject now.
    The same way Adobe very well handled the public relation after Steve Jobs started to bash Flash, you should double, triple check that each demo you perform is stable and working.
    Incident like this can greatly affect the communication “war” outgoing.
    Nevertheless, you did your mea culpa.

    I also don’t believe HTML 5 will kick away Flash.
    It will be a long run and I believe the Open Screen Project will naturally conquer the market.

    All the best and good continuation.
    Cheers.

  • lucy

    thanks for the video. did the zoo web site you showed have to make any changes to their flash movie to make it work on your phone?

  • Darren

    As a Flex developer, I’m more than a tad concerned at the upcoming launch of Flash on Android. Many, many web developers – burnt by poor (Mac mainly) stability/performance or just annoyed after years of putting up with intrusive Flash ads (not Adobe’s fault obviously) – are watching and waiting, seemingly ready to say, “See! Steve Jobs was right!”. Unless the stability, performance and resource usage on Android are exemplary, the future of Flash on mobile and desktop will suffer a significant setback. This may not be fair on Adobe but I believe it’s reality.

    What is Adobe’s fault however is making it easy for designers to make poor performing Flash movies. Every day the average user’s computer is slowing to a halt due to a poor Flash ad or two on a page and, like it or not, this reflects on Adobe. In fact, Adobe actively discourages good memory management by making the memory profiler available only in Flash Builder Premium for example. It’s these sorts of business decisions that end up coming back to bite Adobe. How about a very rudimentary automatic memory tester in Flash Professional that displays a warning when memory usage is unexpectedly high/increasing steadily over time and offers solutions to fix the problem? I realise there’s no such thing as ‘expected’ memory usage but I hope you see my point. There’s a price to be paid (by Adobe) for indirectly slowing and/or crashing browsers and I fail to see much evidence that Adobe is ‘owning’ this problem.

  • JulesLt

    Leef – I’d agree – I think a lot of people haven’t seriously looked at the performance of ‘HTML 5′ (by which I mean CSS 3 transitions, SVG, etc, as much as the HTML features like Canvas) – and what I’ve seen is roughly comparable to Flash in performance.

    Even looking at native iPhome apps, ones with busy animation, like games, can wipe out the battery a lot quicker than simple static content display ones.

    Basically, some of this is just a category problem – that running animation of any kind eats power in a way that a static web page does not.

    (The existence of iPhone native apps also says a lot about the suitability of a web-only stack for development on current hardware).

    On the other hand, there are a lot of ‘simple’ RIA cases that HTML 5 will solve – where we are using Flash less because it’s the best choice, but because it’s the only choice (i.e. no SVG or Canvas in IE).

    I see no logical reason to choose Flash over SVG where SVG is supported (and lest people forget, we can thank Adobe for SVG, and use Flash to add SVG support to IE).

  • Xavier

    Thanks for the videos Ryan, it’s certainly looking great on the Nexus One.

    Will FP10.1 require Froyo to run or can also be installed on the 2.1?

  • Shriek

    Simply amazing.. I am dying to see the “real” rich web experience on my mobile. Thanks a lot, Adobe.

  • Dan

    I want to see more froyo!

  • Bradley

    Some clues to how Flash player 10.1 will install on Android. Will it be released as an update to Froyo? Or will it be a seperate install to the OS as we see on desktop?

    We need to know as we are gearing up for the prelease with current phones. So, for example, I wont be getting a HTC Desire when the Nexus One will be first to get a update to Froyo.

    Please share what you can….

  • http://www.freeetime.com شات مصرية

    Leef – I’d agree – I think a lot of people haven’t seriously looked at the performance of ‘HTML 5′ (by which I mean CSS 3 transitions, SVG, etc, as much as the HTML features like Canvas) – and what I’ve seen is roughly comparable to Flash in performance.

    Even looking at native iPhome apps, ones with busy animation, like games, can wipe out the battery a lot quicker than simple static content display ones.

    Basically, some of this is just a category problem – that running animation of any kind eats power in a way that a static web page does not.

    (The existence of iPhone native apps also says a lot about the suitability of a web-only stack for development on current hardware).

    On the other hand, there are a lot of ’simple’ RIA cases that HTML 5 will solve – where we are using Flash less because it’s the best choice, but because it’s the only choice (i.e. no SVG or Canvas in IE).

    I see no logical reason to choose Flash over SVG where SVG is supported (and lest people forget, we can thank Adobe for SVG, and use Flash to add SVG support to IE).

  • http://www.freeetime.com شات مصرية
  • http://inruntime.com Paulius Uza, InRuntime Ltd.

    Ryan, thanks for showcasing our Alchemist game in your video!

    FP for Android is the best thing that happened to mobile industry in years and will change the way users consume information on mobile web forever.

  • Erick

    Steve Jobs is a moron. His vision is based off of “now” as in what only his product’s hardware is only capable of, on the other hand Adobe thinks of the “future” as in hardware keeps getting better and better to the point eventually flash performance is not an obstacle anymore. Steve Jobs trying make the devs go back 2 steps while Adobe is always pushing forward to the future.

  • DrSpaceman

    id like to see:

    a) what this six minute demo does to battery life, since this unit is plugged in.

    b) sustained video streaming, for about 2 minutes. each video example is a few frames, which at first look like a slideshow and then we never get to see how well it actually plays

  • Phil

    Thanks for the video… It worked flawlessly on my iPad… ;-)

  • Richard

    We should be moving to better formats, not trying to upgrade one that is clearly devoid of being mobile ready. HTML5 is he future no matter how much Adobe wants to brain wash all of you. Why stick with flash when Adobe has been so slow to update and fix bugs, do you really think that is gonna change.

    HTML5 offers all the power of flash without having another buggy plug-in. I have nothing against Adobe, I love and buy many of their products. But Flash is the past, it needs to be phased out over the next 5 years so that the internet can work across all kinds of devices.

    Please stop humoring Adobe, flash is not the future!!!!

  • Ted

    Did you see how choppy some of that video as….come on Adobe, just stop it already. I now all the android people are looking for some kind of bullet point to hold over iphone users, but this is just embarrassing.

  • Jon

    Interesting demo. There are some good examples here of rich web content that requires Flash for the present, although these things certainly can be duplicated by apps pretty easily.

    There are also a number of examples that leave me with a big “meh.” There is nothing compelling about using Flash to get video (YouTube, CBS, NHL, etc). It may have a big install base on the web, but that is changing pretty quickly. Slide shows, same thing. As for Martha Stewart’s site, I regard that as an unnecessary use of Flash. I should not need to have Flash installed simply to click a link. There are many different operating systems and devices. Rather than rely on Adobe to keep Flash running well on all these different platforms, why not just use a standard set of open standards that all web users can access without needing a browser plug-in?

  • David W

    I have a slightly different reason why Flash may not be viable on the small platform.

    If you take a look at a good percentage of the apps running on both Android and the iPhone, you will notice they’re native apps that are merely browsing content that’s already available on a website.

    Even stranger, many of these are paid applications. That means people are preferring to pay for a natively written app instead of using the free webpage.

    Adobe wants to push Flash not only for “rich content”, but as a write once/execute anywhere (WOEA) SDK. However, this isn’t HTML5 vs. Flash, but the idea of WOEA environments like HTML5 and Flash vs. natively written apps. Where does Flash fit in such a world.

    Personally, I doubt Adobe has the resources to create the multitude of Flash clients that is required. Mac and Windows are the two main Flash platforms, yet, despite 64 bit versions of these platforms being out for years, Adobe hasn’t yet created a 64 bit version of Flash for these two main platforms.

    Right now, as we speak, there is no full Flash client for ANY mobile platform. Adobe apparently is now putting all of its energy towards Android, yet despite the vast amount of resources focused on Android, Flash is at least seven months late for Android.

    And when will Adobe develop the Flash client for WebOS and RIM? What about newer mobile operating systems such as Meego and Bada? And, I’m not including Windows 7 Phone which Microsoft already stated that there will be no Flash client for it in the foreseeable future.

    This is the other problem with Flash and the main reason why Apple is so anti-Flash. If Flash is really a needed part of the computing environment, then any hardware manufacturer is completely dependent upon Adobe to “bless” every new device with a Flash client before it can go on sale. And, for Adobe to declare a platform relevant by keeping that Flash client up to date.

    My friends at Apple told me that the iPad was in development for less than a year before it was announced in January. I personally know the iPhone was in development for less than 18 months before it was first shown off in January.

    If Apple thought Flash was important and really decided they needed an iPhone or iPad Flash client, could Adobe have created a viable Flash client by the time either of these devices were first unveiled? Would it be worth Apple’s time, effort, and trust to let Adobe play with iPhone and iPad prototypes before they were publicly unveiled?

    This is the real problem. It’s not whether Flash is evil or Apple is evil. It’s a question whether users want Flash applications and whether other companies can trust Adobe to quickly and efficiently produce the needed Flash clients for each and every new device.

  • Terry W

    Nice to see. But one the many things jobs alluded to. Flash isn’t made for the experience of touch computing on a smartphone.

    Great case in point, the tiny little round buttons at the top of the Flash area.

    A bit too small really, unless using a stylus, and let’s not go there :P

  • Matt

    Glad to see that it works. That’s something.

    More importantly though…what does it do to battery life?

    If Flash works but cuts battery life of my handset in half, doesn’t that prove that Steve Jobs may have had a point?

  • http://clarke78.com Darcy

    Did the Google content not change when you moved that Flash chart? It looked like it didn’t do anything, and then it seemed as though you quickly moved on to the next site to compensate.

    I agree the it looked like the Flash player was working well for a few of those sites, especially on a mobile device but I personally don’t see it as the future of web. Flash, as a developers tool, may extend is life span by allowing for better HTML 5 export, but soon enough Javascript, HTML5, and CSS3 will all be doing a good enough job, natively, to make the Flash Player irrelevant.

    It’s not today, but it’s also not far off.

  • Jason Jolaoso

    What’s in a crash during a demo ?

    Nothing – except that it depends on who is doing and who is watching the demo.

    I once made a presentation during an Intense IT competiton/demo fair. Of course my app crashed – thanks to the hardware it was running on.

    I had a back up of screen shots of the app running on powerpoint , used that for my presentation and pick up a winner’s prize at the end.

    Crashes are like speed bumps – you might get tossed around , bang your head on the roof and have to slow down.But then you always move on while the speed bump gets left behind.

  • Kendall Helmstetter Gelner

    Note that the video.nhl.com site works just fine today on an iPhone even without flash – it gives you a mobile optimized site first, but if you click “view full site” all of the videos are viewable in Quicktime.

    The performance on EcoZoo is impressive though.

  • Andy

    Thanks for posting the vid, can happen to anyone, unfortunately in this case you’re that …anyone … ouch.

    Anyway nice to see Flash running on a mobile (finally). Question remains how suitable will it be view flash content on 3.7″ screen esp considering the fact that Adobe is touting to give Desktop like experience on a mobile device (no concept of mouse, instead touch and multitouch..Jobs does have a point here) .

    Well people will still have to design mobile versions of their sites for devices capable of multi-touch and stuff (but hang on not all android devices are capable of multi-touch).

    Sometimes I wonder how many versions will tech’ees have to develop ..in about a year’s time sites will need to be optimised for iPhone aka HTML5, Flash Desktop, Flash Mobile, Flash Mobile 10.1 (with multi-touch), Flash Mobile 10.1 (no multi-touch), No Flash No HTML5, etc..you get the point.. Wouldn’t it be better to have native apps for certain things and forget about having Desktop experience on a mobile phone.

    Anyway having said all that – it makes no sense to block a platform esp. when its been used to widely. Apple is 100% right about following open standards but 101% wrong on blocking Adobe from its beloved OS.

  • http://mario.ec/ Mario

    Nice touch having the phone plugged in, show one running only on battery. Then I’ll start to believe…

  • Gary

    I find it ironic that an eco website uses flash, considering that flash eats up CPU cycles and causes more watts of power to be consumed by the computer.

  • NormM

    Just for fun I went to the websites you showed on my iPad, to see what would happen.

    ecodazoo.com requires flash.

    google finance works fine, but the interactive charts aren’t interactive without Flash (but Google said last December they’re moving to HTML5).

    cbs.com works fine, but only clips from “How I Met Your Mother” are available — full episodes are not currently available.

    nhl.com works perfectly without Flash.

    I didn’t try Kongregate, but I’m very happy with the free games in the iTunes app store.

    marthasterwart.com works, but the navigation feature you showed is not available without Flash.

    The BBC site works, but requires Flash to show videos. I use the free BBC News iPad app instead.

    (And in case you’re wondering, embedded youtube videos work fine everywhere I’ve tried, directly within the Safari browser).

  • comex

    ecodazoo? Doesn’t that site– like any other Flash content that renders a 3D environment– have to resort to the CPU to do work that the GPU, even on a Nexus One, could do much more efficiently (and will be able to do efficiently even on the web once WebGL is stable)?

    …Nice demo, though. Can’t wait for it to be released.

  • http://www.arxus.com/ Greg Paulhus

    I second the request for info about battery life. I’d like to know how long you can do Flash stuff on a single charge until the battery runs out. Maybe even just use Flash to watch videos and tell us what kind of battery life you get.

  • Bobby

    Ryan, Looks like you got a lot of press for your “demo mishap”. I heard Leo Laporte and friends blasting you on Macbreak Weekly that was recorded today.
    http://twit.tv/mbw

  • http://blog.leefernandes.com leef

    @Richard

    Are you dense? HTML5 is a step backward for Flash developers. It’s like being pushed back to 2006.

    And it lacks many of the features available to Flash developers with AIR, Flash 10 & 10.1.

    HTML5 is going to be great, and I’m so excited to have more options for web-development but really, right now the driving force for HTML5 is that one company made a business decision to limit competition to it’s sales channel, and is placing restritions on web-content. That shit is f*ck!nq lame, and you’re an asshat if you think that restricting web-content is a good thing. Fuck your couch

    = )

  • Wales

    The sites looked at in the video, already work fine on my HTC Desire. How can the Desire have Flash 10.1 before it has been released for Android ? Was it given it pre-release as a selling point ?

  • Jon

    @ leef

    “HTML5 is a step backward for Flash developers.”

    That’s a trusim, is it not? Yet, it highlights a key issue: the vested financial interests of Adobe and Flash developers.

    People love to criticize Apple for trying to maximize its own revenues, but for some reason Adobe does not get equal scrutiny in this respect.

    Let me paraphrase you. The driving force for Flash is one company that has total control over Flash development tools and is fighting to prevent competing methods of content delivery from taking away its business.

    Think about this. Adobe’s main argument is that Flash is ubiquitous, and that one cannot access the “full web” without Flash. Unlike Flash, however, genuine web standards do not depend upon a single company to create development tools and support all the platforms out there. The web should work for everyone.

    The push to HTML 5 started long before Apple’s war with Adobe, and there are a great many players. Apple is not “placing restrictions on web content” and it cannot do so. By saying that it will not support Flash on its mobile devices, however, Apple may accelerate the shift for web developers to deliver content via web standards. Most of the examples in this demo do not need Flash. As others have pointed out, many of these sites already work on Apple’s mobile devices just fine.

    Finally, I don’t think it’s lame at all that Apple does not allow apps developed with Adobe’s tools to be sold in the App Store. Apple is not interested in apps that represent the least common denominator. It does not want to have to wait for Adobe to update developer tools to take advantage of new capabilities in its OS.

    And, as Adobe’s track record with mobile Flash 10.1 shows, the company cannot be depended on to meet deadlines.

  • JoeA

    Jon Said:”Finally, I don’t think it’s lame at all that Apple does not allow apps developed with Adobe’s tools to be sold in the App Store. Apple is not interested in apps that represent the least common denominator. It does not want to have to wait for Adobe to update developer tools to take advantage of new capabilities in its OS.”

    Well, that would be true, except that its clearly not, given that Apple is continuing to allow Apps developed in Corona and Unity3d onto the iPhone, both of which, technically speaking, violate the new Agreement. Its pretty clear that the change to the TOS was not to target 3rd party SDKs but to target Adobe specifically, because, with a massive developer base, it posed a massive threat to Apple, whereas Corona and Unity, while both successful, can be easily corralled by Apple and represent a tiny percentage of total apps. Its about politics and business, not technology.

  • ii

    Question for anyone who knows this answer – how did this handle mouseOver? If you have a drop down menu that is triggered by mouseOver, how does Flash/mobile devices handle this? I have tried searching all over for this but haven’t found anything…

  • http://blog.leefernandes.com leef

    @Jon

    Flash is used extensively on the web, has been for over a decade, and continues to rapidly innovate faster than the standards committee. For the last two weeks I’ve been working on an HTML5/JS/CSS project. And I’ve been using Adobe Dreamweaver for much of it, clearly Adobe’s interest isn’t locked into only Flash. My vested interest is in having access to the absolute best tools for web-development. I don’t like any company placing restrictions on web-content, and from a principled position you shouldn’t either. But you’re small-minded, and the world is this vs that, one or the other, Flash must die for you to have your HTML5. I want both.

    We want to target as many devices as possible, and still provide an engaging & high-end experience to our users. In your future that means using SilverLight on Windows Phone 7, Flash on Android, and HTML5/JS/CSS on iDevices.

    Fortunately HTML will continue to provide at least a mostly adequate set of development tools to reach a broad range of devices. And I’m glad that there are more decent frameworks these days. But implementation is fractured, performance isn’t good, and going back to a splintered web is full of fail.

    You’re ok with companies releasing web-based products that limit & confine the open-web we’ve all grown to share & love. That’s f*ck!nq lame.

  • http://blog.leefernandes.com leef

    @ii

    MouseOver events work great on touch-devices like the Nexus One. Checkout the video demo Lee Brimelow made.

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

  • Jon

    @ JoeA

    “Its pretty clear that the change to the TOS was not to target 3rd party SDKs but to target Adobe specifically, because, with a massive developer base, it posed a massive threat to Apple, whereas Corona and Unity, while both successful, can be easily corralled by Apple and represent a tiny percentage of total apps.”

    Agree with you that the move was targeted at Adobe and that the others are not much of a problem for Apple. I am not at all sure that these smaller SDKs are completely in the clear, however.

    The point is that Apple does not want to be hostage to a major developer SDK for anything important. If it controls the developer environment for its own mobile devices, it does not have to wait for another SDK to catch up.

    Apple would get the same App Store revenue from selling an app created in CS5 as is does from its own developer tools. What Apple gains when developers instead use Xcode is the ability to rapidly update apps in response to OS changes *and* the superior user experience that comes from using native tools.

    Adobe has a track record here. On Snow Leopard, Apple had to amend Safari (a 64 bit app) to allow plug-ins to run in a separate process because Flash is still 32 bit. After many years, Adobe finally has Cocoa version of Creative Suite. And despite all the vitriol, there is still no shipping version of mobile Flash.

    And Apple is supposed to think that Adobe will be able to keep up with the rapidly changing mobile device playing field?

  • Jon

    @ leef

    Name-calling and lashing out merely signal the weakness of your arguments.

    While Adobe isn’t “locked into” Flash — everything can’t be in Flash, thank goodness — it surely prefers a web dominated by Flash. Any software company can try to sell a developer kit for HTML5/JS/CSS. Only Adobe can sell one for Flash. If the fact that I find this troubling that makes me “small-minded” in your view, fine. Maybe Adobe should make Flash open source.

    I don’t want Adobe to have so much power over web users have a good web browsing experience. I happen to think that this is not at all small-minded.

    I started blocking Flash on my browser long before this fight with Apple. Usually, when I click to Flash, it’s just for web video that can be delivered without being wrapped in Flash. It’s rare when Flash is used to do something that is truly “rich”, as you say. The vast majority of the time, it is unnecessary or, even worse, degrades the user experience.

  • leef

    @Jon

    Sorry, I’m just done with the voices who favor restricting popular web-content, and are down with limiting developer options/innovation.

    Whether or not you intend to be represent yourself as such, to me you epitomize the mindset that gladly accepts section 3.3.1 of the Apple SDK agreement. You’re the bloke who’s ok with apps being rejected from the app-store regardless of the quality, & their merit. You’re that guy who’s cool with whole sections of the web not being accessible on capable devices because it happens not to affect you personally (this time around). On principle I hate that guy.

    There are quite a few non-Adobe developer tools for Flash.

    http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com
    http://www.elementriver.com/sourcemate
    http://www.flashloaded.com

    In fact you can start developing Flash content for $0, using eclipse & the Flex SDK. This is what I did for several years. You’re not informed, you’re a small-minded, go back to your iPadded section of the web.

  • Robert

    @Terry W,

    This is the entire basis of Steve Job’s flawed argument. You can write suck in any language as well as build a bad UI. In the off chance that HTML5 does kill flash, who will all the open source guys use as a scapegoat for all the crappy content still out there on the web?

  • Leif

    LOL @ Robert

    Steve’s flawed argument?

    Are you serious?

    Apple doesn’t want to support Flash. There’s no flawed argument here. Just many compelling reasons.

    Ultimately, it’s Apple’s platform. Not mine, not yours, and certainly not Adobe’s. And ultimately, it is Apple’s responsibility for making it flourish. Not mine, not yours, and certainly not Adobe’s. I think Apple is choosing what they have compelling reasons to believe is the right path.

  • http://www.gfx2day.com 3ds max

    Yet another great post Ryan, thanks