Flash on webOS Confirmed for February 37
Palm and SFR held their French launch event last night and reports on the ground bring good news: Palm employees specifically said that Flash would be available in February. Previously we had been a little unsure of that, what we knew for sure was that webOS 1.4 would lay the underpinning for it, but the actual release (which is coming in the App Catalog) was less clear.
As for the actual implementation, apparently that's not fully pinned down yet. It could come via browser integration or tapping a flash block could launch a separate card to run the flash 'app.' We don't exactly get a vote, but if we did we'd vote for the latter option - as cool as Flash is, it's still slow and we don't like the idea of it slowing down the browser.
But hey, who's looking forward to Flash Games on the Palm Pre?
Thanks, anonymous!
37 Comments
Yay FIRST!!!
And i've been waiting for Flash for too long.
Bring it
Woooot!
The first smartphone OS to have full flash, webOS just got more awesome.
i thought the first phone was the nexus one? didn't they get a dab at flash beta last week?
All i've seen are previews of flash beta on the nexus, beta has not been released AFAIK unless i'm missing something, do you have a source? Search isn't pulling up anything worthwhile.
Nope, first with full Flash player came Nokia N900.
It is not a phone, but my n800 had flash before the n900 came out. The first flash on a arm processor, as far as I know. The n800 can barely handle it.
True, however its 9.4, we will get flash 10.1.
Couple of other things fell out of the Twitter feed...
i) The demo device on hand appears to be a standard Pre, not a GSM Pre Plus. The Plus models weren't mentioned at all.
ii) The Pixi was mentioned but not shown but could France get the first GSM Pixi?
Vodaphone owns parts of Verizon Wireless and SFR ... hmmmm???
(scratches scalp)
My French friend who attended confirmed Pre and Pixi Plus for Q2, although they weren't seen. Palm (US and European) and SFR staff had between them all the other models represented: Verizon Pre Plus, German QWERTZ, Pixi (who knows what kind, the battery was dead) and Pre plain vanilla.
I'll believe it when I see it, palm is eager to get flash going, it's adobe who needs to get their act together, and that's out of palm control.
Adobe handed off many weeks ago. The rest is integration into webOS.
I sure hope SRF can market the pre as it deserves to be it is a pretty unique & outstanding device but it seems lik the world would never know that
With regard to the implementation method, it certainly seems that all the Adobe demo videos show the plug-in running within the browser. It was neat seeing the presenter double-tap the Flash animation screen and have it occupy the full screen of the Pre.
Sounds great, February will be an awesome month!
Two questions...Will this be a Beta version? And will this app be free? Anyone? Anyone?
I don't want all flash games! I want to be able to watch Precentral Palmcast!
Pr0n sites...here we come....errr...
Umm.
Isn't this how flash works?
You see flash blocks on the website you are on. It only activates when you double tap on that block of flash.
So in this case you can avoid advertisements while enjoying games/movies/whatever you want.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
I think you're right that Flash items on a page won't run until you tell them to but that isn't what the question was in the OP. He was wondering whether Flash would run in the browser or if it would run in a separate card.
My questions is if Flash ran in a separate card would it break some functionality. Can Flash apps interact with the web page they're hosted on?
Whatever, I just hope XM Online works.
from my experience, the block only shows up if you don't have flash installed. Once you do, it automaticallly loads the video or game. I'm not sure how well flash games are going to work... It will be interesting to see what happens there. As for the slow browser... Yeah it sucks, but someone will eventually come along and optimize either the existing palm browser or we'll be able to run a browser like opera with flash. I'm stoked. No more sprint tv for me. Woot!
Good news, eat that iPhone users. :P
I'm ready, LET'S GO!!
How come everyone keeps talking about how slow flash is? The whole move to Flash 10.1 is to take all the work off of the cpu and use the GPU. Using the cpu for video, and flash games is what makes flash so resource intensive right now. The move to 10.1 should solve this on all platforms.
When can we expect Documents? I sure do neef it.
When can we expect Documents? I sure do neef it.
Where are almost halfway into February. When will we actually get this?
I think if anyone knew it would have been mentioned. Doesn't "February" narrow it down enough?
this just made my day!
There was an earlier youtube video showing flash on the pre running a black eyed pees site. I hope it will work as shown. My biz site is all flash and if it forces the flash into another card, it's really going to screw up site navigation. I hope it run as advertised in the youtube video.
It should be as in the youtube video. Frankly I have no clue why everyone is thinking it's going to pop up in another card. All the videos and indications show it running seamlessly in the site.
A story that ran Tuesday on P|C confirmed upcoming webOS 1.4 delivery on 15FEB.
from what i saw it looks like flash is going to run on the browser and not on a separate card, so i would not worry so much.
I only want Flash if I can easily turn it on and off at will. It would be especially useful if, when turned "on", it also had an option that it would put only placeholders and load the flash element only when you click on the placeholder.
Otherwise we can kiss our peaceful browsing experience, battery, cpu time, and memory good-bye!
As of now, regarding Flash-embedded video, if you double tap the Flash/Lego/Question icon the block zooms to *fill* the screen, blacking-out the unused screen areas. It also obeys the accelerometer and rotates to horizontal. A back-swipe gets you back to the page.
As of right now, there is no Flash to run anything inside of this block so nothing else happens. BUT, this action has no other purpose than indicating how it should work.
If it does this for more than just video, now, I have no idea.
Don't know if this has already been answered but what ever happened to the Flash Beta?
good question
it will probably stay beta for a good long time....