The Other Side of Flash 54
There's been a lot of talk about flash lately. Between the Flash 10.1 announcement with Adobe's demonstration on the Pre and the Adobe MAX presentation, it seems like everyone is gaga over Flash on the webOS. However, at some point we need to step back and notice Flash has some notable downsides that need to be addressed and considered.
First and foremost, Flash is a proprietary format developed by Adobe. It's nowhere near as open a standard as html/css/js. Everything is developed in Adobe-created tools and the format is defined by what Adobe sets it at. That a lot of power and control in the hands of a single company, especially if Flash for the webOS were to gain momentum. And if iTunes has taught us anything, one company have singular control over a format can be detrimental. Kinda funny that the Flash Mobile development group was called the "Open Screen Project," eh?
Then we need to consider the battery impact. Active embedded Flash objects can take up a fair bit of processing power, especially when they contain animation audio and video. During the Adobe MAX conference, this topic was mentioned with the following statistics mentioned:
Active state with video -- 3.4 hours battery life
Active state with animation -- 6.5 hours battery life
Low power with animation -- 14.5 hours battery life
That's a pretty significant hit on the battery. So if you plan of using Flash on a regular basis, be sure to carry extra batteries, you'll need it.
Next, we should address the quality of Flash apps. Will embedded Flash animations be smooth? Will audio run uninterrupted? And more importantly, what kind of quality video can it handle? From what we saw in the video demonstration, the video was a low resolution, and that is worrying. Frankly, the game Adobe used in their demo was something that could look equally as good in html/js/css; there certainly wasn't that much that was impressive in their animation demo.
What would've excited me would be something like a racing game or something a bit more fast-paced, to show off flash animation, because at least then we'd know the additional battery life is worth it. Even today the question of whether Flash for the webOS will support the GPU is unanswered. Hopefully it will, because if it doesn't, chances are Flash won't be nearly as smooth as it could be.
And let's not forget how annoying animated web browser ads can be. Sure, WebOS Quick Install has an ad-blocker tweak, but users shouldn't have to tweak their Pre just to hide those "punch the monkey" ads. When Flash arrives, I pray there's a browser option to disable it, so I can only enable it when needed.
One last thing: native webOS apps, like any web page, can work at multiple screen resolutions - i.e. if properly coded they can work both on the Pixi and on the Pre - will it be just as easy to code up Flash apps to do the same?
It should be made clear, I am not anti-Flash. If it's done well, I'm all for expanded developer options. These are just the inevitable downsides that needed to be brought forward before we get away with ourselves.
54 Comments
For the record, flash on linux is a disaster. Once running, it eats up to at least 50% of the cpu (dual core t7200, ubuntu 8.10+ff3.0+adobe flash10)... The only thing you can do is to block all the flash on the webpage. As it's not an open standard, there were few substitutions for adobe flash on linux either. I sincerely hope this won't happen on any mobile platform.....
Amen. Just running Pandora in the background while coding in Linux chews up 50% of my similar rig. Constantly. It's only made worse by Adobe's Flash for Linux being so completely and utterly NOT optimized as in Vista where my computer scarcely blinks at Flash. Sigh.
(Incidentally, found any alternatives for streaming Pandora in Linux?)
Better than the 90% Pandora sucks of the Pre. :(
I'm sitting here playing Pandora with a terminal open, and TOP says I'm usually using ~42% of the CPU, so I'm not quite sure where you are getting 90%.
>TOP says I'm usually using ~42% of the CPU, so I'm not quite sure where you are getting 90%
It would depend on a zillion factors. Even 42% of a modern CPU, just to stream audio, is *INSANE*.
It seems to consume about 30 to 40% in top on my Mandriva 2009.1 Linux system with dual core 2.2Ghz CPU.
And let's not even talk about YouTube. That can easily peg a full CPU and then some.
Flash sucks, but there isn't much we can do about it. At least Linux is supported and with CURRENT versions, now.
42% isn't all audio stream. It's background processes the system has running. With no apps open, my moderately modded system is running at ~23% most of the time, so Pandora isn't using more than ~20%.
>42% isn't all audio stream. It's background processes the system has running. With no apps open, my moderately modded system is running at ~23% most of the time
If your Linux system has no foreground stuff running and nothing else intentionally running in the background (mail server, httpd, file indexing, etc) and is still using 23% CPU time, something is *broken*.
I have been a senior Unix/Linux admin for over 20 years... so I know how to monitor and calculate CPU time...
But, of course it is not all audio stream, it is everything that goes to DELIVERING that stream to your ears. Most of it is Flash and browser overhead for Flash. It simply shouldn't take 100 times the CPU power of an 8-year-old ipod to do that. :)
I'm talking about my Pre...
(If you'll notice, I was responding to the guy who said Pandora took up 90% CPU on the Pre)
Oh! That changes everything...
Yup - I think I may have to post a HOWTO someplace for you guys - I stream pandora all day long - and I just looked and I'm using 2-3% cpu for that and a youtube page open..
64bit Ubuntu, firefox 64bit, and then the beta 64bit plugin from adobe - which I'm guessing most of you with issues are not running.
>the beta 64bit [LINUX] plugin from adobe - which I'm guessing most of you with issues are not running.
Actually, you are right on that one. (npwrapper.libflashplayer.so Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22)
Maybe I need to check it out. Thanks for the tip
Whoa whoa, didn't mean to hijack with the passing question. I didn't realize the default install was running 32-bit emulation. Tried the Air workaround, but it has no 64-bit version. Thanks, I'll check it out.
Yah - Im not using the Pandora AIR app anymore until there is a solid 64bit solution for AIR.. As for the 64bit flash plugin and using pandora, no issues w/ ubuntu 9.0464bit - I'll be posting a link to a new app i've been working on for these issues in the forums here and on ubuntu's site between now and the end of the weekend.. Sorry if this got off toppic!
As for flash on PRE - I think it will be optomized for the environment its running on - so I'm sure there will be solutions to performance, battery, etc!
I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 and its worse than 9.04 and 8.10 combined for me.
I have no idea where you anti-flash linux guys are coming from. Flash 64bit ROCKS on ubuntu 9.04.. Perhaps you guys didn't install 64bit and the 64bit plugin and are still using that emulation 32bit junk which was slowwww and buggy.. Not to mention the pulseaudio issues that have NOTHING to do with the flash plugin. As for flash being able to resize - it can do this as good if not better than the native apps.. The downsides are very small when you look at what flash will bring to the device. I have 20 firefox windows open all day every day - and a good portion of them have flash content, and I have plenty of resources to spare and animation continues to be smooth with full compiz effects.. Heck in this vid I've got 20 firefox windows open, playing youtube in internet explorer 7, and watching a movie fullscreen - and not full screen on just 1 monitor but across all 6.. Tried all of this with vista and it came to a crawl.. So my guess is we have some configuration problems if you guys are having issues - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1TOAXAbOAI ..
At your (and other's) prompting, I just installed the Flash 64bit beta, 10.0 r32 (of course, with no npwrapper) on this Mandriva 2009.1 system. Framerates in video are about the same, and CPU load is about the same. As for stability, time will tell... but I don't see any improvement in speed or CPU utilization.
it would be best implemented if it's not based on a enable/disable switch. but enable/disable, PLUS, a mode, where you can set on a site to site basis. That would be even better.
Hey Jason, according to this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pee3nT4bPw4) at the 5:15 mark, flash on the Pre is software rendered. The man on stage said they're working on hardware accelerated rendering for "flicker free delivery".
I don't know if he was specifically mentioning flash on the Pre or just the video aspect for the mobile flash platform. I hope he meant hardware acceleration for the Pre. Maybe somebody can elaborate if I misunderstood. Thanks.
+1 Informative
But do keep in mind that even if they use the GPU, it will likely only help the most with video streaming. Other aspects of Flash can still be a pig and consume considerable battery, RAM, and CPU.
We will VERY MUCH need a way to disable it for web browsing.... needs to be optional and easily switched on/off while browsing.
Just to clarify, the name of the project to enable Flash to be played on any device (not just mobile) is called the "Open Screen" project, not "Open Source".
Adobe did open up the specifications for the SWF and FLV formats and removed all licensing restrictions to playing Flash content - but no, Flash is not an "open" format.
IMO Flash should not even load in web sites unless you click on the Flash application embedded in the page. They should have a "Click here to enable this Flash app", and if it's something you want to use, then awesome, if it's not, it won't be loaded and won't bother you.
+100
I really hope adobe / palm is listening to this because it would be the best way to implement this feature.
Side Note: I notice you guys use Drupal here on precentral.net. How do I know this? The comment module generates the same markup on the pages we work on lol. Cheers!
>IMO Flash should not even load in web sites unless you click on the Flash application embedded in the page
You can already do that in Firefox with Flashkill/Flashblock. So we know it can be done... just needs to be done that way on phone browsers, also.
Great idea, like Firefox's "block flash" plugin
I want some news on webGL
Elysian893 is right. Display a flash Icon i can click on before it 'autoruns'.
As for those that think flash is more trouble than its worth becuase it is a proprietary format...give your head a shake...better Something to display those videos than nothing...sigh...
Why are we forgetting the HTML 5? If I am not wrong, webOS browser supports HTML 5... so the future will be embeded videos inside the HTML 5 tags..
>Why are we forgetting the HTML 5?
I don't think people are forgetting about that. But, if I give you a browser with HTML5 support and no Flash support, how happy are you going to be with all those sites that depend on Flash.
Of course, we want (configurable & disableable) support for both :)
Flash is a horrible creation that is so often used at a crutch by Web 'developers' who can't or won't learn how to create engaging sites using standards based development. And even worse it is used by companies to push their crap on users in the form of adverts that annoy and detract.
There are some good uses of Flash like technology but they are few and far between.
For those who want to free themselves from Flash simply DL FlashBlock for Firefox. Combined with the amazing AdBlock Plus you Web experience will be upgraded a million percent!!
On the other hand, there is very little developer support for the Pre compared to iPhone or even the momentum Android is picking up. Yet everything runs Flash, so, kinda like Java, it will open up a much larger library.
Right now Pre performance sucks due to the inability to write native applications and Pre video is incompatible with a ton of websites, so I'm excited about this opening up possibilities.
We'll have to see how actual performance is.
In the meantime, Palm better be working on major internal rewrites to make the Pre overall snappier. Considering it has one of the fastest shipping mobile processors, its starting to look like the overall slowest smartphone to actually use. Especially email and calendar.
What type of formats are supported by the Pre on websites?
a) flash is made by adobe but there are other software programs available that can create flash content. There has been for years and there will continue to be. Probably even more of them if flash takes off even further. Perhaps specialized tools designed to make flash specifically for mobile with built in tools to make things resize for various screen resolutions?
b) I highly doubt palm would be stupid enough to automatically enable all flash in browsers by default. If anything the "click here to display" will probably be the standard.
c)It is very easy to get screen size info into flash from the browser and its actually very easy to make dynamically sized flash content. Just make all sizes and positions relative to the screen size.
I'm glad you commented on screen size. Use it all the time for a lot of projects. Easy as pie to make flash display correctly in multiple screen resolutions.
As far as poorly written flash code, I totally understand the frustrtion. I guess its easier to write bad actionscript than bad javascript since writing multimedia flash stuff is easier than the equivalent using other methods. I swear my flash stuff for pre will be battery friendly as possible.
Also, lets not lump all flash content and developers together. The guys who do high end high quality flash stuff are in a totally different league than those who do crap banner ads.
"I highly doubt palm would be stupid enough to automatically enable all flash in browsers by default."
I am not that confident in palm's cleverness.
This is nice to use, if I have to. Nice to say webOS will support flash but making it staple will make way to many QQs on battery life and load times.
you forgot a very key point of flash ... video.
So many sites I visit provide video that is flash based... (TBT, Vimeo, Wimp, and even Youtube since some videos are available on the Youtube website only).
So yes game playback is important, but video playback will see a lot more usage in my opinion. Thats what they should model is visiting a video site.
+1
I understand this issues you are raising, the problem is that there is a lot of content that just can't be viewed or used without flash. Many radio stations used flash based programs for streaming as do a number of video providers (like HULU I believe).
At this point, only Apple with its own large library of video and active game community can afford to ignore Flash. Palm needs the large amount of addtional content that will become available when it supports Falsh.
Flash has one other major problem that seems to be getting absolutely no attention here - it is incredibly insecure.
I really, really hope they give me the ability to turn it off completely and then only enable it on things that I know are safe.
One thing left out for Flash as a positive is that there are thousands of Flash developers just in the US alone. And the Flash Player 10.1 is made the same across multiple devices, so instead of building Flash apps for the Pre, people are just building Flash apps regardless of mobile device, which will result in a larger amount of Pre-supported apps.
With that in mind, we're also likely to see that as a reason why someone develops for mobile with Flash rather than choosing a platform and developing only for it, or more costly, building separately for all platforms.
>When Flash arrives, I pray there's a browser option to disable it, so I can only enable it when needed.
+1 Amen, brother
It doesn't matter if it is Ads or any other type of banner crap. I DO NOT WANT ANIMATION ON SCREENS I AM TRYING TO READ!!!!!
Thank GOD for the Flashkill and Flashblock extensions in Firefox.
You know... NONE of this matters and NONE of it will EVER matter if they don't fix the app memory limit issue. Who CARES about flash or any other feature or ANY new app or ANYTHING from the app store.. or even STAYING with the Pre... if this issue is not resolved SOON!
Just resize your partitions and install Fair Dinkum App Limit using Preware. Problem solved. Yes Palm does need to put out their own fix, but this will help you in the meantime.
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>You know... NONE of this matters and NONE of it will EVER matter
>if they don't fix the app memory limit issue.
You know... MOST Pre users DON'T HAVE any problems with the number of apps issue because they don't install a zillion apps.
Granted, it is a problem, and needs to be solved, but I can think of several MUCH more important issues [to me] that I would want addressed first (and no, Flash is not one of them).
well what matters is the fact that the problems with the number of apps issue can be fixed with a simple install.... which you can get from preware then you can dl zillion apps
This is all a much of a muchness.
When you drive to your parents you take the Toyota Prius.
When you're picking up a fast lady you drive the Ferarri.
You know that one mode a transport will cost you more at the pump/filling station and the other will get you home and back many times over so you can watch your black and white TV while ironing your grey pants, white starched shirts and your half a dozen brown cardigans with leather patches on the elbows.
Either way its by choice.
When I eventually own a Palm Pre my battery will be flat because it's an amazing phone and I'll be showing everyone that very fact.
When flash finally works on the pre this will not change.
No one has to view flash websites or flash video if they don't choose to but you can bet I will because rather than stare at the invention of the wheel and marvel at it adhering to "wheel standards 1.0" I'd be quite happy to join Doc Brown in his hover Delorean where we don't need roads and the internet is interactive, engaging and doesn't look different depending what browser I use.
"The whole of the internet in my Palm"
>No one has to view flash websites or flash video if they don't choose to
Wrong. If Palm integrates Flash into the browser and doesn't allow us any control, then users WILL be forced to view Flash. That is, until someone else comes up with a hack to enable/disable it...
I sense a lot of anger aimed towards the use of flash. Each to thier own I guess but i'm thinking that people of such a nature won't be using sites that incorporate flash anyway.
i.e. They have a choice and choose forums, wikipedia sites, blogs, search engines, any technet site microsoft runs, apple insider maybe or pre central if they wish.
Maybe the single banner at the top of the page will bring WebOS to a stand still and drain the battery dead within minutes?
There's always a choice and I personally would prefer to have the option rather than not.
Come on join me and Doc Brown in the future where the pre is heading.
I here Jaws 3D is on. ;)
Sorry, but yes, I do have a lot of anger about Flash and the way it is used on sites. I guess that is obvious, though.
Of course, there are some good things about Flash too, but, for me, the negatives far outweigh the positives.
My point is that we can't effective just avoid Flash sites like you propose. For whatever reason, there are all kinds of sites people need to use that sometimes integrate annoying and inappropriate use of Flash. I will give you an example: *ALL* the weekly Ad's for all the major stores now use "shoplocal.com". Where I used to be able to quickly and efficiently pull up the weekly ad as jpegs, and flip through the pages at lightening speed, I am now forced to wait for cutesy animated pages to finally appear, and slowly animate page turns and pop up junk where I am trying to read. I can't even copy and paste info from them. The alternate is to not have any access to weekly Ads at all, because they removed the non-Flash alternative. This is just one of many, many examples.
I am all for having Flash on the Pre. But only if it means we also have control over when and how it is used. If my only choice was to have 100% Flash all the time with no control at all, or to have no Flash at all... I would choose no Flash.
It's a shame there are so many cases where flash is applied incorrectly and any site that is a source of information should have the ability to have its text selectable especially as this has been an option in flash for many years now.
Ideally we would want control of the flash player as you have mentioned but better still web developers need to direct clients from miss using flash in their sites because it is a rich media platform not a text driven medium and should be used as such.
There WILL be HARDWARE-BASED acceleration coming with flash 10 on the pre =).
"In addition to enable Flash 10 on the OMAP platform, TI will also enable hardware acceleration of video and graphics"
"As an added benefit, these new devices not only get the full Flash experience, but they will also deliver the power advantages for which ARM is known! "
Will be very intriguing to see how all this pans out.
Source: http://community.ti.com/blogs/mobilemomentum/archive/2009/10/08/flash-10...
I don't know if this has been stated before because I glossed over on the flash sucks comments..
You can build flash apps for free, you don't need Adobe's Flash software to do it. http://www.flashdevelop.org or just a plain text editor.
The next version of Flash will have an XML based FLA management system. This means you will be able to have multiple people working on the same project at the same time and be able to merge changes. It also means you could bypass the need for the Flash IDE again with exception to compilation.
Personally, I am excited because I will be able to develop and publish apps for web and mobile (including iPhone soon) without having to learn a ton of different languages. If you smell what Adobe is cooking..
B
I think it's ludacrous for someone posing as a smartphone expert to wonder aloud if Adobe can make Flash work well enough for the Palm Pre to utilize it safely and with quality performance!
I come here to get timely information, not to see "experts" making fools of themselves with inane, desultory commentary.
While it's true that Palm should have included video capability for the most popular Web formats with it's original WebOS, and that it's a major flaw not to have video recording capability right out of the box, these fixes will likely be available soon, and as is, the Palm Pre is already making Palm extreme $$$, having created and captured a new market.
I love my Pre and have used Palm products for years and will continue to do so.
Again, please, use this space to give timely, accurate information, and the leave the corporate digs against longstanding corporate giants like Adobe somewhere else!
Many thanks for your time and effort, PreCentral. Overall, excellent job!