[talmand]

But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience on? Is it a matter of a Flash app that's badly designed? Because that's not Adobe's fault. If one were to duplicate the app's horrible user experience over to iOS does that mean the user experience for iOS apps can be considered as horrible? If I write some bad javascript that causes the browser to consistently crash does that mean that javascript or even the browser sucks?

Lack of Flash on iOS is a feature for you. Let's not assume what's good for you must be good for everyone else. I for one have never had much of a problem with Flash on the hardware that I use, but in some circles a negative opinion always outweighs a positive one.

The complaints about the problems you describe just running the Flash player on several different platforms are rather well deserved. It does seem that Adobe has decided at some point to drop the ball on the whole thing. But the player does support backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning. I've always thought that possibly the majority of their problems relate to that. They should try just ripping out support for anything that uses versions less than actionscript 3 for a leaner plugin.

But, this statement does seem more about the Flash player itself in the browser. It doesn't necessarily mean that Flash, as in the platform, will die. It'll probably live on as its own platform that requires something like Adobe Air to run on some hardware.

Also, almost everything you hate about Flash's "user experience" will live on in the canvas tag. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by user experience.

[27182818284]

>But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience on?

Can't speak for them, but yeah, I mean, in the end it is all subjective right? You can try to measure it, but sometimes Shit Just Doesn't Feel Right™. That's how I've ALWAYS felt about Flash. Before Steve Jobs said it, before Google was a company and I was little, and after I anxiously installed it on Android only to once again be sad by how awful it is.

Also developers at WWDC or Google I/O wouldn't cheer if either company said "We're going all in on Flash." they would look at their neighbor and say, "Wait...what? Why?"

[talmand]

But then I could make you a Flash app that does nothing but show a blank 640x480 stage with a simple button and then you would say "that just doesn't feel right"? But if I did the same thing in canvas you would react with "that's better"? That doesn't address my question about what is meant by "user experience". It is a tool, nothing else. Unless someone can show me a common trait across almost all Flash apps that is some sort of fail that can be directly tied to Flash then I attribute complaints of user experience to the developers of the app, not the tool.

Now, if you were to say that your experience with Flash in general on mobile devices is that it tends to crash and is slow; then that makes sense. That would be a user experience problem directed at Flash. It just seems to me most complaints of user experience with Flash is based on a misguided hatred of Flash itself.

The reason everyone would react that way with your hypothetical is because that would be stupid, that's not what Flash is for.

[xiaoma]

It felt great the first time I saw stick fight, and playing Desktop Tower Defense felt right as rain.