Mike Chambers

In response to my post on Mouse Events and hover in Flash Player content on touch devices, John Gruber (daringfireball.net) raises an issue:

The problem, though, for a hypothetic Flash plugin that renders pages within web pages (as on traditional desktop browsers), is how to tell whether a tap-and-drag within a Flash element is supposed to scroll the entire web page or be passed as a mouse movement event to the Flash element. It can’t do both, and it can’t read the user’s mind.

This is a potential issue, and as John notes, is one not isolated to Flash content (scrolling textareas have similar issues on a touch device).

Here is how the current pre-release builds of Flash Player 10.1 handle this on the Nexus One (I havent had a chance to confirm for the other devices).
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So, the Interwebs is all a buzz again around the latest article that “proves” that Flash will not be useful on mobile devices (much less the iPad). From the article:

Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.

That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.

Basically, the writer is arguing that because some Flash content uses Mouse over / hover events (MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER), and because there is no such event as a hover on a touch devices, then apparently, most Flash content just flat out wont work on touch devices.

I wanted to make a quick post that corrects some of the false assumptions and conclusions presented in the article, which include:
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You may have noticed that since September, the public Flash Platform (Flash Player, Flex, etc…) bug base has required a login in order to browse and view bugs. This was not the case when we initially launched the public bug base but after a number of issues (primarily caused by spam), we had to disable viewing bugs without registration.

Starting last night, we are rolling out some new updates and tweaks to the bug base, and will be doing some testing to ensure that the original issues are addressed. As of right now, you can once again browse the Flash Platform bug base without registration (although logging issues or commenting still requires registration). Over the next couple of weeks, you may see some changes in access as we test and ensure everything is working, but the ultimate goal is to allow viewing and browsing of entries without requiring registration.

Yesterday, Apple announced their new tablet device, the iPad. Even if you are able to step back from all of the hype and reality distortion field surrounding the announcement, it is still an impressive device, once which I would love to get my hands on.

However, as a developer and Mac user, I am increasingly concerned with Apple’s movement toward creating a locked down, and closed ecosystem and platform. A platform where Apple controls which applications developers can deploy, and which applications and content users can consume.
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Sorry for the two month hiatus on posting. I was on a sabbatical and vacation from work for the last 6 weeks of 2009, and have spent the first couple of weeks of 2010 busy working on code, and preparing some events for the spring (more on that in another post).

Some of the stuff I have continued to spend a lot of time working on, has been building iPhone content using the Flash CS5 private beta. I have been doing a lot of work on trying to figure out how to get the best performance, and understand the limits of Flash content on the device. I plan to make a separate post on that in the next couple of days.
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I have just completed running all of the performance tests for the ActionScript 3 Development Task Contest #1.

The result below are tentative until I have confirmed that the code follows the rules (and spirit) of the contest. If you see any issues with any of the top 5 submissions, please post them in the comments. You can view all of the entries in the contest’s GitHub repository.

Here are the results:
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I have uploaded all of the entries for the ActionScript 3 Development Task Contest #1 to the contest’s GitHub repository.

If you sent me an entry and do not see it in the repository, email me ASAP (without the file). Adobe’s spam system can be a bit overzealous at times, but if I know you sent me something, I can find it.
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Well, there is just a little over a day before the deadline for entries to the ActionScript Development Task Contest (AS3DTC) are due. I wanted to make a quick post with a couple of reminders to ensure everyone has their correctly working submissions in on time.

First, a couple items:
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I was working on some code over the weekend and was spending a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to approach a problem, and how to get the best performance from the solution. I thought it would be useful and interesting to see how other developers would approach the problem. This gave me an idea for an ActionScript 3 contest, which I am announcing today.
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I use Git and GitHub to manage all of my personal code projects. I have one large repository called projects, which is then broken into sub directories based on the main technology used for each project (i.e. Flash, JavaScript, iphone, etc…).

I am currently working on a Flash based iphone game code-named “pewpew”, which is maintained within my projects repository. As I have begun to work on it more and more, I decided that I wanted to have pewpew in its own git repository. This will make it easier to track issues, as well as give me the option of open sourcing it and allow others to create and submit forks.
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