Frash (Flash on the iPhone) - A Review

I don't have any pics or video to share about my experience with Frash.  However, I do have my memories and oh how bittersweet they are.  It should be noted that I am a Flash Platform developer and would freaking love to have Flash on my iDevices.  It should also be noted that I am a bit of an Apple fanboy.  So, lately I've had internal struggles with some of the decisions made by Apple, but I digress.  Back to Frash.  I was really excited about it.  So, I jailbroke my phone.  It was so easy to jailbreak my iPhone 4.  The only thing easier would have been to buy a Droid 2.  Anyway, once I had jailbroken my phone I went through the relatively painless process of installing Frash.  Before I move onto discussing Frash, I need to say that jailbreaking my device made my user experience seem less stable.  Apps would crash more frequently, it seemed like my battery was being used up faster, and some things just stopped working altogether, such as my Gowalla app.  I don't blame Frash for any of that.  That is just the price I paid for being willing to jailbreak my phone.

I really, really wanted to like Frash.  However, it just didn't perform very well.  I experimented by going to different Flash sites where I knew what Flash player version they were published to.  The exciting thing was, Flash pieces that were published to the latest and greatest Flash Player 10, ran very well.  Of course, things like roll overs behave oddly, but that is because actions like that don't really exist on a touch advice.  It was still gratifying though just to see a website built in Flash.  However, anything I visited that was older than Flash 10, such as Flash 9 with actionscript 2 or Flash 8, didn't work and often just crashed the Safari app all together.  I can only imagine that this is a result of Frash only supporting the latest virtual machine.  In a nutshell, Flash is a virtual machine.  However to be even more specific, Flash is two virtual machines;  one machine that runs the old scripting languages like actionscript 1 and 2, and an entirely separate virtual machine that runs the new scripting language, actionscript 3.  So, again, I think Frash may only support the virtual machine that runs AS3 and therefore older Flash sites will not operate in Frash. That is all just speculation though.  What is reality is that Frash had trouble running a lot of the Flash sites I visited.

The really disappointing aspect of Frash is that for whatever reason, it wouldn't run Flash video players.  90% of the Flash video players I tried to use with Frash gave me a socket connection error.  Not only that, any Flash YouTube video players that the iPhone would natively switch to an iPhone friendly Quicktime version, would stay in their regular Flash version and hence be rendered useless.  The 10% of Flash video players that did run, ran so slowly it wasn't worth my time.

I restored my iPhone back to it's original, locked state.  I'm happy I did so.  My Gowalla app even started working again.

So, if I had to grade Frash on performance, I would give it a C- or a D.  Maybe some day Flash will be on all devices... And the world will live as one

Migrated blog to Squarespace

This is a short note to say that I migrated my blog to Squarespace. So far it's been a pretty cool experience. In fact, I am creating this post via the Squarespace iPhone App. I'll be publishing some new Flash related posts soon. Thanks as always for the support. Chris

First Flash Dallas Meeting!!!

I am pleased to announce that we have a time and a place for the first official Flash Dallas meeting!


June 26, 2010
11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Google Map

For details about the group click here.

For details about the meeting click here.

I would like to thank IMC2 for hosting our first meeting.

Apple denies apps built on translation, including using Flash CS5

I was reading a friends blog and posted a comment regarding Apple not allowing people to use Flash or other translators to make apps for their devices. I thought I would post that comment here and then move on with my life.

I am, have been, and will continue to be a Flash developer. I also have been an Apple fan boy since I was a kid. I think the thing that bugs me most about this whole situation is that people are trying to equate the lack of Flash on Apple devices as the death of Flash. That’s just ridiculous. Silverlight has never been on Mac devices and will never be on Mac devices, but it continues to grow in usage. So if something like Silverlight is still moving forward, then why would Flash crap out? It won’t. For anyone out there who is worried about Flash going away, the best thing we can do to keep moving it forward is to keep developing with it. If you need something that runs on an iPad or iPhone, develop alternative content for those devices. It is possible to build something for one platform and serve up alternative content for another. We have the technology, it can be done. It might take more time and be more expensive, but it can be done. In fact, that is how it has always been done. There has never been and will never be a universal operating system or browser. So, do what you need to do and work with the technologies you like. Snoogins.

Nice Conversation w/ Kevin Lynch About Flash

Kevin elaborates on his blog >>