There are many sites with Flash based educational content , like CBBC, wont the iPad mean starting from scratch for those projects?
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Open standards for web page creation, rather than Flash, is the way forward. As a bit of a history lesson, those of us old enough to remember will recall that Flash was born out of a lack of "motion" on websites. Moving gifs was about as exciting as it got. HTML has matured a lot since then, and fact is, we just don't need Flash any more. Steve Jobs has allegedly made his feelings about Flash, and Adobe, pretty clear today, so I'd suggest no-one expects Flash to be coming to any Apple devices on his watch. |
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"There are many sites with Flash based educational content ... wont the iPad mean starting from scratch for those projects?" Yes and no. Some of these web developers are already beginning to offer content for non-Flash capable devices. The prevalence of the iPhone and iPod Touch has accelerated this. HTML5 offers video and animation capabilities that rival Flash and is supported by the Mobile Safari browser. For other Flash-enabled sites whose web developers aren't as forward-thinking, there are still options. I believe we'll see a rise in Flash video "proxy" sites, like Kickyoutube.com, which allows you to download Youtube video files in a variety of formats (note: Youtube themselves have recently released a non-Flash HTML5 video player) |
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I believe it's unlikely we'll see Flash on the iPad. I also believe that this fact will help accelerate widespread adoption of standard alternatives. There will be a near-term awkwardness while we can't always get the content we want (which may just mean we have to look harder - as Fraser suggests wrt App Store apps, for example), but in the longer run it's going to be a better experience for everyone. Adoption of any significant scale within education will certainly force the issue with content providers within the domain and ultimately benefit not just iPad users. Of course not everyone wants to be a trailblazer :-) |
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The question of whether the iPad should run Flash is one that I think we should skirt around for now, as it's out of all of our hands. What do do about The Flash Problem is a valid point of discussion, though, as it's true that many educational resources are done in Flash. Indeed, some are done in Shockwave... I had a discussion with our Maths teacher because he was concerned about this. Within an hour or so, we had found a lot of equivalent material in the App Store. I would guess that "native apps" are going to be the answer for a lot of situations. |
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