Your Bandwidth Gone In a Flash

I've been looking at Adobe's efforts to put Flash on mobile devices for a while now (E.g. http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/ and http://www.adobe.com/mobile/). It's been slow going and adoption by mobile device makers and cell providers has also been long and drawn out. Yet, Adobe is making headlines recently, concerning their efforts to bring this dominant web media player to that beloved handheld of yours. I like Flash for certain things (playing music, videos, etc.), but I don't prefer it for most. What you'll find is that having it on your cell is not going to make you as happy as you think.

There's a reason this effort has taken so long. It's because Flash can be a huge bandwidth hog. Adobe has had to make something that has proven to be quite heavy on networks, lighter. Cell providers don't want to, and shouldn't have to, accommodate this, just so you can have animated icons and ads. Videos and music already play on their networks just fine. Even if you could get this thing to work adequately, it still isn't the same as having a movie saved on your handheld media player and playing from there, instead of over a network. That said, of course you can use Flash as a player for media that is local to the device. Eye-candy has a place in sales, after all.

Yet, I still don't see the need. I've been in IT for a long time. I generally know what I'm up against, even if I've never seen it before. I've learned to look past the sales pitches and client-facing corporate PR to get to the meat of things. I've seen way too many sites that use Flash and not only offer little significant features by this, but also take forever to load.

Here's a test. Look up web design awards on the net. Most are given to Flash-laden sites that anyone with an average machine would have to wait ages to bring up on screen. Do these sites deserve awards? Certainly from an artistic standpoint, etc., they do.

But I'm not here to debate about merits of web design...simply to say that Flash really ought to be used on music and video sites. Personal sites are fine too. But why bother with it just to say something that could be said much faster and easier and not create bandwidth bloat?

I like Flash for the aesthetics and some functionality, but I most certainly DO NOT want it on my handheld. Perhaps this is why Apple doesn't want it on the iPhone, either.