Flash-Free Versions of NPR, Wall Street Journal Web Sites Coming for iPad
All Things Digital is reporting that NPR along with The Wall Street Journal are just a few of the big-name media outlets preparing Flash-free versions of their respective sites specifically for Apple's new iPad.
While National Public Radio is scrambling to have their iPad application available for the iPad release date, they are also putting the finishing touches on their app alternative solution for users to listen to their programming directly from the iPad on April 3rd.
"Use the iPad’s browser to visit NPR.org, which will detect that it’s being viewed with Apple’s device and serve up a custom-built site. This means no trace of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, which is used to power graphics and media on the site."
The Wall Street Journal will also have their Flash-free, iPad specific, front page in a few short weeks. However, the deeper you click into their site you will find that Flash does still exist. That's certainly understandable given how large the site is and how deeply Flash content, especially video and advertising, has been integrated. Detecting iPad Safari's unique user agent string might be easy enough (that's how so many sites detect and deliver iPhone optimized web sites already), but setting up complete mirrors absent Flash is by no means a simple task and may not be a viable solution for those sites out there that depend on Flash to display most of their content. (Though hopefully it will cause sites that use Flash for no reason -- we're looking at you restaurants! -- to rethink the decision and switch to more basic, searchable, and friendly standards based technologies).
As the battle between Adobe and Apple over Flash continues to heat up, it's interesting to see where the chips are falling. Is not having Flash on the iPad or iPhone still a concern to you? Let us (and them) know how you feel in the comments!
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i've always been a Mac person but at the moment i'm not happy at all with the way apple is behaving. Steve Jobs should stop being such a child and just get everything people need on his devices.
as apetizing as the iPad might be at the moment i will not consider getting one until it has got flash.
i can live without a webcam at the moment but not without flash. more than 80 percent of all high profile websites today are flash. and there is no technology in sight that can do all the things that flash can so i don't see the end of flash any time soon.
please stop being so vengeful towards adobe and get cracking with all the good stuff that the iPad (and iPhone) are missing.
I think it's good for site to use flash and have a flash free way for iPhone and ipad to still be able to in joy there sites. Walmart dose it well when you look at there weekly ads they have it with flash or with out I think a lot of site are going to do it that way.
I dont care much about flash. As more big companies make websites without it, it becomes less of an issue. If it were really something people were missing (on iPhone) the jailbreak community would have fixed it. All the big features iPhone was missing since day one have been provided from jailbreakers- native apps, copy/paste, background apps, etc.
@pepe silva - " there is no technology in sight that can do all the things that flash can" are you sure? they may not be as easy to code, but there are other technologies. The real problem I see with flash isn't even that it is such a hog- its the bad developing. Everyone thinks they are experts. It can be done well, but isn't often.
I love that there's no Flash on iPhone or iPad. I block Flash on my desktop and laptop anyway. It's annoying, and it chews the heck out of the machine just to play stupid distracting animated ads I don't want to see anyway. (Ads are fine, but the animated talking ones are so annoying, I'm not going to buy anything from those sponsors anyway.)
This is how it all starts, flash is slowly going the way of the dodo, take into consideration the fact that flash IS a web standard, Apple, WSJ, and NPR know this, YET, they are going against the grain to create non-flash iPad versions of their sites, and in lieu of how successful the iPad is anticipated to be, many more companies HAVE to follow suit...
Good luck holding your breath for flash on any iDevices, the decision has obviously been made, and the story doesn't end with Apple and Adobe walking away together into a beautiful sunset with Phil Collins softly playing in the background...
thatIsAll
Utterly juvenile. It's one thing when I follow, say, an interesting Tweet link and can't see the content on my iPhone (which, happens multiple times daily), but for something that's more than a phone? No dice. Flash and Apple should be working together for the consumer (you know, to sell more product). It's not like Apple has some competing proprietary service that would be a suitable Flash substitute on their products, but it sounds like the pissing contest comes down to access to code and specific fine-tuning. True, my MacBook sounds like an asthmatic chain-smoker when watching flash video, but arrrg, at least I have the choice! I've not pre-ordered, nor will I EVER buy this if there's no flash integration. And don't give me this crap about battery life. I'm an adult, I know when I've had too much to drink and eat, so why put me in pampers now?
[Quote="BAR"]...so why put me in pampers now?[/Quote]
because you're being pissy about it (see what I did there?)
but in all seriousness, Adobe won't even take the initiative to create a better flash experience in the Mac environment, it's not like Apple is blocking them from doing so, the ball is firmly in Adobe's court as far as that goes.
We'd all be foolish to think that there aren't iPads and iPhones in Cupertino running flash, because it's been confirmed already with the iPhone, Adobe was asked to create a middle ground flash plugin to run on the iPhone, which apparently has never been done up to par with what Apple requires..
The ball is in ADOBE's court, but they'd rather deliver a subpar experience and have the end user rely on updates for things to get better... I say NO, when flash runs poorly on the iPhone and slows it to a crawl, WHO WILL THE AVERAGE END USER BLAME??? (my point exactly Sebastian)
Wait Wait wait let me stop myself from laughing real quick so this overrated Ipad crap can't even see gif images & such and this is suppose to be grand?Lawd Stick a fork in me again I am so done with apple loons...But I will still enter every contest for this ugly ipad and sell it when i get it
I am not a big fan of Flash, but I certainly hope that NPR is not using device detection (a.k.a browser sniffing 2.0). That technique guarantees another generation of non-future proof, non-standard web sites.
Wow! Everyone's jumping on the iPad bandwagon!
http://www.diverse-group.com/menu/blog.html
Anyone remember the post about the ad showing the flash content and I predicted this?? Huh?? Cause I'm so smart. Lmao.
The people, that come to an iPhone blog, whining about an apple device not having flash are really funny. It isn't even out yet and some are saying they will NEVER buy it, as much as you know every school or something might be using it in a few years, you might have to see your kids on it anyway. And it's becoming obvious that if all the more popular website do this, or scrap flash like Virgin US, it wont be a matter of a replacement of flash or not, it's just gonna become less appealing to use.
No flash and no hdmi out is the reason why I am not buying an iPad. I was going to purchase it for a friend however he won't be able to stream his favorite videos with it because of the lack of flash. Getting a netbook instead.
All the naysayers that are saying they won't buy an ipad because the lack of flash will be visiting tipb.com on a 9.7 inch screen by summer.
Lack of flash won't be enough to keep your hands off this new hybrid once you walk into the apple store and see the beauty in person.
honestly I don't care either way about flash, but it make sense that having a very large segment of the mobile browsing public that can't view flash would make websites and content providers find a new way to provide their content so that everyone can see it.
Gino and other apple loons no I will keep my damn netbook and question I was going to get a mac but can u see animation gifs on those things ?
This is essentially what Vimeo already has done, and is similar to what Google does, in the sense that Google customizes the presentation of content depending on the browser you're using.
I was actually quite surprised to hear that NPR is making a no-flash version of their site. NPR has a great iPhone app, and I think it's safe to assume their iPad optimized app will be equally well made. So why are they spending the time and energy to create an HTML5 website? Do they think many iPad owners are going to go to their website instead of the app?
@Gino
I already have an iphone. What will the ipad do that my iphone cannot? Only difference I see is a larger screen, which I don't care about because I would not want to carry it around. If I want to watch a movie or read a book I can do that at home on my monitor or tv.
I'm all for HTML5 but i tested and the majority of "All" the website i go to are either all Flash Video or Full Flash sites. So what would i do if i wanted to surf the web on the Pad?? Theres no work around yet and until there is, i don't think ill be picking one up and it kinda sucks cuz i could really see myself using it a lot @ home and on flights. So either HTML5 gets a major roll out or i wait until something else comes along because without Flash, the iPad is not "The Most Complete Internet Device"!
I try to avoid flash when I can, and I have a plugin for Firefox that presents a button so it doesn't auto-run. Flash sites are not accessible for people with disabilities. I look forward to a world without flash.
As a web developer I don't buy the whole "it takes a lot of effort to produce two websites" for sites that just use Flash for video (most other stuff can already be done with HTML4 Javascript)
For one, most video served via Flash these days is already encoded in h.264 so it wouldn't take much to run a tool to repackage the videos in mp4.
Secondly, these are sites where the pages are dynamically generated and so you don't need 2 completely separate web sites. They most likely already have browser specific bits for reasons of Javascript/CSS compatibilty etc (I'm looking at you IE!) and even the tags to embed Flash can be different between browsers. HTML4 should parse just fine as HTML5 so in about 50 lines of code I could maintain a list of user agents for browsers that support HTML5 and when rendering for one of those, have some of that code replace the DTD declaration with the HTML5 version, replace the flash Object/Embed tags with Video and the equivalent file and in the ad banner code make sure those browsers don't get served flash ads.
So I don't get what the fuss is with getting rid of Flash at least in these 2 cases.
HTML5 ALL DAY!!!
I just don't see why Flash is such an issue. I haven't missed it on the iPhone and I block 90% of it with Click2Flash on my Macs -- at work, where I'm on Windows & IE it just slows everything down. What are the cool sites Im missing that everyone wants so much they don't care that Flash is slow & bloated?
@Lady Kaede Hulu. That's the one you hear about all of the time.
@tipd I'm not getting an iPad because I can't justify getting a table w/out Flash when you have the HP Slate and other tables (specifically Android tablets) providing more (Flash, install anything, etc). It just seems like an extra toy that I don't need right now and without Flash it is just a big email and minimal web surfing tablet. :-/
Maybe one day I'll get one, if the other tablets don't live up to their hype, but I'm holding out for the, seemingly, better devices and Flash.
@sfwrtr Flash has been accessible since Flash 6 (or so). It is no less accessible than Ajax'ed sites. It is in the hands of the web developer(s) to enable and provide that experience.
learnbeforeattacking, please.
The one problem with Hulu of course, even if someone (Apple/Palm/Google/whoever) finally gets Hulu technically running in Flash on a phone at a useable framerate, as far as I know Hulu doesn't have rights for broadcasting on mobile devices for which TV networks charge extra so they would be forced to block those devices or else the Networks could pull their content.
Maybe will Flash Apple WWDC 2010?
On smartphones Flash is a joke!
IPAD & No Flash = Epic Fail
The Iphone is great device but steve jobs sucks with his opinion about flash - he should implement it and if somebody has the same opinion as him, Deactivate it and it's done!
@John C Bland II, so, OK, Hulu, thanks. I'll check out Hulu on the iMac when I get home. Does this mean that if I get all Hulu-fanboy/girl (stranger things have happened) I'll have a legitimate beef about not getting it on my iPhone because Steve is just a stubborn SOB? Hard to imagine, but like I said, stranger things have happened . . .
@Lady Kaede you asked for 1 so I gave you what most folks cry over.
Keep in mind, you don't like Flash but it isn't going anywhere purely based on content already online (not including what is still ring developed. It is the #1 in online gaming, video delivery (especially streaming), and probably ads too (hate'm or not they are revenue and that rules many).
So, sarcasm about Hulu is fine but the world uses Flash. Some don't. That's fine. You just have to find a better reason than "slow and bloated" because that's subjective (HTML sites can be slow too). To that point, what sites are you visiting that are slow and bloated at work? 9-10 it is probably that site not Flash.
Now, I'm a Flash developer so I'm aware of how well it can be optimized. I do major sites in front of huge audiences and "slow and bloated" never creep into performance reports.
Disclaimer: I'm not discrediting your experiences just giving you another path to consider for your anti-Flash rally.
j/k
oh...and Flash on smart phones is def' a joke. Great thing that's a thing of the past. Flash Player 10.1 is going to mobile phones so you have full flash, not a limited knock off. It is like if Apple put the full OSX on the iPad (full OS vs App Store only).
From a development standpoint, it is an issue especially considering how many Flash developers, projects and products are already in the marketplace. All this means is allocating additional resources towards doing some of the same things twice.
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