Surprisingly, this is still a big honkin' deal for some people. iOS devices don't do Flash, they haven't ever, and the chances of them doing it in the future is next to nil. Natively, that is. Developers have been trying to crack this nut for some time and mostly, they've succeeded.
Skyfire from Skyfire Labs, Inc. was probably the first big splash any browser had with trying to square the Flash circle on the iPhone. They offer two flavors of their popular Flash-enabled browser, so if you're running two devices it could set you back eight dollars total. Not that you couldn't run the iPhone version on your iPad and save a few bucks.
If you just want to watch video, save a couple bucks with the iPhone version
Skyfire has opted to ditch the less is more ethos of most mobile browsers and crams the screen with buttons. Skyfire for iPad has 16 buttons on the screen as well as the URL bar and search bar. Pressed for space, Skyfire on the iPhone opts for only 12 buttons. To be fair, only about half of these are typical navigation buttons needed to work, and those can be found at the top.
That's a lot of buttons in there
At the bottom of both browsers sits a row of additional services. Here you can have quick access to your Facebook wall, your Twitter feed, Google Reader, and something called Fireplace, which is essentially just the links from your Facebook wall. You can also Like things and Share with your friends from here, as well as forward sites to your Instapaper, Delicious, Tumblr, and Pinboard accounts.
Sharing, finding out what's hot online, and more
These are helpful, especially if you share a lot of content. But if you don't and find them merely distractions, the settings page offers no way to remove this bar from view. Luckily for iPhone users it hides itself in an off-screen pane while you scroll, as does the top bar of controls.
The one button on the bottom that is important and necessary is the Video button. When you load a page with an embedded film, such as the ever-popular Daily Show site, the browser begins analzying the film content and converting it to something viewable on Apple devices. A small pop up alerts you when the video is ready to be played.
Video is great whether on the iPhone version or iPad
When we watched movies, they played amazingly well. Audio was usually perfect and video was as well. Obviously your connection speed and video length will effect this playback. Once the video is rendered appropriately, you can watch in the tiny screen Skyfire defaults to, or you can kick it up to full screen on your iPad. There you have your usual video controls, though not all of these work. Scrubbing ahead proved impossible on longer videos, and the quick 30-second rewind button, while there, was grayed out.
But I thought we had Flash working? Oh yeah, just movies...sigh
Skyfire stumbles when you present it with Flash gaming, however, because what it does not do is interactive Flash. It will also not help you if you open a restaurant website with a Flash-based menu. Video is typically just something you watch, not something you interact with, while Flash games (and menus) are responsive in many different ways. Skyfire provides unidirectional content delivery.
But that's okay. The App Store has plenty of games for us to play without Flash. :(
We're almost hesitant to talk about Cloud Mosa, Inc.'s Puffin Web Browser for fear of drawing too much attention to it. If you want Flash on your iPhone or iPad, and you want a little more than just video, this is the way to go. Using remote servers, but well integrated, Puffin puts the entirety of Flash content in your hands.
We had no trouble getting in to this Flash-based game
Puffin keeps the interface simple with five buttons, the URL bar and the search bar. All your controls such as bookmarks, settings, and keyboard access were tucked away under one button. There weren't a great deal of settings, but we were never intending to make Puffin our default browser anyway. No, we have just one use in mind for the little arctic bird.
Taking a simple approach to buttons and menus
That Flash-based website menu? Not a problem. Puffin loaded it and we were able to make our reservations, look at the brunch specials, see the slideshow, and even mute that annoying background music. Your favorite music blog that opted for the Flash-player embedding? Got it under control. Granted this was all touch-based, the equivalent of a click, so anything that reacted to just a mouse hovering over it remained off limits to us.
Flash-based sites are no problem; table for two?
Does it stream perfectly? Well, not exactly. When it does recognize Flash video content, it performs much in the same fashion as Skyfire, converting Flash video into something watchable and iOS friendly and delivering it in a little pop up. But there's a catch.
That little button is where the magic happens
Whenever we found a video with a pre-roll advertisement, Puffin got stuck on this and refused to render anything else. This made many commercial sites relatively useless for us to view content on, unless we could accept a stuttering image. When it renders, Puffin delivers smooth flowing images and well-synced audio. When it snags itself on pre-rolls, we're forced back into the browser window to watch a laggy stream from the remote servers. So for the time being, we can watch Hulu and the Daily Show on our iPhones and iPads, but it won't be pretty.
Flash audio is no trouble whatsoever, tho video can be tricky
But with Puffin delivering interactive content to our devices, we could navigate our way through various games without difficulty. To be sure, there's again some lag in reaction times and some imprecision with tapping to control what's meant to be clicked. But still. We were able to log in to our daughter's BuildaBear account and navigate entirely through the online world. We could check our mail and travel through the virtual world without any troubles whatsoever.
We found that both Skyfire and Puffin delivered up content that was previously off-limits to us and that there were great places where they didn't overlap. Skyfire knew its way around a pre-roll, but stumbled over anything other than video streams. Puffin could give us laggy video from anywhere at all as well as interactive Flash, but the results were less than stellar. If we had to give an edge, we would give it to Skyfire just because its video is so completely well done, though we can't help feeling it's a photo finish here with Skyfire just nosing out the competition. Puffin opened doors we thought were shut to mobile users for some time. With a little investment in coding and on their back end servers, this little 99 cent app reminds us of the little engine that could.
