One of the major flaws with the iPad (and the iPhone) is the lack of Flash support. We've heard all about Apple and Adobe's differences of opinion, but that doesn't change the fact that iPad/iPhone users are kind of screwed when it comes to websites that use Flash. However, a little something called Smokescreen may be the answer to iPad owners' prayers.
A mobile advertising company upset by the omission of Flash created a JavaScript library that makes Flash advertisements viewable on devices that do not support the format. Smokescreen renders Flash into JavaScript and HTML5 within the browser if a device can't read Flash.
While it's an exciting development, PC World cites Simon Willison, co-creator of Django, a framework for building Web applications in the Python language, who says there could be some problems when it comes to performance.
"My one concern is performance," said Wilson. "The library is 175 KB and over 8,000 lines of JavaScript which might cause problems on low-powered mobile devices."
Indeed, the folks behind Smokescreen admitted that right now, Smokescreen is slower than the Flash plugin and is limited by the performance of the browser. The team plans to boost performance in the future but in the mean time, we're warned that some demos won't run at acceptable speeds on iPads and iPhones.
Check out the demos on the Smokescreen website. There's a whole bunch of demos showing Flash ads in Smokescreen (them being a mobile ad company, that makes sense) but there's a few really great Strong Bad emails too.
If you have any questions about your iPad, be sure to check out Computing.Net's iPad/iPhone/iPod forum!
