E. Litwin wrote:
[…]
If you have a graphing requirement for the mobile browser version
(which you may not even have - don’t know what your application is),
then the Flash requirement will be an issue.
I think you missed my point. First of all, I was using mobile browsers
only as an example – there are other environments where Flash isn’t
usable, enough that one should not rely on Flash for crucial app
features in most cases.
Anyway, with the current state of mobile phone browsers, most sites
don’t need a separate mobile version, so your remark about that is kind
of irrelevant. Mobile browsers can be expected to deal with standard
HTML and images without needing their own version of the site. (In
fact, HTML is generally at its best when it’s browser- and
device-agnostic.)
Where this falls down, though, is with Flash. Most mobile browsers
simply can’t display Flash content. That would be OK if the content
really required Flash, but graphs are simple images of the sort that
shouldn’t require Flash. There is simply no excuse for shutting out
non-Flash users solely because it made development slightly easier.
If you only need to
provide graphs for a desktop version, then I don’t think requiring
Flash is a major issue.
But you are wrong, since on a properly designed site, the “desktop
version” is also the mobile version. (Even on sites that have a
separate mobile version, I generally don’t use it on my phone, since
it’s usually too crippled.). Anyway, one can’t expect all desktop users
to have Flash, as I mentioned above (internal deployment is a different
story, of course).
I might give different advice if the content were more than straight
images, but that’s not the case here.
Eric
Best,
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]