Sean's Blog

From the article:

To meet the needs of mobile browsers, developers need to think in terms of scaling down — falling back on basic Web technologies that won’t tax the capabilities of low-powered devices. Too often, however, that simply means writing a separate UI strictly for mobile users. The result? Mobile Web applications are in pretty much the same boat as they were when the first WAP-enabled handsets appeared: two separate development tracks, one for the desktop and one for mobile.

Call that an opportunity if you want. I call it a waste of potential. So if it sounded like I was knocking Adobe last week, far from it; if Flash can solve the problem of scaling the Web, it would be a boon for everybody. Unfortunately, the mobile world seems determined to keep Adobe — or anyone else — from doing it.

This comes not too long after I posted this. I feel a separate UI should be written for mobile devices. Making Flash available for mobile devices would do nothing to solve this problem, and would likely only make a bad situation even worse (in slowing down mobile devices even more than JavaScript stuff already does). There should still be two separate development tracks, as that’s the only true solution to this problem—at least as long as mobile devices remain so handicapped compared to their desktop counterparts.