How to Teach Flash and iPad to Play Nicely Together

As someone who has made a good living working with Adobe Flash for the past decade, I was horrified to learn that Apple wasn’t going to support Flash on its iPad. And while I love and use Apple products, I swore I’d never buy an iPad. So what did I do? I bought an iPad, 2 weeks after they began shipping!

Why? Well, for one reason, I believe the iPad is the future of computing. But as far as Flash is concerned, I also wanted to confront my fears, and begin experimenting with alternative technologies (e.g., jQuery, HTML 5, etc.). Two weeks ago, I even removed all references to “Flash Design” on my website, for fear that prospective clients would think that I’ve fallen behind the times. I also began telling a few of my clients that it’s time to stop using Flash, whenever possible. And then, I came to my senses.

For better or worse, Flash just isn’t going to disappear overnight, no matter what Steve Jobs says or does— unless it’s by Adobe’s own undoing.

I, and many others, have already written about the apparent death of Flash, so, I’ll avoid stepping into the debate here, again. My point is, websites that require the Flash plug-in can play nicely (i.e., transparently) with non-Flash-friendly platforms like the iPad. In fact, they’ve been doing so for many years, via a variety of Flash detection techniques.

So, with very little effort, visitors who don’t (or can’t) have the Flash plug-in installed, can see a different version of the site. However, now, it’s time to leave the “Download the Flash Plug-in!” language out of the alternative version. In other words, instead of prompting non-Flash visitors to download the plug-in, simply display a substitute graphic for the Flash-based graphic, and leave it at that. This way, visitors with the Flash plug-in installed will see the Flash version of the website, and visitors without the Flash plug-in will see a non-Flash version of the site (without even knowing it).

Thanks to Geoff Stearns’ FlashObject (now called SWFObject), this is a fairly simple thing to do. You can learn more about SWFObject here.

Tommy Oddo is a web designer and digital artist who lives in Austin, Texas. Entrepreneurs, marketers, and in-house teams hire him to make their websites and digital products more engaging and easier to use. Follow him on: Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook. Subscribe to future articles via RSS and/or Email.