Earlier today Apple announce the iPad, the touchscreen tablet computer which they hope will become the new way in which people browse the internet at home and on the move, and with the companies track record you wouldn’t bet against this becoming a reality.
One of the announcements which interested me, was that the iPad will run on the same software as the iPhone and this could have major implications for your museum website.
If you have browsed the web on the iPhone you might have noticed that it doesn’t play flash animations. Many museums use flash on their website, some are even built completely in flash, on the iPad these just won’t work.
Apple are unlikely to change the iPad to enable flash, as this would give people a cheap way to get games on the touchscreen tablet and endanger their valuable revenues from the App Store.
The iPad will launch in about six weeks, would you consider removing the flash elements of your website to accommodate it’s users?
D’oh, we love Apple so much i don’t think it would affect many decisions in purchasing the iPad.
Such a shame not to acommodate flash.
Most of the time, Flash elements on museum sites could be easily replicated using JavaScript and CSS, and where video is needed, the HTML5 video element.
Flash can’t even run on a Mac without the fans kicking in, so I can’t see how supporting it on the iPad would be beneficial in the long run.
I think that there have been reasons for a long time before the iPad to migrate your content out of Flash.
Between SEO difficulties and complexities, user experience, p-i-t-a modification of existing/new content, the need for constant plugin updates on the user side, I am often surprised that any content is still walled away inside flash.
That all said, apparently Adobe has something to say about Flash not working on Apple mobile devices.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/27/AR2010012704222.html
I am surprised to find some museum websites build completely in Flash, I hope that this gives another reason for these venues to create good, accessible websites.
Indeed Jim, why are they built on flash anyway? Really not the best way forward in terms of accessibility, nor the most likely to get picked up in SEO either. *fail*
I wonder if apple will inadverently end up doing good things for access purely by this commerically orientated decision. Interesting
I don’t quite get the comments about how accessibility & SEO are improved by apps on an ipad. If you buy a piece of specific hardware, and then install a specific app then you have access. Is an app SEO?