To flash, or not to flash, that is the question.

Much has been written of late about Apple not supporting Adobe flash on its newly announced iPad. Not that it supports flash on its iPhones either, for that matter. Many people seem to think that Apple has an obligation to support flash because flash is so ubiquitous. Apple believes, or, at least, its publicly held stance is, that Adobe flash is too buggy and unstable.

My own view is that content providers are (or should be) more interested in maximising the number of eyeballs viewing their content rather than only utilising a single technology that a subset of consumers will see.

In order to be more aware of just exactly where the flash content lay, I installed the ClickToFlash plugin for the Safari web browser. ClickToFlash will block flash-based material from loading automatically, and will offer you the option of viewing it by clicking on the icon that’s presented to you in place of the flash content. Further, ClickToFlash will offer you the option of playing that blocked material via Quicktime, rather than as flash, if that’s possible.

In short, I’ve discovered that I’ve yet to find a single piece of flash-based content that I really, really wanted to view. Those YouTube videos that I did want to view were able to be displayed in-situ via QuickTime.

I’m pretty sure that when the iPad comes along, I won’t be crying in my tea about the lack of flash-playing capability.