Flash not working on OS X / iOS? - ios

I have a flash file (.swf) on the homepage of my web site. When a user loads the page, the file cycles through some images. It works as expected when I access the site from a Windows PC, but when I access it from either a Mac computer or an iPhone/iPad, there is a white space where the flash file should be. What usually causes this kind of behavior?
EDIT:
Did some more careful testing on my Mac (running OS X Version 10.6.8). The flash file does not work in the latest version of Safari with the latest Flash Player installed, but it does work in Firefox.

Flash doesn't work on iOS, iOS does not support it.
As for OS X, what browser(s) have you tried and what versions of OS X?

Running Flash from a web page is not supported in iOS (iPhone/iPad), likely your Mac OSX does not have the Flash Player plugin.

Interestingly, the answer to this question didn't have anything to do with the flash's code itself. The file in question was placed on the page by way of the < embed > element. As I discovered from reading this rather old but still very relevant article, < embed > is not supported in all browsers. Apparently, it's supported in Firefox but not in Chrome or Safari. After following the advice in that article, the flash file plays correctly in all flash-supporting browsers.

Related

Mjpeg broken on recent Mobile Safari?

I am playing with live mjpeg streams from IP cameras and found that support for mjpeg seems to be broken on recent Mobile Safari releases.
I am using a simple HTML test page with an embedded image as follows:
<img src="http://[ip_address]/[path]">
This works fine on an iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1, but doesn't show anything on an iPad with iOS 7.0.3.
Can someone confirm this? Any known workarounds?
MJPEG support on iPhone (and on OSX also) has been often broken in the past, and I can confirm that right now I'm having the same problem with MJPEG streams on my iPhone 5, version 7.0.4.
You can find some threads talking about this problem in the apple website, dating from mid 2013 and with a few recent answers, like this one https://discussions.apple.com/message/22933450#22933450
This one posts a possible solution, if you can control the stream:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4347848
I have not tried if this solution works, because I can't change the stream itself.
And the problem was also on OSX Lion :
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19028348#19028348
They say it has been fixed in OSX, and that some bug reports has been filed for ios, but can't find if and when they will be fixed.
I can't find it again, but in a comment someone speculate that MJPEG support was disabled/limited on purpose on iPhone because some users had their mobile bandwidth consumed when forgetting mobile safari connected to a site streaming mjpeg images, but can't find a reference to that claim.

Inspect Element on Windows Phone

I am developing a mobile web page for several mobile OSes. On Android and iOS, it looks fine but on WindowsPhone, the alignment is a mess. On iOS, i can inspect element on the web view using Safari, but I wonder how to do this on Windows Phone. Is there any way to do this? I only have Mac OS 10.8.5 for development. Been searching without result. Thanks.
Inspect Element is not available on Mobile IE.
The recommended way to test your site is via the desktop version of IE as it shares most of its codebase with Mobile IE.
You can use a VM if you are on MacOS (you can find the IE VMs here: http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools)
Windows Phone 7 runs IE9 and Windows Phone 8 runs IE10.

Trying to debug a web site on iPad, but the device doesn't appear under Develop menu in Safari on my Mac

According to iOS Developer Library Debugging guide it should be possible to debug a web site in Mobile Safari (on iOS 6) remotely from desktop Safari, through a usual USB connection. But after completing described steps (I turn on Web Inspector on iPad, connect it via USB to my Mac, switch on Develop menu form the preferences) I still do not see any device item under Develop menu in desktop Safari. Is there any other crucial requirement for this to work? Minimal Mac OS X version maybe? I have 10.6.8.
It turns out that support for remote debugging was added only in Safari 6, which, for some unexplainable reason is not available for Snow Leopard, only for Lion (in limited version) and up. So I bought an upgrade to Mountain Lion and it simply works now.
Apple wants to force the developers to upgrade to the recent OSX (which is bundled with the recent Developer Tools).
But there is an working way for debugging iOS6+ Safari for developers using OSX 10.6.8 / Windows / whatever:
WeinRE
It works just fine like the official way. Maybe Apple took this project for their debugging (just a guess).
In the preferences for Safari on iOS, there is an option under advanced that allows the toggling of 'Web Inspector', which turns on and off this feature (at least this is on iOS 6, I don't have older devices to check this on).
There is also a limitation that:
Important: You can only inspect apps on devices that have been transferred to your device from Xcode. You cannot inspect apps that have been downloaded from the App Store, even if it is your app.
So I expect that developer apps are the only other ones that you can manipulate in this manner.

iOS webapp performance safari vs home screen start

I read an article recently which states that web apps on iOS launched from the home screen running in full screen mode have slower performance than webapps running inside safari.
Then I found a followup article to it which seems to sugguest that the issue above is fixed.
Does anyone know if this is confirmed?
According to information from appleinsider, ios5 beta fixes that problem and now Nitro JavaScript engine enabled on Web.app.
I've iOS 5 installed on my iphone4 and updated SunSpider JavaScript testing framework 0.9.1 (to be able to start as fullscreen web application under ios). And I've started subspider several times in fullscreen webapp mode and in Safari mobile. So, see my results below (images are clickable):
May be something was fixed (apple insider provides 4 vs 10 seconds difference), but I can't say that performance is equals in both cases (3756.5ms vs 5243.8ms for those who can't see images).
UPD
Small interesting note about UIWebView, it is impossible to use Nitro-enabled JavaScript engine in native applications (I mean applications designed in Xcode and posted to AppStore) because Nitro JIT requires to be able to use dynamic code signing.
UPD
Look at iOS 5 Top 10 Browser Performance Changes on blaze.io, Seems Apple enabled Nitro for Fullscreen WebApps in iOS5 (nice statistics in article).

Which browser has most similar engine to iPad WebKit? (SVG, CSS)

I need to check rendering of a large sum of HTML5 "widgets" that will be shown in an iPad WebKit. Which desktop browser gives me the most similar renering experience? My widgets mostly consist of SVGs positioned with CSS3 and some CSS masking.
Is it Safari on a Mac?
EDIT: The desktop OS is not a concern, I can pick whatever I want for this...
EDIT: What particularly interrests me is if desktop Safari is closer to iOS Safari than Chrome is. They are both based on WebKit, but I see a lot of tiny rendering differences between Chrome and iOS Safari.
How about mobile Safari on the iPad Simulator?
Unfortunately, the iPad Simulator is Mac-only. If you can't test on that, Apple recommends using Safari and changing your user agent string to the iPad's user agent string. You can find instructions from Apple here.
Try real Safari. It uses Webkit and since you're on windows, you can't download the iPad simulator.
On the desktop, anything that uses WebKit is going to give you a similar rendering experience especially with regards to more technical things like SVGs. Unfortunately, there are still browser-specific quirks that you won't be able to notice without actually testing it on either the simulator or a real device.

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