page 2 of 2
I have used Photon a few times. It’s definitely worth owning. There’s a few Flash stalwarts that refuse to make their content available to devices that don’t support Flash. Photon is a highly rated app that provides a reasonably good Flash experience on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For the most part, Flash is a dying technology. For only $4.99, Photon is a good way to bridge the gap until everyone has moved to HTML 5. This could take some time…
Use Photon to Play Adobe Flash
Photon is extremely easy to use. Once you have purchased the app, click on the icon to launch it. When you first arrive at a site that uses Flash, you’ll typically see a message that Flash is not supported on this device.
Simply tap the Flash button on Photon’s toolbar and you’ll have the Flash version running. When the Flash session begins, a new toolbar appears. By tapping on the options you can select how to interact with the Flash player.
This solves the problem of using Flash on a touch screen, however, it’s a bit cumbersome. Flash content is just not suited for mobile devices. It’s designed to be used with a mouse or trackpad. Photon does a good job of enabling the touch screen to work with Flash.
Optimizing Photon
Photon has a lot of settings, which may seem intimidating at first. Your Flash experience depends on your Internet connection speed. Photon automatically configures the settings, however, you are free to adjust them. The bandwidth setting is critical to the end-user experience. If you have the speed, you can select a higher number, which will give you sharper images with faster frame rates. If you are experiencing problems, go for a lower number. It won’t look as good, but it will work better.
Other settings let the user optimize photon for video, gaming, or web browsing. The user can switch the Photon engine version. I couldn’t find any documentation about the engine versions, but try using the newest one, v4, which is the default setting. This seems to work the best. Photon also lets the user configure a gaming keyboard. They seemed to have thought of everything. You can even print web pages via AirPrint.
Beyond enabling Flash-based content, Photon is a great browser, and is better than Safari in some ways. Photon even allows the user to have different browsing views, such as split, trio, and PIP (picture in picture).
Overall, Photon is worth owning. I don’t use it a lot, but it has come in handy. I don’t play a lot of Flash games. I get all the video content I need on my Apple TV. I just use it to view those website that have refused to abandon Flash. For this reason, Photon is well worth the $5. If you really use Flash a lot, it’s indispensable.