Soft music of a gentle tinkling on the piano, raindrops pattering against the window as you sit before the fire in your country home doing a puzzle. This is the serenity into which you are dropped as you launch Quell, a puzzler that just hit the App Catalog from developer Fallen Tree Games.

The game play of Quell is most closely related to Droplets, though in terms of its peaceful atmosphere and pretty visuals, it is more akin to Ancient Frog, at least in terms of the way it leaves you feeling mellow and refreshed. It is a fun, addicting puzzler that is not too hard for those of you who are easily frustrated by puzzles yet challenging enough to keep a pro puzzle solver interested.

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Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite use for the Pre’s mirror?” or something a bit more complicated, like “why are you sticking with webOS (or are you)?” Or maybe we’ll just end up discussing our sandwich workflow. Today, however, we’re diving into the latest version of webOS. While few have been able to handle webOS 2.0, the veritable cornucopia of videos, screenshots, and reviews have made it easy to draw some preliminary conclusions. After the break, see what the crew has to say about HP webOS 2.0.

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webOS 2.0 brings another major feature we’ve been waiting (and waiting) for: Flash! Above, check out the details on how Flash works on webOS 2.0. It’s been a long time coming.

Essentially, the way it works is that when you load a page, the Flash elements are identified as black gradient boxes with play buttons. You can turn Flash completely off or completely on – but the latter is crazy talk.

Once you tap on a Flash element you go into "Flash Mode," which means that all touch gestures and taps are ignored unless they’re inside the Flash box. You can tell you’re in Flash mode because there is a gray border around the Flash box and because the Refresh button on the lower-right changes to an X.

When in Flash mode, rotating the device either way causes the phone to automatically zoom into the Flash element. You can then interact with it by playing the game, hitting play, etc. You can tap that X in the lower-righthand corner to exit Flash Mode and continue to navigate the web page while Flash is still running.

So… How does it work? Actually, it works much better than I expected, which is perhaps not saying much. Once the video or game gets cached up, things seem to move along with nary a hitch. I don’t know how if affects battery life (hint: probably severely if you overdo it), but I do know that I’m glad to say that it’s here (or will be soon) and that’s one fewer thing for webOS fans to have to wait for.

Update: Yeah, we should have thought to try Hulu.com. It loads up pages fine, but unfortunately when you are on an individual episode or clip it doesn’t seem to give up the actual Flash element on webOS 2.0, it’s just a black box. Not a surprise. Thanks for the reminder, commenters!

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webOS is moving up to version 2.0 and bringing along with it a whole host of new features sure to please even the most jaded of webOS users. There’s the stuff that we’ve already covered: card-grouping Stacks, enhanced and more capable Just Type with search and Quick Actions, Exhibition Touchstone dock modes, and expandable Synergy plug-ins.

That’s a lot, but if you ask us, not quite worthy of bringing the big 2.0. Here’s what else Palm didn’t let slip until today:

webOS finally supports Adobe Flash Player 10.1 (beta), and it comes baked right into webOS 2.0. Flash support is limited to the browser, but by and large it’s a rich and fluid experience, and one that we’re glad we can stop wondering if we’ll ever get.

You can now tag contacts as a “favorite.” Doing so has two consequences. One: the contact will show up under the new Favorites view in the Phone app. Two: contacts tagged as such will appear at the top of searches in Contacts, Email, Messaging, and Phone.

As glimpsed in earlier leaks, webOS 2.0 comes along with Text Assist. The new app and service build upon and greatly expand the auto-correction capabilities of webOS, including general spell checking, dictionary customization, and the ability to set your own macros (custom text strings with a short typed trigger).

Skype Mobile is coming to webOS, so long as you’re on Verizon. This leverages that exclusive Verizon deal, so don’t count on seeing Skype calling on any other webOS devices any time soon.

The new Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is included from the start, displacing DataViz’s abandoned Documents to Go package. But the only thing you’ll get by default in webOS 2.0 is the Quickoffice viewer, which lets you read Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. There’s no editing just yet (we suspect Quickoffice wants to charge for that, which is reasonable, albeit disappointing), but the included app does sync with online services like Google Docs and Dropbox.

The Facebook app is also getting a bump to 2.0, which brings along support for Facebook Chat in Messaging, through the magic of Synergy. The new Facebook app also leverages the other new webOS tools, like Stacks, Quick Actions, and Exhibition.

And that’s just the beginning – explore the world of webOS 2.0 updated features after the break.

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If the question “What platform do you see yourself developing for in 12 months?” had been posed a few months ago, the responses for webOS would have plummeted through the floor. But with the power, scale, and enormous bags of cash of HP at Palm’s back, it turns out that developer interest has turned around. In fact, it’s a doubling of interest, though that’s not saying a lot when you were standing at 3% current interest (dead last).

The doubling to 6% ties webOS with Symbian for one-year-out developer intent, but it pales in comparison to Android (up 56% to 61-out-of-100) and of course iOS (still leading with a resounding 82%. Interestingly, it appears that developers are looking to expand their reach across multiple platforms, with interest in HTML5, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, and even Symbian up. The only platforms that are staring down the tunnel of declining developer intent are Java and Flash, which comes as little surprise to us. Now all we need is some kick-ass hardware from Palm and some gangbusters sales to get devices in hands and developer interest up.

Source: GigaOM; Thanks to Jimmy for the tip!

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That screen you see above, that’s what shows up when you point a webOS phone to get.adobe.com/flashplayer. We’ve gone through many iterations of this screen, with the text prior to this one promising that Palm and Adobe were working to get Flash Player 10.1 onto webOS “as quickly as possible.” That came in July, and before that it was the second half of 2010, or the first half of 2010, or February, or by the end of 2009.

Obviously, not a single one of those has panned out (excepting the "second half of 2010"), despite the fact that we’ve been seeing Flash running on webOS devices since October of last year. And Adobe announced in June (of this year) that the finished version of Flash 10.1 had been released to their mobile platform partners, Palm included. It’s been three months since Palm supposedly received Flash, and in the meantime we’ve seen Adobe tinkering with download redirects. But now the message presented to webOS users is nearly as depressing as that given to iPhone users. It now reads:

Sorry Adobe® Flash® Player is not available from Adobe.com for your device’s operating system or browser.

Sad, eh? Having received this message ourselves and a number of tips from users like yourself, we decided to investigate, only to be met with nothingness. Our contacts at Palm had nothing to report, which is better than what we got from Adobe. Despite repeated requests for comment, we were met with stony silence from the folks at Adobe.

So the question remains, do we even care anymore? Sure, Android has Flash Player 10.1, so long as you’re running the right version of the OS on the right device. Even then, with the massively superior hardware that we’re seeing crammed into more and more Android devices, the Flash experience is still less than ideal. It’s slow, it’s cranky, it’s resource hogging. It’s, well, it’s Flash.

Android devices may be selling like gangbusters, but there’s still a large and influential player in the smartphone market that wants nothing to do with Flash: Apple. We’re not the biggest cheerleaders of the bitten fruit brand and their iOS operating system (though will continue to laud them for outstanding advertising), but at this point we’re understanding their position on Flash. In fact, we’re moving from understanding to agreeing.

Do we want a slow and painful experience on our mobile devices? No. Nobody wants that. It’s not like Flash is really a great experience on our desktop computers, and they’re several times more powerful than anything you can fit in your pocket. There are still some things that modern HTML5 browsers cannot do that Flash can, but here’s the question: between increasingly capable HTML5 websites and fully capable PDK apps, is there any need for Flash?

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We’ve been waiting patiently (or perhaps not so patiently) for Flash to become available on webOS. That day may be coming sooner rather than later. Visiting get.adobe.com/flashplayer from a webOS device now pops up a strangely random app in Palm’s Web App Feed called "Conversion."

It could be that the imminent release of webOS 1.4.5 will bring along with it a special surprise: Flash. Or it could just be a bug like the App Catalog down time earlier today.

Via RoscoePColtrane in the PreCentral Forums, Thanks for the tip, Alex!

Update: during the PalmCast tonight, we reported that PC reader Garrison discovered an app in Palm’s beta feed called "FlashPlayer Beta." Investigating the app, we discovered that is was indeed a ‘com.palm.app’ app, which is to say it most likely came from Palm. We also discovered that it would only work with webOS 1.3.5, not 1.4 or the upcoming 1.4.5. So far as we can tell, it doesn’t download, install or work at all. In our PalmCast chat, Rod Whitby came up with what we think is the most likely explanation:

I’m leaning towards the "FlashPlayer" app being an ancient internal Palm test version which has not been published and someone just found the URL by trial and error. If it’s for 1.3.5 and not Albacore then it would not work on 1.4.x anyway

 In other words – it’s a sign, a good sign, but not Flash for webOS just yet. We can’t say for sure whether these strange happenings in the night really do portent the imminent release of Flash for webOS – but it’s definitely on our minds now.

Thanks Garrison!

Update 2: Crazy night, what with these Flash shenanigans combined with the rough launch of 1.4.5 on Sprint. At least one of them has a clear explanation, though, as Chuq Von Rospach of Palm has let us know what the story is with the FlashPlayer App:

The flash that was found in the beta feed was in fact an earlier beta that evidently wasn’t pulled and happened to get found. It’s not functional on 1.4.x and won’t work, and we’ve pushed an update to the system to pull it from the feeds.

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Reader klubhead is the first of many to let us know that Adobe has changed the default "Flash doesn’t work yet" message you get when you tap a Flash element on a webOS phone to the newer official statement we got from Palm earlier this month:

Adobe and Palm continue to work together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to WebOS as quickly as possible. At present, the integration work between the Player and WebOS is undergoing extensive testing to ensure we deliver a high quality implementation.

Want a preview of what you can expect from Flash on your webOS device? Well, the you should point your browser to m.flash.com. Oh, wait, you thought I meant on your phone? That’s not what I meant – go to your desktop where you’ve already got Flash installed, and go to m.flash.com. Then you can check out Flash for mobile.

Sarcasm aside, the Adobe Flash showcase for mobile gives a preview of several premiere Flash-enabled websites that we have great expectations for functionality should Flash ever actually arrive on webOS. In the meantime, we’re going to sit here and shrink our browser windows down to tiny and pretend we’re using our phones…

Thanks to @JohnLBurger, klubhead, nascar_fan, and Nathan and to our own Jonathan Ezor!

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Android Central sends word that Adobe is touting that Flash 10.1 for mobile is finally done, finished, and has been released to their partners – including Palm.

Flash Player 10.1 was also released to mobile platform partners to be supported on devices based on Android, BlackBerry, webOS, future versions of Windows® Phone, LiMo, MeeGo and Symbian OS, and is expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be pre-installed on smart phones, tablets and other devices in the coming months.

In other words, the pressure is apparently on Palm now to ensure that Flash appears in the App Catalog and right quick. Our feeling: even if using Flash for games doesn’t pan out as well as some have hoped, at least we can all stop waiting for it to arrive.

Source: Adobe; full press release after the break

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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More than anything else we find ourselves clamoring for new hardware from Palm. The Pre and Pre Plus are getting to be incredibly long in the tooth (the base hardware was revealed more than 18 months ago). We all knew that something new had to be coming, and at the developers webinar hosted by AT&T today, Palm let it slip that new stuff is on the way. Asked if there were plans to release new devices this year, Palm’s rep said:

“I’m not allowed to talk about future roadmaps, especially because we’re in the process of being acquired by HP, so I can’t say. But yes we have a road map. We are working on future devices. And [a] new version of the OS. So I think, you’re going to find the next year very exciting.”

Very exciting indeed. Watching what’s been coming out of Apple, HTC, and even Motoroa, we’re aching for new hardware in webOS land. Of course, “the next year” means that we have a approximate twelve-month timeframe in which to be excited, though our hope is that the excitement can be spread out over the entire period instead of one big pop. That said, he did say devices, not device, so hopefully the next year will bring more than one or two new launches.

One of those spread-out excitements we hope to see at some point is Flash. While all the delays have made us more than a bit jaded, the tip we got from sepherous isn’t helping. After asking about the continuing delays with getting Flash onto web-friendly webOS, the response boiled down to Palm simply not being able to say what the hold up is.

Update: for completeness’ sake, here’s Palm’s official statement on Flash:

‘Adobe and Palm continue to work together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to WebOS as quickly as possible. At present, the integration work between the Player and WebOS is undergoing extensive testing to ensure we deliver a high quality implementation.’

The full video of the webinar is due to be posted on AT&T’s developer site sometime in the mystical next week. Until then, we’ll just savor the transcripted bit and dream of a brighter future.

Thanks to Gerorne for the transcription!

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