[Nook Touch Themes and Apps] nmyshkin:
I've installed and uninstalled Dolphin many times. It has some appealing strengths but also some annoying weaknesses on the NST. Here are the three big weaknesses as I see them (you can stop reading after that if they are "deal breakers" for you):

1. Like many browsers other than Opera Mobile, Dolphin has trouble updating an existing window with new content. For reliable browsing you need to open in new tabs which, sadly, are always behind the current tab.

2. Swipe scrolling in Opera Mobile is positively spritely compared to Dolphin and most other browsers. For Dolphin you have the option of using volume controls to scroll. I have set the lower hardware buttons to the volume controls using NTTM. I don't ever use them to change pages, preferring a gentle touch on the screen edge.

3. Dolphin is a pain-in-the-*** to zoom. Double tap has no effect. Turning on pinch-zoom button in Settings is ignored. Pinch zooming does not work (even with multi-touch enabled). The only way to zoom in or out is with a gesture. Took me awhile to even understand how that was supposed to happen. I finally made a "Z" for "zoom in" and a backward "Z" for "zoom out". The stock gestures for these functions are visually meaningless (to me).

OK,so why bother with Dolphin at all? First, let me add that the new version 11 does not work well with the NST. You need something in the 10.x series (some old versions here).

Dolphin is an HTML5 browser with some limited (on the NST) Shockwave and Flash capability. With the possible Flash installation for the NST (see here, post #4), you get the ability to access some .swf files (embedded Flash players are a kind of .swf file--more on that below) and Flash 9.1x (despite the claim that you are getting 10.1. Adobe identifies it as 9.1x and various sites that reject anything below 10 also identify it as such).

I used to think no embedded Flash videos would play in Dolphin.Then I discovered that in Desktop mode it would "work" with most embedded players and you could start the videos.But you could not play them through. Although the buffer continued to fill, the video itself stopped after 10-20 seconds and the little running circle appeared in the middle of the image. You can restart in different spots, but you still only get about 10-20 seconds at a pop (examples here).

I have some short little Flash videos in a very simple swf player which I use on an educational site. I thought these did not work at all but with some fooling around in FastMode I was amazed to see that the player actually can be coaxed into working and the entire video plays (example here). Of course, everything works a little bit better in FastMode (except for display quality) but you can, if you work at it a little, coax the player into working in regular mode.

So, Dolphin can play "some" embedded Flash video. But not much.

The Desktop mode of Dolphin makes YouTube nuts. It tries switching back and forth between the mobile and desktop site and never gets anywhere. Anyway, that is not the way to go because HTML5 is a better choice--if you have a cooperative external player.

I've tried a few players. RockPlayer Lite is popular for the NST but is difficult to exit (always full screen) and seems stymied by HTML5. It does play a lot of other stuff, including some streams. I finally settled on MX Player (save yourself some time and download the the ARMv7 NEON codec at the same time because it will just send you back to the Market when you try to run it the first time). It can pinch-zoom (RockPlayer cannot) and handles HTML5 well (yes, YouTube!). I have my two lower hardware buttons assigned for long press as "back" and "menu". This provides two ways to get out of MX Player if you don't want to watch the whole video. At the normal conclusion, the player closes and you return to Dolphin. Nice.

Such a set-up works for YouTube (the mobile version),or at least for as many videos as are now HTML5-ready. Of course, you can also access any Flash videos that allow for a breakout from the embedded player. MX Player handles .flv files fine without any Adobe plugin. And it plays just about any other direct-link video you can find. Videos in the BBC News app work fine.

Daily Motion, Vimeo, My Vidster, Hulu---the list goes on---are no-go with this set-up.

But really, with no audio......If just a little audio were accessible to us mere mortals, it would be nice, but that mod is beyond my geek level :o

One bad thing: for some reason, the NST refuses to make MX Player (or any other player I tried) the "default". So every time you want a video you have to select MX Player from a list of hopefuls (QuickPic? Really?????). I've inspected the file where this info is stored (/data/system/packages.xml) and even cleaned it up, but to no avail.

One last warning: don't try this with Opera Mobile. As far as I can tell, one of the three Flash installations, maybe FlashLite, has a player which is invoked by some embedded videos in Opera Mobile.You touch the play triangle in the video and are rewarded with a much larger triangle. Don't touch that one! It takes you to a Flash player of some sort (you can see some control buttons if you touch the screen) with a black screen and there is no way out except for a forced shutdown.