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There is a new clause in the Flash 10.1 EULA that was not present in 10.0:

7.6 Content Protection Technology. If you Use the Adobe Runtimes to access content that has been protected with Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server or Flash Access software (“Content Protection”), in order to let you play the protected content, the Software may automatically request media usage rights and individualization rights from a rights server on the Internet, and may download and install required components of the Software, including any available Content Protection Updates. You can find more information on Content Protection at http://www.adobe.com/go/protected_content.

You have to download a 3.3 MB PDF with 280 pages to find this kind of stuff. There's no telling how far these updates will go (remember TurboTax DRM?).

There is a new clause in the Flash 10.1 EULA that was not present in 10.0:

7.6 Content Protection Technology. If you Use the Adobe Runtimes to access content that has been protected with Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server or Flash Access software (“Content Protection”), in order to let you play the protected content, the Software may automatically request media usage rights and individualization rights from a rights server on the Internet, and may download and install required components of the Software, including any available Content Protection Updates. You can find more information on Content Protection at http://www.adobe.com/go/protected_content.

You have to download a 3.3 MB PDF with 280 pages to find this kind of stuff. There's no telling how far these updates will go (remember TurboTax DRM?).

Recently, Google announced Android 2.2, the next version of their Linux-based mobile operating system targeted at phones and PDAs, at Google I/O 2010. Developers praised the update, calling it and its features a welcome addition to the platform.

Android 2.2 will bring the phone operating system closer to parity with its competitors. With 2.2r4 out now and a projected final release date of Summer '10, Android 2.2 is coming fast.

But stepping back from all of the commotion, what exactly is Google offering with this update? What are these new features and who will benefit from them? There are plenty of questions about Android 2.2and here are the answers.

Five Alive

Probably the most important update for Android for its end-users is HTML5. This changes very little about the platform itself, but it shows that Google is investing in the technology. It also means that users will have a seamless Web experience.

These two things are important for the future success of Android as a viable mobile platform, though Google's implementation might prove problematic.

On live devices, users will have to install Android 2.2 in its entirety to gain HTML5 support. An entire operating system upgrade for a browser? Get real and update the browser on its owndon't make your users go through the trouble of updating and installing a fundamental update just for some HTML5 support, Google. If this is how you run your phone operating system, I'd hate to see what you expect of Chrome OS users.

And there's also the fact that HTML5 is not novel. Every other industry player has already been including HTML5 support; Apple has long been a proponent of this, including HTML5 support in the developmental Webkit as well Safari since 2007. You're welcome to the party, Google, but don't announce it like you're the one throwing it. You can make catchup, but it's still catchup.

Flash Forward

Oh, Flash. Google and Adobe are performing a very calculated industry sixty-nine because both Apple and Google want the mobile-cum-portable market and Adobe wants the video portion of both.

Apple is pushing the open HTML5 standard; Adobe is pissed at Apple. Google, with the old the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend tactic, sees an opportunity and hooks up with Adobe. Sadly, revenge sex only seems clever at first.

The reality is that HTML5, being open and supported by hundreds of companies and standard bodies, will win in the end. Google and Adobe will look like assholes having lapped at such a bloated, poorly-coded, closed video platform that everyone else will zoom past using their browsers sans crashy plugin.

Who wins in the end? The entire industry, sharing in the HTML5 platform, and users, whose browsers don't crash or chew up excess cycles and memory. Sadly, though, not Android users, who are unwitting Adobe consumers.

Hotspotting et al

Android will also support hotspotting, or wifi sharing funneled into its 3G or 4G network, of up to eight other devices. I'm not sure if you've done any serious work on 3G yet, but it's slow.

The prospect of using one 3G account to support other Internet-hungry devices is like expecting a pygmy to carry weightlifters: backbreaking at best and otherwise i

Is there 64-bit flash 10.1 available on any platform yet? Paul Betlem (Sr. Director, Engineering at Adobe) writes at their blog: "We're working on 64-bit versions, but I'm unable to share a specific schedule at this point. We do understand the incredibly strong interest in its availability." I can't read anywhere that they gona kill Linux version, or Solaris one for that matter.

So I download the .dmg and open it and run the installer.

The "Install" button's ghosted out until I click the "I have read and agree to the terms of the license agreement" checkbox. But where's the agreement? Well, there's a link (with no rollover state, of course) to this page on Adobe's site, with a bewilderingly-long list of links to EULAs. As PDFs.

Nobody ever reads the EULA anyway, but this is ridiculous.

But... why not?

The obvious way to do it would be this: Upload video frames to a texture; bind a fragment program to do YUV->RGB conversion; render a quad mapped with that texture. Then bind whatever other fragment program you want and render your other primitives. Clearly Adobe have thought of this, so what's wrong with it?

It's also quite easy to write a little program that asks DirectShow (or I assume ffmpeg; my experience is with DirectShow) to decode video frames, and then uploads them as textures, which you can do whatever you want with (including draw with various blendmodes). I've used precisely this approach to include video in C++/OpenGL programs I've written, and there's no appreciable overhead; you can play video as fast as DirectShow can decode it. Is this not a constructive proof that blending video with other graphics can be done efficiently?

I spent a little time trying to understand the issues with Flash, and thought that this post from the same blog was a little more informative. Still, the conclusion to be drawn doesn't seem to be that you can't use hardware acceleration, but just that you can't use the X-video extension (which isn't that huge a deal).

So, anybody have any insights?

Welcome to the Flash Player 10.1 Forum
Important: Do not use this forum to discuss the Flash Player 10 64-bit Linux prerelease or Flash Player 10 and earlier release players. Follow these links to discuss these topics:
Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux forum

Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux (Read Only)
Welcome to the Flash Player 10 for 64-bit Linux Forum

I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry... but it reminds me of reading The Trial :)

This link is much better: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player.exe

If you are already using WSUS, then why not try SCUP?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0446cce9-94a4-4fb0-b335-e7516044063d&displaylang=en

Add in the Adobe Flash repo once configured:
http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/AdobeFlashPlayerCatalog.cab

Adobe cant't do that, because Flash is not designed to play video. Think about it. Flash mixes MovieClips with vector and timeline content, all with z-axis alpha-blended content. It must transfer video into RGB in order to mix it with the bitmap data from vector sources, bitmap sources and from the font renderer. Flash can use sophisticated codec helpers for some tasks, but it will never be as good as dedicated devices like the iPad, which can only play one video format with specific limitations. This isn't to say that Flash is some kind of failure -- only that it was designed to solve a different problem.

And the version for IE: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe

Who else would have to foresight to include embedded executable code and a javascript engine in a print document format?

It's even worse than that. Take a good look at version 1.7 of the PDF spec

From section 7.11.4.1 of chapter 13, which is titled "Multimedia Features"

If a PDF file contains file specifications that refer to an external file and the PDF file is archived or transmitted, some provision should be made to ensure that the external references will remain valid. One way to do this is to arrange for copies of the external files to accompany the PDF file. Embedded file streams (PDF 1.3) address this problem by allowing the contents of referenced files to be embedded directly within the body of the PDF file.

And worse yet, quoting from one of the descriptions of flags in table 44:

(Optional; PDF 1.2) A flag indicating whether the file referenced by the file specification is volatile (changes frequently with time). If the value is true, applications shall not cache a copy of the file. For example, a movie annotation referencing a URL to a live video camera could set this flag to trueto notify the conforming reader that it should re-acquire the movie each time it is played. Default value: false.

In other words, you can ALSO embed the LIVE feed from your webcam in a PDF document.

Give this a shot: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe

No more 64-bit Linux version:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time.

Apple has provided the API's to do the hardware decoding, and Adobe has a beta called Gala which has Mac OSX Hardware Acceleration enabled.. Adobe will have a release out soon that will incorporate the hardware decoding in OSX. My guess is Adobe had to fast-track the release of 10.1 to compensate for the wide open security holes they had lingering, and weren't prepared to merge the beta and the final release trees.

Heck, just look at this little gem(from Adobe, naturally).

"Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2, 9.0.262, and earlier 10.0.x and 9.0.x versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris
Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.2 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX" All vulnerable to an exploit that even Adobe refers to as "critical". Mitigation involves either manually updating flash to 10.1 RC(since 10.1 is still Release Candidate, automatic updates won't even mention it) or manually deleting a .dll somewhere, and enduring "a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF file that contains SWF content". Oh, great. That'll be fun.

So, yeah, 48 hours and counting from when Adobe clued in, and the overwhelming majority of Flash/Acrobat users, even the ones who update every time they are prompted, are one malicious PDF or Flash ad away from getting cracked.

Also, those that say things like "Apple should allow Flash" seem to be ignorant of the fact that Flash is not on a single handheld device, except as a very recent beta for Android.

Not true. Flash Lite is already shipping on some phones, including the HTC Hero and Evo. It's not Flash Player 10.1, which is the beta you mentioned (and that beta is available for Android 2.2 users to try for themselves), but it's enough for many popular sites.

That's not Flash, it's a subset of Flash.

Cocoa Touch on the iPhone OS. As well as HTML5. There are zero cases where Flash is technologically better than both of those.

Flash is more portable than Cocoa Touch. It's more powerful than HTML5 and also has better development/design tools.

And neither of those are cases "where Flash is technologically better than both of those".

As a solution for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, the combination of Cocoa Touch and HTML5 thoroughly outclasses Flash.

It's also far from clear that supporting Flash would be to Apple's benefit, and a watered-down version would be even worse.

Apple's benefit? Of course, they'd rather have you use their proprietary APIs. But isn't their customers' benefit what really matters?

The customer's benefit is Apple's benefit. If Apple does a good job of seeing to the needs of their customers, they will sell more products, and as it turns out, they do sell very, very well. It's only in monopoly-like situations where a company can blatantly work against their customers' needs, like Microsoft (not so much of a monopoly anymore, and surprise, surprise, Windows 7 doesn't completely suck, and IE is becoming more secure and standards-compliant!), or Comcast.

Apple has no monopoly, so they have to actually create products that are innately attractive to consumers.

As for the watered-down version: again, you're ignoring Flash Lite, which is certainly better than no Flash at all.

How am I ignoring it? I addressed it right there. And no, it's not clear at all that it's better than nothing. No Flash means no Flash. Flash Lite means some Flash works and some doesn't. And that doesn't even address the issue of most Flash being entirely unsuitable for multitouch.

Better to just have none of it than to have a broken, incompatible variant. And the proper, official variant is by no means compelling at this point. If Adobe can make a version that runs nicely on mobile hardware and integrates properly with multitouch, the case for Apple to include it would be more reasonable. But right now, the existing Flash 10.1 for Android does not make a compelling case for it.

Also, those that say things like "Apple should allow Flash" seem to be ignorant of the fact that Flash is not on a single handheld device, except as a very recent beta for Android.

Not true. Flash Lite is already shipping on some phones, including the HTC Hero and Evo. It's not Flash Player 10.1, which is the beta you mentioned (and that beta is available for Android 2.2 users to try for themselves), but it's enough for many popular sites.

Cocoa Touch on the iPhone OS. As well as HTML5. There are zero cases where Flash is technologically better than both of those.

Flash is more portable than Cocoa Touch. It's more powerful than HTML5 and also has better development/design tools.

It's also far from clear that supporting Flash would be to Apple's benefit, and a watered-down version would be even worse.

Apple's benefit? Of course, they'd rather have you use their proprietary APIs. But isn't their customers' benefit what really matters?

As for the watered-down version: again, you're ignoring Flash Lite, which is certainly better than no Flash at all.

You can download a flash player uninstaller from Adobe.

We heard you the first time. Maybe you should *listen* when you read: It's not fixed yet. The 10.1 RC has not been released yet (that's the whole "release candidate" part of it). There is no patch for 10.0.x.x or 9.0.x.x yet so is still vulnerable. Mmm-kay?

I shouldn't respond to anonymous trolls, but the 10.1 RC is available at the Adobe beta site, just not for Linux 64-bit. That was the point of the post. If you're not familiar with Adobe's release process, maybe you should try a google before blowing smoke out of your ass.

Damn, clicked Submit instead of Preview. Meant to add this from the advisory:

"Note:
The Flash Player 10.1 Release Candidate available at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ does not appear to be vulnerable.

Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.x are confirmed not vulnerable."

Note: This is prerelease code:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

"Flash Player 10 Prereleases

This page contains download information of developer prerelease and beta versions of Adobe® Flash® Player 10 software for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and Android. It is being made available for developers to test their content to ensure new features function as expected, existing content plays back correctly, and there are no compatibility issues. Consumers can try the prerelease of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks. The Flash Player 10.1 prerelease is available in all supported languages; however, the prerelease installers are only in English and we can only accept feedback in English at this time."

Version 10.1 is considered a fix for this. http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/55171/Critical-Flash-Vulnerability-Discovered-Please-Upgrade and http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

You can update to the RC of Flash and just don't open PDF files from untrusted sources (as usual).

The... er... fine folks at adobe will be more than happy to assist in selling a $150 copy of Organic Chemistry 14th edition that magically goes "poof" as soon as the 15th edition is published... Let's see the used market get past the fact that circumventing the(no doubt shoddy) DRM is felony offense anywhere in the greater American empire. Never mind the DRM, it's EPUB, so it must be open!

No specification? Here you go: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

I like your argument that nobody can make an alternative player, so long as you ignore the alternative FOSS player.

The 64-bit version has hardware acceleration removed, while the 32-bit includes it (using OpenGL). You can confirm this by checking the symbols in the plugin - you'll see no references to GL in the 64-bit version (but they are there in the 32-bit version). I have successfully played full-screen video smoothly with low (ok, lowER) CPU usage using the 32-bit plugin, using my nvidia 8600GT. There are a few requirements that must be met before Flash will use hardware acceleration, but I've found the performance to be much better when it does.

This is according to the developers of the Linux flash plugin at Adobe: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html

Really? According to these pages, the alpha was updated in February, 2010.

That said, this is a topic of discussion on the Ubuntu forums.

For whatever it's worth, I'm using the 32-bit version installed via the flashplugin-installer package. However, until the release of Ubuntu 10.04, I was using the 64-bit plugin without any problems.

Yes, I spit coffee at my screen when I read that quote from Adobe. Apparently their Flash engineers haven't tried to go to Vimeo while running Linux. It's mind-numbingly slow on my 2.8ghz P4 system running Ubuntu 10.04 and Chrome 6 (with integrated Flash 10.1). Contrarily, HTML5 YouTube plays content using 20% of my CPU. Adobe engineers even admit that Flash is not designed to be a video player -- so perhaps there is room for both technologies going forward.

Recently, Google announced Android 2.2, the next version of their Linux-based mobile operating system targeted at phones and PDAs, at Google I/O 2010. Developers praised the update, calling it and its features a welcome addition to the platform.

Android 2.2 will bring the phone operating system closer to parity with its competitors. With 2.2r4 out now and a projected final release date of Summer '10, Android 2.2 is coming fast.

But stepping back from all of the commotion, what exactly is Google offering with this update? What are these new features and who will benefit from them? There are plenty of questions about Android 2.2and here are the answers.

Five Alive

Probably the most important update for Android for its end-users is HTML5. This changes very little about the platform itself, but it shows that Google is investing in the technology. It also means that users will have a seamless Web experience.

These two things are important for the future success of Android as a viable mobile platform, though Google's implementation might prove problematic.

On live devices, users will have to install Android 2.2 in its entirety to gain HTML5 support. An entire operating system upgrade for a browser? Get real and update the browser on its owndon't make your users go through the trouble of updating and installing a fundamental update just for some HTML5 support, Google. If this is how you run your phone operating system, I'd hate to see what you expect of Chrome OS users.

And there's also the fact that HTML5 is not novel. Every other industry player has already been including HTML5 support; Apple has long been a proponent of this, including HTML5 support in the developmental Webkit as well Safari since 2007. You're welcome to the party, Google, but don't announce it like you're the one throwing it. You can make catchup, but it's still catchup.

Flash Forward

Oh, Flash. Google and Adobe are performing a very calculated industry sixty-nine because both Apple and Google want the mobile-cum-portable market and Adobe wants the video portion of both.

Apple is pushing the open HTML5 standard; Adobe is pissed at Apple. Google, with the old the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend tactic, sees an opportunity and hooks up with Adobe. Sadly, revenge sex only seems clever at first.

The reality is that HTML5, being open and supported by hundreds of companies and standard bodies, will win in the end. Google and Adobe will look like assholes having lapped at such a bloated, poorly-coded, closed video platform that everyone else will zoom past using their browsers sans crashy plugin.

Who wins in the end? The entire industry, sharing in the HTML5 platform, and users, whose browsers don't crash or chew up excess cycles and memory. Sadly, though, not Android users, who are unwitting Adobe consumers.

Hotspotting et al

Android will also support hotspotting, or wifi sharing funneled into its 3G or 4G network, of up to eight other devices. I'm not sure if you've done any serious work on 3G yet, but it's slow.

The prospect of using one 3G account to support other Internet-hungry devices is like expecting a pygmy to carry weightlifters: backbreaking at best and otherwise i

I could see them kicking up a fuss over open source compilers

Unlikely. For one thing, the Flex SDK (which is the official compiler underlying Flex) has actually been open source for a while now. And MTASC has been around for at least 4-5 years and it's open source as well.

  Then there's ming which isn't exactly a compiler, but it's another method of targeting SWF, and OpenLazlo, and SWFTools and SWFMill and ... well, the point is, Adobe doesn't seem to have been particularly interested in squashing tools which target the Flash runtime.

After installing Adobe CS5, somehow I ended up on this page that supposedly shows the Wired app in action.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/xd-inspire/introducing-wired-on-ipad/

Although I'm not an iPad developer and don't plan on purchasing an iPad, after seeing the Adobe video - I thought the app looked pretty "Flashy". However, after reading all of the mixed coverage about this app, I wonder if the app Adobe is showing off is the actual shipping app, or one that was built without the recent source code/compiler restrictions.

Any iPad + Wired app owners care to comment?

Octoshape has been around for a long time, sometimes colloquially referred to as octoshit. It tends to hog a lot of your upstream bandwidth. Adobe Stratus is going to be Adobe's offering in the P2P-assisted video streaming field as well.

Thanks for mentioning it and not providing a link

Actually your meme is more of a meme than a fact. According to the April 2010 Symantec Internet Security Report ( http://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/wl?tu_id=Lfsd1271711507050126203 ) the number 2 attacked vulnerability in 2009 was in Adobe products. ... You sure did misrepresent that report, didn't you?

I don't think accurately quoting statistics straight out of a core part of the report is "misrepresenting" it. You're now citing statistics that measure something different, and it's reasonable to disagree about which figures imply what, however.

Which I do: you could argue that number of vulnerabilities is a function of the quality of the product, while the popularity of exploiting any given vulnerability is more a function of the ubiquity of the product. So while Safari had about 6x more vulnerabilities than Flash in 2009, it also had only 5% market share vs. 99% for Flash. Which is the more attractive target?

Another quote from the report was "Browser security features and add-ons should be employed wherever possible to disable JavaScript(TM), Adobe Flash Player . . . ".

So if you disable both JavaScript and Flash, as they recommend... what are you proposing as an alternative? Do you think the HTML video tag can replace everything DHTML/JS and Flash do today?

And regarding buggy, I'll take Microsoft and Apple's word on Adobe Flash's effect on their browser/OS.

I don't know what MS has said about this (link?), but Apple has said a lot of disingenuous and/or outright false things about Flash lately, so I'm not inclined to trust their word, especially when no one else has access to the data to back it up.

It's been 3 years since the iPhone intro and Adobe still does not have a Flash runtime to show that runs fast, doesn't drain batter, etc.

Actually, yes they do. It is fast enough to outperform HTML 5, especially on mobile, and the unoptimized beta only drains the battery 5-15% faster than equivalent HTML content (while delivering up to 4x the framerate).

- It runs on more machines.

Flash is on 99% of Internet-connected computers. That's far more than any single browser, and when you start lumping browsers together you're comparing apples and oranges: a single consistent API vs. a fragmented mess that requires a second cross-platform layer sitting on top of it to be usable.

- Supports blind people's screen readers

Flash supports screen readers just fine -- better than AJAX, in fact (screen readers do a terrible job handling asynchronous updates to HTML content).

- Scales the aspect ratio to fit the viewers screen

Flash is a vector rendering engine, sooo... pretty sure it supports rescaling just fine.

- Doesn't require a pre-loader

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Flash doesn't require a pre-loader. Any app that is going to take a long time to load would be wise to choose to show some sort of progress indicator, and this is equally true of Flash and DHTML (AJAX apps can easily top 1 MB in JavaScript code size). And Flash supports progressively downloading assets and code as you visit different parts of a site or app, just as HTML does.

- Isn't limited to a subset of video codecs.

Haha! I hope you're kidding: Firefox only supports Theora, Safari only supports H.264, IE 8 doesn't even support video... Plus, any platform will only support a finite set of video codecs... it just makes no sense to claim this of any platform.

- Still gives the user the ability to navigate a site even though JavaScript is disabled.

Flash works just fine when JavaScript is disabled too :-) Flash apps won't work when Flash is disabled, and AJAX apps (e.g. GMail) won't work when JS is disabled. Sites that care about these fringe cases need to provide a pure-HTML fallback either way.

The only things flash can do better at this time is webcams and microphones.

Flash is the only major video player that supports a consistent codec on all platforms. It offers a consistent API on 99%+ of the world's desktops, something no browser's JS implementation can claim. It has much better debugger/profiler support than JS, and I would argue it has better IDE tools too. It has a superior programming language (with true strong typing, true object-orientedness, package scoping, even some generics). It supports push connections, socket connections, binary wire formats, policy-based cross-domain connections, true video streaming (e.g. with RTMP), and peer to peer connections (e.g. with RTMFP). It supports dynamic audio synthesis, GPU-based pixel shaders, flexible user-controlled local data storage, multi-touch on mobile (coming in 10.1), accelerometer input on mobile (also coming in 10.1), high-quality embedded fonts, 3D transforms, etc. You might find prototypes of one or two of these things implemented as proprietary extensions in a couple of browsers... but that's a far, far cry from reliable support on the majority of Internet-connected computers.

There are only two types of people that think flash has a place anymore. Adobe employees and people who are employed to make flash objects.

Full disclosure: I do work at Adobe, though not on Flash, and as someone with years of AJAX web development experience I can honestly say I believed all this before I worked there too.

In your second category... there are over a million Flash developers out there, and there's a good reason why there are still so many. Flash is simply an easier, less expensive, more designer-friendly platform to build on. For a given investment, a web site creator can typically affor

- It runs on more machines.

Flash is on 99% of Internet-connected computers. That's far more than any single browser, and when you start lumping browsers together you're comparing apples and oranges: a single consistent API vs. a fragmented mess that requires a second cross-platform layer sitting on top of it to be usable.

- Supports blind people's screen readers

Flash supports screen readers just fine -- better than AJAX, in fact (screen readers do a terrible job handling asynchronous updates to HTML content).

- Scales the aspect ratio to fit the viewers screen

Flash is a vector rendering engine, sooo... pretty sure it supports rescaling just fine.

- Doesn't require a pre-loader

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Flash doesn't require a pre-loader. Any app that is going to take a long time to load would be wise to choose to show some sort of progress indicator, and this is equally true of Flash and DHTML (AJAX apps can easily top 1 MB in JavaScript code size). And Flash supports progressively downloading assets and code as you visit different parts of a site or app, just as HTML does.

- Isn't limited to a subset of video codecs.

Haha! I hope you're kidding: Firefox only supports Theora, Safari only supports H.264, IE 8 doesn't even support video... Plus, any platform will only support a finite set of video codecs... it just makes no sense to claim this of any platform.

- Still gives the user the ability to navigate a site even though JavaScript is disabled.

Flash works just fine when JavaScript is disabled too :-) Flash apps won't work when Flash is disabled, and AJAX apps (e.g. GMail) won't work when JS is disabled. Sites that care about these fringe cases need to provide a pure-HTML fallback either way.

The only things flash can do better at this time is webcams and microphones.

Flash is the only major video player that supports a consistent codec on all platforms. It offers a consistent API on 99%+ of the world's desktops, something no browser's JS implementation can claim. It has much better debugger/profiler support than JS, and I would argue it has better IDE tools too. It has a superior programming language (with true strong typing, true object-orientedness, package scoping, even some generics). It supports push connections, socket connections, binary wire formats, policy-based cross-domain connections, true video streaming (e.g. with RTMP), and peer to peer connections (e.g. with RTMFP). It supports dynamic audio synthesis, GPU-based pixel shaders, flexible user-controlled local data storage, multi-touch on mobile (coming in 10.1), accelerometer input on mobile (also coming in 10.1), high-quality embedded fonts, 3D transforms, etc. You might find prototypes of one or two of these things implemented as proprietary extensions in a couple of browsers... but that's a far, far cry from reliable support on the majority of Internet-connected computers.

There are only two types of people that think flash has a place anymore. Adobe employees and people who are employed to make flash objects.

Full disclosure: I do work at Adobe, though not on Flash, and as someone with years of AJAX web development experience I can honestly say I believed all this before I worked there too.

In your second category... there are over a million Flash developers out there, and there's a good reason why there are still so many. Flash is simply an easier, less expensive, more designer-friendly platform to build on. For a given investment, a web site creator can typically affor

Not true. Adobe says: "There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player."

Firefox is available on many, many more platforms than Flash

If you're a content creator (e.g. you're making a web site), it doesn't really matter which platforms Firefox is theoretically available on... it's the marketshare that matters. Firefox is on less than 1/3 of computers, whereas Flash is available on 99% of them.

The versions of the swf that are open do not include all features. It's a "when we get to it" approach from Adobe. The end result is that they open up version 8 and then release version 9. We're now on version 10 and not all features are available. The end result is that the open plugins are never up to date and Adobe is the only place to go to, yet they get to keep the appearance of being open to dupe people like you.

The version 10 SWF spec is available right here. So let me get this straight: Adobe openly publishes all updates to the SWF spec, but none of the open source Flash-clone projects have actually picked up the updates yet... and that's Adobe's fault?

I'd also argue that you're living in Adobe's ideal world which is Windows. NONE of the flash plugins outside of windows support hardware acceleration, they're stuck on your core process support.

Until very recently, Mac OS didn't offer any public APIs appropriate for hardware-accelerating Flash's video decoding. The new APIs are the result of collaboration between Adobe and Apple engineers, and a new Flash beta is already available that uses them.

Adobe's problems can not be solved by hardware. They have buggy, crash-prone, security hole riddled bloatware.

The security hole statement is more of a meme than fact. Symantec reported that, in 2009, Flash had fewer vulnerabilities than any major web browser, including Chrome, Safari, and even Opera... In fact, if Apple wants to play the holier-than-thou game regarding security, they might want to get to work: Safari had 94 reported vulnerabilities, nearly 6x Flash's 16, and the second-worst of all browsers. Safari also had by far the longest lead time before patching: an average of 13 days, vs. ~1 for basically every other browser. And that's not even getting into all the holes in QuickTime and their PDF reader...

And regarding "buggy"... if there are bugs you know of in Flash, Adobe is listening -- so please, file issues when you spot them. But really, if you think Flash is beyond help in this area then I can't even imagine where that leaves most browsers :-)

In the meantime, Adobe would like to charge everyone to develop on their platform. They're content to making it so all web graphic design courses are centered around their tools and they're content to only support a small segment of the market despite trying to make these stupid claims of "uniform code for all platform" BS.

There are actually numerous free and/or non-Adobe tools for producing Flash (SWF) content: Flex, FDT, IntelliJ, haXe, SWiSH, various "slideshow makers," etc.

I'm not sure I understand "only support a small segment of the market." If your complaint is about Linux support, I feel your pain, but I'm sorry to say your argument is completely bass-ackwards -- Linux is the "small segment" while the vast majority of the market is Windows and Mac boxes. And Flash is installed on 99% of them.

h.264 is a codec for video support, flash pushes their own craptacular codec through their flash video players, if they wanted they could write the players to support h.264 as well.

Flash does support H.264 -- since 2007, in fact.

In the meantime, Adobe would like to charge everyone to develop on their platform. They're content to making it so all web graphic design courses are centered around their tools and they're content to only support a small segment of the market despite trying to make these stupid claims of "uniform code for all platform" BS.

There are actually numerous free and/or non-Adobe tools for producing Flash (SWF) content: Flex, FDT, IntelliJ, haXe, SWiSH, various "slideshow makers," etc.

I'm not sure I understand "only support a small segment of the market." If your complaint is about Linux support, I feel your pain, but I'm sorry to say your argument is completely bass-ackwards -- Linux is the "small segment" while the vast majority of the market is Windows and Mac boxes. And Flash is installed on 99% of them.

h.264 is a codec for video support, flash pushes their own craptacular codec through their flash video players, if they wanted they could write the players to support h.264 as well.

Flash does support H.264 -- since 2007, in fact.

The license agreement has made it very clear, for at least two years now, that anyone is free to create an alternative player.

This summarizes it: "There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player."

Last I checked, it could only be used for authoring tools, not for writing an actual client/plugin.

Straight from the mouth of Adobe: "There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player." (emphasis added)

(IANAL)

The Flash Player EULA used to include a clause that attempted to prevent users of the software from also developing a competing product. That particular clause was excised from the EULA several versions ago.

Here's the most relevant part of the EULA for 10.1 and what it says on the subject (you'll have to jump down to the English section starting on page 66):

4.5 No Modification or Reverse Engineering. You shall not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative
works based upon the Software. You shall not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise
attempt to discover the source code of the Software. If you are located in the European Union, please
refer to the additional terms at the end of this agreement under the header “European Union
Provisions,” in Section 16.

So you can't directly adapt or create a derivative work of the player, but as long as you write your own thing, you should be fine.

In any? Here's one:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

So we have one browser that supports all html-5 video formats, and one plugin that works on x64 browsers - we can go to town.

nor is it a true standard as it's not been submitted to a recognised standards body.

Neither is HTML5; the latest HTML version published by ISO is HTML 4. But the scripting language within Flash is ECMA-262.

Then there was the dubious terms it was provided under, most notably that the spec couldn't be used as a reference to write an alternative implementation.

Was that info more than two years old? Things have changed.

In particular, last I checked, the "open" parts forbid you from writing a client.

You last checked more than two years ago. Please see a press release in which Adobe drops the restriction on players.

The video codec in most Flash-encoded videos is h.264. All the new <video> standardization does is ensure your browser plays the video without a plugin. So I'm not sure why you see a difference. It could be that the flash video is encoded at a lower bitrate than any "plain" h.264 videos you are trying to view.

The one advantage that Flash has is that Adobe pays the licensing fee for its users - just as Apple does for Safari, Microsoft for IE, etc. Firefox is the one browser without a major corporate sponsor to pony up the licensing fee.

Any video codec will be covered by a gazillion patents. Theora isn't patent unencumbered, it's just patent unenforced, and in that way it's a bigger legal minefield than h.264. It's highly likely that if it gains traction, it will be sued out of existence. I think the WebM codec is the only chance of a non-MPEG-LA codec surviving - not because it won't be infringing on any patents, but because Google actually has teeth to defend it.