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You are right about Flex already doing this. Want proof? Go to http://maps.yahoo.com/beta
Enter an address and hit enter, repeat n times, now use your browser back & forward buttons at will. :)
Flex has been doing this for a few years and many components support integration with the history manager out-of-the-box. More info here:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta3/ 00000996.html

BTW: Flex 2 SDK is now free as in beer: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:SDK_Anno uncement

Disclaimer: I work for Adobe.

I can't speak to Adobe's overall SVG strategy because I really don't know. But I do know that a subset of SVG is supported in Flex. As for Flex 2 pricing, the SDK is free, and single CPU deployments of Flex Data Services are free. Exact pricing on Flex Builder and clustered FDS haven't been announced.

For more info on the Free Flex 2 SDK, see: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexframework2/

Also for more info on Flex's SVG support see:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta2/ wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Live Docs_Parts&file=00001271.html
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta3/ wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Live Docs_Parts&file=00000992.html

I can't speak to Adobe's overall SVG strategy because I really don't know. But I do know that a subset of SVG is supported in Flex. As for Flex 2 pricing, the SDK is free, and single CPU deployments of Flex Data Services are free. Exact pricing on Flex Builder and clustered FDS haven't been announced.

For more info on the Free Flex 2 SDK, see: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexframework2/

Also for more info on Flex's SVG support see:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta2/ wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Live Docs_Parts&file=00001271.html
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta3/ wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Live Docs_Parts&file=00000992.html

DEL "C:\Documents and Settings\Me\Application Data\Macromedia\*.*" /S /Q
RMDIR "C:\Documents and Settings\Me\Application Data\Macromedia" /S /Q

Adobe/Macromedia does have a direct competitor, It's called Lightroom and is also in beta. http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

lightroom: http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/

and the beta is better than the aperture release version

no windows beta at this point, sorry

Where's the flash player reference implimentation so that I can audit it and build native binaries for linux, X-BSD and other OS's running on PPC, XScale, ARM or Alpha?

Locked up inside Adobe. They'll be happy to provide it to you for the right amount of $$$.

Where do sites with flash content make the source code availiable

Some sites do, some don't. You'll have to ask the site.

do you expect the security concious to run remote executables behind their firewalls?

Yes, actually. Flash is at least as secure than most browsers, and in some ways, more so:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flashplayer/artic les/client_security.html
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/fp layer8_security.html

no executable web!

So, I take it you have JavaScript and cookies disabled?

Where's the flash player reference implimentation so that I can audit it and build native binaries for linux, X-BSD and other OS's running on PPC, XScale, ARM or Alpha?

Locked up inside Adobe. They'll be happy to provide it to you for the right amount of $$$.

Where do sites with flash content make the source code availiable

Some sites do, some don't. You'll have to ask the site.

do you expect the security concious to run remote executables behind their firewalls?

Yes, actually. Flash is at least as secure than most browsers, and in some ways, more so:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flashplayer/artic les/client_security.html
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/fp layer8_security.html

no executable web!

So, I take it you have JavaScript and cookies disabled?

If, by "tiny", you mean "97.7%", then yeah.

Source: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/f lashplayer/

Look: no offense, but Linux-PPC doesn't exactly comprise a huge user base.

How come you don't look for help on the other side?

I see your point, and I often search for help on both sides...

What would be, say, Microsoft's reaction if you asked them for help on plugging your Windows box in a mixed network using Samba?

To be fair, that would be like going directly to RedHat or SuSE for help, which I don't. We're talking about the community, so I end up going here and here and here.

Especially in the light of Microsoft's intentional changing (i.e. breaking) the SMB, so that it wouldn't work with Samba.

Do you have something to support this? I'm not being sarcastic... Is it generally accepted that MS broke SMB for this purpose?

Let's face it... more often than not, it's the clash of religions.

Agreed. =)

Whereas when you look to Microsoft for help integrating the two solutions, they're all flowers and roses?

I don't go directly to MS for help. Just like I don't go directly to RedHat or SuSE for help. I go here and here and here.

I am wondering if this 64-bit porting article is written specifically for Macromedia.

Well, if you RTFA you'll see that there are issues with how registers are handled on certain integer values for example.
I'm sure it won't affect your VB app, but it could affect something written in C/C++.

I'm just wondering if this is what is holding up an AMD64 version of Flash.

So you have people at your company who spend all their time gaming?

LOL, I know you're probably joking... But here it goes anyway. We currently implement Windows for the following:

- Lotus Notes Client
- Macola Progression
- ACT! Premium for Workgroups
- AutoCAD Mechanical
- Macromedia Studio

Those are just the apps off the top of my head. And I work in the manufacturing industry, so my scope is even limited in that respect. I'm sure there are other companies running Windows only apps.

Again, you're comment was probably in jest... At least I hope so! =)

98% is the correct number - Flash player is the most installed plugin out there, so if you're deciding what to use to play videos, this seems like a clear choice. Here's a link to Macromedia's stat page:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/f lashplayer/.

Ummmm... By the time Vista rolls out, I, and many like me will have built MANY corporate presences using this:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/fle x2_intro.html

MS missed the boat.

Somehow, I think that new logo looks suspiciously like the one found here, or even here.

Somehow, I think that new logo looks suspiciously like the one found here, or even here.

can get the 3k tools for under 250
https://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm ?store=OLS-EDU#

I don't know of a good AJAX-y solution.

Flex gives you a good deal of control over printed output.

A smattering of the API provided: http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex/langref /flash/print/PrintJob.html

Wait for the day when we have a real programming language

How about ECMAScript4?

You can have that now (in the form of ActionScript 3, Adobe's confusingly-named implementation) with Flex.

(Overview at http://labs.macromedia.com/wiki/index.php/ActionSc ript_3:overview)

Web documents have no place being applications

Well, yeah, by definition. But that's like saying "computers are good for calculating projectile motion, they have no business being communication devices"... it's a robust technology with multiple uses.

Flex is a popular lexer based on Yacc and not some web2 buzzword

I presume you're being deliberately obtuse here, but just in case, let me help you out: Adobe Flex 2.0

What, this part ?

"The patent was filed on 9 February 2001, five years after the original Flash application, FutureWave Splash, was introduced in May 1996."

http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/john_g ay/page04.html

The player was a java app, then a Netscape plugin and was around before the Application was released.

=)

With over 98% combined (US/Canada/Europe) install base for flash 5 or greater for December 2005, I would say that interoperability is at acceptable levels and that you, in fact, are one of just a very few who cannot or will not install this "junk". Pardon me whilest I find a suitably small violin to play for you.

So? When I was in college I was 'forced' to buy a bunch of textbooks. They were my property, but the University mandated I used a particular set of books that the professors had chosen to teach from. It's really no different.

It is very different. First of all, you had the option to buy the books second-hand most of the time, reducing the cost of the books to you. There's not really a good option out there for buying a second-hand laptop that will be able to keep up with the latest programs (especially graphics and video). Secondly, you also had the option to take the book out of the library (school or public), and not pay anything at all. Please remember that the average college/university student doesn't have a lot of money. It's possible to budget in $1,000USD or more for textbooks -- it's even covered by many student loans and bursaries. But how about this kind of budget:

Mac 2GHz Intel Core Duo: $2,499.00
Microsoft Office 2004 -- Student and Teacher Edition (For Mac): $149.99
Adobe Photoshop CS2: $649.00
Total: $3297.99

That's the absolute minimum that an average graphics design student would have to spend, on top of textbooks. Doing any courses in animation or web design? Expect to spend $699 on Adobe After Effects or $999 on the Macromedia Suite. Video editing? That's $849 for Adobe Premiere Pro if you're running Windows or $1,299 for Final Cut Studio for Mac. God forbid you have to buy your another (larger) monitor, peripherals, an OS, or your course requires you to use Media 100 or Avid. Soon you're paying more for your laptop than you paid for your whole school year in residence (including meal plan), tuition, and possibly your entire school experience combined!

One of the primary reasons that schools offer computer labs is because most students cannot afford to buy the requisite hardware and software. Schools pool resources from the government and tuitions in order to get computer labs, which is something that an individual cannot do. Schools also get trememdous discounts on the products and liscences that they buy because they buy in bulk.

Please remember that many of us went through school on student loans and part-time jobs. Where I live (Ontario, Canada), they have decreased what the government-sponsored loans will lend out, and even bank loans (which have to be co-signed by your parents) are limited. The average student can hope to receive about $6,000CAD max from the government, and maybe another $8,000CAD from the bank, and, if you're lucky, a couple of hundred bucks a paycheck from a part-time job. This has to last you for lodging, food, tuition, and supplies for eight months. Can you imagine what a $3,000 (minimum) mandatory laptop will take out of your ability to pay for things like, say, food?

Also, think about the tech support necessary to keep everyone's computer running smoothly when every numbnuts out there has administrative privileges. Books don't exactly require support. If the school doesn't provide the technical support, then a large percent of student-owned laptops will be out for service so much that they're rendered useless for educational purposes.

Cold Fusion is real:

http://www.physorg.com/news3938.html

http://www.macromedia.com/go/gnavtray_cfmx_home

3. License Restrictions

      a. You may not use the Software on any non-PC product or any embedded or device versions of the above operating systems, including, but not limited to, (A) mobile devices, set top boxes (STB), handhelds, phones, web pads, tablets and Tablet PCs that are not running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, game consoles, TVs, DVD players, media centers (including Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboards or other digital signage, internet appliances or other internet-connected devices, PDAs, medical devices, ATMs, telematic devices, gaming machines, home automation systems, kiosks, remote control devices, or any other consumer electronics device, (B) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television systems, (C) other closed system devices, or (D) any operating system that is not an Authorized Operating System.

-Dom

It's called Adobe Lightroom (not LightTable, Lightbox, Light-whatever) and beta 1 is out for Mac already. The beta expires June 2006, and the product will ship for Mac and Windows eventually.

Showcase gallery of Flex 2 apps:

http://labs.macromedia.com/showcase/

You can right-click on most of the apps to view their source.

On a more complex level, Flash based Flex applications are robust interactive SOA applications with the ability to easily hook into various data services (JMS/Messaging, AMF[POJOs,OpenAMF via PHP, Coldfusion CFCs], XML over HTTP, and WebServices/SOAP).

So you can make rich desktop like applications with all the great stuff like drag and drop, interact with video, webcams, microphones, key events like CTRL and Function keys. Thin clients, where the app loads once. But have the deployment ease of a web application, and are platform agnostic (unix,mac,windows,pdas,cellphones,etc....).

Though the best way to see what it's all about is to look at live applications on the web:

http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/Yahoo Maps
http://www.thoughtfaqtory.com/flex/mxnaviewer/main .swfBlog Reader
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/pent/flickr/PhotoSea rch.htmlFlickr PhotoSearch.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/authorware/

It's now an Adobe property, but Authorware has been owned by Macromedia since at least version 5.

For a university, it would be far better to have one or two trained experts making the content rather than to try to train the teachers how to program. Find someone who is good at both asking questions and hearing the answers.

For a university, it would be far better to have one or two trained experts making the content rather than to try to train the teachers how to program. Find someone who is good at both asking questions and hearing the answers.

For what it's worth, if you're trying from your latest reinstall of Windows, and using Internet Explorer:

You might not have macromedia flash player installed, I noticed when I install firefox and got a missing plugins note.

Hope this helps...

We can always debate whether or not proprietary or open source development models produce better quality code, but proprietary formats are never good. All they do is hurt competition, which helps no one but the authors. Now that Adobe owns Macromedia, hopefully the Flash people will take a hint from PDF: open formats work. If SWF is opened, great

Shocking news: The SWF format IS open: Here you have a link. The license is quite similar to PDF. I think it's somewhat more restrictive to create tools which create SWFs or something but what the hell, stops saying that SWF is closed.

Just because the open source community hasn't managed to write a decent implementation of the PDF format doesn't mean. Actually, people has tried to write implementations (way before that GNU thingy by the way): Google for libswf. There's even a gstreamer plugin which uses libswf to draw flash animations (and it works for simple flash files, I've used it). Dude, in my machine nautilus shows me thumbnails of some flash files. Also, macromedia has written a linux flash player plugin for mozilla-based browsers, I wish all companies would do that.

Very simple - web based applications that require 1) Easy to maintain browser independence, 2) the gathering, collection and manipulation of large amounts of data, 3) highly interactive user interfaces

Hmm... who builds applications like that? Maybe SAP? Or, maybe you want a more complete list?

There is a significant need for web based applications that provide a rich interface for users to manipulate data. Eventually, nearly all applications that gather/manipulate data will be delivered over the web. Some version of this can be built with HTML (and the related buzzwords, like AJAX), but technologies like Flash/Flex do it better. It provides a better user experience, more control for the developer and most of all, a toolbox that was specifically designed for application development.

Yeah, I'm using those tools, too ("AMES" -- ASDT, MTASC, Eclipse and SWFMill). I wanted to switch to Linux for a long time and I finally could. Recently I began looking into ActionStep, and I must say I'm impressed. Other notable projects are ASwing (Swing implementation in ActionScript), and Red5 (server needed to make use of the client's webcam and for streaming videos).
On the player side, Gnash looks like the most promising attempt at the moment, but still has a far way to go. But once it's done, it will become possible to integrate it into "traditional" apps and use an SWF as the GUI (at least if the app is GPL), which is where Flash is best at. I don't see it replacing the proprietary plugin any time soon, though -- the next version (8.5, currently available as public alpha) will be a huge step.

I'm always amazed by the irrational comments each time something Flash related gets posted. I hate Flash banners, too. I also hated the animated GIF banners we had before Flash, especially combined with MIDI sound. Sometimes I think it's too easy to get started with Flash for people who have no idea what they're doing, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad (I'm sure some will disagree). Accessibility is an issue, because unlike HTML, it takes extra effort to support it. And yeah, the official plugin is proprietary, but it's being worked on. Other than that, most of the stuff I read is either nonsense or due to improper use (which includes both how it's done and whether Flash is the right tool for the job in the first place).

No. Flash and Shockwave are two different formats.

This is misleading.

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2005/12/ player_future.cfm

"David Mendels [Senior Vice President at Adobe] noted that the FAQ could bear another edit, and added: "We plan to keep the Flash Player small and focused. We *also* plan on a new client code named Apollo that will work out of the browser and bring together the best of HTML, Flash, and PDF." (I don't have additional info on the Apollo project yet... best I can offer is current search results on what's in the public record.)"

The SWF format is actually an open format. You have to submit some personal information, but it's all there for the public to see. The only thing they do do is keep it about 6 months to a year behind the latest version of flash. You can only get the 7 spec right now. However Adobe does have full control of the direction of Flash and unfortunately that has many drawbacks as there are features that could be added and just have been overlooked for one reason or another. If you'd like to check out the spec you can go here: http://www.macromedia.com/licensing/developer/ Also if you'd like a solid action script compiler, but don't what the bloatware that Adobe releases check this out, it will compile Flash 8 too and gives a decent explanation how they do it. http://tech.motion-twin.com/mtasc.html

You could always apply for this job...

(Principal Software Engineer, Flash Player for Linux)

I have absolutely zero inside knowledge of this, but it would be interesting to know how much inside knowledge Macromedia had of Apple's Aperture, how much input Adobe actually had in the Lightroom product, and what impact, if any, Lightroom had on Adobe's decision to purchase Macromedia.

Or maybe Adobe just thought Macromedia's site was better for hosting betas.

Andy over at Digital Grin got his hands on a pre-release copy of Adobe's hot new app 'Lightroom' last week

FYI, that's not exactly a difficult feat. Adobe's been giving it away for free to the public on their website.

FYI Win CE has the same version http://www.macromedia.com/mobile/ Macromedia has been kind of slow porting flash to platforms other then x86 Windows and PPC Mac. They just announced Linux support for flash 8.5 x86 and x86_64 so there may be a possiblity that flash for other devices is comming soon as well.

and if you wish to turn off or alter the flash player settings you have to visit a page on macromedia.com (wtf!?) which has some rather nasty tracking on it itself

funny how they forgot to build the privacy controls into the player but managed everything else and using regular cookies just wasnt enough

and if you wish to turn off or alter the flash player settings you have to visit a page on macromedia.com (wtf!?) which has some rather nasty tracking on it itself

funny how they forgot to build the privacy controls into the player but managed everything else and using regular cookies just wasnt enough

will tell you exactly what EACH and EVERY visitor to your site did, i.e. what pages they visited. The server logs tell all!

If that was true why would a multi million dollar company base its entire business on this rather large piece of code talking to their servers ?, read the code, dissasemble the functions, and imagine what kind of stats you could create with it when applied through a relational db

the server log will only tell you so much, in stats there is only 1 rule, get as much data as you can, in this case every single bit of client data the browser and user can give them

Flash is much much much worse. Take a look at this:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html

Hi folks,

When the whole wiretapping thing came up, I surfed over to www.nsa.gov to poke around. Now that this comes up, I figured I'd see if a persistent cookie had indeed been placed on my hard drive.

So here it is:

CFID
630440
www.nsa.gov/
1536
1461092480
31957745
3729285920
29754980
*
CFTOKEN
52821618
www.nsa.gov/
1536
1461092480
31957745
3729445920
29754980
*

Looks like they're using ColdFusion. And wow! Macromedia shows you how to disable persistent cookies!

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/in dex.cfm?id=tn_17915

Look guys, this is a tempest in a teapot.