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Macromedia have a page that allows you to modify what sites can do on your computer in regards to Flash:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html#118539

There is no other viewer more widely installed than Flash -- not even close. The runner up Acrobat is more than 10% behind Flash's installed base. Why do you think Adobe is buying Macromedia for so much money?

Flash Player Statistics:
Flash: 97.6%, Acrobat: 87.1%, Java: 86.5%, Windows Media Player: 84.3%, Quicktime: 64.1%, Real: 58.9%, Shockwave: 55.4%, Viewpoint: 49.7%, SVG: 12.5%.
Flash Bundling Matrix:
Flash is bundled with Internet Explorer Win, Internet Explorer Mac, Netscape Win and Mac, AOL Win, AOL Mac, Opera, and with MacOS, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Your management is obviously stupid. My condolences. Not an unusual situation, but sad. Maybe you should look for another job.

You're totally wrong in stating that it's not that difficult to write code that runs in all browsers. Have you actually tried, or are you just saying that because you heard other people say it, and it sounds nice to repeat it?

Laszlo enables you to program Flash for free without buying any of Macromedia's tools. The cost of trying to write cross-platform JavaScript that runs in all browsers is your precious time and the quality of your application. There are some things more expensive than money, and you're wasting them if you're trying to use AJAX without being aware of its limitations.

Flash is much more portable than AJAX, and it is much better technology, by far, and it's widely accepted, much more so than any other technology. Flash graphics are much higher quality and more capable than anything that's possible with dynamic HTML, and you know it. Just try to draw a diagonal line in DHTML.

I can't diagnose what your problem is with having to install Flash manually all the time on every computer you've ever used, but I've never heard of anyone else with that problem, so you're probably doing something wrong.

JavaScript is easy to learn as long as you only need to use one version of the language, which is the case with Laszlo. But the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between different JavaScript implementations are extremely difficult to learn, and you waste a huge amount of time finding those differences by accident and then having to test against every browser use a bunch of half-assed debuggers and popup alert statements to diagnose the problems and come up with work-arounds for each browser.

Were you aware that JavaScript in Internet Explorer for the Mac does not support the push, pop, shift and unshift methods on arrays? Instead of a.push(foo), you have to go a[a.length] = foo.

If that's a surprise to you, then you're not qualified to write cross-browser JavaScript code. If you're using Array.push, pop, shift or unshift in your JavaScript code, then it absolutely will not work across all browsers, because it will crash on IE on the Mac, so you are fucked.

So does any of your JavaScript code ever use Array.push? If it does, then you're not writing code that will work in all browsers, and there are probably other incompatibility problems you're not aware of -- you'd better go back and rewrite all your code!

-Don

There is no other viewer more widely installed than Flash -- not even close. The runner up Acrobat is more than 10% behind Flash's installed base. Why do you think Adobe is buying Macromedia for so much money?

Flash Player Statistics:
Flash: 97.6%, Acrobat: 87.1%, Java: 86.5%, Windows Media Player: 84.3%, Quicktime: 64.1%, Real: 58.9%, Shockwave: 55.4%, Viewpoint: 49.7%, SVG: 12.5%.
Flash Bundling Matrix:
Flash is bundled with Internet Explorer Win, Internet Explorer Mac, Netscape Win and Mac, AOL Win, AOL Mac, Opera, and with MacOS, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Your management is obviously stupid. My condolences. Not an unusual situation, but sad. Maybe you should look for another job.

You're totally wrong in stating that it's not that difficult to write code that runs in all browsers. Have you actually tried, or are you just saying that because you heard other people say it, and it sounds nice to repeat it?

Laszlo enables you to program Flash for free without buying any of Macromedia's tools. The cost of trying to write cross-platform JavaScript that runs in all browsers is your precious time and the quality of your application. There are some things more expensive than money, and you're wasting them if you're trying to use AJAX without being aware of its limitations.

Flash is much more portable than AJAX, and it is much better technology, by far, and it's widely accepted, much more so than any other technology. Flash graphics are much higher quality and more capable than anything that's possible with dynamic HTML, and you know it. Just try to draw a diagonal line in DHTML.

I can't diagnose what your problem is with having to install Flash manually all the time on every computer you've ever used, but I've never heard of anyone else with that problem, so you're probably doing something wrong.

JavaScript is easy to learn as long as you only need to use one version of the language, which is the case with Laszlo. But the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between different JavaScript implementations are extremely difficult to learn, and you waste a huge amount of time finding those differences by accident and then having to test against every browser use a bunch of half-assed debuggers and popup alert statements to diagnose the problems and come up with work-arounds for each browser.

Were you aware that JavaScript in Internet Explorer for the Mac does not support the push, pop, shift and unshift methods on arrays? Instead of a.push(foo), you have to go a[a.length] = foo.

If that's a surprise to you, then you're not qualified to write cross-browser JavaScript code. If you're using Array.push, pop, shift or unshift in your JavaScript code, then it absolutely will not work across all browsers, because it will crash on IE on the Mac, so you are fucked.

So does any of your JavaScript code ever use Array.push? If it does, then you're not writing code that will work in all browsers, and there are probably other incompatibility problems you're not aware of -- you'd better go back and rewrite all your code!

-Don

In other words, you are saying that this is irrelevant, I agree.

I wonder why the ease of development and better user satisfaction was brought in in the grantparent post when you agree that it is at best of minor relevance.


Actually, I think I was ignoring what you had said and was making a separate argument against something you hadn't said. I've been replying to all the sub-threads and I may have gotten things a bit jumbled. Sorry about that.

I not sure that Flash is always easier to develop for that HTML/Javascript/Ajax (never having developed for Ajax myself). There are some things that are easier to do in both. I do agree that ease of development is a very minor consideration (except in extreme differences between technology), but user satisfaction isn't something I'd toss off. User satisfaction speaks to usability and effects the productivity of the people using the application. I have seen good improvements in productivity moving people from HTML/Javascript apps to Flash apps. I wouldn't discount that.

That study is either 10 years old, complete bullshit or both.

The study was one done a few years back and it was one of the Macromedia NPD studys. They don't seem to track Javascript anymore that I see so I don't know where it's at right now, but at the time when we were seeing those numbers my friends and I had a few hypothesises for why the numbers were that way. The big one was that the study was done at the time when pop-up windows were becoming a problem, but there weren't any pop-up blockers yet. (Or at least none that I knew of.) So, we theorized that hatred of pop-ups was driving people to disable Javascript. I know the community seemed to be moving in that direction at one point. Both Flash and Javacript had very high availability numbers (90-something percent), it's just that Flash edged out Javascript by 1 or 2 percent. I know it's surprising, but that doesn't imply that at one point in time it wasn't true.

I know you're going to say, "Macromedia paid for the study! Bias. Bias. Bias!", but I would make two points. One, Macromedia also sells the most popular Javascript authoring program, Dreamweaver. If you read their financial reports you know that they make more money on Dreamweaver. It goes against their interests to report low Javascript numbers. Secondly, historically, their studies have also tracked the adoption of their Shockwave plug-in. This used to be the most installed plug-in and they built a line of products around it, including servers for creating dynamic Shockwave content. Their studies have shown the gradual eroding of the Shockwave install base. I've used Director (the Macromedia tool that creates Shockwave content), and I have more than once wanted to use its plug-in on a project, but then I look a those numbers and recommend against it. Director is great if you don't need the plug-in (CD-ROM or DVD for example), but I don't think I'll ever recommend it for online use.

Of the modern browsers that dont support javascript or a close variation, name me exactly one that does support flash.

I don't know of any, but that a client has Javascipt built-in doesn't imply that everyone has it enabled. Some people have Flash installed, but run FlashBlock, don't they?

I know you want me to accept your credentials and experience to beleive that Flash isn't very widely installed in spite of the evidence I have otherwise, but I'm not going to.

Flash comes with Windows as a DLL, if you want to uninstall it there's a program you download from Macromedia to do so. I don't know of anyone who has done this in a corporate environment, but maybe you do.

I think you're trying to say (I have worked a lot with banks, financial institutions and such... very few of them install flash), "I have big clients and they won't use Flash." If you want to get into the "my potential clients are bigger than yours" argument, I'll just point out one clien

Those numbers seem very high to me, I'd also consider where you're reading them (the Macromedia site...) for the obvious bias

Man people like you crack me up...you could tell them the sky's blue and they'll argue that it's a colorful shade of gray. Like someone already posted to you, you really should do your homework before you start spouting things off. Flash traditionally has an 80% adoption rate in 12 months. That's higher than any browser and OS adoption. You want to say that people won't upgrade and people hate downloading a plug-in??? You show me the numbers where people have turned Flash off. You have that stat handy? Show me the numbers where people have uninstalled the plugin...any numbers for that?? Sorry but I can go off of the high tech "I've seen" stat your so quick to refernce.

take this quote from John Dowdell (and yes he is a Macromedia employee...stating FACTS)..

"According to AssetMatrix, Windows 2000 is the most-often used Windows version in medium- and large-sized corporations, edging out XP 48 percent to 37 percent. Put another way, roughly half of all Windows installs in corporations are Windows 2000." Operating systems require a big commitment to upgrade... as the OS was released four years ago, that's about 10% adoption per year, compared to 80% for a small browser plugin which doesn't change your daily environment.

Got any numbers showing that's false???

I'd wager that the number of people with Flash (perhaps 30%?)

That's not an accurate assessment. According to an NPD Online - Worldwide Survey 97.6% of Internet enabled PCs support Flash 5. Like I said in another post, I've had people tell me - "people won't be able to see it, it's in Flash, not eveyone has Flash" and then never had a single problem or complaint. You may doubt the numbers, but Amazon.com has used Flash on their homepage, if it wasn't widely installed to you really think they'd have done that to their users?

I think there are a couple of reasons for the misperception about Flash install numbers but the biggest one is that, it's come bundled with the browsers forever. When everyone was using Netscape and IE wasn't a big player both browsers came with Flash already installed. Microsoft and Apple OSes have come with Flash pre-installed for 5 or 6 years. People used to notice when they had to go and update their player, but they've added auto-update functionality, and now most users never have a reason to ask themselves "do I have Flash installed?"

Macromedia has another product called Flex that's even more akin to AJAX than regular flash is. I think it generates Flash content, but app programming is done in a markup/scripting manner with server-side foo to transform it to send to the user.

I've always thought Breeze was pretty impressive. It's a collaboration suite for meetings, events, and presentations. The part of it that's easist to demonstrate is the presentation part, since Macromedia often uses Breeze presentations in their marketing - here's a Breeze presentation about Macromedia Flex. It's like a virtual PowerPoint presentation, but I think it's much more pleasant to watch a Breeze presentation than to click through someone's slides on the web.

LivePlasma, is certainly something that I wouldn't know how to implement in plain HTML.

http://www.slideroll.com/>Slideroll creates online slideshows.

The whole, zoom in and out on pictures thing used to be a good example, but Google Maps and Virtual Earth both know that trick.

I guess most of these examples are data visualization/presentation software, but then that's what most of the web is, isn't it? I personally prefer Flash as a video player, but that's not necessarily what we're talking about here.

I guess my question is, is there something inherient in Flash that you think makes it crappy?

  As you've said, web games, which are the most client-side intensive content on the web use Flash very well, is there some inherient reason you think these capabilites couldn't be employed for serious purposes?

That is annoying.

Flash provides a server-side policy file that allows servers to opt-in to provide data to scripts from other domains.

This allows Flash to default to the same security model as the browser, but also work more effectively when the data-provider knows what they're doing.

See http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/in dex.cfm?id=tn_14213

I actually removed Flash from my work PC completely. And it turns out I don't miss it a bit. No more slow-loading, annoying animated ads. No more too-fancy mystery-meat website navigation. No more Homestarrunner or Flash games while I'm supposed to be working, either.

The best tool for editing CSS (and the HTML/XHTML that goes with it) is TopStyle Pro, from Nick Bradbury, the original creator of the HomeSite editor. Unfortunately, TopStyle is for Windows only. (Nick codes in Delphi.)

To clarify, though it's already been done, the animation you saw is a Flash animation. Flash does and always has run fine on Linux, though the releases are somewhat behind the windows and mac releases. Shockwave is an entirely different thing (by the same company), and there is no linux player. Last I checked (which was over a year ago) it worked with CrossOver, but that put up ads in the middle of what you were doing.

Since you asked, I use Gentoo, and it was about a day old (gotta love emerge --sync && emerge -Dtau world). Every once in a while, I report a bug to Macromedia about there not being a player. You should too.

Anyone doing anything more than that on the web has to know something besides PHP since doing anything complex in PHP simply isn't very easy at all.

Having done some rather large and complex projects with PHP, your comment leaves me very curious.

What complex thing(s) is/are difficult to do in PHP? (I'll draw the line at stuff like rendering 3D, since the language clearly isn't meant for stuff like that)

I've had excellent results

1) Developing semi-distributed, (borrowing a buzzword) RIA type application using PHP-GTK.

2) Read headers from MP3s

3) Forked it into a daemon to process TCP socket calls with a home-rolled protocol,

4) Parsed Apache and Sendmail log files,

5) Run system administration,

6) Build a large-scale backup system

and much more, as well as the usual "I built a weblication using LAMP". I fail to see where PHP is particularly limiting in general programming...

or straight to dreamweaver (code view)

Macromedia's own tool for converting Word etc to web pages is Contribute http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/prod uctinfo/overview/. It would be an easy tool to set up so the users could do their own updates, or you could keep it to yourself.
Another option would be to use Microsoft's own tools for the job. Infopath/Sharepoint are intended as a toolchain for getting Office documents to inter/intranets, but they'd be harder (and more expensive) to set up.

I used to use homesite 4.5... it has a built-in macro to strip the office tags and styles out of html. http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/

Because Java doesn't have over 90% market penetration.

• Many more widgets, interfaces available
• The user's browser - provided they have the Flash plugin installed, which most do - is irrelevant
• Reusable, shareable components
• And, the main reason I thought of Flash in the first place: Actionscript 2, which includes strict data typing, class files and structure, etc...

Curl

Laszlo

Flex

Create rich client apps with the DOM

Rich Cients ORG

---
  Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 5.7).

I love Google maps and I like what you can do with AJAX- but the fundamental problem with most browser based scripting technologies is that they're best at rending text. Don't get me wrong, anything that makes a webpage more responsive than the -click- load -click- is a step in the right direction.

Flash has earned a bad rep among programmers because it's often used for @#$?%! annoying and obtrusive ads and unnecessary web... page ... intros... that... just...- swoosha- won't... stop. On behalf of Flash developers everywhere, I would like to apologize for every 'punch the monkey' banner ad out there. But if it's used for browser rending of information being streamed over an XML socket (and no, you don't have to send XML over the connection- it's just a socket) it kicks *ss. it's scripting language, Actionscript is dead easy to learn. If you're used to Java, you can pick it up in a few days. And I'm sorry, but SVG doesn't even come close to touching it. I don't think that it will survive the Adobe/Macromedia merger.

My only beef with Flash is the vector rending pipeline. You get alpha for free but try overlaying a few transparent vectors and... performance... chugs. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the bitmap caching (you need the Flash 8 beta player to see bitmap caching in action) in the upcoming Flash 8 addresses this problem. The demo's I've seen look promising.

Check out Grant Skinner's or Yugo Nakamura work and if you want a great example of what you can do with real-time data in Flash- check out www.dentsu.com. What you see is the real-time position of all 30-some elevators in dentsu's corporate headquarters.

Disclaimer: I am currently a Flash Developer. If you want to see my work- it's at bodog.net. It's free online multiplayer poker and yes, those are real people playing. You can see the two technologies playing nicely together- the lobby was done using AJAX technology and the actual game tables are in Flash. Try refreshing the game table if you want an example of Flash using server-based persistance.

For smaller projects where you just want the client updating small portions of the website without knowing html, there is a product from Macromedia called "Contribute". This product is a client side solution, not a server side one, so no databases, programming languages, or server configuration is necessary. It uses HTML comments to designate which areas of a page are editable and which are not. Access can be granted based on HTML comments in the doument or by restricting entire folders.

Note: This is not meant to be a secure application, it does not actually prevent people from editing pages except at a client side application level. Contribute respects the HTML comments, but there is nothing stopping the user from FTP'ing directly to the site and circumventing contribute's access "hints".

That being said, it is a great quick and dirty way of letting people create new pages and edit existing ones based on templates that you design. You can easily create a page with navigation bars and logos, but define a huge area as "editable". Clients can create hundreds of pages based on this template then later, you can edit the template to update the navigation, and contribute will regex (search and replace) all documents on the site based on that template and FTP them to the server. It is even possible to create a heirarcy of templates, so that changes to a parent template will trickle down to child templates and then to all pages that inherit from those templates.

Another nice thing is that, being a macromedia product, it integrates well with dreamweaver. A contribute template is no different than a Dreamweaver template, except that it has security permissions mapped on top.

Dude, that's unfair to PHP developers everywhere...

MySpace runs CFML, and always has. Specifically, today they runs their CFML application code on Blue Dragon, rather than ColdFusion for the increased scalability and compatibility with a .NET stack. Their leaders spoke at CFUnited a few weeks ago.

That's right, if that was the case you'd be much more familiar with ColdFusion and drop both PHP and ASP.NET as I've used them both more than I wish I had before CF.

It is a great combination of corporation / developer community that is growing and already has a lot of features far past PHP and ASP. And a lot of huge companies use it (ie. Bank of America) , including the government (yes, the government uses it more than ASP or PHP).

And...there are servers that run on top of both java and .NET to leverage either as your company sees fit with 2 different companies making servers (CF is not stuck to Macromedia only for server software and therefore more resiliant than ASP). Oh yea, and did I mention that creating a webservice is as easy as change a function type from "public" "private" or "package" to "remote". Now that is ease of development. Something that blends language design, compatibility, and power.

Spend some time on it...
http://macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/?promoid =BINO (main CF provider)
http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/inde x.cfm (Offers CF on both Java and .NET, with a free server as well)
And I would argue with anyone who claims that both of these companies are not incredibly responsive to developers.

You're correct.
I should have phrased that as "There is a flash player available for the playstation 2", but it isn't built-in.
Apparently, it was used in "Star Wars Starfighter" ( http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2001 /lucasarts.html )

Flash has been on PDA's and PocketPC's for a few years now...

http://www.macromedia.com/mobile/supported_devices /pda.html

A quick trip over to macromedia shows the web access controls... which is handy for setting global restrictions. Not really sure where my flash panel would be other then when the module is loaded, but here is a link to a web based method of setting those restrictions.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html

Right-click a Flash item and select "Preferences".

Go to the macromedia.com control panel page, scroll down and select "Global Storage Settings Panel".

Move the disk space slider to none. This will cause the flash player to always ask before storing information. Or you can uncheck the bottom box to disable local storage altogether.

Next, go to the fifth tab, and select "Delete all sites" to remove all information already stored.

To those who are going to say that marketers tell the truth about products to people who don't know the truth...fuck that. That was true in 1955, and was called advertising. It's not true in 2005, and it's called marketing. I don't think that was true even in 1955. Snake oil salesmen have a longer history, and plenty of quack cures were touted by Madison Avenue long before that.

The Persistent Identification Element is just another example of the lengths marketing scum will go to clandestinely as possible track your movements and sell your data to anyone with a check book. Not that most users shouldn't realize by now that any plugin is likely to be some form of tracking/spyware. For those of you unfortunate enough to be trapped on IE, Flash Disable is a handy tool, its just a pretty front end to disabling & enabling the registry key for flash - one less icon that doing it with importing reg keys manually: Handy Reg Keys Way, both of them require a browser restart to take effect though. Of course, aside from flash being really annoying - its more effective to get to the root of the security problem itself with the security settings panel for Macromedia Flash Player, but you have to flip through several different settings to actually disable them and delete existing ones (under "allow websites to store information how much information on your computer"): Flash Settings Manager. Or perhaps you would like the more permanent fix of: Uninstalling Flash Player Entirely For those using Mozilla and Firefox, you likely already have Flashblock installed, but you should still check out the security settings for Flash.

To those who are going to say that marketers tell the truth about products to people who don't know the truth...fuck that. That was true in 1955, and was called advertising. It's not true in 2005, and it's called marketing. I don't think that was true even in 1955. Snake oil salesmen have a longer history, and plenty of quack cures were touted by Madison Avenue long before that.

The Persistent Identification Element is just another example of the lengths marketing scum will go to clandestinely as possible track your movements and sell your data to anyone with a check book. Not that most users shouldn't realize by now that any plugin is likely to be some form of tracking/spyware. For those of you unfortunate enough to be trapped on IE, Flash Disable is a handy tool, its just a pretty front end to disabling & enabling the registry key for flash - one less icon that doing it with importing reg keys manually: Handy Reg Keys Way, both of them require a browser restart to take effect though. Of course, aside from flash being really annoying - its more effective to get to the root of the security problem itself with the security settings panel for Macromedia Flash Player, but you have to flip through several different settings to actually disable them and delete existing ones (under "allow websites to store information how much information on your computer"): Flash Settings Manager. Or perhaps you would like the more permanent fix of: Uninstalling Flash Player Entirely For those using Mozilla and Firefox, you likely already have Flashblock installed, but you should still check out the security settings for Flash.

You can disable the flash "cookies" with the flash player settings manager.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/help02.html#117157

What a nifty trick.

Looks as if flash gives each site a very small amount of local storage.

The article says it can be disabled, but doesn't link to any information.

A quick trip over to macromedia shows the web access controls... which is handy for setting global restrictions. Not really sure where my flash panel would be other then when the module is loaded, but here is a link to a web based method of setting those restrictions.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en /flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html

I use this tool to do a lot of work. It is very flexible in that it allows you to split the graphical and code parts so whatever you need to do you can edit and go back and forth with. It also integrates well with backend databases for testing and can help with some of the scripting languages as well. However, you can't program in ASP.NET, ASP, Cold Fusion, PHP, etc. with Dreamweaver if you don't know how to do it to begin with.

As with other programs Dreamweaver also has an integrated ftp function and also you to sync files. It will also upload dependant files. Some other features include a sophisticated CSS interface and support, secure ftp and cross browser checks. And it allows you to import Microsoft Word and Excel files. Dreamweaver has a free trial. Try it, you will like it.

As for a hosting service, shameless plug below...

If you're doing more or less HTML/JavaScript and some light PHP/JSP/ASP/CF/whatever it depends on how much money you want to spend.

If you don't want to spend any money check these out.

If you want to spend money I recommend Dreamweaver if you don't want to know what's going on or HomeSite if you do want to know what's going on.

If you're doing more or less HTML/JavaScript and some light PHP/JSP/ASP/CF/whatever it depends on how much money you want to spend.

If you don't want to spend any money check these out.

If you want to spend money I recommend Dreamweaver if you don't want to know what's going on or HomeSite if you do want to know what's going on.

Another route if you are running Windows 2000 or XP Professional is to download Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express 2005 beta 2, available for free download. MS VWDE2005 is bundled with Microsoft SQL Server Express, which is a free, stripped down version of MS SQLServer. This route may be a better idea if you are going to be building a website built on asp and SQL Server hosted on a Windows Server. Visual Web Developer Express will run on XP Home, but SQL Server Express will not. It has built in support for an Oracle DB, but not for MySQL.

Before choosing a host, decide what language you are going to script in. If you are going to use asp and/or .net you will need a Windows host. Most hosts will only offer php on linux servers.

I use HomeSite and have since its inception from Bradbury. Great software.

If you prefer something prettier, you can try Dreamweaver.

I believe there are trials of both available.

I use HomeSite and have since its inception from Bradbury. Great software.

If you prefer something prettier, you can try Dreamweaver.

I believe there are trials of both available.

wow, y'all are too busy writing things like "verily, i say" and "surely you do not foolishly infer" and "peer review is not the only guarantee of veracity" to make, after 375 comments, a single joke on macromedia's cold fusion (yes, i know that's already a joke). i'm going to quote something i saw on some lefty blog, but... WILL YOU ALL PLEASE STOP TALKING LIKE CARTOON VILLAINS!!!!

Cold Fusion has been powering my website for years.

The thing is, the Flahs player is FREE. So the only reason to write this one is political, not technical

There are some practical reasons as well as political:
1) Distros can't package flash into a nice-easy-to-install package. Newbie users often find it extremely difficult to download, unpack and then run the installer. Also having it in the package management system means it can be easily updated when fixes come out and it can be used as a dependency in other packages.

2) Have to rely on Macromedia for bugs and security fixes - ie. no control of how quickly things get fixed. Also bugs which only affect Linux may get much lower priority than others because they only affect a small proportion of the userbase, this is double so for other platforms like solaris.

3) Have to rely on Macromedia deciding to continue supporting it - they may decide its not worth doing this for solaris, how many solaris machines are used for web browsing?

4) The only Linux distros they list as supported (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/producti nfo/systemreqs/) is RH9 and RHEL3. The fact that it works on other distros is a matter of luck and if it stopped working there would be nothing we could do to change it.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/lice nsing/fileformat/license2.html

"Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF."

No license to make a player there...

"So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia is "sorry 'bout your bad luck! Use Windows, buy an x86 machine!""

Sun Solaris (Sparc)

SGI IRIX

HP-UX

Pocket PC (color devices supported only)

"So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia is "sorry 'bout your bad luck! Use Windows, buy an x86 machine!""

Sun Solaris (Sparc)

SGI IRIX

HP-UX

Pocket PC (color devices supported only)

"So if your uname says AMD64, PPC, SPARC, Alpha, or MIPS, the smug reply from Macromedia is "sorry 'bout your bad luck! Use Windows, buy an x86 machine!""

Sun Solaris (Sparc)

SGI IRIX

HP-UX

Pocket PC (color devices supported only)

What kind of help? And more importantly, how are they making something compatable? Reverse engineering?

What the fuck? Flash format is open, why reverse engineering? Flash format is just as open as, say, PDF. If nobody in the opensource community has not written a opensource flash viewer is OUR fault not theirs.

Mind you, I've been viewing some simple flash files through gstreamer thanks to swfdec. Why all this noise now?

To be honest, I wound up being dissapointed because I thought that GPLFlash might be an open-source Flash authoring tool.

As far as I can tell, no such tool exists (please correct me if I'm wrong). All I found was MTASC, which is just an actionscript compiler (no gui).

So, both in terms of impact (who is affected, who would use) and interest (pool of people who'd volunteer), it seems to me that an open source replacement to Flash MX ($200 upgrade / $700 full price, OSX and WinXP only, sure to go up in price thansks to the adobe buyout) is a much better time investment to the player (Free-as-in-beer, which runs on Mac, PC, Sun, Irix, and several Linux distros).

Nevermind the terminal game of catch-up that will be played: GPLFlash will *always* be behind the curve to Macromedia. Obviously the same is true for the authoring tools, but your Flash 5 content will still run on your latest-greatest Flash Player -- the reverse is not true.

Is it the fear of being sued? Is it much harder to create an author tool than a player (consider implementing all of the video/audio/video codecs that you'll need to implement on the player side vs. a GUI that outputs .swf on the authoring tool)?

Why replace the free, widely available player and not the expensive-as-hell, mac or pc only authoring tool? I don't get it.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/lice nsing/fileformat/license2.html You are indeed right...the license states

Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF

Developing a SWF player would probably mean breaking the license agreement. I don't think it means breaking the DMCA.

Forget about code semantics, focus instead on application development theory and techniques, application frameworks, design patterns, etc.

I personally develop in both ColdFusion and PHP along with the Fusebox framework, and have just started using the fantastic FuseBuilder tool for the design stage. The using the Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) and a design tool that works with it (FuseBuilder) ensure that clients get what they want, no hassle, no "but it should be blue with green buttons". I can't promote FuseBuilder enough, it has become the bread and butter of both my day-job and side consulting.

Damien

Macromedia Breeze. Our company did a ton of research on this recently and came up with this as the optimal solution. Just need Flash and, optionally, a web-cam. No other plug-ins, software, or installation required. With Breeze, you can share individual windows on your desktop, upload common office file-types (Word, Powerpoint, etc.) which auto-convert to Flash, and do a bunch of other stuff. User friendly, powerful. A quite pleasant experience.

With technology like this, Flash Paper, and the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, Microsoft better watch out.

Macromedia Breeze. Our company did a ton of research on this recently and came up with this as the optimal solution. Just need Flash and, optionally, a web-cam. No other plug-ins, software, or installation required. With Breeze, you can share individual windows on your desktop, upload common office file-types (Word, Powerpoint, etc.) which auto-convert to Flash, and do a bunch of other stuff. User friendly, powerful. A quite pleasant experience.

With technology like this, Flash Paper, and the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, Microsoft better watch out.