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Actually it is even more stupid. They no longer charge a license fee, but only 'trust' vendors to release working players. http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/apply.html Given the quality and length of support any hardware vendor gives compared to the community this is just spiteful.

It's more open than you think (I guess):
http://www.openscreenproject.org/about/faq.html

Learn Flash/Actionscript3/Adobe AIR. It will simply run everywhere. (cue Flash vs HTML5 flame war. off-topic, IE9 ain't coming to XP so screw that -- I'm sick of all the "this will only work on Safari" or "this will only work on Chrome" HTML5 demos. As someone who actually builds stuff for clients instead of just blogging about these technologies, this is a dealbreaker and ***FORWARD*** compatibility headache as Windows XP will never go away for the near future. The original reason I learned Flash coding was because of the bloody headache of cross-browser compatibility.)

Back on topic, Flash is coming to every single smartphone platform (and even TV set top boxes). 19 of the top 20 mobile manufacturers are already part of the consortium Adobe Open Screen Project and they're working to get Flash running on their respected platforms. Only Steve Jobs didn't sign up for whatever his reasons. Flash is now out on Android, Symbian, Maemo, coming to WinMo 7 (Flash Lite is already out on older versions of WinMo), Blackberry & Palm, definitely on Meego (Nokia Maemo + Intel Moblin).

Flash CS5 can now be used to make native iPhone apps legally again as per App Store policies (the process is the same as making an Adobe AIR app). Here's a refresher on exporting your AIR project into iOS: Packager for iPhone Refresher.

There's some surprising current statistics to fix one's perspective on the death of Flash by the iOS gadget crowd. Currently 97% of the internet is Flash capable and iOS only has 1.1% share. Of course, the iOS share will increase as more customers buy them, but think of that when building stuff with the widest reach possible. Also, currently, devs seem to be monetizing the most on iOS, but the App store is now *so* *so* *so* saturated that it's hard for a new app to get noticed amidst all the noise.

Flash 10.1 is already out on Android Froyo (2.2) and AIR for Android is currently in public beta and should come out soon http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/ so Flash is already good to go if you want to target Android.

Another thing to consider is that Android market share has now overtaken iOS and since there's not enough decent content on the Android and Adobe AIR marketplaces compared to the Apple App Store, if you build a good app on any of those platforms, it's easier to pull in a user base since there isn't much competition yet.

Your Flash apps would run on Symbian^3 devices which are already out (N8, C3, etc) as they have all Flash Lite 4.0 (A slightly stripped down version of Flash 10 which already runs AVM2 AS3 swfs). In fact, Nokia just launched the $10million Calling All Innovators N8 app contest and Flash is one of the formats you can enter in.

Not only will your apps run on mobile devices if you build 'em in AIR, they will also run on Desktop Linux, Mac & Windows and that is the biggest plus for me. For complaints about the cost of Adobe tools, you can build SWFs and AIR apps from completely Open Source tools. The Flex SDK is FOSS and you can build apps just with your .AS3 sourcecode + a command line just like with the JDK for Java (or pick any appropriate IDE of your choice to make your life easier). Oh, btw, the commercial Flash Builder is free for students & teachers + developers who're hit by the economic crisis and are currently unemployed -> apply here for license.

Of course, please don't forget to *optimize* *optimize* *optimize*. Flash is not a slow platform. T

Nokia drops flash...? Do you have a source for that...?

I got the impression that is not the case - http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/current_partners.html and http://openscreen.forum.nokia.com/ seem to suggest otherwise.

As for Google, they're made it pretty clear that they're sticking with Flash - http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html.

And maybe the reason other devices haven't destroyed the ipad might perhaps be because they haven't been released yet?

The only exception is hand-held devices but on those I would in fact agree with Steve Jobs, it is usually better to make the effort to create a native version.

Actually, 19 of the top 20 handset manufacturers have signed up to work with Adobe to bring native versions of Flash to their devices. (guess who the odd man out is)

Flash 10.1 is already out for Android 2.2, and is coming out on every single platform (Windows Mobile, Symbian, Meego (moblin + maemo), Blackberry, etc) except Apple's iOS. It actually already runs pretty well on the iPhone too, except that Steve Jobs banhammered Flash CS5 iPhone apps on the eve of Adobe's Creative Suite 5 launch.

But my customers actually require something that would run on (at least) 95% of all Internet connected computers without the user installing anything Flash meats that criteria, Silverlight does not and HTML5 does not even show up on the radar yet.

And that's why what Steve did is a big headache for agencies. Instead of the possibility of a write once-run everywhere solution that's good enough with Flash, you'll now have to suck up significant resources just to build an iOS port. It's good for protecting and providing business for native iPhone coders, but still, it's a headache and a resource-sink.

the problems are as follows. 1) My security attack surface just doubled. I have bugs in the browser, bugs in the player, and interactions between the two.

If you stuff all the same functionality as Flash into the core browser (which is what HTML 5 will have to do to eliminate Flash), your attack surface also just doubled, since the browser codebase doubled. If anything, isolating the rich runtime stuff in Flash gives you more security, in browsers like Chrome that run the browser and the plugin in two separate processes.

2) If I am a new hardware manufacturer, I don't get the full Internet till adobe supports my platform. 3) Adobe could give me a crap implimentation (or none) and there is nothing I can do about it.

The point of Adobe's "Open Screen Project" is to obviate those issues. If you are a new hardware manufacturer, you have complete freedom to port Flash to your platform yourself -- either using the newly-opened Flash porting layer to leverage Adobe's existing implementation, or using the openly-published SWF/FLV specs to create your own implementation from scratch.

I see no mention of "player" which suggests I'm allowed to write a third-party player. The specs have been available for at least that long...

All it mentions is "removing restrictions", which is pretty vague.

From Open Screen Project FAQ > "What motivated Adobe to remove the licensing restrictions from the specifications?": "Until now, the specification had a license agreement associated with it, which said that developers could write software to output SWF but could not make software that would "play" SWF files. [...] Adobe is removing this restriction from the SWF specification [...] This will permit the development of applications that play SWF files."

No. Open specifications, licensing restrictions, and royalty fees. Perhaps you're thinking of third-party codecs (up to the third party)? Or perhaps you're thinking of people who actually want to distribute Adobe's player (royalty free)?

Moreover, you haven't demonstrated it to be false -- it may be difficult to implement. HTML5 evidently is not.

It is not necessary to prove any random assertion false in order for it to not be true. As you've said, there's more interest in implementing W3C specs than Adobe specs. Still, HTML5 has 0 complete implementations, and Flash has 1.

but that doesn't tell me whether or not they're allowed to read the specs yet

Oh dear; I was hoping that you'd take the hint and look it up. Effective May 1, 2008, Adobe removed the entire licensing agreement from the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications. These licensing restrictions had meant that no one could build software that would "play" SWF content.

[existence of non-Adobe incomplete Flash implementations] Citation needed.

You are lazy. I'll give you three which take about 15 seconds to find on the web, and you can do the job of finding three more (hint: I could find 5 with a cursory search, and the 6th is fairly obscure; I'd already heard of 5). The most well-known incomplete implementation is gnash. Scaleform is a commercial implementation with hardware acceleration. Swfdec is a fairly amateur implementation which has been mostly abandoned.

It actually looks like they just care about DRM, and would use HTML5 if it had the appropriate features.

It looks like good-enough DRM on a platform which actually exists and is successfully in production is one of the things they care about, yes.

Otherwise, your rant here makes no sense in light of the native iPhone client they have planned.

Is that an HTML5-based iPhone client? If not, what's your point?

For example, contrary to your claim, HTML5 does seem mostly implemented by the browsers I'm using. What's missing?

You really are lazy.

I never said that you claimed SVG supports local SQL storage

You're making arguments in response to the strawman argument that "SVG is a suitable replacement for HTML5". I was arguing for SVG in the context of canvas, it was obvious that I was arguing for SVG in the context of canvas, and you were being deliberately obtuse because it felt good to you to so boldly tear down an argument which hadn't been made.

To fake it on top of SVG (or HTML), you'd have to create separate elements behind the element that's moving, and be careful to disable all events on those so they can't be interacted with, and remove them when you're done

If only you could group elements in SVG. If only there were a generic way to add filters in SVG, and that could be used, say, to produce motion blur. The problem with SVG is that you have to read the spec instead of canvas where everyone can be lazy and reimplement his own way.

You can abuse anything, so the fact that a tool can be abused is no reason to avoid it. (I doubt I'd like an entire website in Canvas much better than an entire website in Flash.)

The whole point here being that canvas and most of its HTML5 friends are no better in principle than Flash, and (currently) are worse in practice.

I'm done with this thread. I appreciate that you're at least responding, but your lack of effort at researching most basic points is too frustrating. Thanks.

The truth is Flash is not a standard, it's a convention.

According to the Wikipedia a standard is (I assume we are talking about a technical standard, this is Slashdot after all...):

A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices".

Which in the case of Flash (SWF) would be available here: http://www.openscreenproject.org/about/faq.html . So I think we can safely say SWF is a standard.

but it's a closed system. Only one company, Adobe, decides how it works.

Open source != Democracy. In the end only Linus Torvalds decides what gets merged into 2.6. If you don't like Adobe's reference implementation for SWF, use something like Gnash.

Shouldn't the iPhone support Real video? What about ActiveX?

Seriously, what kind of a comparison is that ? Those formats are long dead.

The iPhone platform is closed, sure. But it's not delivering content to others, it happens to include a way to access web content.

If the appstore does not deliver content according to you, then what does it do ?

If it does a poor job of that the market will reject it

The people who bought an IPhone bought it because its shinny not because they thought it would endorse openness. People don't care about the ugly side if they can't see it. Or did you think all the pigs at the McDonald's farm get petted every day ?

Adobe released the full specs, unrestricted, last year. If you want you can download them.

When will Flash 10.1 be available for my Android G1 phone?

AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices. Adobe has been showing demo videos of Flash running on Android phones since last year. This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, they showed Flash 10.1 and AIR 2.0 running on a whole number of devices. It's running on the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One and other new Android phones like the HTC Desire & Legend.

They've also got it running for Blackberry and Palm Pre. Symbian has been running Flash Lite for some time now, so you'll also see Flash 10.1 and AIR coming to it. Browser Flash has running on Maemo for some time too, so no problem there.

Yes, Adobe's reluctance to support any platform other than a PC is the main reason why I think Flash should die a horrible (but quick) death

On the contrary, Adobe has been making a major effort to provide Flash for every single device and modern OS out there (The Open Screen Project). The fruits of this can now be seen at the Mobile World Congress where they're showing Flash 10.1 and AIR running on a whole bunch of mobile and internet devices. Check out the list of Adobe Open Screen partners (the only one missing is Apple who refuses to have Flash run on the iPhone and iPad, so Adobe got around that by providing export to native iPhone apps with Flash CS5)

Unless all the mobile phone makers settle on one GUI toolkit such as GTK, Qt, etc., there is no easy way for one app developer to target all the phones out there.

Say hello to Adobe AIR 2.0 on mobile. Flash/Flex/Javascript developers will soon be able to deploy their apps everywhere
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Adobe-Unveils-AIR-on-Mobile-bw-730511059.html?x=0&.v=1

All major phone manufacturers & platforms except for Apple will be supporting it by late 2010.
http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/current_partners.html

For iPhone and iPad, you can use Flash CS5 to build native iPhone apps, so your project can easily be published for iPhone OS too.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

The Flash plugin is closed source but Adobe has published the SWF specification. There are third party tools which produce SWF output which will run in the Flash plugin. My favourite is haXe, a Java like language which compiles to a number of targets including SWF.

PDF is an ISO standard, SWF is now completely open and much of the related technologies are in the process of being opened, see here. Postscipt has always been fully documented and third party interpreters have been available. I can't find any reference to Adobe threating to sue over Postscript so while it might not be a formal standard it's effectively open (see Ghostscript).

Flash is no less proprietary.

I beg to differ.

http://www.openscreenproject.org/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/adobes-open-screen-project-write-once-flash-everywhere/

"...if it the Flash format was open, documented and reimplementable..."

It is. But the third-party codecs Adobe licenses for redistribution aren't, so it's still hard to see how to get a functional clone.

The SWF format has been published for a decade, just like HTML. A few years ago reading rights were traded for the promise to not fracture Flash's distributed predictability, but by now that has loosened too. Here's a starting point:
http://www.openscreenproject.org/

jd/adobe

You mean like these specs that have been out for six months?

> Or if you absolutely cant do that, publish a spec that somebody can use to write compatible player.

Here you go.

http://www.openscreenproject.org/

http://www.insideria.com/2008/05/adobe-open-screen-opening-the.html

http://www.csamuel.org/2008/05/01/adobe-opens-flash-9-specification

Enjoy.