Slashdot Mirror
Flash For The Rest Of Us
antiher0 writes "The first beta of Perl::Flash is done! You can now use Perl to generate flash animations, etc. I've been waiting for something like this to come along :) BTW, be sure to check out the demo page. You can also check out the project breakdown here."
I have noticed that the folks on /. have been very hostile lately, and not just the "trolls". If you (and many others) insist on being that way, try not to stick your foot in your mouth -- it will sound much better that way.
On the same line, some people seem to be awfully defensive lately. While I certainly agree since nearly every reply I've gotten in the past few weeks has been a rant against my personal character it seems, I think the original poster was attempting to correct you, nothing else. Of course I could be wrong, but that's just the way I read it.
yerricde was attempting to correct Galois, the original poster.
A little off topic, but JPEGs (and others) are indexable by comments (built into the actual JPEG). Of course I'm not sure which (if any) search engines scan image comments, but it is possible. Obviously, this feature requires users to actually prepare comments for their JPEGs, but we can't expect the search engines to compensate for our shitty sites, can we? :)
other than that, I completely agree with you. I, too, try to get friends and associates to look at the "big picture" as well, but I am often unsuccessful. If you look at ALL the big sites, what makes them good is obviously comprehensive back-end programming served up by an intuitive front-end, not goofy animations and graphics. In fact, from my experience, the only "big" companies who intensively depend on graphics and animations are Fortune 500 companies who don't even need web business.
And CSS was developed defensively as an attempt to defang rotten commercial web sites. CSS represents a meeting ground between the 'decorators' and the users - the decorators can pour their heart into creating the perfect 'style sheet', and the users can opt not to use it. Everyone's satisfied.
"People don't surf the web because they want a Rich Immersive Experience. They surf because they want to find solutions to their problems or find products and services that meet their needs and wants. Flash just gets in the way. So, do yourself a favor and learn what makes the Web work well -- HTML, XHTML, CSS, and their W3C-recommended friends."
CSS and dhtml were developed to provide just that "Rich Immersive Experience" you deride, without the plugin download. Fact is, if people didn't want a pretty or graphical site, then the tag would never have been invented, and everyone would still be using lynx.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
i believe he was refering to the fact that it fell so soon. saying that most machines fall to the /. effect is pretty pointless. there is a difference between jumping up and down on a cockroach and a rabid ferret. the ferret will put up a fight and will probably loose in the end, the cockroach will loose pretty quickly. what he was suggesting is that the scripting engine turned the ferret into a cockroach.
since we dont know the server specks we cannot make any comments too quickly, but this one went down pretty fast, and his question is an important one. the server is still serving the static pages-it's just the dynamic ones it is failing on.
fwiw: i dont think he was trying to _prove_ any thing (including SHIT)
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
I guess I'm just an old fogey, but why on earth do you need flash at all? If a site can't be view with lynx properly then something is wrong. Adding all these flashy (no pun intended) graphics and sounds is just annoying and really doesn't add any functionality over a well laid out site using simple text hyperlinks.. like slashdot for example.
That about sums things up. The only time I'm 'motivated' is when a site has a monopoly on something. So if I'm looking to buy a widget, and widget vendor 1 has a useless web site, I skip them. If I need Oracle docs, I have to dig through Oracles web site no matter how hard they make it. So before you put up a barrier of flash, make sure you have a monopoly on whatever you're selling.
I want to point out that even if plugin and bandwidth issues are solved, you will still piss off and disorient a lot of users with unnecessary flash. People like the 'normal' interface of the web browser and don't want weird, invasive stuff happening. The less experienced the user, the more likely to feel threatened and confused by your flash extravaganza.
Having said that, if you use flash for art, more power to you - I wouldn't dream of criticizing it. Just don't put it between me and the information I'm seeking.
Yes. Yes, some of the non-standard capabilities of certain browsers implementations of JS are supported. Bundling. AS is a prototype-based language (rather than a class-based one) and these languages tend not really deal with data hiding since most are interpreted languages in the first place.
A|Q|U|A
Sorry, I am most unimpressed. Macromedia has a legal right to do this sort of thing, but for users, it's a good idea to turn this sort of thing off and complain to any web master whose site it is an important component of.
you will have to ask him to send you the cgi's. you wont be able to get them with wget or whatever. the webserver processes them then spits out the output-it doesnt send you the code.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
your replying to a troll's racist comment? that was pretty fsck'ed up.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Icebox, the creators of Starship Regulars, only has 4 of the episodes online their site. However, they have a flash based game - Starship Shag Shack - Play the game of skill, luck and intergalactic promiscuity.
This is pretty cool. I hope someone will do a python port so we can get some real work done.. :)
The article wouldn't be complete without mention of openswf.org. This is where Perl::Flash gets it's backend from. There are also a number of useful Flash tools here as well.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Heh. Yes. But now those splash pages can give way to extremly well designed and thought out sites which have just as much power as a normal dynamic site.
IMHO, part of the reason that, up until now, flash has only been used for those useless splash pages is that that is all the functionality really allowed for. You couldn't very well build a site in flash when it had a joke as a scripting language and only tenuous, at best, ties to external functions on the site. With PERL and php allowing inroads however, it allows developers like little ol' me to program a site exactly as we would with HTML, only allow for the nice little graphic implementation that my designers are always yelling at me about.
When flash first came out, I thought it was truly going to be revolutionary, until I used it in more of a live (instead of experimental) environment and understood its shortcomings. Even up through flash 5 (which has, in its credit, added a lot of functionality, a better designed internal scripting language, and XML support) it had apparent weaknesses which would prevent it from being used for what is was supposed to do, which was allow you to build a fully programmable and extensible site such as you would in Director, yet allow for small file sizes, quick downloads, and better animation resolution.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
Flash 5 now uses JavaScript-like syntax, and has a HUGE important addition: arrays.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
siri
Actually, if you read up on Flash's capabilities to load data you will find that Flash can only load data from the 2nd level domain on which it lives.With the original version of the F4 plugin, this was not the case, but MM quickly recognized the problem and fixed it.
A|Q|U|A
I wish there was more documentation period. I am waiting for SVG for dummies as I have a hard time working off of the spec. It has been fun though.
Excuse me for being sceptical, but, I will believe it when I see it. Remember, Microsoft's idea of cross platform is supporting win 3.1, 95, 98 and NT. I do not trust anything that comes from Microsoft.
It sounds like you want to say to hell with the new web multimedia formats and for everyone to be surfing in Lynx.
If you want proof that Flash is wonderful, check out WhirlGirl , the baddest superhero in all of SoCal!
Heh, can anyone mirror this on an Internet web site?
" We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States."
Oh well..
I tried the anonymizer but it didn't seem to work. Anyone with a US IP feel like setting up a public proxy just for sho.com?
Perl has always been good on supporting and integrating with oncoming web technologies. Since i work with both flash 5 and perl, I can say that this is a happy day for me personally, and a happy day for all grahpical inclined web producers everywhere.
better question, now that this is out, does this mean we might see some sort of GPL attached to the flash/shockwave players? IMHO that has been holding back alot of Linux users from being able to experience a great number of excellent looking and functional sites, since they are only capabale of using a beta (and god-awful buggy) player.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
Baloney.
CSS and more-recent flavors of HTML, especially XHTML Basic, were designed to provide greater degrees of separation between content and presentation -- not to further mix the two, as your response suggests! This intertwining of content and presentation is the primary reason that Flash is so destructive when used to express content that could have been expressed in "native" web formats.
Flash prevents the content from being used in its own right. It prevents the use of text-to-speech technologies for sight-impared users, prevents the use of intelligent indexing systems, makes automated classification and compilation next to impossible, and generally flies in the face just about everything sensible that has happened in the last decade to make information more accessible and usable.
For example, the W3C's recently recommended XHTML Basic "allows content to be be shared across desktop computers, TVs, PDAs, pagers, and mobile phones." It makes content more accessible, more usable.
Flash does exactly the opposite. It obfuscates content by hiding it inside of a particular form of presentation.
Once again, Don't use Flash!
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Not quite forever, but for a while. It is really not something perl or php or asp or the like should be doing, but if you gotta pick something for the web, you might just as well pich php - faster and more friendly, and has had flash for a long time. Better overall. IMHO, of course.- --------
----------------------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
There used to be a similar set of java-based tools here for decompiling swf to xml, but apparently the project has moved to this contentless place holder site. Will be interesting to see if it takes off again, and also how much cross polination there is between all the swf projects.
Finally slashdot posts a Perl related story. I never thought I'd see the day.
It isn't IE or Windows crashing. It is flash, which is running in the same process as IE.
If you are planning on constructing a Flash site, please DON'T.
Call me old-fashioned, but even with my cable modem I have no patience for goofy animations to download. It slows things down and contributes to Web Bloat.
I've never seen a Flash site that wasn't an abomination. I prefer web sites that are text and static images. Give me the ability to download animations -- don't attack me with them.
I know my crusade is a futile one. I work in the web biz, enterprise level software, and it's sick how many of our clients insist on larding up their sites with useless crap. Especially when you consider how few people have fast connections. The analog modem is still the way of the world...
Thanks,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
This gives flash a much higher level of interactivity than it had befor.
You were able to generate flash movies with the "Generator Studio" from Macromeda which costs ~1100$, now one can do similar stuff with perl - for free.
This could mean a great revenue loss for Macromedia, can they do anything to put this off air, after releasing the swf format?
Anyhow, I'm looking forward to play with this.
cheers
mike
SMIL would probably be a more appropriate replacement for Flash. It's also XML-based, and SMIL 1.0 has been a W3C recommendation for over two years.
Squeak Smalltalk also has the ability to work with Flash. You can even play flash animations within the Smalltalk environment. See link below.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Heh -- guess not. Not that ours seems to matter all that much at this point....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
4. Finally, using Flash cheats yourself. You're kidding yourself if you think that you need to use Flash. I can't think of one instance of where Flash has made a site better. Just about every use I've seen has been gratuitous. People don't surf the web because they want a Rich Immersive Experience. They surf because they want to find solutions to their problems or find products and services that meet their needs and wants. Flash just gets in the way. So, do yourself a favor and learn what makes the Web work well -- HTML, XHTML, CSS, and their W3C-recommended friends. Then you can toss Flash in the trash. Do it. You'll be a better human for it. Well, the very first thing that comes to mind is www.joecartoon.com If you can think of a better way than flash to do that, please tell me. And contrary to popular belief, 9 out of 10 people i know (ranging from your average "adult", to college students) surf the web for the experience, for laughs from finding new hilarious things, for meeting up with friends that they otherwise couldn't. Most of these people LIKE flash, and thats why it exists. Because your average non-elitist web user(the ones that the web works for now, even if it wasn't designed for it) likes the "Rich Immersive Experience" Journey-
we've stopped being a constitutional republic and are now a constitutional monarchy
If you find the Dubya event amusing... wait until Hillary Clinton runs for President.
How the hell is it possible that the wife of a dead man is appointed Senator when he 'wins' the election... how do dead people qualify for elections?? Didnt everyone who voted for this dead person invalidate their ballot...?
Babbage, you Yanks need to do something serious about your 'democracy'.
(Im Canadian FYI)
First of all perl is much older then php and is by far better tested and supported. The minimum php has to do is to port/support most of the CPAN (http://www.cpan.org) modules, which really help to provide fast and easy application development.
Secondly, why should one learn two different languages to do two different things? ;) Take for a example, standalone (data/system-maintainence scripts) and a web application. Why should I do web part in php and, say, db-to-files-dumping-from-cron in perl? Why should not I use perl for both? You may say that one can use php for those "standalone" scripts, but how convinient that is?
Thirdly, I have not seen any particular advantage of php that is not present in perl. Niether did I see anything which is easier in php. But that is subjective imho ;)
Perl is also easily run in both CGI mode and HTML embedded (http://perl.apache.org). Perl is installed on lot's of systems and it comes with the distributions of most UNIXes. There is even a popular perl interpreter for Windows (http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/).
Anyway, php has no chances to make perl obsolete, since perl has million of other appliences except the web. And even to make perl obsolete for web development, php has a long road to go, though I am following the development a bit, and I like just having another alternative in the future ;)
Leonid Mamtchenkov
"full OOP language"? ActionScript? That's just an implementation of ECMA-262. That is, it's essentially Javascript, with the meager support for OOP that that implies (compared to other widely used languages that support OOP). Also, is there support for "socket connections" beyond the handful of XMLSocket methods?
"Rather than express your content in the Web's native, open, standardized formats, you've hidden you content inside of a non-native, non-indexable, non-searchable format that a good many surfers can't view."
.jpg is indexable? Well you can index the alt tag...so then a web designer would make sure the text from his/her flash movie would be included in a html tag in the page that brings it up. In fact I've used Flash 4 a bit and when you hit publish the .htm file it outputs does exactly that.
And your average
"Forcing them to download the most-recent Flash plugin just for the privelige of viewing your site is presumptious and unrealistic -- many people will just surf to another site, perhaps one of your competitors."
When designing a site you have to assume that the average hit is gonna come from a newer, faster machine. You can't expect the site designer to continue and continue to make site backwards compatible. I know i wouldn't be trying to get a site to look as good in Netscape 1.0 as it does in IE 5. When I design a page I assume that my average visitor is running win98 which happens to include a flash plugin in the install. I figure I'll also get a decent amount of requests from a Win 95 machine and Linux machines. Most of these though would have probably already downloaded the plugin to view other sites in the past but just in case I'll provide a convienient link to tell them where to get it. It is not designers problem if a user can't keep up with technology, he has to go with the majority. As long as the technology is excepted as the norm (which flash seems to be) go ahead and use it.
"Most companies would kill for a few percentage points of market share. But, by using Flash for a client's web site, you'll exclude people with older browsers and unsupported platforms from using your site. These people represent a sizable market share. Do you think your clients don't want these people as customers? Content hidden inside of Flash can't be indexed by search engines. Do you think that you clients don't want people to find their products and services easily?"
See the above solution for the search engine problem. Plus you can't make every user happy it don't happen. And if your service is technology related such as and ISP or Software company, you see customer with out of date equipment as a big Support Hassle.
"I can't think of one instance of where Flash has made a site better. Just about every use I've seen has been gratuitous. People don't surf the web because they want a Rich Immersive Experience."
Image is everything. It's not how great your product is it's how well you can market, display, and how cute it is. Everybody judges a book by it's cover whether they admit it or not. You also forget sites out there that get tremendous amounts of hits for there flash cartoons or games or what not. Heck with out flash we could have that great Napster Bad movie that made me laugh my ass off. There are other good uses to, I generally dislike the intro's but the other stuff it can do is pretty cool.
Just my thoughts,
-Al-
Here are some awesome flash movies which are a credit to what flash can do (albeit not to a web interface)
Browser plug-ins will never provide a consistent and reliable browsing experience. Especially proprietary plug-ins like Flash. The only openness that Flash has achieved at this point is due to Macromedia's fright over having seen SVG.
I urge everyone to support the prospect of built in SVG support in browsers. Mozilla currently has a MathML-SVG build that does very limited SVG with NO PLUG-INS.
If we could just get limited built in SVG support in both the official version of Netscape and IE, then most of the ugly graphics and font hacks that are necessary for website design would disappear.
Icebox currently only has 4 of the 6 episodes that the Showtime site has(probably contract agreement or something). Note - you'll need JAVA enabled to use Icebox's site.
As for Macromedia Generator, its still by far the leader in this area as it does more than output Flash
Generator is also expensive and only runs on Solaris and Windows (last time I checked).
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
maybe you're right...sorry for jumping ahead there, however i think that php has a lot of promise for a lot of different things, and will continue to at least be regarded as a perl-alternative...
i myself even use it for a bit of server scripting...and have had much success doing so!
:)
I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned Flashdot, a demo at Swift-Tools' site. According to the blurb, it "...displays headlines of Slashdot (famous techies news site). It uses Perl, LoadMovie, image replacements, dynamic GotoLabel, ..."
The Slashdot of the future? I hope not.
Jobby
I totally, disagree.
There's a big difference between putting something up on the web for debate (as Simon did when he wanted the people on the london.pm mailing list to go over this.) And saying that something is up for the hostile viewing of the slashdot mob.
We *know* the html doesn't work for I.E. - Infact Simon was going to have a look at it as soon as he got back from his snowboarding holiday.
Oh - the load on the machine is now at 30. Darn!
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
For those who want to find out more about this, see the SWF info on PHP's site, or grab a copy of libswf (aka Flash Synthisesizer.)
-Waldo
Don't ask me, I'm half Irish and 1/4 German, 1/4 Spanish. I just thought I'd whip out a Seinfeld reference. Got you to reply didn't I?
.
it's the fla that is proprietary.. but i would expect that from any company...
Perl is the language
perl is the program
PERL is no more correct than PYTHON or LINUX
just ask anyone on #perl
...now that Unix/UNIX thing I'm still not sure of...
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
There was a U.S. state court ruling some years ago that a vote for a dead candidate is an affirmative vote for someone other than the living candidates. In other words, if more people had supported John Ashcroft in Missouri then he would have won. A vote for the dead candidate was a vote for "Anybody but John Ashcroft."
Only in Palm Beach.
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
While I wouldn't use a language like ActionScript for a production application, it's still pretty cool to find anything like it in an application of its nature. It's pretty cool to do the bulk of your work in an external text editor instead of some contrived, dumbed down "builder" interface.
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So should the new icon for Perl now be an overflowing sink instead of the camel? (Or has someone re-written emacs in Perl instead of Lisp?)
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Sigh. Okay, let's take 'em one by one...
You're right, JPEG images are not indexable. And that's why I wouldn't take a block of text (or other useful content), render it into a JPEG image, post it on a site instead of the text itself, and try to cover up my stupidity by stuffing the text in the image's ALT attribute. Yet that's exactly what a bunch of folks who use Flash do. They convert useful information, sometimes entire site hierarchies, into a less accessible, less useful form (Flash), and substitute that weakened content for the real thing.
No you don't.The fact is, most people don't have the latest-and-greatest hardware and software. Making this assumption is not only contrary to fact, it's cheating yourself, your customers, and your clients. Rather than figuring out how to solve problems in terms of standard, web-native technologies that almost everybody on the Internet can use, you've chosen to make an assumption that makes your life easier at great cost to everybody else.You're right about one thing. If a designer designs sites under the assumption that users will "keep up with technology," it's not his problem -- it's his users' problem and his client's problem. They're the ones that will suffer for his laziness.
And good designers do ensure that their sites are backwards compatible. For example, Amazon's designers made sure that you can buy books via Lynx if you want. They get it: Their content matters, and their designers make sure that the content rules, not the presentation (or their own egos).
Image is not everything. If you look at the companies that live or die based on their web presence, the ones that must truly "get" the web in order to survive, you'll see that they almost universally avoid Flash. Do you need Flash to buy a book from Amazon? Or post to Slashdot? Or participate in projects on Sourceforge? Or trade stocks on E*Trade? Nope. Are you seeing the big picture yet?
Remember: It's the content that counts! Everything that gets in the way, including Flash, is damaging to your users and your clients.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Read
/ fi nal_project.html#_Toc486319426
http://www.2shortplanks.com/Flash/stuff/Writeup
for a history
Simon
Actually this project was started before Ming.
Which I link from my page.
I started this project about a year ago and the current version has been sitting around for about 6 months doing nothing whilst I went travelling.
Not at all. I think that new web multimedia formats are great, just as long as they are reserved for content that is inherently multimedia in essence. The reason I'm urging people to avoid Flash is because most designers seem to think that non-multimedia content somehow becomes "better" when forced into a multimedia format like Flash. It ain't so. Content is best expressed in terms of the minimum presentation sufficient to capture the nature of the content. Anything else just gets in the way.
So, Flash is fine for animated cartoons. But it makes a lousy tool for general web site construction.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
First, Let me tell you who I am. I'm the owner/runner of 2shortplanks.com. This summer I gave the talk on Perl and Flash at YAPC::Europe. I've read and used the code.
;-) Good job we got that unlimmited bandwidth option from mailbox.
;-)
;-)
Secondly, to all those people trying to see the demos. The machine load is currently at 30 - you may have to wait a bit
Thirdly, Simon (the authour of this code) is on holiday, snowboarding - So he can't speak to you lot, but I'll have a go at talking about where we were in the project before he left.
Simon did this code for his final year project based on an idea that I came up with but I was too lame to implement. Up to this point we are at a stage where we can sucessfully break apart a Flash movie with pure perl, and hold it as a data structure of vector graphics objects (well as SWF tags such as Rect, Shape, Text) that can be altered by access via attributes.
This has been a hard struggle for many reasons. Macromedia's open spec (which is linked elsewhere in this discussion) has many bugs in it that Simon had to work around. The other main difficulty is that Flash is a bit based file format, rather than a byte based format - read the spec and you'll see what I mean. (In other words you have 'tags' that take up less than a whole byte so you have to parse very slowly...) Simon had to write File::Binary (on CPAN) before he could start.
Simon has half done the creating perl code bit in pure perl. At this point the code is written, but isn't debugged. I don't think Simon or I am going to even attempt to do this as we've reached the point where it's logical to throw the code away and start from fresh (look mom, the evolutionary design model!) There's lots of changes we'd like to make - processing unparsed data - moving away from Class::Struct - rewriting the File::Binary to work better - template toolkit scripting ability.
One of the really cool things that Simon has done is wrap a binary library to spit out simple flash files. Unfortunatly this module is free as in beer, not as in speech (read: we don't have the C source code.) It has bugs that we can't fix, but this works in most cases - I prepared the slides for my talk at YAPC::Europe with it, as well as the demos that you, well, will be able to see the slashdot effect dies down.
Simon has been doing all this work in his spare time of late - which is very demanding. Sure, if someone was to offer him to work on it fulltime (*hint*) then a lot more could be done. At this time I'd like to thank Simon for all the hard work, often largely thankless, that he's done on this and other projects (YAPC::Europe, Acmemail, and countless help on other modules)
Now for a little news on the server itself. It wasn't ready to be slashdotted. The load is at 30 for goodness sake! Hooray for Linux not falling over! The code wasn't set up to be put under any kind of load - it's just beta code for discussion that has *no* respect for what it's running on. It should be running under mod-perl. It's not. It should not be using file-based temporary files. It is. It's a work in progress, what do you expect?
In closing I'd just like to say it's a shame that we haven't had a chance to get this into some kind of workable form before the whole world decided to have a look and judge it. The site was thrown up in a rush (arn't they always) for discussion on the list. It would have been set up a lot better if we'd known the traffic we were about to get) and we'd love to have shown you a lot more.
Are you slashdot editors willing to let us have another go on the slashdot rollercoaster ride of server death in three months when we've got everything up to scratch? Go on, I dares you
Hope that's been informative.
If you need any info on this then feel free to email me on mark@twoshortplanks.com and I'll be more than willing to talk over any issues. Though I'm in the UK and it's 12:30 in the morning on a Friday night atm, so don't expect a prompt reply!
Later.
Mark.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
OT:
I have noticed that the folks on
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And it's made in Flash
--
=S
password
/. would at least warn people before posting their site. i wouldnt balme the person who submitted it, but rather the editor who posted it. i can understand that the editors didnt expect the result of /. posting a url the first few times, but hell we have a name for it now (/. effect). so hemos cannot claim ignorace.
if he didnt want the rest of the world to see it he should have password protected it. i agree it would be nice if the folks at
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Cool. One of the major things that this Flash project needs (apart from a *lot* more time to work on it) is some idea of where to go from here. Comments really, really welcome!
Currently Simon has written the wrap for the libswf that you've mentioned. But he's also written the parsing Tag routines for Flash 3. As you can understand, it really shouldn't be that hard to add a few more tags for Flash 4 and Flash 5 files if you've read and understood the spec.
I'd agree with your comments that there's a lot to Flash that what you can get with Flash 3. Flash 3 is only just Turning compatible for goodness sake! Flash 5 is really interesting and I'd love to get working on some of the more entertaining stuff.
One of the more challenging problems is that the interface we currently have is way too low level - the kind of people that need to use the tools aren't going to be interested in pushing and popping transformation matrices - they just want the text to scroll across the screen. And good on them...
How we do this, and what Flash 4 and Flash 5 tags we use to do this (and templates) is a *big* question.
Will subscribe!
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
The idea is that Flash is a really interesting technology -- vector graphics, lighweight complex animations, yadda yadda yadda -- but you need proprietary tools to work with it, and the integration with the web browsers is spotty at best -- e.g. they aren't searchable, they don't really support all the standard features like the back button, etc.
That's where Perl::Flash comes in. First & foremost, it's an authoring tool for generating (either one-at-a-time or dynamically-on-the-fly) Flash animations, but I would suspect that it can also be used -- perhaps in Mozilla? -- for other types of manipulation of the Flash file. Cool stuff.
I've just learned that this hasn't been officially released yet -- Simon's on vacation -- so those of you that can get to the twoshortplanks site are seeing experimental code that wasn't yet meant for public review like this. Keep that in mind as you review this stuff -- beta isn't even nearly the word for the code here, so don't be hard on Simon and don't be cruel in pointing out flaws in the code or the ideas: everything is a work in progress at this point.
Whoever this 'antiher0' person is, s|he has revealed this project perhaps a bit too soon....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Agreed. I am using SVG now to develop a web based process control application. SVG does rock. I just wish they would get SVG support for Mozilla finished so I could stop using Windows again.
That has to do with the size of the comment, not the "length" on screen. Size in bytes not screen space
Jeremy
If this bothers you can always filter you view. Probably easier then complaining about it.
dude, how about some links??
i could live a little longer in this prison
The Flash traceroute demo they have on thier pade would be impressive if it actualy worked. *Sigh* Now if only someone would port SWiSH to linux and open source it the world would be perfect. Flash is rarely good for anything other then cool-but-usless-and-bloated interfaces, and cheesy games and animations. This has some interesting animations and games. Lets hope some troll dosent come up with a flash version of goatse.cx, and if they do at least it will be slow loading. Alrighty then I'm off to find some hetro flash p0rn games.
I wonder if anyone's really thought about its security? Is there even any? Now that's it's becoming easier to dynamically create, can Flash exploits be far behind?
--
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
First, I want to make it clear that I have nothing against the fine hackerly work that is Perl::Flash.
But Flash, itself, is just plain evil. Don't use Flash. Ever.
Why?
So, just in case you didn't get the point: Don't use Flash!
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
looks like it's cpu-intensive, because it's only a few hours on /., and the server is already overloaded...
(yeah, I know I have no single fact to prove it, but you get the point... (I hope))
Server Specs (it's my server)
K6 500
256MB RAM
2Mb (up to 4Mb bursting) pipe.
This isn't the point though. This code isn't even slightly optomised. It's running as CGI on a server that's set up for mod-perl (stupid, but we only just moved these scripts to their new home and haven't altered them yet) Even if they were mod-perl then they wouldn't really be very quick - It's beta code.
However, Flash creation is *hard*. Don't ever expect it to be quick. However, sooner or later we'll write the version that only *alters* the SWF file rather than creating it from scratch.
It's not fair to judge concept code on it's performance.
Oh, powerpuff girls is on Cartoon Network.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
There's nothing wrong with the file format - It's simple vector graphics very well compacted.
The main problem with most Flash files is that they're created with the graphical editor. The graphical editor has a chip tool that chips away from the vector graphics and ends up creating a large number of polygons. Extra polygons = big files.
Of course with Simon's routines to create flash files from perl then this shouldn't be a problem.
For example, the Flash files I created for the Perl Flash talk at YAPC::Europe on this code (using this code) were under 10K a slide (including font info.)
Later.
Mark.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Generator2 runs on Linux as well as Solaris and NT.
Lots of folks use flash to read in files from external URLs to display text, etc.
I've seen a few sites that are reading in text from perl scripts, so the content within the flash page has been generated via perl/php/whatever. This would alow to do most of the things this perl:flash modules does, but This module is a much cleaner way to do it. woohoo! Great job guys.
Off the top of my head, I know that www.ragingmouse.com uses that. I'm sure there are other sites as well.
i didnt realize this until i got further down in the comments. i really think the editors should get in touch with the owners of web sites before posting. reguardless of who submitted the story, ultimately the responsability is theirs. it's almost like they are insighting a riot, or guideing an army of deaf mutes. i know when i read the article i thought "cool i want to check this out."
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
One of the advantages in getting the Perl Flash stuff working is that you could parse SWF files and spit out any format you wanted (In theory - I stress - In theory.)
Many people I spoke to at YAPC::Europe were interested in doing this. We're striving for an XML version of the Flash file format atm. Soon (not today, not the day after, but soon) we should have something that can create an XML representation of the internal perl data structure that we can grab from a raw SWF file.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Ah, but we're (when I say we, I mean Simon is working on it and I am watching and hoping my server doesn't fall over again) working on a pure perl one.
;-)
Parsing currently 'works'.
Creating new files has lots of bugs
Later.
Mark.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Same setup here, same errors.
Jeremy
I was going to say something to the same effect. It sounds like this Simon Wistow took the .SWF file format and reparsed it into XML. Hmm, sounds a lot like what SVG/SMIL are supposed to be.
And that bit about Macromedia opening the .SWF format. OK so it's open for people to read, but is there an external body in charge of updating it or is it still controlled by Macromedia?
Constitutionally Correct
C# is a truly open standard? What standards body certified it as a standard? It's not controlled by Microsoft?
First of all a large majority of the people here talking about Flash really don't have any clue what they are talking about. I am currently working on a number of Flash 5 related books, and let me tell you, there is a HELL of a lot more to Flash than most people know... full OOP language, XML, socket connections... the list goes on.
This perl lib is nice and all, but its based on the same library that the basic PHP library is, and really isn't that big of a deal... it outputs Flash 3 files!
If you want cutting edge open source tech for Flash go check out Ming
Ming is a library for PHP, Python and Ruby that really kicks some serious ass!
As for Macromedia Generator, its still by far the leader in this area as it does more than output Flash... it also spits out JPG, GIF, QT, PNG, and Mac/PC exe's. It's more than a dynamic Flash solution, it is a dynamic graphics solution. Think PHP for images. It also has a very powerful plugin architecture based on Java.
Also, I run a mailing list for people who program inside of Flash 5: FlashCoders
A|Q|U|A
This really isn't Flash, but .swf files
And what else did you think swf stood for? None other than Shockwave Flash.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
- Read Macromedia's own Top 10 Usability Tips for Flash Web Sites to quickly learn how to make your Flash site at least ten times better than the average Flash website.
- Read WebWord's Flash Usability Challenge , co-sponsored by myself, in which a ransom is offered to find a Flash site that is suitable enough for e-commerce to actually make money.
- Read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column Flash: 99% Bad for an expert opinion on how Flash makes websites unusable for the average user.
Finally, whatever you do, remember there's a reason why words and characters are so rarely "animated" in the real world. And please don't forget the "Skip Intro" button.--
the mirror is dead too now. Wheeeeeeeeeee
the demos on the mirror site are returning error messages as fast as they were on the original site. O'joy.
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
Some of us cant choose what systems we use at work.... :-)
Jeremy
PERL is practically evolving into an operating system in itself, supporting ::Telnet, ::Ping, and loads of other file-and-network functions available through CPAN. It only seems natural that .SWF is moving into PERL, considering the growing support its obtaining in other platforms. (I just which the sounds-syncing features in the Linux driver I use would sync correctly in the Mondo Mini-shows I catch each week. Instead, they play like chipmunks on speed.)
Perhaps a standard for the platform will come about, similar to PC2001 specs. The current generation of Palms would likely not make the cut, but the next likely would.
Seven Comments, and this site is already Slashdotted to the point of non-functionality. While this code is in beta, it brings about the point of server overhead.
Is this going to be like any of the various servlet engine that can bring a good, hard server to its knees? Is it going to eat all my RAM and CPU cycles like a pothead at TacoBell?
This *looks* like a damn neat thingy, but I'm scared to run it now.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
...this has got to be the most annoying thing i've seen...1 big flash animation for a site, ugh....
also php can generate and manipulate swf already...and as i put on my flame-retardant underwear, i'll say that php will probably make perl obsolete soon (at least as a web programming language)
Now thousands of PERL users can program Flash to generate completely useless splash pages.
Dammit. Sharkey
www.badassmofo.com
I sure hope you mean the person who posted the link to slashdot, not me or Simon.
Later.
Mark.
(Owner, and webmaster, 2shortplanks.com)
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
yes...but small bands of techies do not run the world. so for right now, deal with flash because 80% of the browsers in the world do.
----- go to www.questionexchange.com.
Can we see some of the Perl::Flash stuff in the next version of Slash? Like, it would be so cool maybe to have the banner swish in, or when you click stuff sounds happen........
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I find Flash stuff to be annoying, and it doesn't run very well on lynx. (teeheehee) Seriously - although it is cutesy, and has some application or use in the world - it's annoying even with the [skip intro] buttons. More annoyingly so, is that there are so many sites that skip content and go for "flash" (literally). Generally if I can't get the info I want via lynx, then the site isn't worth visiting...
Oh well, someone will get off on this new introduction to the world...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
SVG is the shit. If you look at the spec, there's MANY differet ways of minimizing code, and yes, there is sound support(I haven't goofed off with it though).
I just wish there was more documentation on SMIL animation. I don't think that part of the spec is complete, but right now the canidate recommendation for SVG as it stands is very usable(november spec).
I'm just waiting for someone to take the SVG spec to the limit by making a first person shooter using the filter effects and such to its max. Of course, that might overwhelm the Adobe SVG viewer.
Michael Dorn (Worf in Star Trek) and Diedrich Bader(Oswald on the Drew Cary show) do some of the voices.
Works great using the OS/2 flash plugin too.
no text
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Although this does appear a very promising step forward, I think it might well lead to further poor coding as there will be some areas not easily branched between the two. I think we should appear the advancement with a touch more caution.
http://www.php.net/manual/ref.swf.php.
also check out swift-generator - also perl based. Quite possibly the coolest .swf based tool of all.
- daniel
- daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
Whoops!
Looks like this one uses LibSWF after all - sorry! My mistake!
creation science book
Yep, it's CPU intensive. That's why our server now has a load of 30.
However these are just demos. As I've said in other posts, they never were meant for widescale public debate. They were put up so that all the people we'd talked it over with could have a look at what could be done. Lots o' optomisation needs to be done.
Producing Flash files is really quite expensive. There's a lot of bit twiddling to be done. Most computer systems are quite happy shifting bytes around, but SWF files are packed right down to the bit level meaning that you might have tags (flash object definitions) that start on bit 4 or byte 6 and end 47 bits later. Now when you need to make changes you need to shift a whole load of bits across. On most systems that's quite expensive when you have to apply it to the whole file!
There are ways round this. Simon (the code's author) and I were talking about various ways to parse only part of the file and make good guesses about what is contained in the rest (so that you for example just search through and grab the alter the stuff you want) rather than deconstructing and then reconstructing the whole thing.
I guess the key is going to come down to the fact that in 99% of the time you don't actually have to create the thing every single time. More often than not, you can simply recreate it every 15 minutes or so, and just serve that version. I've done similar things with Java tickers in the past that grab data from the web via a perl script and update the files to be served often.
Anyway, if we compare and contrast to making images on the fly, I think you'll find that that's very slow too when scaled up to a couple of hunrded (let alone hundreds of thousand) users.
Later.
Mark.
(Owner/webmaster 2shortplanks.com)
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
It's called three.drinks.minimum(); -Mr. Fusion
Flash isn't a format. It is an application. The format is *.swf, which Macromedia opened quite some time ago.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I look forward to /. allowing Flash codes in the "Allowed HTML" of postings. That will be a sight to make eyes sore.
No, I can't imagine it. Can you draw me a Flash diagram of it?
looks like tha slashdot effect has overwhelmed this site. I tried to see tha demos but all I got was a 500.
Flash is a binary coded, obfuscated, proprietary format owned and controlled by Macromedia. It's difficult to program for, supported only on select platforms, only with non-free plugins and utilities etc.
Use SVG, an open standard which aims for wide support, based on XML with a very strong underlying rendering model. It rocks.
\end{rant}quick, delete the post.
Taco's gonna see this, well actually just the word PERL and we are all done.
No more "Standards are important for the web" Articles, just rotating logos all over slashdot. And an fscking intro, NOOOOOOO
Oh the humanity.
Well, it's probably to late allready.
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx