Slashdot Mirror
Macromedia to Port Flash MX to Linux?
LnxAddct writes "An article on CNet reports that Macromedia will start taking Linux more seriously. It will start this new initiative by making it's suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux! Their Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, stated, 'What we've been investigating is, When will it be time to bring our tools to Linux? I think it might be happening now.' Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux."
This is half the reason I dont use linux on the desktop. Now, get me a stable version of Photoshop CS, and I'm in.
Thank god, because the only thing the world needs more is more adoption of Flash.
I'm still waiting for Microsoft to port Office to Linux! Then I'll switch over.
All them emails I sent them finally paid off!!
Hopefully, this means that they'll take non-x86 platforms semi-seriously. ;b I'd like a PPC Flash plug-in, that's for certain.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
They might as well just come out and say they will not support Linux. My experiences with WINE have been, shall I say, bitter. I've managed to get a few games running with it, but never without significant hassle or loss of resources (sound, fullscreen, etc.).
The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux cannot go through WINE.
IIRC previous version of Flash (5?) was running almost properly under WINE.
Dunno if much changed in MX, but i guess it's not a lot of work for Macromedia.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives. The Macromedia MX line of tools is -definately- one of those.
;D).
AFAIK, there is no alternative to Flash MX on Linux -- yes, Openoffice.org Impress will save to Flash, but to some designers, that's simply not powerful enough.
And Dreamweaver MX is the -only- wysiwyg editor that I will allow to touch my code. It works cleanly and with compatibility, something no other wysiwyg editor, even oss ones, can claim. (disclaimer: I code in gedit
On a side note -- didn't I read something a few months back about Adobe doing something similar with Photoshop?
Jay | http://oldos.org
This sounds great. I wonder if the existence of MacOS X being unix based has any role in this kind of decision,
However my real question is how does one make something run on WINE easier vs just normal windows development? Making sure you use only standard APIs and such?
While I applaud any efforts to get more software running natively on Linux, I have to ask: why Flash? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad flash movies, and anoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Dreamweaver be a better choice?
down with linux... uh I mean windows...um no.. uh...hmm!...down with cp/m cause everyone knows flash mx for cp/m sucked
Are they doing this as a response to SVG? Especially since Microsoft is "embracing and extending" SVG into WVG? It'd definitely be easier, without a Flash MX that runs on Linux, for Linux users to develop SVG than Flash. Many of the people that create interactive content that's as advanced as Flash are geeky enough to love or at least know how to get around in Linux.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Something that endless consume your processor speed (like a little movie) while you're reading a text or with a lot of tabs/windows open, it's definitly not the way I want to expend my processor time.
Kill Flash function on mozilla kill some of them, but misteriously don't work with most ads.
Not that I am in any way disparaging The GIMP, which is awesome, but the PHBs and CXOs only know Illustrator and PhotoShop...
libertarianswag.com
Considering how Flash makes the web experience all the more worse, this is not a good thing. What next, a happy news item that the major spam generating software has been ported to Linux too?
OpenOffice.org (that's kinda two words...)
If you read the article, what you will see is that the guy is talking about some plans to make Flash MX work on Linux through wine first. The second phase has no concrete plan, where a native Linux Flash MX. I highly doubt that's going to happen, mostly because people talk all the time, say things, but we haven't heard much action so far. It is always talk. An action news would be much more exciting.
Can we keep the tools, but not get the plugin? Please? PLEASE?
Isn't it sad when you prefer the platform where a quarter of the "web" content DOESN'T work, and that's perfectly OK? No full motion ads, no ads that start talking to you when you mouse-over them...
Please help metamoderate.
Flash might be some clever technology, but whats their market really? Many over done web sites, that you present you with: you're not worthy, come back after downloading several megs of our OS in a browser toys. Oh and ads. I had to go write a script to turn macromedia's flash on/off just to avoid the all singing, all dancing distractor ads. I turn it on oh so very rarely. Having quicktime or realplayer - handy. Having their products - couldn't care less.
about time they figured out that people actually use Linux. they have Unix ports of their stuff like Coldfusion so why not make everything cross-platform. this is something Adobe should start doing.
http://www.geocities.com/baddsectorr
Wow i thought i would NEVER hear those words! I hope this starts some kind of trend for more companies to start porting their software over to Linux. Go Macromedia!!
Oh Macromedia, please please please/b> bring DREAMWEAVER. I"m having a hell of a time with posting comments to Slashdot. It would make my life easier if I wouldn't have to do my own HMTL.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I can finally give up my win comp 0.0! Except for games of course =/
One thing I like about Macromedia apps is that they fully support WebDAV. And I dont know of any good Linux based Web Development app that supports WebDAV natively. So this move by Macromedia will be very welcomed. WebDAV is IETF stardard for WebBased Document Authoring and Versioning, and is very useful in WebDevelopment. Support for WebDAV in Windows based WebDevelopement apps is what forces me to use windows. If Macromedia ports its apps, I will be able to switch to Linux completely.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
will we start seeing Flash with better content soon, seeing Linux users are on average better skilled technically.
"The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux cannot go through WINE." Good words.
This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.
Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
The more I delve into my job search here in Japan, I've come to realize how much Linux is growing on the minds of companies. Almost every company I've interviewed with has asked the "what experience do you have with Linux" question. I'm glad I installed Debian Woody last year and have been running that on a separate spare box here at home.
Until now, most multimedia production platforms have either been Windows or Mac based. But as the tools of Linux become better, especially with the recent improvements in KDE, Linux is seen and being used more and more as a desktop production platform. Because of this, software vendors are feeling their ears perk up in the direction of Linux.
While it may never take the lead in the Desktop wars, Linux will find a nice niche somewhere between Windows and Mac. Software vendors who do not take Linux seriously may find themselves and their competitive positions usurped by some other up and comer, if not someone else who wants to write a free version of the software.
I have been pwned because my
Seriously, this could be the thing I'm looking for to get people on Linux. I know plenty of people who only use their comp for HL/Steam games and maybe a bit of Flash animation...and this could be it. Flash MX for linux, and WINE for HL/Steam. On a side note, it will be interesting to see what rate the Linux version of Flash MX will be pirated/cracked. Will the crackers out there recognize that this is the PERFECT opportunity to show that the linux community is generally law-abiding?
I'm not sure if it was so much Adobe as it was Disney and 2 other unnamed companys paying codeweavers lots of money to get Photoshop 7 (was current at the time) running in Crossover Office/Wine.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I'm commenting entirely too much on this thread in separate posts. Hrm.
In any case...
Macromedia will also soon introduce Flex, a set of server software and other tools that will allow developers familiar with text-based environments--particularly Java--to create Flash applications.
Flex. If they port that to Linux, that'd almost be a conflict with flex, the free version of lex. Maybe they'll rethink the naming?
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
I'm not sure I agree with the porting strategem. Getting MX to work on Wine is all fine and dandy, but basing the full port to Linux on the acceptance of the Wine port seems silly. Yes, I know it saves money doing it this way, but that's kind of like changing the tires on your 15-year-old car and expecting people to buy it for full price; not very likely. I have used Linux frequently, both as a software developer and an end-user, and I have rarely had any call to use Wine (though it is a great tool). As a developer, though, I would be really leery of using this kind of potentially unstable platform for my bread-and-butter work. The bottom line is that MX works on Windows, so I run it on Windows. If it gets ported fully to Linux with the same support and the Windows version, then great, I'd consider using it on Windows (especially if the same box came with both versions!) I'm not about to fiddle around getting it running on Linux, and I doubt many other developers will either. (Why are you so afraid of Linux, Macromedia??)
This could be an excellent move for Macromedia, since the Linux-platform is currently (still) being ignored by its archrival Adobe.
I'm an optimist, so I am sure that Adobe will eventually be convinced by the increased marketshare of Linux to port their applications over as well. But the sooner Macromedia gets a foothold in Linux in the meantime, the more of an advantage it will have when the time comes for Adobe to follow suit.
Since we're talking about Macromedia and Flash anyway: does anyone here know why the open-source Flash plugin hasn't been developed further by anyone? Macromedia's binary-only plugin lacks performance (and often stability) as well as platform-support, is currently still at version 6. Besides, the Flash 7 specs are publicly available anyway, so we wouldn't even have to reverse engineer the format to reimplement the plugin, right?
Perhaps such an open-source plugin could eventually even be integrated in the Mozilla directly? Or would that somehow be an undesirable idea?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
It's worse than spam. Harder to filter, too.
>>Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux No, 2004 is the Year of the Monkey!
slashdot crowd also expects them to:
1. Release the source under GPL
2. Give the product away for free
3. Hate Microsoft
Neither of which they do. So I predict this will be a complete failure.
They fix the Flash player first? I mean, jesus. Yeti Baseball shouldn't be using my entire CPU.
It is => it's.
Otherwise, use its. Even for possession.
Remember that "its" is an exception to the usual rule of the apostrophe indicating possession, as in Steve's, Bill's, Darl's, etc.
Let's practice on the article header:
Sorry for OT-ism.free speach
Did you mean: free speech
as cited in a previous slashdot article
( http://slashdot.org/articles/04/02/13/2134234.sht
Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux' PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.'s (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) Macintosh (news - web sites) software.
Smart move to support the number two desktop OS.
It looks the dam is about to burst in terms of software vendors supporting Linux. Too bad it's WINE, native Linux support would be better. Regardless, this is a big win for Linux.
I'm worred that they might just be using this as a bargaining chip with Microsoft as Dell has done with desktop support for Linux. The deal would be "don't build an alternative to Flash and we won't push this Linux fad too much".
BTW, I submitted this story too... Posted it in my Journal as well.
I've noticed that at least people in the UK, and perhaps a large portion of Europe (I don't really know) treat companies, bands, etc etc as plural. So while your grammar naziing is valid for American English, it doesn't necessarily hold elsewhere.
(The idea behind it is not that Macromedia is a group of companies. It's that Macromedia is a group of people.)
It seems weird to me every time I see it (since I'm American), and it strikes me as odd to accept the abstration of a bunch of people into a company without accepting that the company can be treated as a single entity, but it's still idiomatically correct.
IMHO, there can never be too little Flash.
/usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.temp
BTW for those who want to turn it off by default, all you need to do is rename the plugin, eg
mv
And if you REALLY need it, like those horrific sites that don't actually use HTML (car manufacturer sites are the worst offenders I come across) you can rename it back
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Get the rest of the MX toolkit running and it just might be enough to start using Linux as a desktop again. Imagine if some custom Apache-Dreamweaver integration were included. That would be buy-it-today cool.
Yeah, yeah. I developed about four dozen sites with nothing but a text editor and Mozilla too. Dreamweaver has some good points, like being able to tab a whole paragraph without reconfiguring the upper half of the directory tree.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Dreamweaver is by far the best WYSIWYG HTML editor, and for those who claim notepad (emacs), I can only assume you have never used dreamweaver.
Does Dreamweaver justify the time one would have to flip burgers (upwards of 100 hours after taxes) in order to afford a single user license (400 USD) in this recession? One advantage of big-F Free software is that it's also available for little-f free.
They should have done this much earlier. Macromdia is doing this now because they are scared of Microsoft 'Sparkle' due soon.
"Don't blame the tool for these things. Blame the people who design sites poorly, and who use Flash for advertising."
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Lets give guns to children.
Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch said the company would begin soon by offering optimizations to allow Flash MX, its main set of tools for creating Flash content, to work smoothly with Wine, an emulation program that allows Windows programs to run on a Linux PC.
Would you say that Macromedia might Lynch the idea once they figured out that Wine Is Not an Emulator?
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Why not port a native Dreamweaver? There is NO decent WYSIWYG HTML editor on Linux. Flash is an accessory to Dreamweaver. People who want Flash can't work without a decent HTML editor. They definately won't edit their HTML in vi, so they won't buy Flash for Linux.
/, then you get to dig for the home directory.
WINE is a pain when it comes to drive letters.
First, it has a totally different view of the filesystem than every native app. It has a fake drive letter (Z: for instance) that leads to
Or, if you set up the home directory as H: or whatever, the user ends up looking for their H: drive from a native app.
WINE is unstable, even using the Crossover Office I bought to try to get my wife, the last holdout in my house, off of Windows.
PLEASE, Macromedia, don't use WINE to hack this together and please port the main application FIRST!!
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Why go through WINE first?!? WTF?!? Why not do a direct port to Linux like they did with MacOS?
And yes, before any of you mod this down, I do know about the cross-distro issues of running binary-only packages under Linux. But you know it and I know it, Java Runtime from Sun works on a lot of the mainstream Linux distros.
The F4L project (at sourceforge) is already working on an open source alternative to Macromedia's monopoly. The GUI is already in place in version .01, and there are already libraries in the wild for editing .SWF files (based on information released by Macromedia), so it is only a matter of developer time before it is finished.
I run the F4L Documentation Project. You can chat about F4L at irc.freenode.net and #F4L
Center for Student Developed Education Policy
How many times do I have to sing the song? "Oh, if it's supposed to be possessive, it's just I-T-S, if it's supposed to be a contraction it's I-T-apostrophy-S! Scallywags!"
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Business is cozying up to Linux so they can get
better deals from Microsoft.
from Analysts: Microsoft feels tug of Linux
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-976755.html
"Linux continues to be increasingly important--if nothing else, as a viable alternative when speaking to Microsoft," Kusnetzky said.
By installing Linux, he said, large companies "want to have more leverage negotiating with Microsoft. The more diverse environment they present, the more likely they are able to say, 'Give me a discount or I'm going over there' and be believed."
"Yeah, yeah. I developed about four dozen sites with nothing but a text editor and Mozilla too. "
That's why frameworks came into existance.
Proper division of work, and easy to manage.
Dreamweaver is good for small to medium sites, but gigasites are out of it's league.
Towards the constant inundation of desktop Linux users with pop-ups, horrendous advertising, and unwanted web content in general.
I agree that this is definitely a most welcomed step forward towards mainstream Linux acceptance, but at the same time could also be a kneejerk reaction to advertisers complaints that spam "isn't working" on Linux.
Now that Linux-based OSs are gaining popularity on the desktop, I suppose Macromedia finally decided it was time to start the advertisements a-rollin!
try this instead!! :D
it worked for me
The link should install Flash Click-to-Play if you're using Mozilla or Firefox.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
It can also generate SVG animation.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
I can finally get rid of my residual mac and windows machines and just use Linux.
This is the best news since the release of birth control pills!!
As good as this port might be for the user friendly desktop-oriented distributions, the reality is that Flash is a deeply dated, inferior technology when compared to the open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).
The old proprietary Flash standard is centered around a rendering scheme built through reverse Bezier curve transforms. This is fine for small, non-interactive banners with small frame counts, but in more complex applications it scales horribly and is incredibly inefficient on commodity hardware (ever notice how a huge, complex Flash applet will *completely* monopolize your machine until you manually kill it). Even worse, although it may be difficult to believe, internally the Flash format uses 16 bit INTEGER values exclusively! (Is Macromedia stuck in 1983?). It might have made sense in 1996 when Flash was first being developed, but today using a bit depth that's less than an architecture's default word length is devastating to cache coherency, not to mention that all the processors floating point functional units are left idle.
By contrast, SVG uses 128 bit variable-length pages, with a modern cubic spline rendering core (see last years SIGGRAPH proceedings for a great paper describing the rendering model). Best of all, it's free software with all the efficiency and security that it brings. If people would just get behind SVG instead of beating the dead horse that is Flash, we wouldn't have to deal with Macromedia's half-hearted "outreach" efforts.
Just say no to Flash!
As much of a "win" as this is for Linux, I really wonder what's in it for Macromedia. It's not as if flashy website developers won't have any windows and mac boxes around (if only to test what your sites look like on the platforms that determine the majority of your users' experiences); the people who are really into using these tools aren't likely to be the same people who are into compiling kernels and tweaking their mod_perl.. As some one else here noted; there's no photoshop for linux.
Of course, getting the MX tools working with Wine is a great step, and gives them instant cross-platormability, but I have a hunch things will stay at that level for a while..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
An update for Mozilla/Firefox (or whatever it is called this week) -- that will let you easily turn OFF flash support on a site by site basis? With Pop Up Blocking....Flash/Shockwave Blocking would be a logical next step.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Ok i'll give up some mod points, but i have to say i completely disagree on this.
The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux MUST GO THROUGH WINE. And for a simple reason. If we are anywhere serious about bringing the stereotypical Aunt Maggie (which represents is 90% of the desktop users) we can only propose ONE change at a time.
Changing together operating system AND the most used apps it's too much for most users. You are seriously waiting for that to magically happen ?
Well my friend, i think that DRM will probably have locked everybody up, and linux will be long gone, before that happens.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
use SVG. Duh.
/>
What rock have you been designing under?
Try w3.org and take a look at what's happening.
It's about to become a "one less lame plugin" world.
Where is the almighty Zul when you need her?
<smoke_and_brimstone
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Great, Macromedia. Glad you are taking the cheap way out with WINE.
By the way. Where is Flash Player 7? Your last Linux release, 6.0 r79, is 12 months old now, and several sites now *require* Flash 7.
If they don't take Linux more seriously, they'll eventually see some SVG browser plugins pop up with similar (better) features, and better native Linux support.
I do. It spanks ImageReady for web editing. Its pop-up menu editor alone is worth the price of the app.
Have you, err, actually used it?
Thanks for that, I wasn't awared of it. But for those like me that don't like "just click to install" stuff, here is page with more information.
instead of increasing the number of platforms that their products work on, adobe has been reducing it... premiere no longer works on mac (once considered THE platform for premiere) because of heavy reliance on the windows media format in the latest premiere version (can use wmv as a 'native' format for editing)... i doubt that adobe will clue into linux, we'll have to rely on hoping that the gimp folks will figure out how to make an interface that is comprehensible and we can get rid of photoshop once and for all
Gekido's Lair
Because anyone who looks at webstats knows that linux is not overtaking anything on the desktop, and certainly not Apple's share.
Your 'smart move' comment is also wrong for another reason.
The other critical difference between Mac users (the only other platform supported by most mainstream commercial developers) and Linux users, is that people who throw down all that extra cash to have a nice Mac instead of buying parts and putting together their own PC... ALSO PAY FOR SOFTWARE! Imagine that. Who the hell is going to move major apps to linux to sell to people who have never bought anything beyond Windows games? How many Linux users are gonna drop $1200 for Adobe's Creative Suite CS or Studio MX 2004?
Also recall that Macromedia has started DRMing MX 2004 apps.
The idea of buying Dreamweaver is that it pays for itself by making you more productive
A Macromedia software package that improves productivity will not pay for itself if one's time is worth nothing. My web design time is worth nothing because a search on CareerBuilder.com (which reproduces my local newspaper's help wanted ads online) has not turned up any web design job leads in northeast Indiana, and family issues prevent me from relocating in 2004. How would one go about finding a job in order to earn enough money to bootstrap the process of having an expensive Macromedia product pay for itself?
Much to the dismay of many of my designer friends, the last few development cycles for Flash have been focused on Flash as an application platform. Just take a look at their recent initiatives, Flex, Central - they're targeting the developer community.
Sad to say, lately their efforts haven't been going so well. Most of the people who are Flash programmers right now don't need new interfaces for creating Flash content because they're already acclimated to the old interface, and many programmers who aren't already in the Flash community aren't getting turned on by these changes to the tools because they already have strong opinions that they aren't open to changing. ("Flash is good for Strongbad, but why should I care?")
So, how do they attract more developers? By going where the developers want to go, to Linux. It might seem obvious here on Slashdot, but this is real leadership in the market in which they operate - let's hope it starts a cascade that turns into a flood.
"By contrast, SVG uses 128 bit variable-length pages, with a modern cubic spline rendering core (see last years SIGGRAPH proceedings for a great paper describing the rendering model). Best of all, it's free software with all the efficiency and security that it brings. If people would just get behind SVG instead of beating the dead horse that is Flash, we wouldn't have to deal with Macromedia's half-hearted "outreach" efforts."
Sigh! I have to go through this every single time.
"Brent Getlin, Macromedia"
"Peter Santangeli, Macromedia"
And of course everyone's whipping boy.
"John Bowler, Microsoft Corporation"
"Tuan Nguyen, Microsoft Corporation"
Yes, it justifies it if you can then use that investment to move from burger flipping to a nice white collar office.
So what's the plan B if I do in fact take six months to save up to buy a copy of an expensive Macromedia software package, learn it, and then end up unable to find a job in northeast Indiana where I could use that knowledge?
Flash! ah-ahh!
Savior of the Universe!
Flash! ah-ahh!
He'll save everyone of us!
Flash! ah-ahh!
He's a miracle!
Flash! ah-ahh!
King of the impossible!
He's for everyone of us!
Stands for everyone of us!
He saves with a mighty hand!
Every man every woman!
Every child-he's a mighty!
Flash.
He's just a man
With a man's courage
Nothing but a man
But he can never fail
No-one but the pure at heart
May find the Golden Grail
Dreamweaver MX is already listed as a bronze application in Codeweavers Compatibility center's list of win32 apps. That means it is able to perform some of its functions under either the latest wine or crossover office 2.1 Take a look, vote for it and/or pledge money to help make it work.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
Goddamnit! You're missing the point!
Every major software vendor, whether you like an app or not, that recognizes Linux as a viable platform for its software and commits to making its programs run well under Linux, whether through WINE or natively, is a benefit for all of us.
As more "essential" Windows 3rd-party applications are converted, we gain more momentum, hopefully reaching the spillover point, namely (almost-)out-of-th-box support from Photoshop. If we get that, people will convert in droves (relatively speaking).
So even if you don't like WINE or Flash, if a company gives support for Linux, give support back; it's more in line with the spirit of FOSS -- even if they don't subscribe to it.
Wow, Flash MX on Linux, natively? I might actually have to buy software!
Now if we could only get a port of FrontPage... :)
God I hope Fireworks MX is ported to Linux, may not be as good as Adobe Photoshop, but IMO its the next best thing, or maybe GIMP will really start to get better over the next couple months, thats just a dream though...
A dongle? Can that be secured under linux? These copylockers won't be releasing it without some sort of restrictions.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Does this put Macromedia in the crosshairs for another of SCO's crazed lawsuits?
How about a flash 7 plugin guys?
The reason they want their tools to work under Wine is simple. People will use them instead of code a replacement. Ming exists but isn't anywhere as easy to use as Flash. They're probably worried someone will make a Flash clone that will output swf and svg files and be OpenSource. That would kill their market for Flash.
The Flash plugin is a pretty good example. Its a version behind. It enough that most people aren't going to bother coding their own viewer but not exactly Macromedia's top priority.
It definitly won't choke any computer, but using 7% of my computer time, just because there's an ad playing (and I won't even look at it because it's in background), is not what I want when compiling some heavy program that will take hours.
Do you want some proves, here they are:
(measures made while idle, just watching top, specially mozilla-bin)
Mozilla with the Sun flash banner opened:
- active (i'm seeing the banner) 17-19% of processor use
- background (i'm not even seeing mozilla): 3-5% processor use (ok, that specifically isn't a heavy banner)
Mozilla with no flash:
- active (mozilla opened): 0.0%
- background: 0.0%
It may not be a lot for some, but for people which computer is always doing other stuff in background (aswell as their browser is always opened where you last stopped) or just waiting a java applet on the other window, it is.
These are facts, I'm not trolling.
I agree now that I shouldn't have used "sucks" (might be a strong word for some) but that's what I feel about it most of the time, and don't think my comment should be hidden for most of people ( tagged flamebait) just because of that.
Why not use Anjuta? Works fine for html and real coding.
I've noticed that at least people in the UK, and perhaps a large portion of Europe (I don't really know) treat companies, bands, etc etc as plural.
This means they have bad grammar. You can try to make a case for ``if enough people speak one way, then that way becomes the right way,'' but that doesn't make their grammar correct.
This may be the thing Linux needs in order to make inroads on the desktop.
Dreamweaver MX is, IMHO, one of the best web design apps out there. It running on Linux with all of the other Studio MX apps, would be a powerful solution.
Brielle
Can it get any more lukewarm? sounds pretty vaporous to me. Screw you macromedia, you're completely in Microsoft's pocket, and I see no real motivation to ever come out.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
Since this is just the start, it looks like Linux is going to suffer from the same problem OS2 suffered from... Good enough emulation...
Why bother creating Linux applications when your Windows software will run with little or no modification. It makes more sense for the application developers to turn Linux into a Windows emulation platform. Sure it'll be a pain in the arse and run like shit but the application developers get to put a tick in the "runs on Linux" box while making little or no investment in Linux and doing little or no Linux development.
One of the reasons I don't support WINE. Linux is better off with native applications. But linux adoption will suffer without I hear you cry. Bollocks, Linux is one of the purest markets, if there's a demand, the software appears in commercial or free versions.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I vaguely recall that, much like Real, Macromedia often 'hides' some of the Linux downloads where they are difficult to impossible to find.
I can see the link to the over-a-year-old Flash plugin for Mozilla 1.1 for Linux, but I don't see the fabled "standalone viewer" (which I know exists - I downloaded it to another machine last year), and I wonder if there isn't perhaps a 'beta' download directory or something hidden on Macromedia's site somewhere...
Anybody know of any such links?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Yeah, I mean, christ, AcroRead6 even displays a freaking little ad button on the toolbar now. One time installing that POS taught me to only use version 5.1, conveniently available from the text-only download page.
... if they could get FlashMX 2004 running properly on windows and OSX, before deciding to port it to another OS. this latest release has to be one of the most bug-ridden "commercial" releases i've seen in a long, long time. not to mention it's a processor and memory hog and is unreasonably sluggish, especially on OS X.
The whole "port the world" argument is quite good. It's one of the things which seems even more positive in the light of Microsoft stuff like XAML (their ripoff of XUL)... it seems like Microsoft will be inadvertently making their applications more easily emulated, and I hope that's the case.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I would give up my cracked FlashMX/Win2K and actually pay them if they did this!
Well, probably.
I think not ...
Remember that "its" is an exception to the usual rule of the apostrophe indicating possession
I don't wish to nitpick, but your description of the exact part of speech that the word "its" belongs to is not quite right. "Its" is the possessive case pronoun and possessive case adjective for the third person singular neuter gender.
Possessive case pronouns (they replace a noun):
First person singular: mine
Second person: yours
Third person feminime: hers
Third person masculine: his
Third person neuter: its
First person plural: ours
Third person plural: theirs
Possessive case adjectives (they come before a noun):
First person singular: my
Second person: your
Third person feminime: her
Third person masculine: his
Third person neuter: its
First person plural: our
Third person plural: their
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Since a company is not a person, it couldn't possibly "take Apple seriously". Only the people within the company can do that. So, it does make sense to say that Macromedia (meaning the people who work at Macromedia) take Apple seriously.
Try this: The New York Yankees takes the Boston Red Sox seriously. It sounds wrong, doesn't it? But there's really no difference. Macromedia and the Yankees are both corporate entities made up of people. Why should we use different grammar for each of them?
And another thing. The poster of the original article needs to learn the difference between "its" and "it's". If you don't mean "it is", then don't use "it's". It should be "its suite of tools", not "it's suite of tools".
And yes, its is posessive in this case, but posessive pronouns are an exception. You don't write hi's and her's, do you?
Wow, it takes quite a bit of cheek to say that the way a language is used in it's native country is incorrect grammar. If any country can claim to set the grammatical standard for English, it would be the UK seeing as how English developed there. I would say that where English spoken in the UK and the US differ grammatically, it would be English in the US which should be considered wrong. Of course this is assuming that you believe that different dialects of a language must have the same grammatical rules in all situations.
Let me guess you also think that where French spoken in Quebec and Paris differ, it's the people speaking Parisian French who are using incorrect grammar.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
I just don't get Flash. The only good thing about it is all the flash ads that I don't have to see<snip>
We're just starting to experiment with flash-based training for our software, and so far, we're incredibly pleased.
Of course, we aren't using anything from Macromedia, we're instead using Qarbon which allows you to turn a screen-shot into a flash animation with reasonable bandwidth requirements and amazing pizazz...
We posted a "Viewlet" to our website, and got a sale that paid for it within just a few days! We bought the software, and had our first sample video in 20 minutes, including install time.
Incredible.
And, the reviews we're getting from trainees is just wonderfully positive.
I encourage you to try the link above; you'll be amazed.
Oh, and I'm not affiliated in any way with Qarbon...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Flash is smooth, it allows you to do a lot of fancy stuff, like annoying ads and badly designed web sites, but say sweet good bye to your CPU. What I mean by that is anytime I visit a page with flash I see a 10-20% increase in CPU usage per embeded flash. In some cases I have had my CPU usage at 80% until I closed all web page with flash in it. For this reason I ask Macromedia to please be considerate with my CPU. Maybe we need an option to be able to do a 'nice' on plug-ins?
If it makes a difference, my browser is Mozilla. If you want an example of CPU usage and Flash visit http://movies.yahoo.com/oscars/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Alright, first of all, i'm using Windows primarily, as most people viewing Flash content at the moment are. You seem to be using Linux, which is fine, but you are not typical, and Flash support under Linux is also rather less polished from what i've gathered.
It definitly won't choke any computer, but using 7% of my computer time, just because there's an ad playing (and I won't even look at it because it's in background), is not what I want when compiling some heavy program that will take hours.
If you're doing heavy compiling, I don't see why you'd want to be running anything else. I don't think Flash is unique in that respect. Further, the typical user and viewer of Flash content will not be doing CPU-intensive compiles while web browsing.
It may not be a lot for some, but for people which computer is always doing other stuff in background (aswell as their browser is always opened where you last stopped) or just waiting a java applet on the other window, it is.
I thought I implied this well enough...I generally have a large amount of background activity and/or open applications going, yet Flash does nothing to appreciably slow anything down. I don't think i'm uncommon in that I usually have several web windows open, an instant messanger, music playing, and whatnot.
I agree now that I shouldn't have used "sucks" (might be a strong word for some) but that's what I feel about it most of the time, and don't think my comment should be hidden for most of people ( tagged flamebait) just because of that.
Saying something "sucks" solely based on generalizations drawn from your non-typical experiences would seem like flamebait/trolling of some sort to me. Not horrible, to be sure, but still.
I fear that SVG will never be able to catch up with Flash and be a viable competitor. Here are a couple reasons why I think this:
1. Development tools for SVG are hard to come by.
2. Plugins, plugins, plugins -- I can't find a working plugin for mozilla. Sure Adobe has one that is kinda there, but I currently tested it in Mozilla 1.6 in Debian unstable and it consistently crashed on me.
Feel free to add more points to the list. I understand the merit of an open-standard for vector graphics, but until there's a true demand for it with an easy migration path, most users and developers will use Flash. However, if someone out there has a personal desire or commercial reason to push SVG to the forefront, s/he will have to address these shortcomings AND build robust software to convert existing Flash to SVG.
Linux at home
1) Take a reasonably useful product.
2) Add bloat and adverts.
3) Loss!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
In Soviet Russia, Flash ports YOU to Linux!
Running Windows applications on Wine during development is a very good idea because Wine implements most of the Windows API. Stuff that doesn't work on Wine is likely taking advantage of implementation specific behavior, rather than using only the proper interfaces. These aren't Windows bugs, but rather details of the implementation. It means that the program is buggy. Wine compatibility also means better compatibility with future versions of Windows where the underlying implementation can change.
DEVELOPERS: RUNNING YOUR WINDOWS PROGRAMS UNDER WINE WILL GIVE YOU CLEANER AND MORE COMPATIBLE CODE!
I've been reading slashdot for at least the last 5 years (and I know there's lots on here who have been reading longer) -- EVERY SINGLE YEAR there seems to be a post that says "Maybe is the year of linux"
Macromedia products are the one reason I dont use linux fulltime. It will be great if they port it.
http://seanism.com/
Since a company is not a person
I think that the SCotUS disagrees with you.
If they port it to Linux/i386 - then they should say so or look very non-professional.
But if they port it just to Linux, means to all architectures in /usr/src/linux/arch the it's a big day to all of us, Linux/non-x86 users.
Less is more !
all i need is photoshop 7 now and i'll be happy although photoshop runs not too shabby under nomachine's nx software, it'd still be nice if it was natively ported
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
No it's not you fucking moron.
I'm tempted more and more to flat out refuse plug-in downloads rather than requesting confirmaton because I'm fed up with the darned Flash advertisements. Just say ``No!'' to dancing bologna.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Sure he meant "Maybe 2004 will be the year of Macromedia" instead of "Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux". I think the year of Linux is already being happening from a few years, and will likely be happening for some years to come... I use Linux and have no need for any macromedia products :D
(PS: T'was friendly, I'm glad Macromedia is coming from "the dark side"! Nice!)
I reinstalled my desktop, Windows XP Pro (I know...*gasp*...it's only til I get a chance to install Debian for the first time, which won't be from home...no broadband availible, working on that)
Installed Mozilla 1.6, still haven't installed Flash.
Man, I'm lovin' it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's largely due to the old custom of making sport team names plural in the USA. If I say the Philidelphia Fire takes the Boston Red Sox seriously I think you'd say that sounds more normal, even though it's exactly the same grammatically.
2004 declared to be the Year of Linux!
In other news, beleaguered Apple is about to die...
Oh yeah. And Duke Nukem Forever's going to ship. Real soon now. Promise.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Port Flash MX to linux? I still haven't gotten flash player to work yet!
I have a serious pet peeve with flash. Many sites are starting to use it to bypass popup blockers. I want per site blocking of flash.
Maybe Mozilla can do that?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
There is a huge difference between running binaries under Wine that were never intended to run under wine on one hand, and modifying the source in order to compile binaries that run smoothly under both MS-Windows and Wine.
Of course, if they are actrually going to the trouble of testing their programs under wine, they might as well take the extra step of compiling them under Linux with libwine.
The DE that wins this deal will probably get a big upswing, at least among web developers.
It's very nice to hear that yet another compay have changed their mind about Linux - the more, the better, perhaps.
But when it comes to flash video - that's one thing I can live without. I'm too tired to look things up right now, but I don't recall having heard anything good about Macromedia - my overall impression of them seems to be negative. For comparison - other companies that I am sceptical about include Microsoft and Oracle, both of whom I recall having actually heard (reliable) positive information about.
Something like three years it was absolutely clear with *everyone* in the professional IT field that Linux/OSS would take off and soar. It went just as generally predicted, only did I lose a bet that Macromedia would have ported at least one app from the dreamteam to Linux within 2 years.
And here is why they're to late for me to collect my dinner out:
During the dot-bomb Flash was everybodys darling. There was no way you could design a solid site with predictable Layout behaviour without using flash. CSS was so crappy everyone just plain ignored it after playing with it for 2 hours. If you wanted a webdoc that was more than just a string of characters you had to use flash.
Then came the bomb, the web grew up within 6 months flat, Flash was to crappy for solid client side apps and the remaining pros switched to functional sites, also ditching Dreamweavers template engine for the bazillion OSS CMSes popping up left right and center. In the mean time IE and Netscape 6.1/Mozilla finally fullfilled the promise CSS had been making for 5 years. That all together weighed in on MM. Flash lost big chunks of it's significance on a monthly basis.
Nowadays Sites are cool and don't need no flash whatsoever.
But here's a really interessting thing: I happend to work on a Rich Media Framework in Flash MX 2004 Pro. After 2.5 years ignoring it I was in pretty fast again. (Sidenote: Customer and Partners agreed to GPL it once the bills are payed!) I actually had to install Windows to do it. While the IDE still has the typical super-crappy anoying macromedia glitches and quirks in it, ActionScript 2 has become a full range PL. ECMA compliance, error handling, a stack of oreilly books for it and all. Rolling an XML controlled industry leading E-Learn-Player and Webpresentation framework was a piece of cake and took me and a guy I work with no more than 8 weeks. On top of that, Macromedia is getting a drift before anybody else in the app vendor field: Their newest product 'breeze', doesn't come in a box anymore. They sell it as a service!
I presume that they saw income going down after the bomb and hushed and listend to the experts. I think there is a strong developers team with them that is seriously fed up with the crappy underlyings in their products (just like many of the professional customers) and that they have gotten a chance to call the shots. Not only is MM doing some very smart moves as a corp. right now, but a Flash MX 2k5 Pro for Linux would bring me right back onto their list. MM has had a steady revenue stream through nice packaging. Now that that doesn't work anymore, they're doing the next step. If I were to bet a fistfull of stockshares on a closed source software vendor, they'd be my first choice.
Linux/OSS is rolling and there ain't no stopping it. And now that MM isn't everybody darling anymore they have to shape up and comply.
All good news indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
i'm flashing since flash 4th, now using 7th, and never felt any trouble in puttying somewhere i have shell and use vi to edit html. Oh you have to say _web_ designers make sites somewhere in the bunker with no network? ;)
dreamweaver is a bunch of crap, all that it does i can simply make in vi with a help of google. Exept maybe ruining 90% of my memory and killing my disk with endless swap shit.
the only thing valuable in dreamweaver is nice js help. And i'm mostly in windows, while you under linux start wine to start dreamweaver!
This world is going straight to hell, you know =)
From this site:
"In fact, there is a great body of historical evidence that American English is much closer to historical English in England, than the version that is spoken today in modern day Britain. It may come as a surprise to the sneerers to learn that words such as fall, for autumn, mad for angry, trash for rubbish and scores of other Amercanisms all come from Elizabethan England. Many linguists believe that the accent Shakespeare's plays would have been performed in would have sounded nothing like the classic renditions we've heard by Gielgud or Olivier. These linguists believe that the accent typically heard in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, would had a distinct twang that we would associate today with the west country. A little bit more like, shock of shocks, the American accent."
This will be almost enough to make me ditch Windows completely... now, if our clients would be kind enough to switch too, then we'd be sorted!
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
Q: Are there any tools that will let me fill in forms in pdf?
Yes, acroread. But it provides output only via printing. When run on a pdf with a form to fill in acroread reports the following : "To save form data you need to have Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Approval. This form can be completed and printed from Reader; however to save the data you need one of the viewers noted above."
However, it is fairly easy to partially circumvent the above and direct PS to a file instead of the printer. Then you'll have the completed form in PS format. PS can then be easily be converted to PDF using ps2pdf. This doesn't let you edit the form later, you would need to start over in acroread. (Unless the edits required are small, then editing the Postscript file before creating the PDF file is quite possible as Postscript is just another text file).
Speaking as a software developer whose package runs under Windows (because that's where the money is) but sees that platform collapsing into an entropic mess in the not too distant future, I'm interested in ways towards liberation.
If (judging by the comments on this story) adapting your product to WINE and then doing a native port isn't a viable strategy, what is?
There are a lot of vendors like us out there and a little bit of guidance could result in a flood of Linux products.
then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux
So, if people prefer the Wine version, they will port it to run natively.
But if people want the native version, and refuse to run it under Wine, the Wine version is all they will get.
Talk about upside down.
1. Release the source under GPL
2. Give the product away for free
3. Hate Microsoft
4. ???
5. Profit?
Use ed.
hold the shift key while acrobat loads. it will start up in 1 or 2 seconds then, because it doesnt load the plugin this way.
IAAL
This will get me modded flamebait, but...
(SNIP)
Move to Linux and you'll see ;). Simply because my computer is doing heavy, CPU intensive stuff in the background doesn't hurt my desktop experience in any way, at least if I was smart enough to use "nice -n 19 make" to start the compile.
The whole point of the multitasking environment is to use unused resources for something else; compilation uses neither my display, keyboard or mouse, and surfing doesn't use much CPU (at least if the page doesn't try to start 30+ java applets / flash animations at the same time) so there's no reason for not compiling large programs and surfing at the same time.
200+ browser tabs scattered over a few dozen Mozilla windows, Evolution e-mail, Pan newsreader, kernel compile, FreeNet, Frost, XMMS playing music, a few bittorrent downloads, some other P2P programs, a seach to find all the references to java in all the scripts in the filesystem, list said files and count them, a few text editors and assorted terminal and file manager windows, on a 1 GHz Duron with 512 megs of memory. No problem; Web works fine and fast.
I guess that's the difference between Windows and a multitasking OS...
On the bad side, it just can't run ZSNes at constant speed, even with no load :(
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
With more places like ILM moving to Linux for apps usually run on IRIX artists can have one machine that runs all their favorate apps... Maya, Flash... etc. All on Linux.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
QT or GTK?
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
Assuming we want more Flash on Linux (Linus forbid):
Shouldn't they start with making Flash accessible on ALL Linux platforms? I know people running some PPC or IA64 distributions. No Flash for them. I remember that kinds of problems with other stuff too when working with PPC Linux a while ago: "No problem, just run it under wine." - "But wine doesn't run on my machine ...".
With all the dependance on wine and all those Linux GUI designers (ahem) trying hard to make their stuff look as close as Windows as possible ... Is this a good direction to take?
Sorry for the rant, probably shouldn't post it ... but it bugs me for a long time now.
The existing plug-in causes Mozilla to crash consistently on certain web sites. The plug-in is crap, and doesn't even have the decency to give an error message before it unceremoniously shits itself. Maybe if they would bother to fix that kind of stuff, I'd take them more seriously.
Given that windows longhorn will contain features that is in direct competion to macromedias tools its the obvious move to make.
The more microsoft incorporates technology that challenges the other players, the more "defection" we will see.
Next, please move Cubase product line with VST to Linux. That is definitely software that would greatly benefit from it.
-el
Maybe it's time to trade up the Altair? ;-)
- traskjd
My blog [.net, rants, general IT]
Simply hit Ctrl-Meta-Shift-X-U-G, then Meta-Shift-Q-Shift-P-77, then type gvaomp-txt
... since everyone knows that's what emacs stands for anyway.
Don't worry, it becomes quite natural after a while.
I find it much more intuitive to remap it to Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Others have voiced the same opinion as me: If I can have Macromedia software on Linux then I have no further need for Windows!
According to an NGSSoftware Insight Security Research Advisory posted to NTBugtraq on Wednesday:
I used to use ColdFusion back when there was a good Linux server for it. I also used to code with HomeSite and/or ColdFusion Studio through WINE when I was coding for ColdFusion. When Macromedia bought Allaire, that all went to hell. Their next Linux server was for ColdFusion MX and it was a horrible product. Completely unreliable and completely rewritten to be a Java plugin to a plugin to Apache, rather than the native Apache module as it had been. Further, the CF community wouldn't hear from Macromedia for months at a time while they promised patches and updates galore.
Meanwhile, we returned our copy of ColdFusion MX Server, which wasn't that hard since the support staff was used to taking those calls. We stuck with the older CF server and are almost done porting to PHP. Further, eventually, I discovered Quanta and so no longer care about using HomeSite/CF Studio under WINE.
Obviously, our new setup doesn't take well to Flash, but that's for designers more than developers like us, so I don't feel a loss. We've found the free software world's equivalent and we've found it's better, cheaper, and far more reliable.
From the sound of it, they're going to do like Corel did and make WINE-compatible programs, but as I recall Corel actually had to package an entire WINE distribution with their software to make it work reliably - not exactly efficient. We'll see, but it's going to be awhile before I trust Macromedia to do anything good with Linux for a bit.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Well, there is an important difference between your U.S.-Britain and Quebec-Paris comparisons. In the case of Paris, it is still, culturally, much more important than Quebec.
It is not the case that the U.K. is more important than the U.S. Look around the world: McDonald's, Coke, and Nike. American companies. Many of the most popular movies are American, and a good portion of the music is American, or American-influenced. Since the U.S. is more important culturally, it makes sense to say that its language deviations should take precedence in many people's minds.
Let's face it; the reason many people learn English as a second language isn't primarily because there's an island just north of France.
The truth about Michael
can hardly wait for the Microsoft Sparkle version for Linux...
That's the first I hear about somebody actually trying to be wine compliant. Asking for wine compliant products in markets in which producing separate windows and linux versions is not an economically sound option would be an excellent path to linux acceptance. Electronic train schedules and such stuff would be a good niche to focus on. "Runs on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Wine."
Dirk van Deun
And Homestar Games.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
The best thing about the non-Adobe readers, is that there's no document protection. You can print pages which have printing disabled in the Windows/Mac version.
Now I too can finally join the wonderful world of software piracy!
There are however a _lot_ of patents for converting from colourspace to CMYK, a fair number of which are held by Adobe.
Pantone is primarily a spot colour standard (they provide a swatch book which shows what a given colour will look like on coated or uncoated stock), w/ a library of swatches for use on a display to approximate that. They also have a CMYK - equivalency list which shows which Pantone colours can be approximated by CMYK. And they've since branched out to offering a list of RGB swatches which allow one to pick an RGB colour which (in theory, on a colour callibrated monitor) will match a range of official Pantone libraries. These libraries are protected by trademark and copyright, and the methods used to get at the derivatives by patent.
That said, the big problem is that there's no way to do an ink representation in GIMP --- a generalized method of doing this would get one CMYK ``for free'', and allow one to do spot colour monotones, duotones, tritones &c. Possibly even Hexachrome (printing w/ six colours for an extend colour range). There's a British company (Cerilica) w/ a wonderfully cool system for this, Truism --- I _really_ wish Macromedia had listened when I suggested they license that tech.
I've a list of books in my bibliography on my web page which cover this sort of thing (ob. discl. I'm an Amazon Associate). Check out _Four Colors / One Image_ and _Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones_ for specifics.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The real critical difference between Mac users and Linux users is that Linux users system wasn't bailed out by Jobs accepting cash from Microsoft to keep his firm afloat and agree to meekly submit to Redmond by serving as the "alternate" platform for Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.
Macs only redeeming value is that it's UNIX underneath. Otherwise, macs are "for me to poop on".
There is no way to port MacroMedia Flash MX to Linux without stealing source code from SCO.
I think you'vew all managed to go off on a big tangent..again.
I work with games, and increaingly, we're seeing Macromedia flash being used in kids/ed. games.
I believe its a growing market,
so if joe bloggs is scared that by using Linux, his kids will miss out on education possibilities etc. he's mistaken.
If this works out the way it should, Linux could eventaually compete with M$ on the most difficult level - a serious alternative gaming environment...
Good news.
What will happen is that those apps running under WINE won't run quite as well as their windows counterparts, so Windows users don't see reason to switch. Linux users won't pay for mediocre software, so Macromedia declares the Linux market nonviable and we're back at square 1.
All this happened with OS/2 ten years ago, you know.
macromedias current linux support is quite bad, you only get flash player 6 on i386 (and this is even "unsupported" by macromedia), nothing for ppc (i asked macromedia many times to release a ppc version) and other architectures. interesting to see there is something going on at macromedia, but i consider this to be marketing as log as the real thing isnt out.
There are a lot of people on /. poo-pooing this initiative. Its simply absurd. I have my issues with Flash , and Dreamweaver too, just like everybody else.
But for heavens sake this is great news and I support it whole heartedly. Consider this, suppose this initiative was a success, and we have industry standard applications running, on the linux desktop , Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Homesite and so forth? There are a lot of New Media shops out there who are going to benefit immensely from avoiding the Microsoft OS tax. The repercussions of this are immense.
Just quit moaning and support Macromedia for taking Linux more seriously. Regardless of issues with the software or how its put to use. Macromedia are doing a good thing period!
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Ming is an open source extension to PHP which can do most that Flash can and works on Linux already. see http://ming.sourceforge.net/
Not on my machine, anyway. It's very slow and I get strange blocks of what looks like reversed video over portions of the windows.
When OpenOffice doesn't work (which is fairly rare), I run Office in Win2K on VMWare. It's fast and works perfectly. Of course, it does require a Windows license, which is too bad, and VMWare isn't cheap, but it works much better.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A dubious award, perhaps, but yours nonetheless.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
thank god cfmx runs under linux (gentoo isn't "supported", but it sure as hell works). my job would be bad bad bad if it didn't...
we're moving everything from IIS/SQL server to apache/something else currently. this includes production cfmx servers.
flash mx for linux would be nice, native studio mx would be wonderful
A little different but perhaps they'd like to discuss this with some of the 220 people who were dismissed from Corel a year or so ago.
But, where Gimp, IMHO, beats Photoshop is with making quick RGB graphics and logos for web pages. Within that narrow scope, most tasks take fewer steps and are faster. Bulk manipulations can be done with 'Fu. Gimp's great for on-screen work.
I still use Photoshop for most other graphics especially large, hi-res images (and all CMYK), but if I need a really quick icon or logo, then it's Gimp. That's for similar reasons to use OpenOffice.org for some things and Gnumeric or TextEdit alon for others. If Adobe announced Photoshop or Illustrator for Linux, I'd pre-order in a heartbeat.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
there is no other viable alternative with so many multimedia features. .swf file...
About a year ago, I started a research on an alternative program for FLASH MX, and guess what? I found none. Only other programs that mimic some features of Flash, and at the end, they generate the same
So, as I work with educational software, had to learn to use it, and it is not so bad after all. I guess it just need a good programmer and designer to use it properly. Otherwise, more crap comes out (hit Bill Gates, Sadam Hussein, Osama, etc).
Want to learn Manga P2P way? try www.mangaschool.com.
I was offered a "Linux" survey in January, and I took it, it was linux oriented but asked enough questions about web design/flash/etc. that I realized they were Macromedia, (they flat out asked near the end about wether using wine for dreamweaver would be good enough or would I only use an actual port of the product. I of course told them DW on linux only no wine with my dw please.)
:) too bad it wasn't for the o'rielly store...
It worked out for me, I got a gift cert for amazon from them...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Comment removed based on user account deletion
sorry, but FUD and ignorance run both ways--SVG will never be a replacement for Flash, because they do very different things, and Flash has capabilities that aren't anywhere near the SVG spec...and even your magnanimous $100 contribution can't change that...
The reason we learn english in Europe is because everyone learn english. It's not so we can order larger Bic Macs or something lame like that.
I'd be more interested to hear that they plan a version of Flash player that doesn't crash recent releases of Mozilla every single time. (OTOH the little puzzle piece is more interesting and more informative than anything I ever saw in a Flash, so I'm not really suffering now that I've removed the plugin.)
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but...
Knowing a few folks at Macromedia and their economic woes AND knowing that M$ has been drooling over their product line for quite some time, I wouldnt be a bit surprised if Macromedia were making these public statements in order to push M$ into an acquisition frenzy.
Nothing says 'BOO' to M$ more than Linux these days.
-_-
A few years ago we were bitching about all the clueless people that were using Java for trivial things and taking the experience to the toilet.
Now we are bitching about clueless people using Flash for everything including the kitchen sink.
The problem with everything techy is that is seldom left to techy-types and is ultimatly handed down to the complete clueless who will use whatever tool they can to whatever task they need to do.
problem is between Dreamweaver GUI and chair
First of all, porting flash mx means better flash player support.
... most flash developers are more techie minded than the average content/sparkle provider on the Internet. Meaning they're a better part of the population to introduce to Linux madness.
... are the "Killer Apps". Flash MX is pretty heavy in that category, at least for an interesting subset of computer users.
Second, momentarily forgetting all the bitching about flash not being a true web standard/tool, not W3C compliant, bandwidth hogging, introducing GUI chaos on the web,
For all the negatives you can sum up, there's one huge positive: when talking about Linux Desktop, a lot of people are convinced that even more important than installers, standards, ease of use etc
I think, therefore I am...I think.
...when are they going to create a Shockwave Player for Mozilla/Phoenix?
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
I hope they 'finally' make a Flash plugin for PPC Linux, it's a big whole in my iBook/Linux surfing...
CBV
free ipod and free gmail!
Dude, there are plenty of badly designed websites out there written in HTML. Do we denounce HTML as a bad standard too?
Sheesh!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
FlashMX is fine ... but it would be nice to have shockwave on Linux without having to emulate it or hack it up.
... you know you all want shockwave. Plus all the nifty games you can play like the cool ninja game where your a stick man and you get to fight other stick men ...
The one thing I miss is all my nice shockwave games I play on my windows machine.
Shockwave Pong Game
They can forward flash to linux but c'mon
Classic
oh well my 2 cents
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
So, 2004 isn't the year of Linux. 1996 was the year of Linux. It's been just refinement ever since.
I'm completely bamboozled as to why this matters at all. Macromedia is _finally_ jumping on the Linux bandwagon? Gosh, BOLD MOVE THERE. Takes a real VISIONARY COMPANY to start thinking about porting their stuff to Linux in 2004. That's FORWARD THINKING for you.
Why should we care if anyone ports their stupid proprietary software to Linux, anyways? They invariably mess it up. And it's not Free. And it's just stupid Flash, anyways.
Much more interesting would be to see good SVG and SMIL support -- both of which are W3 recs, not proprietary hoohaw -- built into Mozilla. We've already got great SVG tools like Sodipodi -- a good SMIL editor would put us over the top.
So, in conclusion: proprietary software developer is cautiously considering doing an inept unsupported port of their closed platform to Linux. No big whup.
~Mr. Bad
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
I love Linux--but I still use Windows--mostly becasue my favorite apps are still not avaialble on Linux. Porting the Macromedia apps to Linux was one of the last hurdles to moving over completely to Linux. Hurrah!
I've been trying to get Linux on the desktop within the company I work for more than 2 years. The conclusion is that wine (any wine - wine, WineX, crabweavers) is NOT suitable for business, period!!
MACR, instead of failing, do the right thing and target your new marketshare appropriately
...free software, not "Linux"! The flash player is buggy, unfree, insecure and for these reasons I'll never run it on my main box.
Macromedia should be hated more than Microsoft because their products lock in the web in proprietary bs much more than MS..
If you told me 2 years ago I'd be defending Flash, I wouldn't have believed you. Now I believe it is the best way to deliver truly dynamic content online.
With FLash MX 2004 it now defaults to Actionscript 2.0 with is a Java-like OO programming language that is quite powerful and has a significant toolbox.
That's right, there's a truly proper programming language hidden inside Flash, capable of whatever you want, but running on top of a robust visual interface.
We're now using it for quite a bit of remote data management - for instance a 2D database-driven layout online
Of course, people who don't know how to write code write crappy code, and it is somewhat less intimidating than starting a new Java applet.
It's actually better than Java (I know, you're all going to try to kill me) It's because of the way the plugins work. Exactly for the same reasons I _don't_ like it - because Flash is a protected brand name, Macromedia gets to control the plugin. So you get proper plugin version control and etc, instead of the clusterf*ck that MS made out of Java plugins, and Apple didn't do much better. (One of only 3 times I've been unhappy with OSX)
Anybody understand why if you install XPPro OEM on a client machine and run the online updater to bring everything up to date you get no Java at all?
Before anybody really slits my throat - well written Java works great if you're using a Sun/java.com interpreter. But I promise you really can't expect that from arbitrary users (my inbox tells me so) But you can expect them to "accept" the Flash plugin install window.
Btw, just to be overprecise - someone else in this thread misunderstood: you've been able to _play_ flash apps natively in linux for a while, now you're going to be able to _create_ flash apps in linux.
Also, of course, they're now talking about MX2004, which really is different than "FlashMX"
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
flashMX on linux?! are you crazy?! HELL YES!! that sounds perfect if you ask me.. dealing with emulators is no fun at all.. its great that a large software company is developing for linux.. it will definitely influence many other larger companies that are willing to develop all sorts of interesting, new, and better software to the linux desktop..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Of all the Macromedia suite, Flash MX is what I use the least.
Is there a way to disable support for this "XFDF" type of file (which smells completely useless to me)? Perhaps just associating the file type/MIME type to Notepad or something? Also, I use Mozilla Firefox, and for me, PDFs open in a normal Acrobat window, not within the browser as the advisory alludes to. It didn't make clear, though, whether you're only vulnerable using the browser control.
Or maybe I'll RTFA you linked. Just checking to see if you knew a workaround besides AR6.
2004 is not the year of Linux. 2004 is the year we save move to buy a Mac.
You know what's great? You'll have to post 24 comments before "Re:I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER IN THE EAR" disappears from your user page. LOL
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
for those afraid of their keyboards and prefer the use of a mouse, click This
All of us who already use their products on a daily basis via VMWare. I hope they can get Dreamweaver over the Linux soon. Then I could dump VMware and Win2k and reclaim my 256mb of ram those two use up everytime I run DWMX.
--
Inkscape is great for SVG!
No, you don't. That's a complete lie.
Maybe if you're talking about Office 2000. I don't remember having to reboot for 2000. That was four years ago. I know specifically that I never had to reboot for Office XP or 2003. And you don't have to reboot when you update it through Windows Update, which is what I was pointing out.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Flash plays on the Linux desktop (browser plugins), but there's no editor - as if the Linux market were balanced in favor of media consumers, rather than producers. In face of competition from Apple, they demoted Premiere from generic movie editing to focus on Windows Media Frameworks - as if Microsoft were a softer competitor than Apple. I know that the center of their empire, PostScript, is named euphemistically for "Reverse Polish Notation", which requires stack operations to get the arguments backwards, but aren't they taking that approach too far?
--
make install -not war
When Linux get as popular as Windows, you'll also get all the bugs, all the bloatware, all the spyware, all the idiots, all the exploits and all the garbage you get with Windows. Getting Flash ported is an obvious step in that direction...
I strongly disagree. Linux by design can't allow any of the windows style spyware and exploits. Just as it doesn't need any anti-virus programs. To install anything in linux requires root authorization. That goes for things you yourself install, and that also applies to spyware that tries to execute in the background.
Fuck you.
Love,
Slashdot
Move to Linux and you'll see ;). Simply because my computer is doing heavy, CPU intensive stuff in the background doesn't hurt my desktop experience in any way, at least if I was smart enough to use "nice -n 19 make" to start the compile.
:) And on a clunky old P3, no less.
Actually, my system is dual-boot with Redhat 9 and Win XP Pro at the moment. But anyway, I do agree. My point in the original post was that if you're obsessively worried about something taking up CPU time while you're compiling, why are you running anything, least of all Flash content? I'm not necessarily agreeing, just fitting the argument to the way Via Patrino seems to feel.
Personally, I have no qualms about running everything including the kitchen sink at once - if a compile or movie encoding or something is going to take a while, there's always something else to work on while it finishes.
I guess that's the difference between Windows and a multitasking OS...
Not sure who you're responding to here, but just to be clear again- I was referring to running under Windows when I mentioned being able to run a million n' a half things with no slowdown
it's gonna be a long long time. Do you ever hear a knock at the door? DO YOU? I say... A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. Do you ever think when you herar this knock on the door.. that maybe... just maybe these bastards are porting their shit to linux? NO, YOU DON'T.
Photoshop is a nice program, but in linuxworld GIMP is catching up. Not that it will be a replacement for most professionals, but for the average person it's not a bad solution.
I've yet to, however, find a product that compares to Dreamweaver for linux. Yes, as with many linux users, I can manually code HTML without much problem - but I do miss the elegance of Dreamweaver. I'm hoping that the porting of flash will be a signal fo future things to come.
AS1.0 was like Javascript - it was the flash interpretation of an ancestor shared with Javascript. This is Actionscript's lineage.
But AS2.0 is intended to be Java-like in syntax, and they considerably souped up the class-based OO programming interfaces.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot