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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.
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!
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
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!
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
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?"
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?
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
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.
Saying that flash can be well used is like saying that giving guns to monkeys could actually repel an enemy attack. Technically it's possible, but totally unlikely to happen.
For each 1 site which does use flash for something which absolutely needs an animated illustration of how something works, there'll be no less than 99 sites which:
1. Just make the whole goddamn site in flash, including the plain text parts. So now I have to wait 15 seconds on DSL (!!) for every single page to load. And I pity the poor buggers who are on dial-up.
Bonus points for forcing me to use it all in a tiny flash window, instead of letting me use the whole 1600x1200. More bonus points for forcing me to read whatever flyspeck font looked good on some retard's 640x480 screen. God forbid that they give me plain HTML which I can zoom to a readable size in Opera.
2. Clutter an otherwise potentially useful site with a bazillion slow-loading pointless flash animations. E.g., God forbid that they actually give me a link or button to click on, when they can make it a huge flash animation instead.
3. Make me watch some retarded and huge flash ad before even seeing what the site has to offer. And then give me half a dozen huge slow-loading flash ads per page.
4. Never even tested their flash crap on anything other than Windows 98 (or presumably now Linux). There's a difference in how the thread scheduling works in '98, NT, 2000 and XP. A tight loop which never yields control will _not_ slow the whole computer to a crawl on Win98. It _will_ on NT and 2000. So a single badly written flash ad (or java applet) can make my computer not even accept more than one keystroke per second. Oh, the fun.
And who's to blame?
A. The clueless graphics artist promoted to designer, without any extra training. Instead of making a usable site, he'll keep his old fetish that flashy graphics, colours and non-standard hard-to-read layouts are what art is all about.
B. The SFV (Stupid Fashion Victim.) This can be an artist, a PHB or even a programmer. The common ground is that they think newer _must_ be better, no matter how idiotically mis-used.
Don't get me wrong, new generally is better, but only when used right. Using plastic bottles instead of bricks, just because plastic is a newer technology, won't make a better building.
C. The dot-bomb style PHB or marketroid. The kind who thinks that what matters isn't the content, usefulness or even having a product to sell. The kind who thinks that people will surely rush to buy any useless crap, or even stuff available for free everywhere else, if it's on a site with a megabyte of animations per page and flashy colours everywhere. Yeah, verily, we just need more blink tags and flash animations, and everyone will just rush to give us tons of money for nothing.
Just for the record, I don't have anything against the professions of graphics artist, manager, or marketing expert. There are some skilled people in those professions. And I can respect someone's knowledge in any domain.
My beef is with the ones who are obviously unfit for their job. Some may have been skilled in a completely unrelated domain, but they don't even start to realize how different the new domain is, or how their new job is really a completely different one, with completely different rules, and which requires different skills. E.g., that making a usable GUI is _not_ the same thing as painting a work of art.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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...