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Macromedia: More FUD About SVG
Robin Berjon writes "Macromedia recently announced that its latest version of Flash Lite (a limited Flash for mobile devices) was to support SVG Tiny 1.1, and support it fully (though no one has yet been able to verify that assertion). For a moment, the Web community wondered if they might be playing nice at last, after yielding to massive pressure from the mobile market to support W3C and 3GPP standards, or if they simply meant to use SVG as a trojan to get Flash into mobile devices. An article freshly published on Macromedia's web site clearly makes the case that they're after the latter, speading as much FUD as possible along the way. Thankfully, Antoine Quint decided to respond in a brief O'Reilly Net article in which he debunks Macromedia's marketing lies one by one, and expands on the wondrous features of SVG Tiny 1.1 and the shortly upcoming SVG Tiny 1.2 that make people drool before their mobile phones.
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Tell me more so I know how to keep it off my systems.
Most Flash content I've seen is ads or novelties. I've found very few sites where Flash contributes anytihng to the site.
The last thing I want on my web enabled phone is crappy Flash content slowing my downloads even further.
I went to an online commerce site where all the merchandise was viewable only in Flash animations. I saved some money that day and the website operator lost a sale.
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Yeah, it's a "trojan", but you say that like it's a bad thing.
Look, a lot of phone makers want SVG-Tiny support on their phone. Macromedia wants to put Flash Lite on a lot of phones. This is an obvious way to make that happen.
But geez, there's no big conspiracy to get proprietary stuff on phones just to Stick It To You Open Source guys... we just have a technical solution that we happen to think is pretty damn good, that will suit the mobile market well. So what if it's proprietary? I defy you to show be ONE SINGLE PHONE in existence that runs on Open Source software; phone makers seem to be pretty happy with using whatever will get the job done, without getting all religious about this.
Honestly, I read Slashdot daily, but I'll never understand the peculiar Flash-Is-Evil bias. Yes, there are annoying ads that use it. There are also annoying ads that use animated GIF, and even HTML. It's just a tool, folks, and like the song says, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
And for the expected flood of responses saying, "You can do this with SVG+DHTML+SMIL+etc,etc"... bollocks. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's practical.
Look: 98% of interesting interactive animated stuff on the Web is done using Flash rather than that something else. I submit to you that this is not a coincidence! Artists aren't stupid, and they sure as hell aren't going to spend hundreds of dollars on Flash if there really was a superior (or even comparable) solution available for free.
I'll tell you what: why don't you go off and write a nice, free authoring tool for SVG that is good enough for the Homestar guys to completely replace all those Strong Bad Emails with. (I will, of course, expect the final result needs to be just as bandwidth- and processor-efficient as Flash.) Until then, please, give it a rest.
(Disclaimer: I work for Macromedia (though not related to the Flash Lite effort in any way), so I expect to be ignored or dramatically modded down...)
No doubt, MM is a marketing driven company. And one of the rare profitable ones in the pure software business. And Macromedias Flash IDE sucks. It's near unusable for professional large scale developement of flash apps. Like almost every IDE they offer.
But nevertheless Flash is the most widespread professional rich media plattform. And it's a good one too.
The recent release of flash's PL ActionScript (V 2) has even has stepped on to a professional level with solid oop and error handling very simular to Java.
There are even serious OSS projects developing on it. Xical comes to mind as one.
So quit the flash bashing. There are flash sites that suck a lot. That's because every Idiot can grab a ripped Flash IDE and start clicking some crap together. Ok, I get that. But that doesn't mean Flash is bad. Just like bad Java apps won't make a bad java platform. Keep that in mind before you start ranting on what you don't know whoot about.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Since when have Slashdot articles become flamebait? Come on guys - show some editorial restraint!
:-) ).
I am not a fan of Macromedia one way or the other but gimme a break. Flash has not taken over anything. It is just one of many gimmicks used to make web sites (and now mobile sites) "flashier".
Perhaps Slashdot's ire might better be spent on ActiveX controls or those who coopt Javascript? Flash is a tempest in a teapot (though the headline is definitely an attention getter
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
Sorry dude, there's not much market to gain with that. Every flash developer I know uses a mac. SWF is an open format, so perhaps, yes, some good coders could write the app you're looking for but I don't think there's much demand for it.
Using flash for video is stupid and wrong. Use MPEG-4, and stick it inline with an element.
Quit picking on Macromedia. If they can get Flash onto every device in the known universe, more power to them: at least Flash does not try to lock you into a single operating system. The alternative to Flash is the next crop of Microsoft lockware (you think they're going to do XAML/Avalon plugins for Linux or Mac?).
I'll take Flash over the alternatives any day, thank you. And besides, the Flash format is openly documented. What more could you want?
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Not on cell phones
Like hell. Converting SQL database queries to SVG is trivial with existing free tools. Converting anyone else's data to Flash is a major pain and requires that you give big sacks of cash to Macromedia for proprietary server-side tools.
The exact same thing can be said of SVG, especially with the new implementations on cell phones.
You're living in the past. SVG Tiny renders blazingly fast on the new cell phones that use it, and there are lots of great tools out there.
That's not a virtue on cell phones and other smart small devices, which is where the future is at.
Um, how exactly do you link into menu option 3, scroll down, select item 2, which redirects you to some other area of the site?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
"Flash is very cool technology. It simply does not belong on the web."
Wrong. Flash belongs on the web, but is often misused. Your problems with Flash have nothing to do with the technology, but rather the way content authors have used it. It's like wanting to ban all music stations because Britney Spears is overplayed.
"Derp de derp."
OK so for my job I recently had to do a very simple clickthrough for some UI design work. I would have used straight HTML but I also needed to approximate some fancy UI thing. So even simple 'goto' statements didn't work like they were supposed to. The Flash ActionScript language is one of the most assinine things I've ever encoutered.
Meanwhile, Flash. What is it good for? Absolutely nuthin'! Well OK, funny animations like This Land are great. But most of the time it hinders me getting to the information that I need or want. Car sites are a prime example. Just show me the pictures and let me get to the specs easily!
The Web is primarily a tool for information--Flash has not proven itself to be a good information tool.
If you do a search for the cantankerous french duo that is Robin Berjon and Antoine Quint you'll find that they have a long history of biased and irrational arguments.
Their sole purpose seems to be to critize anyone who attempts to support SVG. They also have an obvious hatred for Macromedia that slants their arguments to the point of being absurd.
What they don't realize is that having well known companies like Macromedia adopt SVG is actually helping their cause.
The point of SVG is to provide declaritive, text based mark-up of engaging and interactive vector graphics. It's not rocket science. Flash has successfully produced such an experience for years and there's no harm in Macromedia trying to support SVG.
The fact that they didn't support such and such or didn't do everything perfect isn't the point. The main thing is whether customers will be successful with their offerings - if so, then case close and everyone gets richer.
For those who don't care about vector graphics then they shouldn't be reading articles about SVG or Flash - flames and attacks on these formats are out of place here, why not spend your time on something more productive?
Flash based websites suck, no doubt about it.
But flash as a game development environment does not deserve the same treatment. Especially when it ends up on mobile devices. I can see a lot of interesting multi-player games evolving out of this. SMS based games like fudfite are going to be twice the fun.
As for being a waste of bandwidth. Yes, flash websites are, but flash games are certainly not. A game like Lightning Break is only just over 300k. Write something similar in SDL/PyGame and it's going to be a couple of meg's, minimum.
Yes, flash websites suck, but flash games do not. A lot of clever programmers are handling the limitations of Flash to come up with some good, optimised code that always loads fast.
Now, if they could just make Flash a bit more secure and a bit more web-aware, I'd be much happier.
Disclaimer: I work with Flash games daily on Chickstop and Playaholics so I'm quite biased I guess.
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
Using existing languages and standards within your product reduces development costs (of the application), gets users (of the programs) up and running fast, and makes companies seem like they play nice.
This issue is more about source files, players, and output formats. The argument is that Macromedia doesn't want to make the best editor for a standard file format - they want to make a ubiquitous file format that they own, and crush others.