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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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If they would just realise people would use their products to create QuickTime/SVG over Director/Shockwave, they would be OK.
Macromedia has never been a first to market company, they just create great tools.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Is there a Flash Animation editor for Linux yet? I don't mean stuff that'll save to SWF like the drawing tool for OpenOffice or sodipodi. I'm talking about stuff that'll make animations, deal with actionscripting, and support embedded sounds.
It seems a natural progression from the projects that are creating libraries to be able to do such things. Is it ming? I don't remember.
I know the whole "Flash Sucks" thing and the "Macromedia is evil" thing but there are uses for it in one form or another..especially for artsy/multimedia-based projects. Are there any Open Source projects out there that can substitute for Flash MX or will WINE still be the only way to get through?
(imo) flash is a bad technology because it fundamentally makes access to information difficult, once you have a flash based website there's no searching, selecting text, deep-linking etc.
it also wastes bandwidth and client resources.
if it weren't for Flashblock, flash would be a far greater annoyance/hinderence to me than even spam.
"They make the best web development tools in the business, period."
They have the best known throughout most of the world tools for their purpose, but that does not make them the best necessarily. Btw, who is to say they will continue making such "great" software? A business has no interest in progress unless they have no choice. Business-wise, they are what Microsoft is. They sell software. The internet is leaning the business world toward services, not sale of software. Any company that resists this is going to be up against a lot of pressure. This pressure exists everywhere, from end users that don't want to pay over and over to "upgrade" their product, to the large corporations that wish to lower their TCO. One can argue all they want about software as a "shrink wrapped" product all they want, but it doesn't change what is happening. Macromedia is going to be up against some very stiff competition. What keeps them alive is interesting in a way. They have a large user base for starters. They offered what people wanted at the time and quickly took control over a nice piece of the market. They exist because just like the MS Windows OS, people are stuck with it. There are many flash sites. They are not exactly a standard, they are simply popular. When people say standard, they generally talk about a technology that is NOT controlled by one company. A standard is agreed upon and used througout the world by many. Flash is simply a "popular" (depends on how you define popular too) technology being used by many, in many cases forcefully(not physically, etc. don't twist what I say please).
Question everything.
Rebutal to your rebuttal:
1) Flash is bad because it is used for annoying animations that get in the way of website usability.
It is. Who wants to be annoyed? Your rebuttal says The web is full of websites that have annoying popup and popunder ads. I don't know what your talking about. I havn't seen a popup/under in 3 years. Who puts up with that today? Being that I don't load flash by default, and only do enable it by morbid curiosity. I can't think of a website that "requires" it. Oh, and the flash/javascript comparison. I don;t like javascript either, but I do enable it because it does seem to be required today. And the javascript popup/under thing is very fixed.
2) Flash is bad because it springs music on people without warning.
That is bad. So is any other technology that plays music on a website. I love music, but its annoying an unapropriate on a webpage.
3) It hogs the processor.
Yes it does, and that sucks. I use a laptop 99% of the time, and if I don't have to have my fan turn on or my battery run low because you want to get my attention and buy something from you, thats fine by me.
Flash is very cool technology. It simply does not belong on the web. I can download and run the flash in a helper app if need be for a game or something, but don't inline it with my html. Thanks.