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. "

Comments

"debunks Macromedia's marketing lies"

[Neil Blender]

Lies filled with bunk are the worst lies of all.

Flash Lite

[corngrower]

Tell me more so I know how to keep it off my systems.

Gosh...

[Trillan]

For a so-called debunking, there's an awful lot of "Yes, this is true, but it doesn't tell the whole story" in the article. Quint's article reads like a panic attack waiting for a problem.

Re:Gosh...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Who Needs Flash?

[Anomalous Canard]

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.

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[fiannaFailMan]

Most javascript content I've seen is for annoying popup ads and popunders, especially from porn sites that make it almost impossible to clear your screen without quitting the browser. Scarcely a day goes by when I don't get irritated by at least one popup, and popunders are just evil. Who needs javascript?

And if it's Flash helping the content and functionality you want, go to www.broadmoor.com and click 'reservations.' Show me a _single_ web technology that can do all of that without having to combine ten other technologies and looking the same in all browsers.

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[hackstraw]

Believe it or not, I don't need flash either. I've gone on rants here before about it and I think it still sucks. In fact, I disable ALL plugins by default, and only load them when I get a pretty much blank page and I'm for some reason, interested in the java or flash that they might have.

I think that all plugins are evil for browsers. Back in the damned plugin craze of the mid to late 90's that sucked. Every site had their own cute plugin that you had to install. Ha! Remember VRML? Havn't seen that in a while, and that was pretty cool as far as eye candy goes.

I especially don't like the new standards that people are working on for plugins in browsers. I see this as a possible reinvention of the plugin craze (probably the new form of spyware).

Now that I've bashed plugins and flash in general, I will have to say that flash is actually a cool multimedia toy. Its fairly easy to do really cool animations, games, etc. I'm shocked that flash has not made itself a pluginable thing via APIs as eye candy for windows apps. Instead of a silly dll animation, why not have a cooler flash one? You could have flash splash screens, etc.

But as far as the web goes, flash is unnecessary, and it (and all plugins) are in my opinion unwanted. I think that the fact that there are really only 2 plugins left that are commonly used (flash and java) says that the "market" does not want plugins. Java is hardly used anymore at all, and 99% of the time flash is used for ads. And they are the most annoying adds. They do not stop cycling like GIFs (doesn't your webbrowser stop them after 1 cycle?) They have the utter annoying feature that they sieze my keyboard input while I'm navigating a webpage via keyboard.

Summary: tech good, tech in browser bad

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[Mprx]

Microscopic text (zoom is worthless here, fixed size page layout) and irritating animation is supposed to be an example of good use of Flash? Web pages are not supposed to look the same in all browsers. The text also can't be copied and pasted, and individual pages within the Flash can't be bookmarked. This site only illustrates why Flash sucks so bad.

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[McDutchie]

My two-year-old daughter needs Flash. Teletubbies games in DHTML would be pretty crappy...

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[88NoSoup4U88]

"Microscopic text (zoom is worthless here, fixed size page layout) and irritating animation is supposed to be an example of good use of Flash?"

Irritating animation , nope, that's no good example of Flash : Trying to add to one's experience of going to a certain website (for instance , a game site) is better achieved with Flash, than with a clean html site with some cool MIDI song underneath it :P

"The text also can't be copied and pasted"

Depends on what kind of text the designer uses : It is perfectly possible to have text selections within Flash documents.

"Web pages are not supposed to look the same in all browsers"

Ohwait, now we -aren't- looking for uniformity in browsers anymore ? What did I miss ?

", and individual pages within the Flash can't be bookmarked"

Again, this would be a design choice of the webdesigner.

"This site only illustrates why Flash sucks so bad."

Then why haven't you started using some sort of Flashblock extension yet ?

Re:Who Needs Flash?

[Dogtanian]

So, why do designers keep making user-hostile choices?

The best explanation is that they are designing for aesthetics and/or gimmickry, and not usability.

For what it's worth, I don't mind the use of Flash for websites that are about image and novelty. What I find unacceptable is its (mis-)use in corporate websites that should be about professionalism and usability, when in fact we get some badly-designed Flash crap designed to look 'impressive' and bolster their image.

Actually, the image this projects is "this company is run by PHBs in thrall to superficiality".

NIV

[Queer Boy]

Macromedia has an EXTREME case of non-invented-here that they have been fighting for YEARS. They are desperately trying to be Microsoft by locking people into their file formats, when they are late to market on abilities. Problem as I see it is that they don't realise their tools are wonderful and that's the reason to use Macromedia. Everything Director does can be done in QuickTime and was done in QuickTime BEFORE Director came out, it's just that the Director tool is so good.

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.

Re:NIV

[obi]

I don't agree. They've often tried to use existing languages/techniques for flash. Examples: they were probably one of the first to use the new ecmascript 4 in a major product. They could've rolled their own language, but they picked something familiar, and kept up to date with it. I hear the format they use for Flex is based on Mozilla's XUL. And their Flash VM (the plugin) is really quite good.

Now, as someone who has to use the tools quite often, I absolutely HATE Flash MX. It's buggy, bloated, the code editor sucks, FLA files aren't really portable, it crashes often, and it slows you down all the time (crap usability).

I wish I had a compiler that would take some XML files for graphics (a subset of SVG maybe?) and some .as files, and would generate an SWF.

Flex is a bit like that, but it's not exactly there yet. And it's incredibly expensive.

Re:NIV

[Monkelectric]

I use flash all the time, and I hate it. Its like software purgatory. The problem is consistancy -- sometimes there are context menus, sometimes there aren't. Sometimes not all an items options appear in the properties window. Some things that should be in a context menu can only be accessed while selecting an item and then going to a pull down menu. If flash would make proper use of context menus and straighten out their GUI, then yes flash would be a great program.

Re:NIV

[Queer Boy]

Being a multimedia developer for the past eight years

That would mean 1996 was your start, which means you STARTED after Myst was completed with QuickTime and HyperCard on a Quadra, at the same time Flash was crashing everyone's browser left and right.

Some of the best online games were created in Director because the programing language (Lingo) was very easy to learn

You have illustrated what I said, Director is a good tool, thank you for backing me up.

Last time I checked, SWF was an open format.

Flash is an open SPECIFICATION, meaning Macromedia will tell you how to read and write them. IT IS NOT AN OPEN FORMAT. Changes and enhancements from other companies/indivuduals are not accepted. That's like saying JAVA is an open format.

You can generate SWF from most Adobe products.

You can generate Word documents from OO.o, what the hell's your point?

If Macromedia is so sluggish -- why isn't there a better flash development tool?

Sluggish is your word. I said late to market on abilities. Everything Macromedia has come out with has been done before (and accepted) by previous vendors/companies. Macromedia just made easier tools to use their own versions (which are STILL not standards).

There's NOTHING special about what any Macromedia product produces that cannot be replicated by a competing or open product.

Re:NIV

[joshmccormack]

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.

Macromedia's great asset

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Nothing beats a great product naming scheme for grabbing mindshare. Today they launch Flash Lite, but they still have the following absolutely smashing names at their disposal:

- Flash Flood
- Flash Gordon
- Flash Card ...

Is there a Flash editor/creator yet?

[Eberlin]

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?

Re:Is there a Flash editor/creator yet?

[blackmonday]

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.

Ah Yes

[cubicledrone]

Summary:

"Macromedia must be lying because they make Flash and we all hate Flash because someone used it for a banner ad."

No matter what play on words and rewrite of definitions Macromedia folks can come up with, Flash Lite is not standard.

Macromedia Flash is standard, whether "Flash Lite" is or isn't. There are thousands of Flash developers and hundreds of millions of Flash player installations. Flash MX managed to accomplish what no other platform has: cross-platform web multimedia with a WORKING AUTHORING APPLICATION and a WORKING PLAYER at the SAME TIME.

Just because Macromedia is making money doesn't make everything they say FUD. They make the best web development tools in the business, period. They don't have to support open standards, but they are supporting SVG, and Fireworks+Flash have the best commercial support for PNG on the market. These are good things(tm). The anti-Macromedia-because-they-make-Flash thing is getting REALLY old.

Re:Ah Yes

[rzbx]

"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).

Re:Cue the Flash-bashers...

[rokzy]

(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.

Re:Flash Forms - not just obnoxious animations

[fiannaFailMan]

You're wasting your time, mate. Have a look in my journal and see the ignorance that abounds on /. about Flash. Of course it has moved on, hell I can't even remember the last time I saw a flash splashscreen on a website, but most people here just don't want to know. As far as they're concerned, it's not open source therefore it must be evil. (Unless it's Apple of course.)

Well, of COURSE it's a trojan... so?

[mad.frog]

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...)

Re:Well, of COURSE it's a trojan... so?

[boomgopher]

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 not the ads I bitch about, that's actually an appropriate application IMHO. It's lame ass sites like Ray-Ban's where Flash is used as a replacement for HTML.
Especially when there's very little here that needed Flash, as in this case. Site-as-snazzy applet-thing should die a painful death.

Re:Well, of COURSE it's a trojan... so?

[nothings]

Yeah, I have to give Macromedia props on Flash. Bitching about ads or other abuses is insane; if there was some popular open source Flash-like thing, that would be getting equivalently abused. Flash is small, it works, and it's a lot better through than most "web standards".

An example of that last thing: stuff I access off the web is "untrusted content". Good window managers understand that as much as possible, the user (not the app) should be in control of the windows and the window location on the desktop. The same is true in the browser: the status line is for the user; the buttons are for the user. HTML and javascript goes crazy with allowing opening of new windows without status bars, without scrollbars (even when the client can detect that a scrollbar is needed anyway, most don't provide one if the code requested none), etc. See those dopey "vibrate your window" javascript apps. Flash can't do this; the flash application is sandboxed not in terms of disk, but in terms of screen real estate. Here you go; here's your client space. This has been a mess for years with javascript; w3c has sided with a "trust the author" paradigm with CSS, and browsers (e.g. Firefox) still don't sensibly override all of it (e.g. with needed scrollbars); whereas Flash picked a "safe" model from day one and hasn't changed it.

Re:Well, of COURSE it's a trojan... so?

[u02sgb]

Personally I object to things like not being able to mute the sound. You have a "right click" menu with settings. Why isn't "Disable sound" one of them? I don't want a full volume bleep noise every time an advert pops up to tell me it's there. Despite it being requested regularly (do a google search for Flash disable.sound) it still hasn't been included.

It just strikes of product that's had design compromises from a marketing department ("Look at the control you have over the users browser with Flash").

Uh... when will OSS support SVG for real?

[CajunArson]

OK, so Macromedia makes a viewer for SVG but they have a preference for their own technololgy. That's like attacking OpenOffice for making a system that can read MS Word documents while encouraging its own document format. Right now Macromedia appears to have done a hell of a lot more to support SVG by making a viewer for it than all of OSS who talks about SVG all day long but I have yet to see a single OSS utility to employ SVG beyond a couple of gimmicky static images. So should we say that open source developers are trying to kill SVG??

Ok, quit the stupid Flash bashing allready.

[Qbertino]

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.

forget flash, and svg sucks too

[DNAspark99]

Anyone who has been checking out the latest developments by rasterman (enlightenment) may be aware of the upcoming 'edje' library, which appears to be quite promising for desktop, as well as embedded applications, phones, wonderapps and such.

http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/systems.html

"Edje is one of the more unique parts of EFL, combining many things that Shockwave / FLASH can do with some things it can't, but instead of being designed as a player, it is designed as a slave library to be used by an application to enhance the applications content and display via external compressed data files. It is being expanded continuously, and thanks to its clean design is easy to improve."

Something to keep an eye on for sure!

Gimme a break

[DamnYankee]

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 :-) ).

It's about time....

[gtshafted]

... that Flash is on the front page of Slashdot again

lately I've been hearing alot about this horrible upcoming MS thing called XAML - and (quoting a nameless slashdotter) how it's akin to VB crack for its power and ease of use.

I could be wrong, but I think many people have overlooked that the kind of pervasive scary crap is already here, and it has been here for awhile now.
While I love Java and use it heavily, I admit that Flash is more ubiquitious it runs on almost every major OS and browser. Delivers more on the write once run anywhere.
-Flash is extremely fast and easy to install. it's literally point and click. I don't even think the player is even a 1mb...
-Flash is extremely easy to learn and use: my female, graphic designer cousin who hates anything "technical and dorky" makes flash apps all the time; hell most of flash dev is visual drag and drop
-Flash is getting more powerful by the minute: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/ development/
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/ video/
http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/

Re:Cue the Flash-bashers...

[hackstraw]

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.

Im a n00b, Whats FUD?

[nfamous neil g]

What's FUD? all i can think of is"fudged up data"...Am i even on the right track? it would help my future reading of /.

Mobile phones that run Linux

[timothy]

"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."

Here's a page that lists several such phones, in various stages of availability from Now to In-Development.

Re: the "Flash is evil" meme, well, I don't find it evil. I just like graphics formats (including creation tools) to have at least some free / open-source equivalent, so there's some chance of it being supported on all-free/Free platforms. Mileage obviously varies. If I could view Flash, and create (even if awkwardly) Flash presenations using all Free software, then I certainly wouldn't begrudge Macromedia making lots of money selling their source-secret versionto people who liked Macromedia's interface best. More power to you.

Flash can be used well or annoyingly, all up to the designer; it's a shame though that many sites rely on it at the expense of those who for various reasons don't want to need Flash.

(I could well be wrong; are there yet any working, Free tools for creating Flash presentations?)

timothy

Re:Mobile phones that run Linux

[mad.frog]

Here's a page that lists several such phones, in various stages of availability from Now to In-Development.

Thanks for the link. I stand corrected.

That "Rebuttal" misses the point

[Pausanias]

Pop-ups and pop-unders can be easily cured by Mozilla or other popup blockers without having to give up javascript. Java can be turned on and off easily via a preference pane.

But what about Flash? For the users who hate 90% of Flash content (ads) but are very interested in 10% of it (for example, New York Times multimedia presentations), there is no easy solution. No preference pane that allows you to turn it on and off quickly. Luckily the Mozilla's flashblock can take care of this problem, but IE users are stuck with tons of undesired content.

Re:What a bunch of

[Phexro]

Using flash for video is stupid and wrong. Use MPEG-4, and stick it inline with an element.

Quit picking on Macromedia.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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?

svg is...

[Sithgunner]

Since no one mentions it everytime, I'll paste what's significant about SVG I commneted a while ago on slashdot.
Sure flash works, is deployed in wider audience, but simply lacks the following stuff.

From what I understand, SVG is superior to flash because,

1. Not only human, but machines(web robots etc) can read information on graphical content of a web page if SVG is used, because the file is presented in a human readable file as xml text file, opposed to flash delivered in binary format which you can only know what it is by loading it on specific applications.

2. File size is notably smaller compared to images presented as a binary format, because the rules of the graphic/animation is written as a text file. Although if you embed an existing image file, that will make the entire SVG bigger than just lines of xml code, of course.

3. SVG is an open and standardized format, so many applications may adopt the format(Editor, viewer, converter etc).

4. After all, it's XML :) Interoperability, it has.

Re:SVG is so good how now?

[Hibernator]

Flash: Widely supported,

Not on cell phones

easy to use

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.

performance varies but is generally acceptable if the artist didn't go massivly nuts.

The exact same thing can be said of SVG, especially with the new implementations on cell phones.

SVG: Slow as hell no matter how fast your machine is, poor support, I /GUESS/ there is a tool set out there, but who in their right mind would want to use it?

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.

Flash and Shockwave are easy to install, frequently updated...

That's not a virtue on cell phones and other smart small devices, which is where the future is at.

Re:Cue the Flash-bashers...

[runderwo]

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?

Re:Cue the Flash-bashers...

[NanoGator]

"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.

Re:What a bunch of

[fiannaFailMan]

I'm not sure what you mean by "XML parsing (last time I checked SVG couldn't do that in its authoring tool)"--what is the SVG authoring tool? Sodipodi or such?

In the Flash authoring tool you can use ActionScript to parse XML data from external sources and display it in the swf where the user can then be allowed to manipulated it at his heart's content. If additional data is needed by the user, the swf can ask for an additional stream of data to be parsed in without having to destroy the page and re-load the whole thing from scratch. This is one of the main benefits of Flash, not animations. Unfortunately it seems to be very hard to get this message heard here, a lot of people seem to have already made their minds up about Flash because it's a proprietary standard and are digging around for any excuse to denounce it, even blaming the technology for any abuses that Flash developers come up with. It's a bit like denouncing C because that's what viruses are written in.

You can use a text editor to develop swf files too in the same way that you talk about developing svg, but the Flash authoring tool is a lot more powerful.

For video--& if you're using Flash as the comparison, I guess you mean synchronized sound and animation

No, I do mean video.

SWF is NOT an open specification!

[rillian]

Flash is an open SPECIFICATION, meaning Macromedia will tell you how to read and write them. IT IS NOT AN OPEN FORMAT.

If only. Then it would be no worse than PDF. Have you ever read the license terms associated with the published specification? They specifically restrict you to generation and disallow playback implementations. So, no open source flash player. That's not even an open specification, that's just the same sad old we-must-control-things mindset that open source has been fighting since the beginning.

Some of the open source work that's been done has been based on reverse-engineering, but really, just use SVG. It's a real pity too. Flash (the technology, not what it's usually used for) is quite useful and well implemented to boot. Just another case of routing around the damage.

Don't even get me started

[theRG]

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.

Re:Cue the Flash-bashers...

[duncangough]

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.

The SVG Format is unfeasible.

[Robotron2084]

Bah. I usually agree that the open source format is the preferred format. But having worked with the flash swf file format and having seen SVG in action, I'll go with flash. Its not even worth trying SVG, SVG Tiny, or any variant.

The 'interactivity' aspect of SVG is laughable. It's on par with Flash v2, which basically gives it just enough interactivity to make it positively annoying, but not at all useful. Give SVG forms(XForms would be nice) and it might be more approachable. It sickens me to think that everyone likes to complain about Flash being annoying, but then support an even more annoying format just because its open source.

There's too much XML bloat within SVG to make it of much use. A flash rectangle is 9 bytes. SVG's is about 40. A flash matrix record is about 5 bytes, SVG's is at least 5 times that. These are basic atomic units used hundreds if not thousands of times throughout a file.

Plus the SVG parser has to compile to an internal vector engine. Flash is already compiled to HIGHLY optimized bytecode.

There's no way I'm going to use hundreds of bytes to describe just one shape. And then waste precious cell phone processing power to parse the xml into an internal format.

If anything, there should be an intermediate bytecode format determined by the W3C to allow for compiled SVGTiny.