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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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Lies filled with bunk are the worst lies of all.
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.
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
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.
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.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
(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.
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...)
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.
"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."