Slashdot Mirror
Flash Makes Splash in Gadgets
An anonymous reader writes "Flash is winding its way into a growing number of gadgets and devices, according to an article at DeviceForge. Although Macromedia normally requires licensees to sign up for massive quantities of licenses before they can build its 'Embedded Macromedia Flash Player' into devices, the company as authorized NEC subsidiary Vibren to supply embedded Flash licenses in lower volumes to makers of POS (point-of-sales/service) terminals, personal organizers, PC replacements, small-screen airline entertainment devices, real-time securities trading terminals, digital signs, and more. Brace yourself for some juiced-up electronic billboards!"
Talk about a news Flash.
Klatu Brata Nicto
I hope someone comes up with a way to block these flash animations on these devices. The last thing I need is a cash register showing cartoons at me.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I can't wait until embedded device designers take a cue from web designers and start using Flash for navigation and suddenly a simple thing like "adjusting the contrast on my monitor" takes 10 minutes.
Username taken, please choose another one.
This was already mentioned in the iPod story last week.
Our company, http://www.wirelessronin.com/ does exacly this, and we are a Macromedia partner.
We are still waiting for the Flash 7 SDK, but at the moment, we use the v5 and 6 SDK's running on Embedded Linux in all of our devices.
HUGE biz, LOTS of cash to be made.
Flash, as a website based format, is EVIL! I can't even count the number of times I've dismissed a site because it was flash based. Some are just really poorly done, and it shows, while some are just too computer intensive, and some just look silly.
Just my $0.02...
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Instead, SVG seems to have a better future. And the right tools are HERE:
http://www.beatware.com/products/md_golive.html
"PUNCH ME and WIN AN iPOD!"
*smash*
Love the Third Amendment?
As much as I like Java, the more and more I see Flash-based applications for vertical markets, the more I see that as Java's missed opportunity. This was Java's golden path, and it floundered with poor download times, incompatible security policies, and prejudice as "nothing more than animated icons."
Meanwhile, Flash became more than just scaled vector text, taking on greater amounts of application capability. Even my daughter's Leapster, the so-called "learning game pad" that displays Dora and SpongeBob in a variety of educational situations, is based on Flash, not Java.
So much for a language originally intended for embedded applications. Java is strongest now in the server room, tier 2 (Oracle & Sybase hold tier 1). Flash is strongest in tier 3: the user interface.
You mean "the company has authorized", right? Does anybody proofread these things?
Flash is for animations and for simple user but graphic-rich interafaces. It's hardly a good choice for serious UIs, especially in small devices where the priorities aren't the same as in rich content websites, where Flash is most often used.
I hope this is the final little step that is neeeded to make tablet PC's a viable option. Given...I don't want to see a 5 minute spalsh animation on my cell phone any more than I want a hole in my head...but flash is a powerful tool, when used sparingly, and could really boost the efficency/awesomeness of many devices.
...on other news the FlashBlocker sales reach new heights!
Now can we get back to work on SVG, so we at least have the possibility of an open format.
damn !!!
At least these POS machines will be able to start using something besides Windows CE, in all its glory.
Flash-based POS's seem like they could be much more focused, as they wouldn't need much fancy stuff to run simple, colorful apps on. It should probably lead to smaller, more focused POS things. Think mini-billboards, interactive and all that good stuff.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
At last I can shutup all those cretins who secretly think of me as a nerd luser!
What's the point (pun intended) of having flash-animated menus that ask for your PIN?! Or should we now expect LCD touchscreens at places where needs to press the sequence "OK-CHQ-PIN"?
What a dumb idea.
Doomie
Oh wait, THAT's what POS stands for?
Someone had to do it.
Talk about old news... pocket pcs have had flash players for years -- lots of flash based games and apps already out there...
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
A must have for firefox. I can't stand flash. I don't know why poeple put this crap on their pages.
Now it is a a good thing that they are cramming this into other devices?
I'm going to need a hammer instead of a remote control soon if this goes anywhere.
Here's a Q.. In the last few years Flash has added stuff like networking, DB access, dynamic generation of content, etc.. How much of this is actually in SVG?
AFAICR SVG was just a vector content format. Do SVG viewers implement stuff along the lines of Flash or do they just display SVG content?
Can you program a network-capable video game in SVG according to a single standard?
The way I see it lately, Flash is eating applet Java lunch and is quickly approaching full-blown Swing app territory... And what is inherently wrong with Flash being the view layer ala HTML, Qt, MFC, etc... I mean, of course, besides its proprietary nature...
Macromedia also has Flash Communication Server, which offers streaming video within Flash-based apps. I know. I am doing it. So expect things like live-support streaming, perhaps from a tiny device like your mobile phone, and Flash animations to make it pretty, all driven from a database or some XML data source. As someone pointed out earlier, there is $$$ in this market. Also, I do not necessarily agree that SVG is going to "win" out over Flash, but there will definitely be some form of fusion of the technologies (Flash SVG hybrid) at some point -already Macromedia has Flex, its XML data transport, and Central as well (asynchronous data streaming). Lots of things going on here.
just a web application developer and instructor in Toronto, ON Canada
...some of you may like this program for windows. the themes are all flash based and it is basically an alternative to the windows login screen. it works for win2k too!
http://frontmotion.com/
I've noticed two prominent companies in Australia already using Flash in these types of devices: Coles Supermarkets - in their POS units, and Commonwealth Bank - in some new (very recently installed) ATMs. They both use Flash to display advertisements on the screen, and not to run the actual POS / ATM application itself (who in their right mind would??). Personally, for advertising, I think its a good step forward (you can do so much more with Flash than you can with the ol' ATM 40x24 character screens!). However, I know that in Coles' case (who have had Flash ads showing for several years now), they in fact use Windows NT 4 workstation on their POS units (soon to be upgraded to Windows XP), so whether or not Flash is available in Embedded devices is a non-issue for them.
Point of sale software (or Piece of S*** as we who use them prefer to call it) Is hard enough to deal with and now that Flash is getting in to it, it will just get worse.......
Insert Pithy Quote here.
How to remove it from ie
And still no flash for AMD64 Linux...
Oh dear God I hate flash.
Flash intros.
Flash ads.
Flash slideshows.
Flash buttons.
Flash menus.
Flash Flash Flash...
I've disabled Flash in my browsers, and in those rare ocassions when I can't successfully view a site because it's not there, I'm relieved. Not having Flash just saved me from having to suffer through another splash page or interstitial.
Life if better without Flash.
Although to be fair, it's not Flash that I hate, pe se: it's the way Flash is almost always used -- combined with the fact that there's usually a better way to accomplish the same thing without using Flash. Anyone remember when the web was infested with Flash buttons and menus? I just about had to gnaw through my own ethernet cable to escape.
Here's to the hope that Flash will incinerate itself by becoming synonymous with obnoxious crap, just as javascript popups have done.
Oh, finally: why would you want Flash on most embedded devices anyways? Am I missing something? Why would Flash benefit a cell phone or cash register? I guess cell phones could have excruciatingly intrusive ads beamed to them...but cash registers, etc? WHY!?
If I were a billionaire, rather than curing cancer, or ending poverty, or some other cliché like that, I'd do the world a favor by buying Macromedia and revoking every Flash license, and then I'd buy influence in Washington to create a law -- to be exported to the rest of the world through trade agreements and copyright alignment -- whereby crappy Flash animation artists and self-affected Flash-crazy "webmasters" could legally be dragged away by angry mobs with torches and pitchforks. That would be my contribution to the world. So far I'm only $999,999,942 from becoming a billionaire.
You're welcome.
When I decide where to shop, I consider things such as products, prices, location, convenience, and customer service. I don't care about their checkout counters.
So why should a store care about spending money on fancy POS points? I worked in a store during high school that used a DOS POS/inventory program and it worked fine. This is a case where the simplest way to get the job done is usually the best.
Flash is designed by a single entity whose goal is to make a quality product that is desirable to its clients (note Flash is a quality product, what Flash programmers generate is irrelevent).
SVG is designed by a group of people representing several entities, some who are direct competitors of each other, each with their own agenda, and whose goals are mainly political (note in any such group it takes just a few politically-minded members to drive away the technically-minded who get replaced by more political peers).
Figure out the rest yourself...
I worked in the SVG group at Adobe in its early years. I saw first-hand how the process fucked-up a potential Good Thing... Forget SVG, invent your own language and just put it out despite the consortiums.
Agreed, expecially because Macromedia is creating Flex. Flex is a Flash front end with Java servlets running it. Check out the demo of the online store in Flex at the Macromedia site. It really is the future of web applications.
I'm using Firefox 1.0 and the left column (with the Login, Why Login, fields, etc) is rendering over the top of the main column.
I notice that IE doesn't suffer from this today... Some days are good, others not so good.
What gives?
Now I'll have to install FlashBlock on my personal organizer.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Are there currently any open-source attempts at implementing a Flash engine?
I never liked flash, the cartoons were funny - but I've seen cartoons before.... anyways, what do you do to mozilla to make it stop asking you to get the plugin; it's something I've ignored about a thousand times and never found casually setting preferences.
It's starting to get on my nerves.
Hi - The initial attraction to Flash by designers and developers is its relative ease in creating interactive animations. Now I cannot be an absolute judge on creativity or content, I am sure that there are a lot of abusive uses of Flash (I've seen lots, and unforunately, some have come from my former students of my Flash classes), but it can be used effectively to express content and ideas when placed in the right hands. Its way easier to generate Flash content then perform a similar feat say, in a Java based presentation layer (which incidentally, Flash has a lot of origins in) or utilizing some other technology. Flash just had mass development appeal. Again, I am not necessarily disagreeing with you - its unfortunate you have had such terrible experiences with Flash. But best of luck in getting that billion.
just a web application developer and instructor in Toronto, ON Canada
If you're interested in Flex, but don't want to shell out huge wads of cash to Macromedia, check out Laszlo, the system that inspired Flex. Laszlo is now Open Source, and it's a wonderful way to program Flash, without using the horrible proprietary Flash authoring tool! www.laszlosystems.com
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Dduatta If the fact that an ordinary set of people can produce something like this without a full animation studio doesn't impress you with the possibilities of the form, you clearly just don't like animation.
Theoretically, it could, although in actuality it will only add to the already prevalent information noise, since most "rich content" will be ads (or just meaningless graphics) disturbing the user process. When withdrawing money, you will have a number of presentations and offers from the bank, and perhaps from third parties (porn ads, contact ads, whore-o-scopes, dick/boob enlargement ads, ...).
Also, current installations of very simple text- and/or video based devices intermittently display the typical Screen o' Death, since these devices typically rely on Windoze systems. This kind of failure will only increase with the more complex Flash, unless implementers start deploying Linux, OS X or other more robust systems (and this will probably not happen, since most implementers are clueless). Flash itself, being rather complicated, also has a large array of bugs.
It's too bad that the same word is used for a graphics display system and a type of data storage. I read the other day about rumors about an Apple MP3 player that was "flash based" but didn't have a display and I thought, how the heck could that work? Then I realized which "flash" they meant.
and think it said...
"Flesh is winding its way into a growing number of gadgets and devices..."
wha wha what?! now how did THAT get in there?
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
But now that I've found Open Source Laszlo, programming Flash is quite fun and easy! I can live with that.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
You're driving down the highway one day, and all of a sudden you see, "Ram the monkey with your car and win $20!"
Flash is even fronting for Asterisk
You asked for it: Adblock for real life.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
But does it run NetBSD?
I think the problem is much broader than that. It's about the authoring experience. It's relatively easy to create some funky animations in flash, and relatively difficult to do so in java. I remember there were a few programs kicking around years ago which allowed non-programmers to produce animated java applets, but none of the ones I used even remotely touched flash for easy of use and power, much less performance.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
"Flash licenses in lower volumes to makers of POS (point-of-sales/service) terminals,"
Now, we all know what POS stands for, so why did you put in those parentheses? I mean, there's no need to deny what those terminals really are. I swear, one time my dad drove up to an ATM (same thing as a POS terminal in my opinion), entered his pin, and got BSOD'd. Yes, he crashed the ATM machine.
"The technology should not be blamed just because some people use it poorly."
Yeah! Like P2P.
Anyone using Java (or Flash!) for "nothing more than animated icons" on a website ought to be shot.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Flash seems to be gaining momentum [macromedia.com] as the application development platform of choice for the web and new devices like this rumored iPod. Yet it is a closed platform that Macromedia can control at will. Is history going to repeat itself with the critical apps and content of the web era locked into one platform?
Damn stupid name for some software. It was fine when Flash (the software) was PC only since PCs only have flash memory BIOSs. Terms like "flash file system" and "upgrade flash" are going to cause a lot of headscratching. I can't wait for someone to call some software "128MB RAM".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Great! Now, a poorly designed server-side technology (Java) meets a poorly designed client GUI technology (Flash).
Thanks, but no thanks. For "rich internet applications", PHP and DHTML-based toolkits are a better choice right now: easier to train developers, faster development times, better user interfaces. With SVG, XUL, PHP-XUL, and similar technologies, that's only getting better.
It's true, in some ways client-side Java was ahead of its time in terms of technology. I think the biggest problem was the botched job that the browsers did in implementing Java support. Like how Netscape supported Java 1.1 except for the new AWT classes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Sun would have been better off developing the Java Plug-in right from the start instead of relying on Netscape and Microsoft.
EricDeploying Java applets (old set of tips)
The one thing I hate -most- on the entire Internet is Macromedia Flash. People make whole websites using a proprietary plugin that doesn't even work on a goodish number of OS's! Animated SVG can't come soon enough! Or, better yet, people understanding good old XHTML. Here's a good example:
At my local high school, I happen to know the "web team". The webmaster doesn't know any HTML. Not a bit. He couldn't even make the equivalent of a hello world. But he's the webmaster. Why? Because he knows Flash and Dreamweaver.
My only response is argh!My Systems
"SVG is designed by a group of people representing several entities, some who are direct competitors of each other, each with their own agenda, and whose goals are mainly political (note in any such group it takes just a few politically-minded members to drive away the technically-minded who get replaced by more political peers)."
And since you were part of the process. You also have noticed that Macromedia sat on the board as well.
Where'd you get 68 dollars? I want 68 dollars!
--
RumorsDaily
...they could make flash not suck, they'd be on to something.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
I'm cutting and pasting a journal entry I made a while back because I see a lot of the same crap that people like tcomplain about when it comes tflash on slashdot whenever there is a story about flash. I'm a flash developer and it does keep food on the table; however, just because it's a good deal of what I dfor a living doesn't mean I think it's perfect.
Just tvent a little bit, I really hate flash sometimes. There are smany things that make it a pain tdeal with, it's not funny. Yesterday it was the sandbox issue where flash can't access data outside it's own domain, and today it was the realization that flash is just todamn slow tuse for fast paced action games. Here is my top 10 reasons I love and hate flash:
Top 10 Reasons I Hate Flash:
10. Poor buffering of streaming mp3's
9. Inability for projectors tlaunch files outside of the root directory of the Flash movie
8. Lack of "onload" feature for Loadvariables()
7. Lack of videsupport
6. Separation of Movieclip and Button class objects
5. Unexpandable work area
4. Usage of flash in advertisements
3. Even after you set line tnone, it goes back tblack once you click something
2. New "sandbox" security protocol in Flash MX that is retroactive
1. Extremely slow screen re-draw
Top 10 Reasons I Love Flash:
10. Easy tunderstand
9. Built in sound mixer
8. Scalable vector graphics that can be drawn on the fly
7. Ability tstream mp3's and pull JPG's in on the fly
6. Ability tpull/push data from server based applications
5. Ability texport as a stand alone executable
4. XML Socket support
3. Support for PNG's and TRUE alpha channels
2. Most cross platform multimedia development tool there is
1. Actionscript, Actionscript, Actionscript
On this whole note, here is an open letter I wrote about a year agon the adoption of flash for front ends tnew web technologies. It's fairly venomous, but it was sinta hostile email I had gotten from a company I was freelanceing for at the time.
Flash Findings:
Debunking the Myths
What follows is a slightly modfied rant that I sent as an email ta client concerned about using flash for a front end interface ttheir flasgship product as opposed tDHTML. Hopefully this can provide some insight tpeople that don't fully understand the potental uses for Flash and are currently believing some common myths as truths:
Most of the things that concern clients and other developers about the prospect of using Flash for a project are either untrue or not of concern. Please excuse the rant/angry tone of this -- but there are alot of misconceptions about Flash that make me angry. I've been hearing them a while from people on slashdot. There is alot of ignorance surrounding Flash and I'm here tdebunk this.
1. Closed source
Not entirely true. The Flash file structure is actually quite open and the specifications are available freely from Macromedia. Anyone can write a program that creates flash files or a flash player. As example, there is Adobe Livemotion (www.adobe.com) that creates flash content. If flash is closed source in a traditional Microsoft sense, why does Macromedia's biggest competitor, Adobe, have a flash authoring tool? There are alsother open source flash authoring environments available, just poke around freshmeat.net and you can see for yourself. It may not be full on GPL/BSD open source, but the specifications are available -- unlike almost every other closed source format/application out there today. This is a non-issue anyway. Is your project itself open source? Didn't think so.
2. Breaks Browser paradigm
Back/Forward buttons
You shouldn't even have a need thit back in a browser any more. The web has seriously advanced since the days of HTML 1.0 and Mosaic. If a site is laid out correctly, all desired information should be availble tthe user with one mouse click, removing the need for a back b
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
Of course, the benefits of Strongmad-enabled library terminals and Marzipan-embedded mop technology would outweigh any irritation that the tinkling 888 Online Casino ads may foist upon us.
*Free after prorated rebates. Void in countries other than Moldova. Certain restructions may apply.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Some people hate those cheesy Flash animations on badly designed web sites, but Flash is soooooo much more than that. And it's a good thing that they've got so much inertia going for Flash, because Macromedia will be a lot more platform-agnostic than, say, Microsoft or Sun.
This is a big deal, people.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"Flash has it's uses, but making complete websites isn't one of them."
It is if you don't want people swiping your content.
As demonstrated with this survey posted on slashdot
... to hear flash and macromedia in one sentence and go gleefully typing away about animation and "skip intro" and all the bullshit... RTFA... it's about presenation layers... it's about application development, not websites... if you heard "skip intro" last year, or the year before, the one before that... well go find what else people are saying about flash now... you might even learn something new... if nothing at all, keep this "The simplicity and richness of a Flash interface makes devices more user-friendly and enhances the customer's experience with rich content." if you are not in the business of creating rich user experiences, well, that means nothing to you... and of course, you can keep rattling all the BS you've been rattling, because anybody in the know knows you are just on the other side... it's a human trait... people hate what they don't understand... funny, i thought the /. crowd were no mere mortals
When Java first came out they really pushed their Applet technology hard. Most of the examples for Java 1.0 were Applets which were all about web animation. Sun changed their strategy and went for the business application maket. Too bad Java didn't head off Flash from the beginning. Now, Sun is really pushing Java in games but they've been working on that for over a year and the only demo they have is a pong application. Too bad, so sad!
... in volume that is. The PXA270's are out now, but I predict that in Q1 and Q2 of 2005 we're going to see some pretty wild PDA's, embedded devices, etc.
;)
The PXA270 has enough horsepower in a small enough form factor to deliver flash to cellphones, etc. easily.
2005 is going to be an interesting year in the embedded realm. We're going to see some very cool new toys...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
SVG 1.2 is coming along, bringing with it the netowrking APIs and so forth to make it a more serious application platform. Though Adobe is typically quiet about new releases of their SVG plugin, work is going on in the background. After some licence owrries, Thomas is back working on Batik, implementing SVG 1.2 features.
SVG is getting big support from mobile vendors. See the list of shipping and upcoming phones that support SVG.
You people need to stop complaining about how this will bring more ads to ATMs and the lot. Stores are already full of ads. My local supermarket has LCDs, showing ads all the time, it's right above the register. ATMs already have ads in them. Only difference is they might be in Flash now, but that doesn't make them any more or less annoying.
There's a lot more happening with SVG for embedded devices. Like all these phones.
3D game engines could be used for educational purposes too.
"Is Flash evil, or are the evil ones the people that haven't a clue how to use it properly and/or practice proper site design?"
The same thing can be said about Visual Basic.
I attended the Macromedia MAX Conference in New Orleans in early November. Please note that I do not work for Macromedia, I abhor Flash on Web sites except for very limited uses, and will have nothing to do with Cold Fusion, so to say I felt out of place at a Macromedia conference comes as sort of an understatement. :) My observations regarding Flash on mobile devices:
Flash for mobile devices has the moniker Flash Lite. Two versions exist: 1.0 and 1.1. As I understand it, Flash Lite came about when DoCoMo in japan approached Macromedia with an interest in coming up with an animation engine to spruce up the user interfaces of DoCoMo's phones. Macromedia cobbled something together by stripping down Flash 5 to a footprint suitable for small devices. Note that, as a result, Flash Lite uses ActionScript 1.0 instead of the current 2.0 in the latest PC Flash implementations, which ruffled the feathers of some of the Flash developers at the conference.
As of the conference, Macromedia had essentially zero penetration in the U.S. They recently got a little bit of penetration in Europe with T-Mobile, but Flash Lite at this stage exists almost solely in Japan with DoCoMo, though they mentioned they might have something going with KDDI, the, as I understand it, second largest carrier in Japan behind DoCoMo. Some of the DoCoMo phones in Japan actually use Flash Lite to render the user interface replete with 'cute' animations and such, some models using Flash Lite 1.0 and others 1.1.
The latest version of Flash MX Studio 2004 (right name?) has a profile for Flash Lite 1.1, so you can develop Flash Lite applications with it. However, Flash Lite Flash applications have extreme limitations - no bigger than 100K distributable and small runtime memory allowances. Ironically, they advised developers to use bitmaps rather than high-complexity vectors because the player on these limited phones cannot handle vectors very well.
The examples of applications and code I saw demonstrated a high level of 'hack' factor to get around these limitations and Flash Lite development in Flash MX Studio 2004 looks absolutely agonizing, though that may stem from my lack of experience with Flash development in general. Let me just say when you have to draw 'off stage' *visual* elements and click on them to input your 'script', which differs from frame to frame in a 'movie track', I want none of it. When you get layered inappropriate paradigms, you have trouble.
Macromedia did a good job of providing information about Flash Lite, but they face an uphill battle because they appeared to have an almost singular focus on pleasing carriers, not developers. This does not surprise me in the mobile world, which presents a generally toxic environment for independent developers, but suffice to say that they really want to make money off licensing the player to carriers in large volume. They need developers to create some compelling apps to encourage such licensing, but with no penetration in the U.S. and very rudimentary support for developers, this does not seem likely or wise for anyone except those targeting the Japanese market.
One important point that demonstrates this: Even if you came up with a fantastic app such that you could actually convince mobile users to download Flash Lite, there currently exists no way for them to do so or for you to bundle the Flash Lite player with your app because Macromedia wants license fees from carriers for the installation of the player on the mobile device and therefore does not provide free and ubiquitous downloads as it does with the Flash browser plugin.
If you want to start development and test on the phone, you need an advanced phone for which they have a beta client, such as a Sony P900 or recent Nokia Series 60. You also need to email them at a special email address to get added to their 'Flash Lite beta program' and may have to sign an NDA to get a version of the Flash Lite player to run on your phone, which I declined. I think, to test
Two things there. I believe there was talk about porting it to C#, and there's the possability for it to spit out XUL, SVG, DHTML or any other mix. And doing it all in a more programmer friendly manner.
Where's my Flash development IDE that doesn't cost $400? ActionScript is supposedly (an ECMA) standard, and I've got a legit Flash VM installed in my Windows and Linux computers. Where's the gcc preprocessor? Where's a simple Windows or Linux compiler that compiles the script into a Flash movie? Then I can study some apps' open source, and make light little mobile clients that run on my phone, in sync with my desktop.
--
make install -not war
In another 4 years, Americans will have flash advertisements on their Diebold voting machines...
Oh well, what the hell...
I really think that a lot of people on this page, don't realize where flash is going to take us in the future. It can offer a better and more effective way to get information across to people. Think of how many poorly designed websites are out there. You don't complain about that but when some guy wants to try out somthing new (which you all will probably be using in the future) don't knock on him. The only reason you probably hate flash is because you have only seen the adds and don't see what it can do to make life so much easyer. From friendly intranet database management to games for kids to learn. Also Macromedia is working on making flash more accessable to the dissabled.
t s.uwlax.edu
http://www.karlsplace.com
dettmann.karl@studen
So it's not that GIF's are limited to the standard 256 color palette, but rather to a 256 color palette you choose. Most graphics with an optimized median cut palette look rather good in GIF format.
I assume the previous post was referring to Flash's vector based animations, and not it's JPG compression... The example sucked, but he/she's got a point saying that "Flash brings good graphics with low file sizes to the masses".
Go here, watch the videos and the emails, and come back to slashdot
Flash does have its uses...
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
w00t! Soon we'll be seeing Flash-based (software) flash-based (storage) devices!
Maybe in the form of a camera. WITH A FLASH!
Thanks - I'm here all week - try the veal.
Shades of Grayden
flash is the next standard in design after the past year's awesome css standards drive that has been growing so fast with web design now.
flash will rule the new tech gadgets, mainly cellphones in the next year i bet.
this is a very exciting time in tech. i love it!
clubmedia.com
I can't believe how damn clueless some people are regarding technology like Flash.
Everyone judges the damn content on freakin' banner adverts, instead of having a deeper look into how incredibly powerful it is.
Pffft.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Wait till Flash creeps into your server room! Enterprise Flash Beans (with full antialiasing) - woo-hoo!
Finally a Flash rant that doesn't come from a total dickhead.
/. .
But you've got some serious wrongs in your rant. Haven't got much time so I'll speed through a few (my refererenc is Flash MX 2004 Pro, btw):
10. Poor buffering of streaming mp3's
Completely wrong. Works perfectly if you write your own AS 2-liners that control delayed playback dependent on bandwidth. Which is what you should do in the first place anyway.
8. Lack of "onload" feature for Loadvariables()
Bad example. Loadvariables() is an ancient artifact thats only left in for compatability reasons. Load an XML document with your stuff (loadvariables() sucks anyway. I remember hacking a dynamic flash app with that in Flash 5. Creepy.) and you can check loadstatus and totalload anytime you want.
7. Lack of videsupport
Incorrect. Importing into swf doesnt bloat Quicktimes and FLV is the best streaming format out there. Or do you want the plugin to be a full range video player? Isn't that a bit much for a VM with so much features allready? I'd rather keep VM size down then support all video formats in existance. We get new ones every odd week anyway. No use trying to keep up with that.
6. Separation of Movieclip and Button class objects
Yeah, shure. Stop the nitpick allready. Heavens crickey, that button thing is a built-in for those who are used to clicking together their apps by hand since Flash 3 using the old style paradigms of keeping your brain switched off. AS is a full range PL with a set of libs. Don't like them? Ignore them and build your own.
THat's for a quick comment of mine. Aside from that: Congrats to a rather educated remark on flash in a long time. Rare thing here on
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What the hell is informative about this parent post ?
I'd love to know - the person who wrote it is a clueless moron.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Here's a great tool [plugin] to disable Pesky Flash on Firefox. It replaces the flash area with a white box with a button. If you really, really want to play the object, just click on it. Quality Product that eliminates distracting ads while still letting you play the movie if you really want to see it.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
while I sometimes cringe at the way flash is being used on the internet and whatnot, I do think that it can be put to good use as well
...
now - don't get me started on the UI to create Flash ; it's precisely why I hate to do Flash work as a job, Macromedia really screwed up royally there, me thinks
But - where it can come in handy -- domotics !
I was checking to install domotics in my new house - and apparently there is only one company that uses standard input from touchscreens over Macromedia Flash interfaces, amongst others
The company is Vantage (vantage-emea.com), and apparently they also use IP integration in their whole setup.
Now - this truly enables me - and others - to quickly learn how to program these pretty interfaces (Touchpoint) myself, without need of pesky operators that are paid by the hour
Vantage even created a Designer's Toolbox - (vantagecontrols.com
Knowledge first. Social contact later.
I'v used loads of different POS systems, both as a user and a Admin.
The best and most stable are DOS based. Running on pure DOS 6.2 or under Win98/2K..., the best and most stable was a old Dos program running under Win98 on Tills and 2K on back office, on a Novell Ver 3 (on top of Dos 6.22) on a PII servering 40+ users...
Windows versions are normally just FrontEnds for the Dos program and run a hell of a lot slower and are crap to use....
Flash on a POS the system will have tobe P4 with 1GB of Ram and ATI9800pro's......
Leave flash where is belongs..., Cartoons that are fucked up....
Banana Phone http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/15133/
And Banana Phone: The Aftermath http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/15170/
NEEDS SOUND..., Turn the Volume up and piss every on off...
or Because I miss Breskfast http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/47/
---------
"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
I nearly bought one once. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/pogo/spec/index.h tml
I really don't know how java missed opportunity while its coming with every device.
Palm, PDA, Symbian and even my funny 240 kb ram Siemens C55.
http://www.midlet.org for more info
Scalable Vector Graphics is getting network support??? Glad to see no-one is getting carried away.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
> sites like Homestar Runner [homestarunner.com] can use Flash in a way that dovetails with their content. Uhh.. That's http://www.homestarrunner.com/ NOT homestarunner... homestarunner (one r) is NSFW!
Nice of you to point out the definition for that acronym. Before I noticed the parenthesis, I was thinkin' "Finally, someone's just sayin' it like it is! :D"
:-/
I guess I was horribly mistaken.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Flash as a technology is fine. The only problem is that it breaks the hyperlinked web, which means that the more data is in flash, the more impossible it becomes to find it.
Fortunately, there is hardly any meaningful information Flash only, so for now it is not a problem.
If you don't believe me, go to Jakob Nielsen's site, and see for yourself.
useit.com
Bart
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
Flashblock is great because it puts control back in the hands of us, the users. No longer will flash start running automatically, instead all the flash content is replaced with a play button, one click and you see the flash YOU want to see and are free from the the flash that someone ELSE want to force you to see.
Now who could possibly complain about a plugin that gives you this choice?
If you are an IE user, this may be the final reason to switch to firefox, to use this great extension.
Unfortunately, we are not likely to get flashblock on POS terminals.
Flash as a technology DOESN'T break the hyperlinked web, anymore than Java, or JPEG breaks the hyperlinked web. The problem (as with all these things) is the poor implementation by bad web designers, or good designers working towards different goals than you.
Some designers for example don't want you to be able to teleport right to the middle of their site, they want you to come in through the front door, or at least a side door, so they can show you stuff on the way.
Now lots of people here will quickly decry that sort of design as evil and marketing led, and it CAN be i agree, however it can also be very useful when they tell me something i needed to know, when i wasn't aware i needed to know it and would never have looked for it on my own.
Fundamentaly it's all about design, and bad design is bad regardless of the technology.
Obviously you still don't understand how flashblock works, so I have made a more informative post that better explains why everyone should have flashblock:
1 10 50515
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132241&cid=
I trust you will find this one more informative.
Flash is the future, my friend
A future where one company (Macromedia) controls the format everyone uses for websites? What's to stop them abusing that monopoly; the temptation would certainly be there.
You get a taste of what that experience would be like when you right click on a flash animation today (perhaps an advert, perhaps a graphic). Macromedia controls that menu, not the user, because it's *their* plugin. Incidentally, if I right click and choose 'Settings...' I get a dialog asking if I want to allow ultracomercial.com to 'access' my microphone and webcam. Although I have no intention of letting them, the fact someone thought this was a good idea at Macromedia scares me.
That's not a future I'd be happy in. While Flash is very flexible (via scripting etc) and the tools easy to use (or at least it was and they were when I looked at it a few years ago), I'd prefer a future where a format like SVG was common and supported. SVG is open, searchable, usually text (so easy to manipulate/copy/save by servers and end-users alike), and thus easy to output from common scripting languages. Once one person has written a library to do this, anyone can use that language to output dynamic graphics on their server, using whatever scripting language/platform they choose.
Shame they made the initial spec so huge that no-one wants to implement it all.
Considering Flash as a platform, we've been here before with ActiveX or XAML trying to take over the web, and we should be wary of the same sort of experience. Yes, I know ActiveX is not Flash but the aim of both companies is the same.
Have you seen Processing? Or MediaFrame?
For example:
It doesn't break the web, but it circumvents what is IMHO the biggest step forward in computer interfaces since the mouse: the back button. If computers had a back/undo/cancel/"just get me out of here and back to a screen I recognise" button that worked everywhere, inexperienced users wouldn't be half as scared, they would play around more, and they'd quickly become more experienced.
nt
Since year 2000 Dynamic RAM has stayed around $100-$200 a gigabyte, while flash has fallen from nearly a $1000 to $70 a gigabyte. If you dont need RAM's greater speed, you might as well go wiht the slower and less power-hungry flash.
I dont know whats slowing down the release of next generation RAM. Typically they release a new four-times-larger chip every 3-4 years. Some RAM manufacturers have been fined recently for memory price collusion.
you mean, iPod flash ? That's great.
SVG has support for JavaScript, which in turn comes with quite a bit of functionality. Say, things like XMLHttpRequest. Or modifying the SVG contents dynamically. Plus, it's a tried, tested and true language that has quite a mindshare of its own, as well as several interpreter implementations.
All in all, SVG has quite a bit going for it, save for committee-induced idiosyncrasies. I personally am looking forward to native support of SVG in Mozilla - then all hell will break loose with XUL apps directly integrating vector graphics and whatnot.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
Adobe and other bigwigs were interested in SVG because it was a direct competitor to Flash. Adobe had no Flash-killer at the time, and they were hoping that SVG would be another Postscript-type success for them. But the standards committee slowed things down to a crawl (helped greatly by Macromedia and Microsoft), SVG was delayed, and by the time it got mature enough, Flash had become so advanced and popular there was no way competing against it. Adobe gave up. Sure, SVG continues on, but without the backing of big companies who see no business value into it, it'll be an uphill struggle.
Bad Design (as in JVM being a bigger CPU and memory hog than any other programming language interpreter I've ever known) is NOT "being ahead of time".
Linux is not Windows
Simple: If you replace HTML,... with Flash on Websites you lose the ability to view Webpages on arbitrary sized screens (which is important now as more and more people get bigger screens at home and view webpages on portable devices), you lose the ability to use a screenreader or custom fonts, you lose the ability to save parts of the content or copy it to your clipboard, to open pages in new windows,...
You gain: More flashy, colorful, distracting shit and nothing more.
Don't get me wrong, Flash is nice for games and movies but it should stay out of Web-Design.
Linux is not Windows
You don't have to understand shit in detail to notice the bad smell.
./ers are just prejudiced when critizising your favorite technology. Some of us simply see through the Hype and identify the "advantages" of these "technologies" for what they are.
It is not only Flash but all these Web "technologies" that claim to be sooooo user-friendly while at the same time pages like Google, Slashdot, Freshmeat, Heise.de,... that use not much more than pure HTML are among the most usable pages I've ever encountered.
You Zealots, and I mean not only Flash but most other people using this argument (the "you know only technology x from y years ago, now it is much better" argument) too, must understand that not all
Linux is not Windows
If you go to a site of a photo-editing company
The problem is not with photo-editing company, but
a) with using proprietary closed technology, which effectively discriminate against open/free one.
b) with clueless/time-stressed GUI or Web designers which misuse Flash everywhere they can
The Web offers too much freedom. You should not be able to turn ads off. You should not be able to scroll away from them (that was the original purpose of frames, did you know?) To make a long story short, you *will* be assimilated...
Take a look at Rich Internet Apps created with Macromedia Flex. I agree that flash sucks for sites...but it kicks ass for building apps. i.e. portlets, timecard systems, mail clients, media libs, etc.
Now, in addition to the rumored flash-based iPod, they can have a Flash-based iPod and a flash-based Flash-based iPod. Then you can listen to it in your car while you look at your HDD-based HD-HUD using CSS-protected CSS to generate CSS for the pages.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
A super versatile goodie.
Here's some explanation:
2D Web Graphics: SVG by I.Herman, W3C, Head of Offices.
Introduction to SVG
svgx.org
SVG.org
What is SVG
Yahoo svg-developers group
Not only that, Java crashes Firefox.
amen- you're not gonna have java programmers making spongebob cartoon animations, so you're gonna have to get artists to do it. i know very few artists who can program in java (or even really know what java is, for that matter) but pretty much everyone knows their way around flash.
i think it was to macromedia's benefit that flash was designed as an animation tool first and then got the code side added on afterward. actionscript has gotten quite powerful and thoroughly object-oriented and easy to learn. they've earned their place.
Mod this guy up... fuh-nee!
-- daecabhir (this mind intentionally left blank)