Flash Developers Fear Spectre of Spyware

SomeGuyNamedMike writes "I realize the thought of using Flash and Actionscript is considered beneath many Slashdotters, but here's this piece, anyway: Macromedia is receiving (and answering) a a lot of flack from several blogs over its decision to package Yahoo! Toolbar with its Flash player. Will your company develop Flash content knowing Macromedia is using its runtime as its own marketing piece?"

Comments

SVG

[Kaenneth]

Hopefully this will allow more open technologies, like SVG to get a better hold.

we'll continue with the prior player

[ScooterMX]

flash is a big player in elearning, and there aren't a lot of tools that can be used at the skillset that many content developers have. We'll just continue, and have our clients use a specific non-ad based version. Macromedia has done a lot to extend the web for a lot of good reasons. They've had some tough times lately, and I think that they really must have struggled with this before selling out.

One Minor Detail...

[lax-goalie]

The one thing that makes this palatable is you don't actually have to install the Y! toolbar -- you're given an option and can decline the toolbar install. Problem solved.

Macromedia's been doing this for a while with the Shockwave plug-in, and while developers HATE it (including me), the revenue from yahoo's been a godsend for the Director team. (No, Director's not dead, despite what the Flash team at MACR wants you to think...)

Still, I think most of Macromedia's top-level management are pinheads, and this is more proof of it...

Re:Flash blows..

[mysticalreaper]

I dislike flash for the reasons you pointed out.

A) not open source. open source is good for me, so closed is worse

B) platform support. Flash will NOT reach the entire world, simply because you must have the flash player, which is unavailable on most platforms (all but the most popular)

C) standardization. There is none. it's proprietary vendor lock in. There's no competeing development environments, no competing players

D) breakage of the web. Flash is not the web. therefore, you can't bookmark it, index it, search it. You can't look at the code, or make the text bigger, or have your text reader read it because you are blind

Basically, flash is okay for silly games or homestarrunner, but so bad in other ways it's generally frowned upon by those who are not confused by colors and animation.

Not Spyware At All

[stevemm81]

This isn't spyware at all... The Yahoo! toolbar doesn't do any spying or hijacking, and Flash doesn't require you to install it. You might install it by mistake if you're clicking through the install menu, but then you can just uninstall it right away.

If it were spyware, installing it would be mandatory, Flash might not disclose that it exists, it would interfere with your use of the browser and you couldn't just go to add/remove programs and take it off.

Re:Open Source Flash Player?

[cortana]

Now read the license for the Flash file format specification:

2. Licenses. Pursuant to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF.

Plus there's the usual bullshit I'd expect in clauses 3 and 5.

What I didn't find was a clause that basically said "If our implementation differs from the spec, our implementation is correct, the spec is wrong and you are screwed". I seem to remember that being there in the past, but I might be wrong.

I think they cut the deal backwards.

[anopres]

If they embedded the current flash player in the Yahoo toolbar, I don't think there would be a problem. Heck, they could even make the Yahoo toolbar a fancy flash app.