Slashdot Mirror
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?"
In case it's needed.
= 53
http://www.turdhead.com.nyud.net:8090/index.php?p
http://www.hyperology.com.nyud.net:8090/?p=90
In case of Slashdotting, break mirror.
See here.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"A spectre is haunting slashdot - the spectre of spyware." Cowboy Marx
Ok... somebody get Google on the case to get us an alternative... QUICK!
Everyone today is worried about the 'Spectre of Spyware' - it's not just Flash Developers or any one group. Just about any network enabled software developed today suffers that problem. The real question is do you need to question the security of any/all software that you use/develop? And the quick answer is: Yes
But what will replace it? My little boy likes to play flash games all the time. In theory Java is better all around, but in practice it doesn't seem to run as well.
There's not much you can do about the way people use your tools. You can't program a hammer to only pound nails.
Berto
Hopefully this will allow more open technologies, like SVG to get a better hold.
It is more than time for an open source Flash player...
Anyone know of any?
http://www.diaperdevil.com/
I looked at flash and was happy to see that a flash *.swf file saved and run localy, can't do anything more then when its on the web... unless it's saved to a folder with a 'command' subfolder and batch/scripts in it for each command. Much better then an java applet saved and run locally, which can do anything.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
If it makes less people willing to use flash then less "developers" will want to use the thing and perhaps it can start dying a well deserved death.
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.
Flash is successful. There is no real need for Macromedia to bundle the Yahoo toolbar with it, at least not from a technical viewpoint.
Probably some Macromedia executives don't like that they just give Flash away for free. When approached by Yahoo executives who would like their toolbar installed on more computers, these Macromedia executives were happy to learn that they could generate extra revenue from Yahoo by bundling the toolbar.
Unfortunately the executives of neither company had enough insight to predict that the whole thing would blow up in their faces.
I worked for a multi-media house where to used Action Scripting to report user statistics invisibly to the user. IMHO, that's considered the first type of Spyware - it just looks are reports anonymously. Macromedia in bed with Yahoo!? I don't trust ANY of Yahoo!'s downloads, toolbars, messengers, nor SBC bundles. They're just so invasive and overwhelming for users.
I guess we'll be seeing more of this as time goes on. I wonder if Sun will follow suit and install the Yahoo toolbar when you download the java runtime installation.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Some guy saw that Yahoo toolbar is now being bundled with Flash by default and exploded about how that might be spyware.
Yahoo toolbar isn't a spyware application. I don't like it, but it's just an add-on app from a respectable company to help fix Microsoft's broken browser.
Spyware is a very specific word. It means software that reports back to the author with data about you.
I think a more appropriate term here would be "shovelware"... software you may not care about that gets installed just for kicks. It used to mean software that was shoveled onto a CD along with the main package, just because CDs had so much space free.
What's going on here? Clearly Yahoo paid a bunch of cash to Macromedia. What's the matter, Yahoo? Can't get enough people to install your software on its own merits? Have to resort to tricking people into installing your software? That's the mark of a bad product. A good product people will seek out. A bad product has to be foisted upon an unsuspecting public.
You're jerking my chain right? Did Macromedia really do that? Damn, i tolerate decent Flash movies, but won't go out of my way to sit through a shitty one no matter what the content following it is. Now, i guess i'll not be seeing any more Flashplayer anytime soon (been too lazy to install yet ... and now sure as hell won't).
i guess an important question i'm forgetting to ask is this: do you get the option to *not* intall that crap toolbar?
most flash you see nowadays is ads anyways, like the "[verb] the [obscure noun] and get a free ipod" ads you see, and the ones at the top of slashdot. i haven't actually used a real flash app in a long time, except homestar runner and some musicians' websites. so i guess its good to keep around for those, but this is really low of macromedia. i knew i was ahead of the game when i dropped flash a few years back.
By that I mean an open-source flash redering plugin that is bundled with Firefox?
Seriously. mplayer can decode a variety of closed formats. What's the difference?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
why must people continue to make computing such an esoteric excersise?
Because you're stupid.
Macromedia Flash continues to not have a 64-bit linux version.
I make sure to leave a note to all websites that use flash heavily for ads, that they did not even have a chance at getting any money due to my visit.
badness 10000
Isn't that like asking: "Will your company develop content for Firefox knowing that the Mozilla Foundation is using it as its own marketing piece?"
I don't care that Mozilla includes various related links with the browser, nor do I care that Macromedia includes other stuff either. If there's a business case for using Flash, my company will use it. Man, if people objected because of co-marketing deals, then nobody would ever develop for Windows based upon the desktop shortcuts that come with it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It seems Flash is going in three directions:
- Flex -- Enterprise Flash based on XML
- Central -- A way for them to use Flash to develop consumer apps
- Classic Flash
Classic Flash is completely hamstrung to prevent it from doing things like writing to your HD, communicating outside the basic arena of your own web site, etc. They are really paranoid about it becoming used for *other people's* spyware/malware.
Now, as far as Flash being spyware itself, they will go as far as the market lets them. If they, like any company, can make money through software add-ons like Yahoo!! toolbar, they will. But it seems unlikely that they will damage their reputation by overstepping, especially when the big money is potentially in Flex, etc.
OK, I know this is /., the home of open source zealots etc. etc., but I'm curious:
Why the Flash hatred?
Was there a court battle that hurt open source involving Flash somewhere? Or is it just because it's not an open source standard?
This is a legit question, not a troll. Thus I posted with my username, not as an AC.
And for the record, I do use WinXP, MS Office and other closed source products. I do however support open source in some ways. Example: I use Firefox, and will never look back to MSIE.
your witty attack has left me useless and gasping for breath.... i shall never show my face on slashdot again....
Flash is really annoying, but there are times I don't mind it. Most band sites I visit are in Flash, and usually the site's style corresponds closely to the band's most recent album's style which is kinda cool. Green Day's site is a good example of Flash I don't hate.
But Flash ads? Flash nav-bars? Entirely Flash-based sites for products and companies? I don't think I'm alone when I say the web should stay HYPERTEXT based because that's what it is designed for. The web can be as dynamic as it wants to, and languages like php and asp are one of the best examples of the direction the web should be heading, but they're also a good example of where the web should not be heading: flashing lights, obnoxious sounds that play when you visit a site, dynamic and processor-intense media which displays over the page you want to view. So Flash is kind of on thin ice with me right now...
And now they're pulling this stunt? Sorry, but no. Good thing I never paid Macromedia for my copy of Dreamweaver...Hopefully Mozilla doesn't make me eat my words, though. I gave them money (donated) and now they're getting awfully touchy feely with Google...
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
I didn't realize that anything called "Turd Head" or a couple other bloggers constituted "a lot" or anything credible for that matter. Is there another news source for the "issue" the parent raised?
As an ex Flash using developer, the advantage Flash has over Java is the IDE. (Not that the Flash Producing program is really an IDE)
With flash you can rapidly develop graphics and then plug in a small amount of code to make it do "clever things". This means a designer (of the graphic type) can build games etc.
On the flip side with Java you have to actually know how to code, so most applets are made by coders not designers.
What does this lead to? Well most of the stuff flash is used for is pretty with not too much coding, like most of the Web. While the Java stuff may have lots of features, but is kinda ugly.
Basically Java could replace Flash, but it would need someone to build an IDE for designers to use before it was popular and started to generate content to match that of Flashes.
As it stands Flash is a graphics format with scripting, while Java is a fully fledged programming language with the ability to do graphics in a web browser. If someone came up with the JavaFlash graphic tool / ide then we would be onto a winner.
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...
My, that's a useful comment.
Look, I work for Macromedia, so I'm hardly a disinterested observer, but saying "Flash blows" (or "technology X blows", for that matter) is hardly what I'd call a useful contribution to this discussion.
Dislike Flash because it's not open-source and thus is unacceptable to your personal philosophy? Fine, that's a point you should make.
Dislike Flash because it isn't available for your platform of choice (eg, 64-bit Linux)? Fine, that's a point you should make.
Dislike Flash because it (like every other web technology) can be misused to make really annoying ads? Fine, that's a point you should make.
Dislike Flash because of some other, specific reason? Fine, that's a point you should make.
But for all the folks out there who simply have juvenile comments on the order of "Flash sucks"... well, I guess I just don't understand what you think you're contributing to the topic.
(For the record: yeah, I have AdBlock installed in Firefox, to block annoying ads of all sorts.)
Man one of our doze admins just about blew a blood vessel yesteday when he installed flash on a machine and it installed that thing...He went in and immediately banned the site so yes it is gonna cause problems and it already has.
Got Code?
But what will replace it?
SVG for vector-based animations and Java for the few minigames out there.
So are they including both the IE and the Firefox toolbar? If they dont distribute it with the FireFox plugin, whats the big deal?
If we hadn't all let Macromedia get a monopoly on pretty animated graphics on the Internet, they would never have pulled such a move.
I think it stinks, they sell Flash to developers on the understanding that people can download the flash player and run there content, and that most people can view it.
If I setup Chris's Animated Web Graphics tomorrow and built a better system, no one would buy it because people don't like using random plugin dependant content.
Macromedia should be sued by all of the people who have purchased there products for creating Flash content.
and when will all the browsers support it.. i hate flash but SVG ain't going to help before 2010
Flash is a platform. If you develop for that platform, you must convince users to download that platform.
Part of convincing your users to download that platform is being able to let them feel like there's no ill effects. This is why web plugins have essentially disappeared, people are afraid or too lazy to install all that shit.
Now Macromedia is selling the ability to get your app bundled with their platform. And if you're a developer for their platform, you now run the risk of getting upset emails from people who don't quite understand what a software installation process entails and just hitting "ok" over and over while installing going "I INSTALLED THE FLASHY THINGY YOU WANTED AND NOW THERE'S THIS WIERD TOOLBAR THING ON MY BROWSER!! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY COMPUTER??"
This is not so good from the developer's perspective, and it raises valid questions about the future reliability of Macromedia; if they're bundling Yahoo now, what will they be bundling in 4 years?
Anyone else remember when the Flash player was so tiny that it could fit in a java applet, and if you loaded most Flash pages without having the plugin installed, it did?
I recently installed a new Flash player and when I had to fire up IE for a compatibility test - there was the dang Yahoo Toolbar. I was pretty distracted when I did the install and Macromedia had, I repeat HAD, a very high trust factor with me. I don't use IE very often so I didn't notice it for a while. I thought to myself "that's very short sighted thinking Macromedia." They then moved from the high trust level to the do not trust level.
Thalasar
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
So how do I know that they are not going to install
anything else on the system. It does not matter much we banned macromedia's web site at the company as soon as we noticed it started installing yahoo toolbar. 100% loss of all trust, they just got placed in the same ranks as Real and Kazzaa
Got Code?
Most Slashdotters may well disdain Flash, but I really like the ability to integrate Flash with web services. The Flash provides an interface unatainable in regular HTML + javascript and it will run in many environments, including Linux.
What would I like to see next? Flash compile directly to Java Applet!
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
For me the line was crossed when I ran into a talking flash ad on Slashdot. Since then I've been using Flashblock which blocks everything by default and lets you play individual flash pieces.
Maybe it's not a constructive comment, but it gives a taste of the public (or at least geek) opinion.
I'm the owner of a company developing a (sucessful) product to manage content on a website (A CMS). - This product is heavy on JavaScript usage, and laso uses ActiveX for several things. - We've been thinking a lot about several things who would be easier and faster to develop in Flash rather than DHTML, but how can I professionally tell people to download a RUNTIME for viewing content, when it comes bundled with third party software, that I myself disapprove of, and find annoying? - The answer is; I can't.
I use Windows, and I have Flash installed myself - This is not enough for me to uninstall it, but this just seem like shady business practice, and depending on the reaction from Macromedia on this issue I can't see myself upgrading it, or recommend others to upgrade it.
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
"I realize the thought of using Flash and Actionscript is considered beneath many Slashdotters." 'nuf said.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
I recall trying to disable flash in Safari. The only way I could really find was to remove the plugin. (I have yet to find a way to mod a style sheet to block flash) Unfortunately this causes Safari to belch up an error message every time it runs into a flash object. I'd rather have it skip rendering silently. Does anyone have a "pacifier" flash plugin for Safari that will just do nothing? Or another solution?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
Flash itself as a technology doesn't blow - however, the only sites I've seen that used it (or say, in 99% of cases) use it either for highly annoying ads, very annoying "splash" page when you get tho their websites, or bad and non-accessible site nav (usually with no real structure and nothing to fall back to if flash plasyer isn't installed).
:P )
There might be good uses for it, but I've hardly ever seen that (ok, I'll give you badger badger
So along with adblock (if not even BEFORE it) I load flashblock.
Oh, and be sure I'm not going to use this (flash) instead of XForms (or whatever else) either.
///<sig
and when will all the browsers support it..
http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html
the simple stuff already works with:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/
samples
I just installed it. It asked me if I wanted the toolbar. I said no. End of story.
Paranoia.
vk.
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.
Even if that means Flash will be blocked in future Browsers when the Annoyance/Usefulness Ratio of Flash gets shifted even more towards Annoyance?
Linux is not Windows
I work for a US government agency. We will not use flash under any circumstances because it is not ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. No big whoop, you might think, until you start to imagine what it really would be like to be blind. As a blind person, the internet holds great potential to expand the information blind people can expose themselves to, but everytime their parsers hit crazy crap like a flash site, it's basically a brick wall.
So, for their sake, let's abandon Flash, once and for all. If not, let's use intelligent coding that routes blind people's browsers around Flash and to the ASCII content they seek.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
As someone has already mentioned Flash is used extensively on educational websites. I realize that the average geek guy does not find flash extremely useful in daily life unless your into Homestar Runner, but it is incredibly useful in the educational arena, making websites for children much more interactive and useful. (This is my biggest issue with Linux: very few useful, well-designed children's applications.)
I am disappointed to find that Macromedia is taking this route now that they have become a big name. I prefer to download only what I request without having to deal with "extras", spyware or not. I personally won't mind as long as they tell you before hand and give an chance to opt out.
My other concern is that this may make my job harder when it comes to cleaning up other people's computers. Its bad enough trying to convince people that they shouldn't go downloading every free screensaver they like but to have to explain to them where even more random bits of software come from, sigh.
In the end I don't hold it against Macromedia, they do have the right to make their money somewhere (yes, I realize that the prices for the developement software is pretty high.) I just wish they would be more straight forward about things, advertising it on their site like Download.com does instead of just bundling it with their software.
I think the easiest way to express what we want is to say that there be no payload in the Flash Player download. When we ask people to download Flash to view our sites, we do not want to open the door to unrelated advertising or marketing activity. It makes owners of Flash based sites unwilling and unpaid partners in Macromedia's 3rd party marketing efforts.
More pragmatically, you can see where there might be a problem if we are competing with whatever the payload is.
ed
But for all the folks out there who simply have juvenile comments on the order of "Flash sucks"... well, I guess I just don't understand what you think you're contributing to the topic.
;)
It's like this. When you describe dogshit, you don't say "I don't like the smell, although it is a very pretty shade of brown." and you don't say "I don't like the way it sticks to my shoes, although it is very good for growing plants" . You just say "Dammit, I fucking hate dogshit. This sucks."
Now I may be wrong, but it seeems to me that what he was saying wasn't "I don't like Flash because it's not open source and can be used to create really annoying ads, but it's great for stupid cartoons" and it wasn't "I don't like Flash because it isn't available for 64 bit linux"
Again, I may be wrong, but it appears to me that he was saying something more along the lines of "Flash is a lot like dogshit. It sucks and I hate it."
Hope I was able to clear that up for ya!
Oh, b.t.w... VB sucks too!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The future is now.
Flash seems currently the best way to deliver sound, movies and vector graphics on the web. But the slightest inclusion of spyware would kill the technololgy in a flash.
Companies will continue using flash until not a single user looks at a lame flash intro and says "cool"
Bottles.
I rest my case :-)
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.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
Didn't Real learn a valuable lesson similar to this one when they had one of their media encoding tools stamp "RealNetworks" on all of its output? Companies will pay lots of money for production tools, but they won't stand for someone else piggybacking their advertising on their content.
Or maybe they will now, since the content itself isn't branded. What a crock. Sad thing is, Flash can be a really useful tool, but it's seldom used as such. (Unlike, say, the BLINK tag, which was a useless and pointless idea the second it rolled off the line.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I must be in the minority that actually like Flash. It's very effective for adding interactivity and animation to the web. Yes, it's used for lots of ads, but it's also used for lots of really cool (and even useful) sites.
But the idea that it would come bundled with other software is hideous, and the reasons should be obvious. This is the deal breaker for me and many others, I'm sure. It doesn't matter what software is bundled with Flash, the bundling itself is just wrong, in principle. And the timing of this decision couldn't possibly be worse. Google, for example, is showing more and more that rich, interactive sites can be developed without Flash. Turning Flash into mere packaging for third-party software will shift people in droves to javascript/XML alternatives (and whatever else comes along).
I remember the days when RealPlayer used to be really cool... Look at it now -- it's nothing more than packaging for advertisements. It's bad business, plain and simple.
You forgot E.
E) You can't tell it to NOT play sounds. God damn.
Flash is a great web design tool. All of these geeks (yes, YOU!) just say it sucks because that's the "geek" thing to say. It would be uncool in the computer geek world to actually like technology that non-geek people like.
Man, I didn't expect all the positive reaction to my Dreamweaver comment! Sadly, I don't code commericially or for fun in Dreamweaver...I code in vim and kate. Linux, of course. I haven't paid for ANY software in a long time, with the exception of all the default bundled stuff like WindowsXP Dell sells you with a new PC. I work for an open source-based company and try to keep my entire computing experience as open source/free software-based as possible. And about that Windows I paid for...I dual boot that particular machine, as it's handy to now and then load up Windows and see what the industry buzz is about. Dreamweaver was one such industry buzz, and it didn't really grab me. Seems to be focused more towards web designers than coders, so I'll stick with my free open source tools. Thanks, though.
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
By your own definition, Yahoo Toolbar is spyware. See the Yahoo Toolbar's Privacy Page: http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/toolbar/detail s.html
Some choice quotes:
etc.Now if you knowingly download and install the Toolbar yourself, you clearly are ok with this (you did read the privacy notice right?). But for someone to have this installed on their computer without their consent is definitely just plain wrong.
Look, I work for Macromedia
Great,
Now, where in the hell is the Shockwave player for linux !?!
32-bit would be fine.
This is absolute shite.
So many educational websites were duped into using shockwave(not just Flash) and it really bugs me that Macromedia doesn't have the decency to even respond to the thousands of request(yes thousands, look at the petitions)
I don't hate Flash, I hate that Macromedia is ignoring Shockwave for linux.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
What do you do when you need to access a website that can only be accessed through through flash?
Why would slashdotters not like flash/actionscript? What am I missing?
ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
Well, under that logic I'd really think a lot about using ActiveX, as most of the people who dislike flash also dislike IE.
You basically lose all greek cred if your web app doesn't work in anything but IE.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
If anyone else said this before me, I'm not aware of it, and I take credit for it as "dgould's First Law":
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Flash lets people talk back to a server that it was not loaded from? That's not a good idea at all.
- sigs are for wimps.
heck yeah! It was the closest thing to Tank I could find.. very addictive. Nice packaging, too.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Simply click on whichever blocked pieces you want to re-enable.
Or just go somewhere else. What did you used to do when you arrived at Websites that 'must be viewed in Internet Explorer at 800x600' with broken JavaScript detection and other assorted irritations? There's usually an alternative.
What site should your firewall block to prevent a drive-by Yahoo toolbar install?
Good points. Also interesting to note that Adobe now do the same thing for those downloading Acrobat Reader. Ticked checkbox for the Adobe Yahoo Toolbar, etc.
Can't wait for all of my clients to start passing on their confused customers wondering where the extra toolbar on the browser came from.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
A) not open source. open source is good for me, so closed is worse
Worse, perhaps, but unusable? No. How about your video card driver?
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)
Nothing will reach the entire world, Flash currently covers Windows/Mac/Linux/Pocket PC, and is branching to cell phones. Not bad for a proprietary technology. I still can't play Quicktime movies for crap on Linux, but Flash does pretty well, even the newest features like video.
C) standardization. There is none. it's proprietary vendor lock in. There's no competeing development environments, no competing players
Not entirely true. SWF, the file format, is open and there are several 3rd party development environments (not as functional, but they exist). There are also open source libraries for generating SWF (ming, et al). There are even general purpose encoders for Flash video. NOTHING stops someone from creating Flash content using free tools, and NOTHING stops someone from creating a free, open source Flash player like the below:
http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/
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
Depends on how it's used -- and certainly this will change over time. Google could write a reader for SWF just like PDF once Flash becomes better at rendering text which would be usable to search on.
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.
Simply not true -- perhaps it was at one point but Flash has grown a lot from the Futuresplash days.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
I find it strange that /.ers aren't clamoring more for SVG growth and development. I understand that SVG is under the radar because development tools are rare. I can't see how we can tout standards in many other aspects of the internet but not this.
Linux at home
In theory Java is better for flexibility, however it lacks several things:
1. A robust, hand-optimized-assembly, variable quality vector drawing system. Java can do 2D anti-alised graphics now, but at nowhere near the speed that flash can.
2. An IDE that marries artwork creation, layout, and scripting. This is simply from the lack of anyone doing it.
3. Startup times comparable to image loading or JPEG decompression. This is inherent to the nature of the Java runtime environment.
4. Web Service support. Java applets can only talk to the originating server, preventing you from using web services.
My question is, if they decide to bundle the Yahoo spyware, I mean, toolbar with it. Then, does that mean there'll be no firefox plugin since there is no yahoo bar for firefox?
I'm personally not a fan of flash because of the inability to point at a certain "page" inside a flash site. Otherwise it's mostly misuse that appals(sp?) me. Such as the flash banners, with sounds that make my music sound like crap and have no mute button. It's kool for games and cartoons. But PLEASE band the use of audio without a mute button!!!
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Recently Macromedia actually experimented with the player, to see what effect increasing the size of the plugin would have on downloads. They found that once it got past a certain size (which wasn't revealed), downloads dropped off dramatically.
So I'm really surprised that they're bundling other software in the download now. I've no doubt that the total size is still below that threshold they found. But there's always a constant battle at MM to add features to Flash whilst keeping the player small. This ain't gonna make that easier and any bundling that alienates the user base is pretty self defeating IMHO.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
If you work at Macromedia (I was at your offices last fall), go strait to the nearest biz guy and tell him to get the Yahoo toolbar the heck out of your product. I work on Flash related technology too, and this just makes my stomach turn. It's actually very cool technology, with lots of great applications, and this could spell its death knell. Until now, the reason that players like Viewpoint have failed utterly and Flash is still more or less ubiquitous is that Flash has been a medium for artistic expression as well as advertisement and annoyance. Viewpoint's bundled toolbar pisses people off. What's next? Auto-update without an opt-out? Soon EVERY browser will block Flash. Not a brilliant marketing move.
Thus, flash sucks.
I realize the thought of using Flash and Actionscript is considered beneath many Slashdotters I see all flash ads...
A lot of people here are saying Flash is replaceable by Java. This isn't really the case. Flash uses vector graphics to make things really small. Redoing in Java would lose the vector graphics support. Not to mention Java loads a lot more slowly.
What's the deal with all the IE 'Toolbars'? Yahoo, iSearch, yadda, yadda, yadda ... one spyware scumware toolbar after another.
... "Gee, I'd really like another stupid pointless toolbar".
Why is everyone so hot to install another 'Toolbar'? My web browser displays web pages. That's all I need it to do. Never once have I thought to myself
"I realize the thought of using Flash and Actionscript is considered beneath many Slashdotters..."
Okay, after six or seven years of checking this site daily, I'd consider myself a slashdotter. And I'm also a Flash developer who knows that any application platform (such as Flash) is only as wholesome as the person developing with it.
But to deride Flash in general just because (1) there's no IDE for Linux, or (2) you read somewhere that some subversive script kiddies use it to create spyware (people use C++ to create nasty shit all the time, so I guess we should do away with that, too?) is a bit ridiculous.
Opting for open-source over commercial stuff may make you more open-minded to alternatives, but it certainly doesn't make you superior.
Please remember your comment next time you spend hours of company time at homestarrunner.com
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
A developer's concern about MM's move could be equally that of "brand promotion" in addition to concerns about spyware. What if the developer doesn't like Yahoo? What if it had been an MSN search bar? And what if the developer thinks that MS is a sick company? Again, the benefits of FOSS are clear because you can't be taken along with incompatible agenda... It's much more than an issue of spyware at stake.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. -- Mark Twain
Not only are the blind not seeing your flash site, (well, hearing via screen reader, and yes, there are some workarounds) but search engine bots are skipping it too. Text in a webpage automatically gets included, Flash content and everything it links to is a black hole, the spidering stops. This means your site is irrelevent in search engine results, and you don't contribute to the web in a meaningful way. Add a 10% chance your viewer needs the plugin and will never return, a higher development cost, and a "broken" back button (last html page, not last flash screen) and I rarely recommend the use of Flash, and never for textual information sites.
Rule of the open mind
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.
Open source is not important to me. It's OK, but I'm happy with Windows/IE also. Only supporting common hardware is OK.
But, I take the cross platform/standards stuff up a level. The web is built on HTML/XML/CSS. All standards that are implemented in IE, Mozilla, Opera and other browsers. I shouldn't need to download anything else to view pages.
Shockwave/Flash don't index.
Also, I noticed long ago that the web pages that I don't like (for style/presentation) are usually Flash. They are typically noisy, busy and quite creative - but contain less unique content (meaning text and ideas) than standard web pages.
The movie sites are the worst. Typically done by Mac designers who like QuickTime for a video format. So, unless I download TWO plugins, I can't even see the site.
Web designers should go for standards and least common denominators. That means using CSS and XML. Put video out in QT, Real AND Windows Media. Let me choose what tools I want to present it.
Hopefully, the Yahoo toolbar will lead a migration off Flash (or at least limit it to games and niche content.
As someone has already mentioned Flash is used extensively on educational websites. I realize that the average geek guy does not find flash extremely useful in daily life unless your into Homestar Runner, but it is incredibly useful in the educational arena, making websites for children much more interactive and useful. (This is my biggest issue with Linux: very few useful, well-designed children's applications.)
Sites like this should be using Java. It's just like putting an MS Word file on your website vs a PDF file.
Sure most people have both Acrobat and MS word, but PDFs are both more portable, and less of a security risk.
Flash is no less of a hassle for the end user, but Java is less of a security risk, more "open" in every sense of the word, AND has much better support on a wider variety of platforms.
It should be almost a non-question.
How many companies make Flash players?
How many companies make Java VM's?
How much does Sun's JDK cost?
How much does Macromedia's stuff cost?
Life is too short to proofread.
Don't take it personally.
//Troll me up, Scotty
Macromedia has been producing some amazing technology lately. A friend showed me some of the features in the new ColdFusion and I was blown away.
The whole anti-Flash thing here is not real. It's mostly all talk from a bunch of low self-esteem geeks trying to be cool for once.
Flash sucks until the new Strongbad email comes out.
MPAA sucks until the next LoTR comes out.
Windows and Blizzard suck until the next Warcraft comes out.
Big business sucks until it allows for open source use of a few throw away patents
Lucas sucks, but guess who will be first in line the May?
There is very little legitimate discussion here. It's mostly just cliche posts and bitching for the sake of bitching.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
for scripting, you can use eclipse with the AS Development Tool, flashout and MTASC as the compiler. there are commercial products, too.
flack? what the heck is a flack?
The right word is flak, ab abbreviation of the German word "Flug Abwehr Kanone". Translated: Anti Aircraft Gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak
That still doesn't explain why it is so leet to say "received a lot of flak by" instead of just saying "was met with resistance from" or "was opposed by"...
--- Eat my sig.
But for all the folks out there who simply have juvenile comments on the order of "Flash sucks"... well, I guess I just don't understand what you think you're contributing to the topic.
Get it right, man. He didn't say it sucks, he said it blows. That's a totally different and perfectly legitimate argument... Duh. Some people.
This is just another idiotic MM marketing move.
..."Hey, I haven't screwed up this section of the company yet!"
.NET applications. Switch to MM development, and then you can gradually switch your OS...
If MM ever goes down the tubes its going to be because whomever "comes up with" or "says yes to" their idiotic marketing ideas drove the company there.
My two favorites thus far have the trying to sell Flash Remoting separate from Flash; and the "almost" separation of their ColdFusion Reporting from the ColdFusion Server product.
Oh yeah, then there's the $10000+ Flex product... geared only toward "enterprise" development.
So obviously this "employee" who comes up with these ideas got involved with the marketing of the Flash Player...
Flash, Actionscript, Flash Remoting, ColdFusion, ColdFusion Reporting... all run on Windows AND Linux.
You could do some cool apps with these products to free companies from the tyranny of being stuck with Windows clients because of developing VB or
But they can't seem to market THAT idea.
No instead, let's help Yahoo Toolbar by letting them piggyback on our Flash Player's success.
Actually I'm beginning to wonder if MM is hurting for "cashflow"; and this was just an easy way of generating some. But from a "reputation" point of view, it was just plain stupid!
SVG is ready to replace flash, and is an open standard. Those sites should switch. (Come to think of it, if they switch MS would be forced to make SVG work right in IE because customers will demand it)
The mistake that everyone always makes in thinking about flash is in confusing what it can do with what they see done with it.
What can flash do?
It's an extremely flexible scripting language, that enables extreme rapid-development of GUIs, graphics, audio, and other multimedia applications.
And the resulting files are fairly small, (or at least can be, if they're not chock-full of sounds).
And the graphics are both very small, and scalable, since it's all vector-based.
And it streams, so if set up correctly, even modem users can join in the fun.
In short, Flash is a pretty cool development environment for creating web apps.
That being said...
what do people see flash used for?
pop up adds. And web sites with too much flash and not enough content.
Is this the fault of flash? I don't think so. The only thing flash is guilty of is making it TOO easy to create things, so everyone and their kid brother tries to. And 95% of it sucks. But ease of user-interface is usually a goal, and not a crime...
I think that flash, in and of itself, is an extremely powerful tool, that fills a needed (or at least highly useful) niche in web and multimedia development.
Don't hate the product, hate the dorks who think that a web site built entirely out of flash is cool, with looping audio, and annoying animations.
(Am I the only one who remembers all the annoying java-apps that people added to web pages for a while, with weird cursors with tails, snow, and other strangeness?)
Did any of the alarmists actually go to the download page?
The Yahoo bar option shows up in IE, not the other browsers.
And if people are concerned about this, why not take some positive action? Sure as Macromedia is checking blogs, they'll be looking at how many people download the Yahoo version vs. the regular version.
Instead of sulking, go and download the regular version if this upsets you. To MM, that will be one more person who doesn't want the Yahoo bar.
Collective Type Project
I work for a company that thrives on making flash websites for Fortune 500 clients, and I promise you that you're 100% wrong. The annoying flash movies you speak of are made by poor flash designers and developers. Look at some of the great sites for Ford, for Bacardi, and you'll see that Flash is an amazing application when used properly.
But Flash DOES suck.
Pointing out why is like pointing out why living under a fascist regieme sucks. You could go on forever about why it sucks, or you just admit that it sucks and move on to something else.
Let's look at just SOME of the reasons Flash sucks:
Flash sucks. There's TONS of reasons why, but it just plain sucks. It's one step away from double clicking random
Some software just sucks. As another poster put it:
"Flash is a lot like dogshit. It sucks and I hate it."
You don't need to give specfic reasons to hate dogshit because it's dogshit. To a reasonable person, it's pretty obvious that it sucks.
Life is too short to proofread.
Flash is a much higher level language than java. Yes, they both (can) run in a browser, but you might as well compare Visual Basic and assembly. Flash, being higher level, is more suited to rapid application development for a fairly limited set of solutions.
While java allows you much more power and flexibility, when it comes to browser based apps there are few if any things java can do that flash can't. Java performs poorly when it comes to GUI-based applications, and requires far more code to get the same result. When it comes down to it, there are only two things Java really does well, portability and reliability, and as a result, it's a great server programming language.
Please provide links to good Flash websites.
I agree that there are some interesting uses of Flash, but Flash sites discourage visiting the same web site many times, because even interesting moving pictures become boring after someone has watched them maybe 3 times.
That's why Google is so successful. The company has a policy of not annoying people.
Funny, I never would have known this, had I not read it here.
1. as a developer, who uses flash at times to do a project, this is absolutly insane on macromedia's part. for them to include this in their plugin, which is supposed to be a transparent part of the browser experiance, and force that upon the end user, who may, or may not know what their getting in to is... I'm at a loss for words.
Corporate environments that lock down their browsers better, and prevent such tool bars are going to stop allowing flash to be installed on their systems. which actually BACKFIRES for macromedia, as they are desperatly trying to get people to use flash / cold fusion / flex / breeze etc... Corporate entities will not allow flash to be installed on office computers if they're going to get some unintended software like the yahoo tool bar on it.
I'm dissapointed, and will start voicing such to macromedia.
Then how, may I ask, do you view the plethora of whimsical animations that abound on the internet? Badgers? Kenya? Ja Da? STRONGBAD EMAILS?
Come now, you're missing out on the best the internet has to offer!
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Flash is loved by ignorant managers who only look at their new web site once, and then link deep inside it.
Correct its the full-version of the google toolbar that is spyware. I just visited the google toolbar page and clicked 'download' and was not given an option to get the page-rank free, thus spyware free toolbar. Not to mention their non-expiring tracking cookie.
Looks like google, again, can do some evil. Reminds me of MS in the bad old days. Because they werent IBM anything they did was golden. Now look where we are.
Well... sometimes flash site navigation ain't too bad:
Machine Supremacy has nice flash nave on Their Site
It's fancier than your standard HTML/JavaScript, but still easy to find what you want (and there is an HTML version if you don't want the fanciness).
And of course, there are lots of rather neat little flash movies abounding, much better than badgerbadger
ActiveX you aint got a chance of hell in selling it to our company. If it cannot run on any standard browser we don't buy it period.
Got Code?
Do you know what's holier than God?
The clients of my clients. That's what's holier than God.
Personally I don't much care whether the Yahoo toolbar is offered with the Flash player so long as I can opt out. But there is no way in hell I can develop a gizmo for a client when its deployment is going to cause any single one of his clients to question his faith in my client's trustworthiness.
I'll roll my own javascript animations before it comes to that.
I hope you read this, Macromedia. I've worked off and on with DW and Flash for about 6 years, but you've just fixed it so your Flash is unusable to me. And I will be looking more closely at ALL the implications of using your other products, too.
Does this mean that by getting to many of those crappy annoying e-cards your computer will go blind?
www.macromedia.com. Didn't you RTFA? :-)
John
Wow, this post must date from, what, 2000? Haven't looked at Flash in a while, have you? Every point you raise has been addressed in the last couple of versions.
Flash no longer evil! Update your talking points!
It's still interesting and evil, of course. :-) Don't get me wrong!
I don't think even having a process to 'disable' the toolbar in an the interface is remotely acceptable, let alone having to decide to disable it when people install the player themselves.
As developers and corporate end-users, we can not accept something integrated with a web site to suddenly acquire an unnecessary UI element to join the browser screen, especially in something where the UI was supposed to be clean and clear. You will have single handedly broken a look, feel and usability factor that was designed for a client, and the client might just well come to me asking why it's broken. I'll have to spend time and money to fix it. In my mind and possibly reality Macromedia's going to get the bill for any hours of work I spend doing that, as well as the time spend calming down my client.
This opens up the door for advertising to be sent, interrupting or preceding what is supposed to be a design, presentation, logo or splash...Why? Simply because I (or my client) was told to trust something Macromedia decided to add on for those unsuspecting souls who download the new player.
The moment a board member of an organization I'm helping decides to call me in a rage over the Yahoo toolbar showing up in something that's NOT supposed to have any other UI add-ons, I will heavily consider finding a way to sue Macromedia for damages. This is a 'design and programming environment', not Macromedia's or Yahoo's excuse (or their advertising clients excuse) for a billboard. I don't want Yahoo's garbage interrupting my work, or putting it at risk in any way, which is a huge possibility considering a newly-downloaded component of the previously installed toolbar (even it it doesnt contain anything harmful right away) could contain yet another add-on from yet another company I didn't expect to have to deal with before.
They need to change this path before this gets exponentially worse. Take the Yahoo toolbar out permanently, and let Yahoo develop an alternative Flash player if they want one of their own with a toolbar in it so badly.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
I have to agree with you. His comment of "Flash Blows" isn't real useful.
But something to take back to Macromedia -- It seems to me that Macromedia has a design and development community responsiblity, as well as a corporate one. That responsiblity is to provide a clear-cut interface to the results of that same design and development. No other add-ons, no other distractions from what I designed the end result to be. Yes, the toolset permits add-ons. But those add-ons arent supposed to be included by default with the product in question. If Yahoo wants their darn toolbar in with the product, let them offer the toolbar separately.
The moment Macromedia starts messing with my designs and UI considerations is the moment I start seriously looking at other avenues, as distasteful as it may be at first to do so, and I will start saying things like "Flash Sucks" to my customers.
That said, "Flash Sucks" comments are a great barometer. If Macromedia doesn't want "Flash Sucks" comments, they should improve the product, not add things that demean it or detract from it -- especially without interviewing the community before the implementation of something really potentially hurtful like this.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
I am a slashdot reader who uses both, and let me tell you something; from my experience, it's not that it's beneath you, it's beyond you. 90% of the slashdot readers couldn't build an interesting interface if you lives depended on it, and I'm willing to put money on that. I know lots of other slashdot readers in my region, and guess what? They know this too. I could code in something other than actionscript, but I choose not to. I like design, I like graphics, and I'd appreciate not getting chastised for this choice, just as you (the rest of the slashdot world who believes Flash is "beneath" you) wouldn't appreciate unfounded criticism of your choice of profession. You, just as I, realize your place and your importance, and without your efforts and work, there would be a lot of people scrambling to get shit done. I make things easy, VERY easy for idiots; the rest of you make it work. We know the world we live in, and we know that without the effort we put into quality work and quality code, this world could be brought to it's knees, and you know as well as the next /.er that you've thought those same words. I would appreciate seeing a little less of this sort of sentiment from the readership here, and just a bit more appreciation for the world beyond C98 code, or whatever the hell you chose to be your weapon of choice.
Mod me down, do what you will, but I had to rant.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
OMG I wish I had mod points for ya'!! I laughed my ass off!
What is your penile percentile?
Dont forget this: Bunny
So they're packaging them together? Sounds like a simple marketing strategy by two companies trying like mad to keep up with the Joneses.
I really don't see the problem, it's not like you can't uninstall Y! Toolbar if you don't want it (or not install it in the 1st place).
-S
There is a Flash player for linux, but it is only a beta. There was no full release with this version of Flash. My hope is that there will be a complete linux Flash player in the next version.
Most stuff works in the linux player, but some of the more complex stuff, like runtime masking of device fonts, doesn't work. Which, of course, means that you can see most of the useless intro movies, but none of the well-written, worthwhile Flash pieces.
Oh, and the swf format is open. There are 3rd party compilers available for both C# and Java.
Flash blows.
For none of the reasons you seem to think of. But for this very very simple reason: its not an accepted W3C standard. It blows.
I very much like the graphic design in the first link: http://www.fordvehicles.com/trucks/f150/index.asp
However, there were five shortcomings:
On my high-speed DSL connection, I got only the word "loading..." for only a few seconds, but it seemed like a long time. Ford must be very arrogant indeed to believe that this does not annoy people with dial-up connections.
Second, you get the option "Low Speed Non-Flash" only after you have loaded the Flash page. That makes me realize why I don't like the average Flash enthusiasts web designer. They aren't very intelligent, and they assume I'm not very intelligent.
Third, Flash breaks tabbled browsers!!! When I right click on a Flash ad, I don't get the normal menu. My normal way of shopping is to load several pages and flip between them on demand. Macromedia thinks I should not be able to do this.
Fourth, the site uses blind links. I don't know what will happen until I click.
Fifth, after something is clicked on the main page, the connection is kept alive, as is shown by the message "Transferring data from www.fordvehicles.com..." which remains there forever and can't be made to go away by hitting the Escape key.
If there is something that cannot be done in standard HTML, standard HTML should be improved. Flash has had perhaps 38 serious security vulnerabilities. It is not good to introduce an entirely new, essentially proprietary technology.
I've developed a flash application on a mac. This application had a little over 20,000 lines of AS2.0. It was a terrible experience. Everyone at Macromedia should be ashamed of themselves for having released such a slow, buggy, and horribly designed piece of software.
The only satisfaction I received from the experience was solving two problems that everyone on the actionscript forums claimed to be impossible. Well, half of the satisfaction came from solving them and the other half from not sharing the solutions with anyone. Never again.
Adobe are bundling the Yahoo Toolbar with the new Acrobat Reader 7 for Windows, along with Photoshop Album SE and 7.2 MB of extra plugins. The Yahoo Toolbar then installs not only to IE, but also to the Reader itself. To hide it in Adobe Reader, you need to right-click its toolbar and untick "Search the Internet".
:)
But they do at least offer you a choice: you can choose not to download any or all of these extras, by unticking a few boxes on the download page, which appear after you've chose Windows as the target OS. And they're not pushing this junk with their SVG viewer. Yet.
As noted above, this only affects users of MS Underpants Exploder for now. But I wonder if Adobe, Macromedia or other vendors will start offering Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox soon, and on other OSes? Linux and Mac versions of the Firefox Toolbar are reportedly on the way.
It's just one more good reason to use Free and OSS software whenever possible, like GPLFlash, Ghostscript and PDFcreator: no clueless marketing droids "adding value" unasked.
I don't want an interesting interface, I want one that works. That's exactly the distinction 90% of Flash developers don't understand. If you do then good, Flash can be used well, but don't kid yourself that you're the norm.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
SVG might have solved some of the problems that Flash is solving now, except for the fact that Mozilla/Firefox support for SVG is quite bad..especially on Linux.
The Adobe SVG plugin has a whole range of problems running on Linux.
But even if SVG for Mozilla/Linux was fully supported on Linux, it still does not solve all the issues that Flash solves - for instance, SVG has no support for audio (at least not now).
If I wanted to find out about (say) Ford cars, I might go to Ford's website. But if I find it full of flash and images instead of text, I will think that it's not likely to contain much genuine information. So then I will turn to Google instead of wasting any more time looking at it.
You can let Macromedia know you don't want the Yahoo! Toolbar bundled with the Flash Player:w ishform/m ain.cgi
http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/
Regards.
Because they think that Flash == annoying ads/intros.
While there's content like this - this will probably be true for every technology, like the annoying java menus - the fact is, slashdot people can't accept that flash isn't SVG, it isn't Java, it isn't HTML, and there are good sites and good uses for Flash. So they'll jump at any chance to spit on Flash because "those annoying intros" aren't needed and the content should be replaced by something on svg/java/html.
Web designers should go for standards and least common denominators. That means using CSS and XML. Put video out in QT, Real AND Windows Media. Let me choose what tools I want to present it.
I really don't get this point of view. It's the "I am the consumer, I want everything my way" line - except you're not a consumer. You're browsing the web for free. People put stuff up in QuickTime because that's the format they want to use. If you don't like that format, use a different website - that's your choice.
Most people browsing the web don't care what format stuff is in as long as it works. I couldn't care less if a site uses an SWF to present some of its content. It's the content that matters, not the underlying format.
People use Flash because it's an easy, well-supported way of making good-looking content. Go ahead and try to do the same thing using normal web standards, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun messing about in Notepad/vi/emacs/whatever for hours on end.
Oh and if your operating system doesn't support Flash, but you *really* want to see Flash content, maybe you picked the wrong operating system. After all, it was your choice.
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
Yea! Let's stop all Technical development That does not cater to the Blind, or the deaf, or the handicapped. If it can't serve their purpose too, then damn it, everyone should have to do without it.
After receiving complaints that our site's (Turdhead.com comment section wasn't working, I discovered that some may be trying to enter comments using the mirror sites above. The mirrored site won't except comments, as they don't update our spam-filtering "captchas."
I do. When I see a Flash lead (like many movie sites), I do go on to something else. But, a company paid some high-paid designers to produce a commercial website. One would think they want the widest possible audience. Instead, they only reach people that work the way they do.
I don't care if they use tools, like VStudio, etc. to produce the sites, but I shouldn't need a plug-in (QT, Flash, whatever) to get to the main idea of the content.
In our case: we have to.
I work in a company where we concieve the flash platform to have the utmost potential for developing interactivity for several reasons- it's cross broswer and cross platform (MM: linux soon pls?) in a way that allows for very high speed downloading of rich media applications (in a way that java is not with it's load time to run time, and lack in my opinion of true cross browser/platform standardization in the way that people generally develop for it)
Flash offers the ability to conceptualize and develop on the Authoring environment in a creative way to impliment complex graphic interfaces over the web in a fashion is simply not accessable to people focusing on raw code - and it's fast to develop in via this method for designers and animators, and to develop a process to work with the more application oriented people.
At the same time the people I work with who are more 'raw code' oriented can program in server side action script and raw AS to their hearts content to overcome tricky engineering problems- as a developer it provides a great synthesis between limitless interface design possibilities and ways to plug in to essentially any type of backend via XML, remoting, etc...
The possibility is fairly endless, and the elegance of it for rich media activities is it's main selling point. As an observer of social networking sites and the implications for the larger global social base in areas such as the arts, the potential is enormous to combine expressiveness with function- simple tools such as XML based mp3 players documented in such a way that an average musician knows how to plug them into their sites. The ability to create these type of tools quickly and easily is a boon for the emerging web community at large. For learning solutions, playerless web video streams, and the ability to leverage interactivity between users on a fully customizable platform has it's merits- it is next generation thinking on the web.
Though I wish there was a fully OSS platform to take advantage of these directions, macromedia is really doing a great job of expanding the creative potential of both actionscript and the swf format, which is essentially open while providing for a very strong and sophisticated authoring and design tool- what I've seen of the future of the flash player makes me buzz.
With that being said- this toolbar thing scares the bejezzus out of me. The one thing that's required for our work to continue is that I need to be able to tell clients (and know for my own projects) that the flashplayer is everywhere, and I've been trusting the flash player not to disincentivize users from actually downloading it. In my experience most of my clients have flash, understand what it is and are comfortable with the aquissition of it. Accept checkbox or not, we all know what users actually to when installing something (click-click-click) and I know at least 5 corporate IT directors who will block out macromedia at the first hint of anything that deviates from their up-till-now philosophy of ease of aquisition.
For me this brings up deep seeded fears of macromedia transforming from a developer for developers and a custodian of the future of the web, into a company looking to leverage it's assets to gain profit - nothing wrong with that, as long as it's not at the expense of marketshare and sustainability for their core customers and fans- their development userbase, with our big investments in their server side products, authoring platforms etc.
On another note, slightly ot I guess. How does flash affect google's scoring of a page, since I imagine its pretty hard to parse out the text for analysis, since its all contained in the flash.
Doesnt this also cause problems with losing customers?
(I'm of the opinion flash should die and/or be relegated for simple web based games) The languages and standards used to build the web (client side stuff anyway) should not be controlled by any one company.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
You're certainly in the minority on Slashdot. But probly not the minority of the general populace. Most people like "flashy" things. And I've rarely seen a non-flash web site that can have as much bling bling as a Flash site.
Slashdot has its own very peculiar politics and tastes.
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
The problem for Macromedia is that they have locked themself into a situation that change to their codebase will mean breaking their bundled software contract...
This tells me that for coming years the platform will step out of it's own evolution and wont improve anymore but will be patched to keep their bundled stuff from breaking.
Guess how Netscape came to it's end, and no it is too much honor for MS to think that they are fully responsible for that, Netscape just got stuck into it's own contracts, like Macromedia will...
Just an FYI, but you are in the minority in terms of the market for these websites. Joe Sixpack thinks those websites are cool. If they didn't, then a company wouldn't waste the money paying high-paid designers. And there wouldn't be any high-paid designers. Those things exist because the market is there for them.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Its *way* overused.
I'll put it this way - if your site cannot be mostly viewed and navigated *without* requiring flash, you are using too much flash. If a browser must have flash in order to contact you, get basic information about your company/organization/etc, get your email address or phone number, send a message via webform, then you are using too much flash. I would proffer an exception for portions of sites which are entirely entertainment (Eg, animations, etc) - but there still should be a non-flash main page, as well as basic info contact/etc.
This is nothing new...Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 includes this piece of crap as well.
I don't think that the way people use today it is so much at issue in the long term, the creating of more 'advanced' stable systems for true web applictions, beyond just informational uses is.
but to speak to your point I feel that 'Flash Intros' are on the downtick, because they precisely serve no useful purpose but advertising is on the rise...
However us, macromedia, any developer needs to think about the future - broadband users are the majority now, and most dial-upers know they are less and less on the radar (at least in the US). The fact that one can (and do) use these capibilites to maximum effect in terms of ease of use, and versitility can only increase the use of flash as a standard. What we're talking about in macromedia's decision to add the toolbar is their long term market potential, something that will be hurt by this decision, and will in turn hurt the developers committed to realizing it as a next generation front-end platform.
Alt tags are a must though, and I feel that one thing that's important is to develop systems that allow the content to be available in dynamic ways even if it's primary display technique is in flash, (RSS, Meta, Html alt)
If there weren't annoying flash ads there would be something else- people can write terrible and annoying HTML (should we ban javascript from our machines because of how marketers take advantage of it?)
But, for an accurate analogy, the Flash hammer with Yahoo installed wouuld be annoying to some users, by having unnecessary and unwanted graphic features (ugly toolbar = flashing red and blue LEDs). It would also, by its' nature, create an unnecessary impediment to your work (CPU drain = sponge hammer). It would also be difficult to get rid of (assumably difficuult uninstall = recycling limitations in most states).
So, you can't do muuch about the way people use your tools, but people will probably like them less if they're flashing spongy hazardous hammers, like the Yahoo! toolbar.
I am the tech guy for a small private school, and one of our Art teachers uses Flash to teach animation. I really don't want to have the sttuupid Y!bar on every PC, so I can see trhis being an issue pretty soon.
Maybe it's not a constructive comment, but it gives a taste of the public (or at least geek) opinion.
No, it gives a taste of that poster's opinion. To arbitrarily assume they speak for anyone else is silly.
For the following reasons. Most people use Flash for entirely the wrong reasons. The will build an entire website in Flash. It will take forever to load and then only display limeted content that is difficult to read and hard for the site owner to updated.
If the purpose of your website is to attract customers to your businees, sell a product or provide information about yourself and your company, Flash is not they way to do it. It does none of those things well. As a prior business owner, consumer and consultant I will say that a good website provides relavent information in an easy to find way, loads quick and does not aggravate the user.
If the purpose of your website is to entertain then by all means build the whole thing in Flash or make fun things in Flash. Cartoon Joe and EbaumsWorld come to mind.
Flash has useful purposes, but I could go the rest of my life without viewing another Flash page or App and I would be very happy.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
IIRC, Google completely ignores Flash animations (apart from possibly indexing the URL of the top-level SWF file itself).
This may no longer be the case, but the last time I looked into it no major search engine supported searching within flash files - they're opaque, compiled (alright, byte-code or whatever), binary files, so it's practically impossible to find links within them (certainly without some form of decompiling, which is hard for search engines to automate), and they're also stateful (unlike the web) and prohibit deep-linking (so there's not much point in extracting deep links from them anyway).
I had the job of advising a customer on elementary SEO techniques recently, and the first one was basically "you'll probably have to scrap your entire site and re-do it from scratch - the whole thing's done in Flash, so there's no way to optimise it, and no way for Google to even see anything other than your front page". Didn't like pissing on his bonfire, but at least now he knows not to mistake "pretty" for "good" again...
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
You mean flashy, obnoxious, distracting ads?
No, not the ads. The kitschy often-musical animations.
For that matter, I don't recall the last time I got a flash ad, but I'm using Opera so what do I know.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
You know it's weird - we completely disagree yet you demonstrate practically every point I have against Flash.
1) Flash is proprietary, and hence you're willingly putting yourself at the mercy of one (now proven clueless) company. If Microsoft owned Flash everyone would be shitting themselves about vendor lock-in - what's different about Macromedia? Especially after this debacle?
2) We already have solutions for things like GUIs. Ever hear of HTML? Javascript? DHTML? AJaX? These are all open standards, accessible to all, gracefully degrading back to plain ASCII text, uncontrolled by any one corporation or entity. As one poster already indicated, if there's something you can't do with AJaX/DHTML, the answer is to improve AJaX/DHTML - don't replace them with a closed, proprietary, inaccessible, non-degrading (at all!) format that wasn't even originally designed to do what it does now.
3) Flash fans are primarily designers, not people with good/varied development experience: "Most of us have moved away from plain ASCII stuff a while ago and moved into the wide-world of GUIs". HTML/AJaX are likely all the GUI you'll ever need (and see point 2 if not). In fact, in my experience Flash is one of the worst languages to develop a GUI in, certainly in the set "languages any vaguely sane person would ever consider using".
3) Flash fans tend not to "get" the web - the idea of the WWW is to make information available. Not pretty, not animated, but accessible. Prettiness is a bonus, but only once you can see the content. Flash started as an animated movie format, and as that it excells. The problem was when someone decided it should get all interactive, because it does that very, very badly, certainly in the context of a web browser. Flash is a binary, compiled, proprietary and closed format. It is the antithesis of practically everything the web is supposed to be - textual, human-readable, uncontrolled by a single entity and open to all.
Don't get me wrong - Flash has its place, but that place is the same as "images" - a discrete, minimally-interactive (play controls and nothing else) role where it can convey information that's hard or impossible to convey another way (an animated diagram, web cartoon - hell, even a rotating company logo if you want). The second flash starts encroaching into "text" or "browser" territory it should be beaten back with a stick, since it can't do them as well as the solutions we already have. It can do them prettier, but that only sucks in the naive, emotive magpie-users who confuse "shiny things" with The Right Way To Do It.
4) Tied-in with the above is the complaint that Flash breaks almost all the most important functionality of web browsers - back/forward, bookmarks, cut-and-paste links, statelessness, non-blind navigation... (I can't even be bothered to complete the list it's so long). Practically the only thing that Flash doesn't break is the point-and-click link selection. Oh yes, and what's another major reason everything seems to be given a web-interface these days? Consistency of interface. Flash comes in and forces designers to re-invent the interface practically from scratch any time they want interactivity, throwing out X decades of refinement and evolution. How is that in any way a good idea?
5) And finally, look at the two "Flash is good" examples you offer: web cartoons and five-minute throwaway games. How in any way are these representative of the vast majority of the web? They're not - they're silly useless glittery things that can't be done any other way, and that's where Flash should stay.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
http://www.beautifully-webdesign.net/
Pages upon pages of good flash or HTML based design (some not so great, some FANTASTIC.) Most of these sites also have links to other great sites. You'll get your 4+ hours worth out of it.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
I'm with you on this one. I could go on, but i'd just be repeating what you've said.
Collective Type Project
My web developer for my record label's website is primarily a flash programmer, but one of my questions to him when we first started working together was "What happens when they don't have flash installed?" His answer: "I've wrote a script to check to see if flash is installed and then just display a flat jpg image instead if it is not." That and he keeps his flash word really small so I'm happy with it. Music related content sites tend to have lots of multimedia as it is consirding that is what we are selling.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Apple does something similar; the latest QuickTime forces you to install iTunes. What's worse is when you uninstall QuickTime iTunes is still there. I don't see any easy way to get rid of it.
Popups are controlled by Javascript. "Automatic installs" doesn't even make any sense, unless you're talking about the auto-download feature of ActiveX.
Show me one instance where Flash "takes away the control of a browser". It works exactly like any other plugin....say QuickTime, Real, etc. And I have never once lost control of my browser.
I tried really hard to respond to your drivel without using the word "fuckwit", but alas, I failed.
gameDB
I like flash. Our company (XP Java, etc, etc) has been considering using Flex to deliver some content to our "extranet" clients using the Flash client. But here is the thing. The clients use ie on windows. They will not likely install Flash through an activex install as it will be corporate IT guys who do the installing. We will have to say to them "You need to have Flash to use the rich internet application we are providing". Their IT guys will then go to the macromedia website to get Flash. The default install optiojn will be to download the Yahoo toolbar as well. Our CEO, knowing this, will kill our push to use Flash to deliver our service to clients (200 current corporate clients, gorwing rapidly). We will thus not be buying Flex or anything else to do so. We will not be using Flash to deliver our internet application. For those of us considering using Flash to deliver content to corporate clients, this is a serious impediment to doing so. Probably a deal killer. Too bad.
You may be able to write decent interfaces, or at least you think they are.
But the vast majority of flash-based sites that I have encountered make life harder. Several examples are:
- Tiny 6 point miniscule fixed fonts that I can't resize, contrary to what I've told my browser to use.
- Scrollbars that don't obey the mouse scroll whell and often times are not even real scrollbars (i.e. you HAVE to use the up/down buttons, you can't even drag the elevator - sometimes you can't even CLICK on the up/down buttons, you have to hover over them and WAIT for the text to scroll)
- Packing the text into a miniscule text area so that the presentation will work on granny's 640x480 display, meaning that to read more than a sentence or two I have to use some godawful nonstandard scrollbar, while the vast majority of my screen space is blank.
- Breaking the ability to easily bookmark a section of a page.
- Breaking the ability to use the back-button or open-link-in-new-tab features, which I use extensively.
If you call that better than what stock html gives me, then I'm afraid we disagree on what a user interface should be.
If you are one of the flash developers out there that have a clue and don't foister the above nonsense on your web visitors, then all the more power to you. But realize that this "hatred for flash" that you seem to have noticed is because the vast majority of people making flash DO violate one or all of the above annoyances. If that's the case then your beef is with these incompetants soiling the reputation of flash, and not for the rest of us that have been burned by it too many times and have dismissed it.