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Flash 9 Beta for Linux Available
DemiKnute writes "According to the official Penguin.SWF blog, the a beta release of the long-awaited Flash 9 for Linux is available for download, a mere year after the release for Windows." From the blog:
"While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory."
Report bugs here.
Long-awaited, indeed. The best part is finally being able to play Flash Video 8 on Linux. They got a huge quality improvement when they switched from Sorensen Spark to ON2 VP6, but no one who cares about Linux users could use it... until now :)
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Unfortunately a plain element pointing at a movie does not work.
If the movie is MPEG1 then it looks like crap.
If it is in a Microsoft format, people who aren't on Windows can't view it.
If it is in a Real Player or Quicktime format, people who aren't on Windows or the Mac OS can't view it.
Additionally, Real and Quicktime require your users to go to the effort of finding and installing the appropriate player software. Most can't be bothered.
Also, all the above formats are patent-encumbered.
If you choose a free format such as Ogg Vorbis+Theora, then again you force the user to waste their time hunting for the plugin software, but in addition there are about five hundred sites that all distribute slightly different versions; the correct (blessed?) site is impossible to find unless the user is a computer expert.
Flash looks attractive because of these problems. In addition it makes it impossible for non-experts to keep a copy of the movie, which makes it attractive to content publishers. In their eyes, the fact that those who don't use 32 bit Windows, the 32 bit Mac OS, or i386 GNU/Linux, can't view the content is but a small price to pay.
On another note: anyone read the EULA for this Flash player? It's pretty scary! Adobe could arbitrarily send you a huge bill for auditing your compliance at any time. In addition you are 'not allowed' to run the player on an embedded/set-top-box device. Does my desktop PC become embedded when I hook, it up to my TV?
I have skimmed a few of the comments here and some of the anti-Flash-in-general comments that popped up in the "Holy shit, IE7 launched today!" story comments. I wanted to throw in a few observations about Flash and why keeping this medium around is important.
;-)
/. about how annoying Flash ads are, then allocate 3 of those 5 minutes to downloading and installing a Firefox extension (there are several, I believe -- Flashgot, right?) that blocks all Flash (including adverts) until you want them. I know they're annoying -- but coming from a media company that relies on advertisers buying those "fancy, irritating" Flash ads, I accept them as a necessary evil. A website running those box or vert ads aren't FORCING you to watch them now, 'cause I've taken 1 minute of my 5 minutes in this rant to tell you how to block 'em and get on with your web browsing life.
First, I will agree with anyone that says that Flash gets misused more often than not. It does. It sucks ass when someone does a really crap Flash project. I have 2-3 designers doing the visual labor with me turning their designs into relatively interesting Flash interactives. I like to think that I am using Flash properly, but I know I have much to learn, and I look forward to that opportunity keeping me gainfully employed for a few more years (until enough anti-Flash people get it killed?).
Secondly, if you're going to take 5 minutes to compose a rant on
Finally, I noticed folks talking about the tag to embed Flash. Stop. Stop doing that and google "swfObject" -- it's a Javascript library you can drop into a central location on your web server and forever forget about detecting Flash or making sure it's relatively standards compliant. The guy who wrote it put together a BETTER detection setup than Adobe did (their kit was NUTS), and it works really well. AND it's flexible, processing querystrings and adding flashvars very easily for a simple Flash embed. If you're still talking about the tag and Flash, you're either developing Flash badly (and this is coming from an intermediate level user who tricked people into paying him for it) or browsing a badly developed Flash site.
My 2-3 cents (5 minutes) about Flash. Be nice to it. With Flash video, it's really coming around as a useful tool, and things like Flex 2.0 (wicked cool way to build application interfaces) are making it more of a tool than a design medium for the web.
BTW -- if the title was confusing -- I was "dragged" into Flash development when folks found out I was better at writing ActionScript and using Flash than writing pure CSS page layout. I'm actually enjoying it -- if you're intersted in learning it, be prepared to re-learn a lot of stuff every 1.25 years or so with new Flash versions.
Thanks,
IronChefMorimoto
I'd go a step further and ask what benefit a 64-bit OS has unless you have over 4GB RAM.
AFAICT, you use up more disk space, individual apps require more memory and the biggest benefit - that you can access >4GB without hacks like PAE - is irrelevant.