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Adobe Opens Up AMF Spec

Posted by kdawson on from the remotely-possible dept.

neutrino38 writes "Adobe has released the specification of the AMF format, the format used by Flash Remoting — the equivalent of AJAX for the Flash world. The article doesn't mention the AMFPHP project and the fact that some German and Canadian guys had reverse-engineered the format a long time ago. Adobe's action eases a long-standing legal uncertainty that slowed the uptake of AMFPHP for commercial projects. Next, we note that Adobe has not released its RTMP protocol used to contact a Flash Media server. This latter protocol is more interesting as it provides sessionful operation; media streaming; RPC both client-side and server-side using the AMF format; and shared objects among several sessions and server-side events. Fortunately, RTMP has been partially reverse-engineered by the red5 project. I suggest that the W3C should take a look at the whole Flash ecosystem as they think about upgrading the HTTP protocol."

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Gnash!! by bvimo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will the opening of AMF help Gnash http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ ?

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    In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
    1. Re:Gnash!! by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not really. There was already an unofficial AMF spec, so having an official spec that says the same thing makes no difference. The problem with Gnash is that they just don't have enough coders to keep up with changes in Flash Player, so they will fall farther and farther behind.

  2. Flash is the web's single point of failure by goombah99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly. Flash is more ubiquitous than anything on the web. More ubiquitous than internet explorer. It runs binaries in the host machine, not simply running the in the browser's sandbox. I don't know if it will load and run native binaries over the web (like active X) or if it has it's own sandboxed java-like pseudo code. But it's a single sourced point of failure rather than a diverse ecosystem like all the different java VMs. Plus the code is enormous. Who knows what's in there. (cringley has speculated ADOBE could leverage this ubiquity to role out all sorts of products deployable overnight just by activating them. e.g. imagine is tommorrow everyone with flash also had bit torrent, google desktop, and perhaps even some DRM system available. "flash" deployment of programs could make them instant industry standards. no more arguing over which DRM will be universal is everyone has it available.)

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    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  3. Re:flash is for ads - so I block it by Grampaw+Willie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FlashBlock like NoScript will allow you to have FLASH installed and select which media you want to allow