Salasaga Fills Flash Creation Hole for Linux

Linux.com's Bruce Byfield is reporting that Salasaga, the renamed Flame Project, is attempting to fill the functionality gap of Flash creation for Linux in addition to being a cross-platform tool. While it still lacks the spit-shine of more mature apps, it is going a long way to filling yet another hole in Linux software. "Opening Salasaga, you could easily think you are in a slide show program. Individual slides display on the left, and the current slide appears on the bottom right. On the top right is information about the layers on the current side. Menus are logically laid out across the top of the editing window. From the editing menu, you can set the defaults for new projects, including the default display size of finished projects, the preview width, and the default background color. After adjusting these settings, you proceed logically from the right as you develop a project, progressing from Screenshots for importation through Slide and Layer to Export. This progression is so logical that few viewers should have trouble teaching themselves the basics of the software and producing a test project in less than 20 minutes -- and saving it in native .flame format or exporting it to Flash or SVG formats."

Comments

Link and Summary

[26199]

On the off-chance someone was going to RTFA, here is the FA, since it doesn't seem to have made it into the story.

The following line probably tells most people what they want to know:

Also missing are features that those familiar with Flash Professional or Adobe Captivate might expect, such as drawing tools, a scripting language, and support for sound and video.

So what does it do? Well, slideshows. Handy, but not hugely exciting.

Re:Link and Summary

[26199]

To be fair, the hype comes from Slashdot, the linux.com article is quite restrained...

Re:Link and Summary

[TheRaven64]

If the only aim was to generate swf files, this was already possible using vnc2swf. If the aim was to produce a replacement for Flash, then it seems to have failed.

Re:Link and Summary

[someone300]

Seems that Flex provides a more complete Flash creation tool than this software. What's more, Adobe are supporting it under Linux, and you can pick up an alpha version of Flex Builder based on Eclipse already.

To me, it seems that this software would be more suited to a plugin for OpenOffice.org Impress.

The link?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link is a lie.

can't comment..

[rucs_hack]

After all if I did, someone would only mark it as native .flame bait

Track Jumping

[mrbluze]

being a cross-platform tool That's what we used to call the people who jumped tracks instead of taking the overpass at the train station.

What about a player?

[Epistax]

Here I am in amd64... can I have an integrated flash player that WORKS please? Gnash is utter crap (arg please don't say contribute, I haven't the time to do anything but work and flame on slashdot). I don't want to make a chroot 32 environment / install every 32 bit library in existence...

Does anyone in my situation have a suggestion? I've also tried broken firefox add-ons, including: Magic's Video - Downloader, Media Pirate - The Video Downloader, and Video Download. I can watch about 1/3 of youtube videos. 1/3 don't work at all, and 1/3 only show the first frame. I haven't seen one interactive flash that works. Some flash completely freezes up firefox. Maybe I'd have luck with a different browser :P

Re:What about a player?

[Device666]

Epistax: "Can I have an integrated flash player that WORKS please? [...] arg please don't say contribute, I haven't the time to do anything but work and flame on slashdot"

If you don't have the time to contribute, how important is that integrated flash player for you? Contribution doesn't neccesary mean it will cost you time, contributing money (even a small sum) can be a way too. Or you could send Adobe a polite email, asking them to add support for your platform. Adobe is increasingly paying more attention to linux. A friendly reminder of lots of people helps

Epistax: "Gnash is utter crap"

There are people on projects like Gnash, GPLFlash player, etc who tried or still trying to solve your problem. It's not easy to build an open source flash player. It takes a lot of effort from people with very busy lifes who make the time to contribute code. If all open source developers had your attitude, we all wouldn't even have something like a amd64 open source distribution. So please don't say open source x or y is utter crap, but you don't have time to contribute.

Re:Here is the truth...

[SanityInAnarchy]

The reality is that Linux has little to offer to the inexperienced user.

Face it, no OS has much to offer to the inexperienced user. The question is, how much does it take to become an experienced user? Or how much does the OS get in your way if you're inexperienced?

The same novice that is seen disconcerted by the impossibility to do a simple one copy-paste between QT and GTK applications.

Been doing this for years.

Go out and ask to the people how they install a program that does NOT have packages for its distribucción

Simple: Treat the distribution as an OS. If it doesn't have a native package for Ubuntu, then as a novice user, assume it doesn't support Ubuntu.

Now, I dare you to find a slicker way to install and maintain programs than Synaptic.

Explain him why in his Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Fedora cannot see many web pages: he must download the Flash and the Java plugin, in order then to install them with complicated commands.

Oh please:

apt-get install sun-java6-jre flashplugin-nonfree

And there's a GUI for that, too, if you need it. I think it prompts you on first boot now.

Also make him know that he won't be able to listen its MP3, WMA and WMV files.

Except he can -- again, absurdly simple to enable. First time you click on an MP3, you'll get a prompt that'll guide you through installing the necessary packages.

You're not even trying, are you?

Tell to the flaming buyer of a new AMD64 how he can play flash games.

Worst case? Tell them to install a 32-bit OS. Not as if they'd be worse off than in Windows.

besides, the drivers don't come in the distributions. ..becuase of the fucking freedom

Again, only a few clicks away. And once they're installed, they'll actually auto-update, and stay updated.

Believe it or not, installing XP on this laptop was worse -- tried downloading the drivers from nvidia.com, and they didn't work. The Toshiba site only had Vista drivers. Had to go to an old Toshiba UK site to find any. On Linux? Damned-near plug'n'play.

The proof of the free software failure is seen also in the professional world...

And then you go on to list a few apps that you don't like, but which do, indeed, prove that these things exist. Oh, and Maya has a Linux port.

In the software development industry there's not a single decent RAD tool.

Rails.

now prefer the most powerful system for software development: Microsoft Visual Studio.NET.

Which also can only be used reasonably on a machine with 2 gigs of RAM. May as well use Eclipse.

Accounting software? In Linux? There's not software in this area.

For business-level, maybe not. Personal-level, there's Gnucash and KMyMoney.

If Linux is free (in both senses)...Why the high computers-makers don't preinstall it (just a 1% make that)?

Dell does.

He wants to install his webcam without recompiling the kernel.

Literally plugged a webcam into a vanilla Kubuntu, had it running in Kopete with no tweaking whatsoever.

And at that point, you descend completely into a pointless rant, that makes me wonder exactly what Linux people you've been hanging out with -- if, indeed, you know anything about Linux at all. You make some good points, but you lose all credibility when you rant about problems that were fixed 2+ years ago, or actually complain about things that Linux does better than Windows.