Adobe Opens the FLV and SWF Formats

Wolfcat writes to tell us that Adobe announced today that they are opening the SWF and FLV formats via the Open Screen Project. "The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices. The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment — taking advantage of Adobe Flash Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR — that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes."

Comments

Great

[suso]

This problem doesn't mean opening the code for the player, but still, it will help projects like Gnash, etc.

Re:Great

[BinaryOne]

This is good news.

For those of use who use flash (for instructional simulations) this means (hopefully) new tools and a chance to deal with the accessibility issues flash has.

While AS3 has improved accessibility classes, products like Articulate and Camtasia have been slow to enable them in their products.

Re:Great

[maxwell demon]

If the format is open, the browsers can support it out of the box.

Re:Great

[Mental Maelstrom]

Yes, it will help a lot. Using the Open Screen Project page, I just discovered a link to the SWF file format specification, version 9 is available for download without having to accept any NDA's.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

A plain download link wouldn't require me to view (even lint to make it readable) javascript in order to reconstruct a simple URL. I don't want audio/video to download automatically, much less play!

Re:Great

[twistedcubic]

Since Gnash is a GNU high-priority project, this is a big boost. It will be nice to run an absolutely stable, crash-free Firefox once Gnash is complete.

Re:Great

[MoogMan]

After a cursory glance, the [swf] specifications look pretty complete - they even give a sample "dissection" of a flash file, as well as a nice index of "opcodes" (tags) - should indeed be useful to the Gnash project.

The swf specifications do not seem to document ActionScript, however so it's not easy riding for the Gnash team (Gnash's ActionScript todo list)

I wonder if this document will give raise to any security vulnerabilities?

Re:Great

[LO0G]

Yes you can download the spec for SWF, but nowhere in the spec did it discuss terms of use.

If I implement to their spec, are they going to sue me because of the patents that cover the SWF technology? They say it is available as an "open specification", but there's nothing that says if there are any restrictions on my use of the specification.

Do they have a covenant not to sue like the one that Sun has, the one that IBM has or even the one that Microsoft has?

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

What accesibility issues? My advanced CS class at M.I.T. barely struggles with Flash at all!

Re:Great

[WPIDalamar]

That's the whole point of today's announcement. They've removed the restrictions.

You can make swf-creation tools.
You can make swf-playback tools (this was what wasn't allowed before)
And you can make swf related stuff not even thought of yet.

Re:Great

[LO0G]

Then I just wonder why Sun, IBM and Microsoft feel it's appropriate to issue a binding commitment not to sue people who use their specifiations, but Adobe doesn't.

How do you know that Adobe isn't going to sue you over violating their patents if you implement the specification?

I keep on hearing on /. that you can't trust closed source vendors not to sue over hidden patents, why does Adobe get a free pass here?

Re:Great

[maxwell demon]

If the browser understands it, it should also be able to extract the URL. Actually, even today there are browser extensions which do that.

Re:Great

[urcreepyneighbor]

browsers can support it out of the box. Oh goodie! More bloat for the browser! Yay!

Back in my day... Wait. What the hell?! I'm THAT old? I'm old enough to begin a thought with "back in my day"?!

Well, time to start looking for a retirement community. ;(

Re:Great

[Nivex]

Not to mention 64-bit compatible. Hey Sun, you watching this?

Re:Great

[_Sprocket_]

Then I just wonder why Sun, IBM and Microsoft feel it's appropriate to issue a binding commitment not to sue people who use their specifiations, but Adobe doesn't. Shennanigans. Smoke, mirrors, and waving hands. Just having a "commitment" doesn't mean much. Critics have charged that Sun, IBM, and Microsoft's covenants are not equal. The devil's in the details. And a big detail in the whole scheme of things is that these covenants are used as much for publicity and marketing games as actual commitments.

Having said that - the general concern is definitely a valid one. We've seen how the game is played these days. Lifting the restriction to a port of call means very little until we can be sure there's no submarines lurking below. The specification is an excellent first step. Now where's the license? That'll be the details where we have to look for the devil.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I use youtube-dl but we'd have to basically write and maintain custom code for every implementation. I have script disabled so my browser cannot "understand" following example of the typical stupidity I'm talking about:

var mFormat = 'flash';
var mHost = 'http://media.example.org/';
var mPath = (mFormat == 'flash') ? 'flashmedia/': 'wmvmedia/';
var mExt = (mFormat == 'flash')? 'swf': 'wmv';
 
function getVideoURL (videoName)
{
  return mHost + mPath + videoName + '.' + mExt;
}
// And variations thereof with rawurldecoding and other needless redundancy

Crap like that plain sucks. There's really no need for a browser extension when a simple href link will do -- it's HTML lesson 1 and they can hide it with script anyway.

Re:Great

[nickull]

The code for the player is already open - look up the Tamarin project in SourceForge

Re:Great

[Constantine XVI]

That's only the ActionScript (a close cousion of JavaScript) engine

Re:Great

[MenTaLguY]

A lot of the ActionScript stuff (in the newer version of the players) should be covered by Adobe's Tamarin project, which is open source.

Re:Great

[Neil Hodges]

Try looking here: IcedTea. You can't always count on the primary source for your needs.

I'm using IcedTea on my 64-bit boxes; it isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

Re:Great

[HeroreV]

And that doesn't even include the standard libraries. Tamarin is really great, but it's only a small part of Adobe's Flash plugin.

too little, too late

[larry bagina]

Adobe needs to put the Flash player (as well as the Flash program itself) under the GPL license if they want to be relevant.

Say NO to Closed Source software.

Re:too little, too late

[Jellybob]

Let me translate that to the real world for you:

"I'd Adobe to put the Flash player (as well as the Flash program itself) under the GPL license. However, if they don't, they'll still have > 90% browser penetration, and be used by YouTube to deliver huge quantities of crap video to people."

Right now, in the age of streaming video, Flash is about as relevant as you can get.

Re:too little, too late

[elronxenu]

Yes, then we'd be able to fix why it uses 100% CPU time most of the time.

Re:too little, too late

[Viceroy Potatohead]

I don't think that's necessary. It's the same thing with hardware, or MS formats or whatever. If a complete and accurate spec is available, the open source community can make their own player/driver/reader/writer or whatever.

Adobe may not be providing an open source player here, but they are giving the information needed for us to make one ourselves. Isn't that basically what we've been wanting from hardware manufacturers?

Also, this makes a Linux Flash writer possible. oOFlash? I really don't see anything to complain about here.

Re:too little, too late

[SpinyNorman]

[Flash] used by YouTube to deliver huge quantities of crap video to people

YouTube have recently added MPEG-4 support though (done for the iphone, I beleive) :

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html

Re:too little, too late

[lukas84]

Do you have the sourcecode for you machines BIOS? The firmware in the RAID controller of your servers?
etc.

Re:too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe needs to put the Flash player (as well as the Flash program itself) under the GPL license if they want to be relevant.

Yeah right. Flash currently has 95% market pentration according to most estimates and isn't going anywwhere by the looks of it. They don't "need" open source players to stay relevant - They've been relevant for just about the last decade, as one of the most prominent tools for rich-media web application.

I think the release of tools like Silverlight and other competition has more to do with this release than anything else others might believe.

Re:too little, too late

[mwvdlee]

Relevancy isn't determined by your personal taste.
It's determined by the fact that most browsers on this earth have it installed.
Flash already is relevant and there doesn't seem to be any realistic reason for it to become less relevant any time soon.

Re:too little, too late

[lena_10326]

Say NO to Closed Source software.

Say no to zealotry.

Re:too little, too late

[stewbacca]

Say NO to Closed Source software. In all seriousness, doesn't this mean the same thing as saying NO to capitalism? Or am I missing the open source bandwag...errr boat and is there money to be made for Adobe to go open source?

Re:too little, too late

[stsp]

Say NO to Closed Source software.

Right, but also say YES to good quality open specs (I don't know if the ones in question are good quality). In the long run, a good open spec for a file format is a much more useful to developers than an open source program that uses an otherwise undocumented file format. Having to look up magic numbers and offsets in other peoples' code all the time just plain sucks. The best you can do is writing up a spec based on examination of the code, and use that for your own development. This extra work is unnecessary if you have a spec in the first place.

Re:too little, too late

[Ilgaz]

Actually VP6 and 7, Sorenson Spark are very high end codecs. Youtube's problem was (deliberately?) encoding video like junk with horrible settings and the original's horrible quality as it is ripped from TV (already compressed), low end DV camera without colour correction.

The big issue was the Sorenson and On2 being big time MS Lapdogs and never offering any real solution except Windows market. Truth to be said, they are not bad quality codecs. Check their reference pages (demos etc.) to see what they actually are.

In fact, current quality/bandwidth/multiplatform champion is Realvideo 10 and it is MPEG4 based too. Of course it is a bit hard to convince user to install it even while Real gives whole thing (except codecs) as open source. You know, history haunting.

Re:too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, then we'd be able to fix why it uses 100% CPU time most of the time.

Time to upgrade that P3?

Re:too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The big issue was the Sorenson and On2 being big time MS Lapdogs and never offering any real solution except Windows market. I think Sorenson had Quicktime compression tools (for win/osx)?

Re:too little, too late

[Ilgaz]

Yes, but they are archaic (Video 3). In fact, those junk codecs prevented Quicktime video to take off.

  I thought there would be Spark codec. Industry standard codecs always have at least a Quicktime Export plugin. Spark never had it.

People moving to H264 on Flash and it doesn't even make On2 guys to ship a VPC7 encoder plugin for Quicktime too.

Re:too little, too late

[MMC Monster]

Err... Maybe you want to cut down on the mind-altering drugs before posting.

Is there any proprietary video delivery mechanism for the internet more popular than flash?

This announcement sound more unexpected than anything else.

Adobe should be applauded for making the formats open. I hope the license will be compatible so that open source versions such as gnash can benefit.

Re:too little, too late

[justthinkit]

one of the most prominent tools for rich-media web application

To give Flash the dis-credit it deserves, why don't we call it indulgent-media, let-them-eat-cake-media, or artery-clogging media? Or at least put the word "filthy" in front of it.

Personally I prefer "baked-cake" media because:
(1) I can't see the URL of the link I am clicking
(2) I can't shift-click or middle-mouse click a link and have it open in a new window
(3) I can't get it to stop flashing at me
(4) I can't turn off images but still see the links & text
(5) And as previously posted, the filthy snob monopolizes my cpu whenever it wants to for no good reason.

Ok, one last try at a new name: "Paris Hilton" media (and I'd accept Paris-Rich Media).

Re:too little, too late

[mjbkinx]

Also, this makes a Linux Flash writer possible. oOFlash? I really don't see anything to complain about here.

I've been making SWFs on Linux for years. Swfmill is quite capable (the svn version has very good SVG support and works well with Inkscape), there is a fine language and compiler called haXe that can even compile for other targets as well (the Neko and generated Javascript, with PHP support in the works), among other tools.

Also, the Flex SDK is already open and works on Linux (it's Java). Finally, their (proprietary) Flexbuilder for Linux is currently a public alpha.

Re:too little, too late

[InlawBiker]

I suggest this new technology for you: LYNX. If that's still too media-rich, you can lead the revolution in bringing us all back to Gopher.

Re:too little, too late

[larry bagina]

Of course their is money to be made! They should give away their software (GPL) and make money by paid support contracts and writing O'Reilly books.

On second thought, they should give the books away for free and make money by selling coffee cups, tshirts, and other merchandise at concerts^W developer conferences.

Re:too little, too late

[OrangeTide]

Luckily it only uses 100% of one core, until you open that second browser window.

Re:too little, too late

[delt0r]

What about patents? And what is made public? Looks to me like the file formats, not the codecs. This is like a open avi *format* but you still have to pay up if you want mpeg/VC1 whatever content encoded in it. I can find nothing on the above on there site.

Re:too little, too late

[nine-times]

In fact, current quality/bandwidth/multiplatform champion is Realvideo 10 and it is MPEG4 based too. Of course it is a bit hard to convince user to install it even while Real gives whole thing (except codecs) as open source. You know, history haunting.

I think part of the issue is that some of us just don't want to install another player. As a general policy, whether my own machine or some other machine I'm supporting, I don't want to install a single piece of software that I don't have to. Every piece of software is another thing to keep track of, another potential bug, security risk, software conflict, or other problem. I'd much rather use a single media player for the sake of simplicity and consistency. I'd rather install a codec than install a new player, and I'd rather not even have to install a new codec.

So yes, VP6 and VP7 produce good quality (I'd argue that Spark isn't so great). However, until they get better support in Quicktime, WMP, and FFMPEG, I'll view them as a PITA to deal with and "not worth the trouble".

Re:too little, too late

[Zencyde]

This seems to be more of a problem with Adobe not caring about Linux users. : ( Though, I'm quite excited that the standard is open! Hopefully there are no silly restrictions holding back the FOSS community now. Finally, I'll be able to open multiple tabs that have Flash and Youtube won't clog my poor little Pentium 4.

Re:too little, too late

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually lots of sites look better in lynx. It needs tabs, though.

Re:too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice impress (the presentations-program) can save to flash. So OOOflash does already exist (and has for a few years(

Re:too little, too late

[redhog]

It's called "links" :)

Re:too little, too late

[debatem1]

My big fear is that they have opened the specs and retained the right to sue gnash out of existence for using them. That's some dangerous stuff right there, and would certainly rank Adobe in the Power 5 for legal assholery.

Re:too little, too late

[Neil Hodges]

It's actually called ELinks.

Re:too little, too late

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I like lynx because it looks like a typed paged. Links actually doesn't look as good to me. When reading for content, I don't want to see extraneous formating. In Firefox I "View/Page Style/No Style" to achieve a similar result when a page has too much "desgin" in the way.

Defence agains silverlight?

[sucker_muts]

I guess Adobe is doing this to try to stop silverlight getting too much attention.

Since Microsoft seems to want a new way of control of new web enabled devices with silverlight, I guess this is a good thing.
(And obviously this way gnash can implement better compatibility more easily!)

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Fri13]

Last time I heard that Microsoft will turn it's sites to work only with Silverlight to convert (force) almost all computer users (85%) to use it.

I have not seen any Silverlight sites than Microsoft's own... who needs it (silverlight I mean)?

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[maxwell demon]

who needs it (silverlight I mean)?

Microsoft.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[sadgoblin]

They dont really need it... They still wonder why the heck they made it.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Gavagai80]

All baseball fans need silverlight... they've paid off mlb.com to prevent watching games without it (though some hackers came up with a python script to bypass that).

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[superslacker87]

Hey, they still wonder the same thing about Vista!

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[xgr3gx]

More like another nail in Silverlight's coffin.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Ilgaz]

Check http://www.earthbrowser.com/ . An application dates back to MacOS 9 days. Matt Giger, single author of it upgraded to version 3 and it runs on both Windows and OS X without a single glitch. It was originally a C application, it was converted to Adobe AIR and the day Linux has a stable Adobe AIR (soon I think), it is also automatically shipped to Linux/FreeBSD.

That is the opportunity Sun missed with their Webstart/Java. People and industry looks at results, not promises. You can ship a full feature commercial application RIGHT NOW using Adobe AIR Framework. Most of your customers (like me) will be amazed at the fact that it uses LESS CPU compared to "real" previous version.

If they don't make stupid mistakes, Adobe also has a full feature multimedia player/content downloader which also perfectly works both on Windows and OS X. It will be huge in couple of months.
http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/ . It is -of course- possible thanks to Adobe AIR. Needless to say, it is also automatically shipped to Linux when Adobe Air for Linux stable ships.

What did Silverlight do except bribing to some known figures to promise outdated versions emulator or abusing the panic state of Nokia? Right, Nokia says they will ship Silverlight too but everyone who is experienced on handheld/PDA knows that just by shipping a framework, you don't guarantee people who will code for it or use it. Why would established Flash developer use it instead of using Flash Lite which will be in third generation soon?

I got Silverlight on my Virtual PC 7 running XP SP2. I almost felt sad for Microsoft, shipping as a "optional windows update" with a "KB" number? Sigh.

As a side, cautionary note, Silverlight adds a potential security issue to Mac OS X since it installs as User 502 which people always use as secondary, "non admin" account. Hope they fixed it. That is MS for you and no, I am not confusing it with MS Office 08 bug.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

link? i was thinking about subscribing, until i saw the silverlight requirement. Also, whats the deal with moonlight

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[drinkypoo]

Check http://www.earthbrowser.com/ . An application dates back to MacOS 9 days. Matt Giger, single author of it upgraded to version 3 and it runs on both Windows and OS X without a single glitch. It was originally a C application, it was converted to Adobe AIR and the day Linux has a stable Adobe AIR (soon I think), it is also automatically shipped to Linux/FreeBSD.

I would, but their website requires Javascript. Is this some kind of joke? What year is this?

Maybe you could just tell those of us who won't visit them what it is.

Their webmaster is an idiot, by the way, because the javascript required page went into an endless loading loop. Just what he needs, everyone who visits his page to generate a bunch of spurious page loads that won't produce any revenue.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Ilgaz]

Well, it seems everyone including Apple co-founder happily browsed that site and purchased their updates.

Anti Javascript etc. are so 90s if you ask me. Profile of your userbase matters. If you code an entire Application in Flash/Flex, you don't really CARE about bunch of lifeless idiots who tries to be different by turning off javascript on a legit site.

Turning off Javascript like things are basically non existent on OS X community and the Windows profile that kind of application serves to. Also, you would even call FBI about the webmaster since with a single click, you install Air Framework AND the Application same time. Oh the humanity! It should come as a tar.bz2 file, tar -xvzf to home directory and run as ./earthbrowser --display-gui I think!

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[nahdude812]

No way, they know exactly why they made it, and they do in fact need it very badly.

Flex + Flash's ubiquity + Adobe Air = obviated operating system. It doesn't matter what OS you run if you can create a single application which runs on mobile phones, from a web browser on all major OS's, or as a desktop application on all major OS's.

It's quick and easy to create a single application which runs just about anywhere - much simpler than creating a standard desktop application. So as a developer, as long as you don't need something high-end enough to rule out Flex as a platform (ie, 3d games, etc), there's really very little reason to not currently be developing for Flex.

Microsoft knows this, Flash crept up on them and turned into a serious threat to their monopoly. They're probably really kicking themselves for having distributed it for a while, cinching the install base.

Silverlight is Microsoft's knee-jerk reaction to the realization that this sleeping giant is waking up. It's their attempt to maintain the lock-in they currently own. This is why they're now shoving Silverlight down your throat. For example, my Microsoft Office 2008 on OS X had a "Critical Update," whose description was vague, and did not contain a link to the full details. Installing it because of course that's what you do with critical updates, it turns out to have simply been an install of Silverlight, even though there was no way for me to have known this in advance.

I went to a Silverlight developer conference, and I saw Microsoft employees showing off example applications, including walking us through the creation of these applications. I can say without a doubt that Flex is substantially easier to work with; in the time and lines of code they created a simple slideshow with fading transitions that reads filenames out of a CSV, at the Adobe conference, they'd made a slideshow with thumbnails, transitions, varying timers, pause, manual navigation, and even a carousel mode, which read data from a CSV, SOAP, WSDL, or REST web service.

Like many things, Microsoft is putting just enough effort into Silverlight to make it look competitive.

FWIW, I asked during the Silverlight developer conference a few months ago what the current install base of Silverlight was, and the only response they were willing to give is, "If you don't use it, nobody will install it." That means practically nobody.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[nvivo]

I believe the technical concept behind silverlight is better than flash.

I mean, it uses XML instead of binary format for source, meaning it's easy to generate files on the fly. And like it or not, .NET has a far better library and tools than ActionScript, even on linux.

There is a good post here about some differences: http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx

Of course there are problems for linux about using .NET as platform, and WMV as codecs. But mono has been putting a great effort into this, there are other codecs available. Also, xine can play wmv files without problems. If they are able to bring silverlight to Linux and other systems in an usable state, I see no problem in using them to develop my applications.

Also, Adobe/Macromedia were never saints. They took ages to release flash players for linux, and I still use a package called "flashplugin-nonfree" on my box, that uses wrappers and lots of 32bit libraries to run on my Ubuntu x64, because Adobe refuses to compile it for 64bit, and the player cannot even be put on the repositories because of licenses and other factors.

There are no open source heroes here. It just heppens that you believe Adobe is better than Microsoft, but they are just the same, and will do anything at all costs to crush the opponent. If Adobe's solution is to start releasing good players for all platforms, they will do because they need to stay in market, not because they love linux. And if Microsoft makes a deal with Novell to release a good silverlight player for linux to compete with flash, I see no difference in that.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[MightyYar]

I don't think you are being fair. It is only prudent to click on a random Slashdot link using NoScript.

When you do so on that site, instead of just telling you to enable javascript, it redirects you to a "no javascript" page. This is a bad thing, because now even when I turn on javascript the page still tells me I need javascript.

I love javascript and use it in my sites, but I never assume that someone has it, and if I create something that really does need it... well, a recoverable error message is the only reasonable thing to do.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[TropicalCoder]

It just happens that you believe Adobe is better than Microsoft, but they are just the same, and will do anything at all costs to crush the opponent.

Come on - you're kidding, right? Adobe competes in the niche market with Pdf and Flash, whereas Microsoft p0wns 85% of desktop computers in the world, and is a convicted monopolist? That is typical M$ party line, where they try to say the "enemy" is no different. They tried that in the M$OOXML scandal, rationalizing their unscrupulous tactics by saying Open Source companies were just as bad. How come they are always in such a position? everybody does it - we are no worse that them - that is the meme they keep pushing both directly, and indirectly via their proxies we encounter on \. Pretty pathetic, I think. How about not behaving badly in the first place, instead of all these rationalization?

Of course there are problems for linux about using .NET as platform, and WMV as codecs. But mono has been putting a great effort into this, there are other codecs available.

if Microsoft makes a deal with Novell to release a good silverlight player for linux to compete with flash...

Leading right down the slippery slope to eventually putting a Microsoft tax on Linux? Your argument is pure Company Line. Microsoft would be proud of you. Maybe if you talk to them you could get a little revenue stream going for yourself, planting M$ FUD on \. like others. I hear the pay is not too bad.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Gavagai80]

MLBViewer: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlbviewer/

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Tumbleweed]

I would, but their website requires Javascript. Is this some kind of joke? What year is this?

My friend, it seems YOU are the one confused about the year. The year is something like 10 years PAST the time you should be running with JavaScript off. Welcome to the new world, one full of interesting and (potentially) useful things like AJAX. It's time to put the Gopher client out of its misery, upgrade the 19.2kbps ZyXel modem you got at a discount for running a part-time BBS, and for God's sake, stop listening to Weird Al Yankovic's "All About the Pentiums" and giggling at all the geek jokes.

I'm guilty of only one of these. :)

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it seems YOU are confused about the year. This is 2008 and common sense best practice has had a name for a few years now.

• Wikipedia article
• 06 ALA article

Javascript is a gaping security hole. If you're happy running it -- good for you but please do not be so arrogant to assume everyone wants to run arbitrary code. Hence I disable javascript unless I'm developing locally or testing on a server under my control.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Delkster]

Also, Adobe/Macromedia were never saints.

You're right about that. However, while Adobe's interests in supporting Linux may vary, at least they don't have an automatic and obvious interest in fighting against it either. MS does.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[nvivo]

Adobe's interests in supporting Linux may vary, at least they don't have an automatic and obvious interest in fighting against it either. MS does. Agreed. But that don't change the fact that Silverlight is a very good alternative from a technical standpoint.

I mean, if you had the exact same product coming from Sun and running on Java, everybody here would love to have this alternative.

But I'm not surprised that on slashdot, suddenly the silverlight vs. flash fight became a microsoft vs. linux fight. =)

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti Javascript etc. are so 90s if you ask me.

Some misguided individuals probably feel the same way about protection for casual sex, just as the majority before the onset of widespread Aids education in the eighties.

you don't really CARE about bunch of lifeless idiots who tries to be different by turning off javascript on a legit site.

So you're saying legit sites never get compromised and sites hosting scripts (ads, stats) linked from legit sites never get compromised? Otherwise what are you saying?

This is simply lame...

<noscript><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=/jscript_required/"/></noscript>

And after disabling redirects, the only part of the site that appears to really use script is the purchase cart. They also didn't bother to set the text color when they set the background so I get sections of white text on a white background. Perhaps web/RIA development isn't an area these guys are very knowledgeable about?

And what's the javascript used for?

1. 
    
2. Making Ajax requests to send the form to the server for validation and redirect to a receipt
3. 
    
4. Toggling display of selected payment method

It gets better though because the page (including inline script) is 12k compressed whereas the scripts are 22k compressed. Using ajax was a pointless exercise that made a trivial billing application more complex than needed. I bet the back end is coded in RAILS too isn't it? Hahahahaha!

I've no comment on the app itself other than that it looks like it could have just as easily been written back in the '90s as a Java applet.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Locutus]

if Microsoft makes a deal with Novell to release a good silverlight player for linux to compete with flash... sounds like a very naive n00b or as you implied, a fan of Microsoft or even a Microserf. Believing anything controlled by Microsoft will be good in any way for Linux users is as believing in Leprechauns. ie foolish, IMO.

LoB

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as you spelled Yankovic right, I think I know which one...

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[old and new again]

actually now more than ever we need to turn off crap-a-script, that is why there is no script and such extensions, javascript is one of the worse PITA on the net, preventing simple task like opening a link in a new tab (damn I hate webmasters that dumb)

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Nutria]

because Adobe refuses to compile it for 64bit

Or can't, because of hand-coded x86-32 assembly code or poorly-written C code that assumes that pointers will always be 32-bits. Or both.

Probably both.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[AJWM]

"If you don't use it, nobody will install it."

That sounds like an excellent reason not to use it.

Not that I was ever a huge fan of Flash either, although between Gnash and Adobe's latest move to open it, it's marginally acceptable (I'm just not a big fan of all-singing, all-dancing web sites). But there was never a need for Silverfish, er, light.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[paitre]

I'm dealing with an application right now that makes the latter assumption.

I'm rewriting the entire backend database because using an MMAPed binary file for your live data is just asking for trouble.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[Hatta]

The year is something like 10 years PAST the time you should be running with JavaScript off.

You are correct here. You should have turned off javascript 10 years ago and left it that way. Welcome to the new world, one full of interesting and dangerous things like XSS exploits.

Seriously though. It's ok to use javascript for functionality that can't be provided without it. When you use javascript to implement a shopping cart, and then BREAK THE ENTIRE SITE for people who are just browsing and don't want to run the shopping cart script right now, that's just stupid.

BTW Refresh Blocker will make the site usable again.

Re:Defence agains silverlight?

[sjames]

Considering that I can run Java right now on Linux, *BSD, and Mac if I care to (I don't), and cannot run Silverlight at all, the former is infinitely better than the latter.

Let's all try to remember, http and html wiped the floor with AOL and Compu$erve because they worked everywhere and didn't come with strings attached.

Given the bazillion WYSIWYG html editors out there, I'd say there is money to be made in creation tools even where the spec and the player is free and open.

hmm.

[apodyopsis]

this is not the same as open sourcing it.

i would guess this is more like attempting to gain market share at the same time as holding the family jewels close to the chest as it were.

still, its a step in the right direction to be sure.

Re:hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is not the same as open sourcing it.

Not required.

Once the specs are available, and there is permission to implement it, FOSS will independently implement anything worthwhile in quite short order.

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html

Gnash is the #3 priority overall.

I thought SWF was open?

[MobyDisk]

I thought FLA was closed but SWF was open. And isn't FLV just a container format? Even if it is closed, everybody knows the format and theirs tools to read/write them (VLC player for example, plays them).

Either way, being open is really good. I know several game and media companies that use Flash now, and are strongly considering Silverlight because C# is nicer than Actionscript/Javascript, and Microsoft is oddly enough very open about their formats. Adobe needed to do this and make sure they were the "standard" before MS takes over.

ISO approval might be nice too.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft are Open... at the moment

Remember the 3 or 4 E's
    Embrace - Put Silverlight out there and 'give' it away so that the dominance of Flash is removed.
    Extend - the functionality but keep this 'closed'
    Extinguish - then Flas is sufficiently dead on the water, release a now closed version of Silverlight and say to themselves 'Gotcha'.
    Exterminate - all copetition. Make the Linux Version so horribly crippled with the new version that everone is using the practical chances of any year in the future becoming the 'year of the linux desktop' a total impossibility.

IMHO, its all part of the MS Master Plan for continued desktop domination. Frankly, any company that falls for their offer of 40 pieces of silver should suffer the same fate as SCO.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? I thought the sole reason Microsoft keeps dominating the desktop is because it has security holes put there on purpose so that CIA and FBI can easily access to your (and government's) data, and thus it's on the US government's interests that everybody uses it.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[Anonymous Coward]

The SWF format has been open for a long time, in one sense: you were always allowed to make your own application that created or modified SWF files, but the licensing agreement said that you were not allowed to create your own application that played them back. So the spec was published, and you could make your own authoring tool, swf compiler, etc. to write swf files (and many people did, for example MTASC) -- but you could not make a swf player tool that competed with Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash Player.

The intent of the new initiative, from what I can tell, is to further open the format so that you can now create your own player. I have seen complaints from Linux users that there is no player available for their specific flavor of Linux -- well, now you can make your own.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[TheRaven64]

I thought FLA was closed but SWF was open Depends on what you mean by 'open.' It's open in the sense that anyone can download the specification for free, but in order to do so you needed to agree to a license which prevented you from writing a player - you could use the spec to write something that wrote SWF files, but not something that read them. From the press-release masquerading as a summary, it doesn't sound like this has changed.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it has changed. Read the FAQ.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[MightyYar]

No, you are thinking of peanut butter and fluoridated water.

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[Gabest]

I remember downloading the format spec of FLV from adobe's site years ago, this one is the same, extended with a few new codecs. It also mentions a new file format F4V in the later half, which seems to be yet another customized mov (like mp4).

Re:I thought SWF was open?

[naz404]

A large contributing factor to MS Dominance in the desktop because of piracy.

Piracy is actually pretty beneficial to MS because a very huge user base (areas where piracy is rampant) get used to and locked in to windows.

Nintendo Wii?

[insomniac8400]

Does this mean the Nintendo Wii will be able to work with all flash sites? That would be good.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[Sulix]

No. The Wii already uses the official Flash Player; just an old version. When Adobe re-hires all of the x86 asm coders that they fired, then the Wii will get a new version.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

Why the Wii is PowerPC based?

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[tepples]

Does this mean the Nintendo Wii will be able to work with all flash sites?

No. Even if Gnash uses these specs to become fully compatible with recent Flash, the Wii platform uses code signing with a fixed root CA to ensure that only executables approved by Nintendo can run.*

*Yes, Wii homebrew exists. But at this stage of the scene, how many end users would be willing to try the Twilight Hack to run a third-party web browser, especially once Nintendo applies a patch to defeat the Twilight Hack in all new copies of the LoZ: Twilight Princess Game Disc, as happened with MechAssault and GTA: LCS?

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because PowerPC is better!

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[Constantine XVI]

Only if Nintendo/Opera is willing to write their own SWF player to these specs.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[Millennium]

Two problems with this post:

1) The Wii does not use the official Flash player. It uses a player coded by the Opera folks, which uses the latest specs released by Adobe: specs which correspond to Flash 7.0. Releasing the specs for the latest version is still a Very Good Thing, of course, but it's Opera, not Adobe, who will be updating the Wii player.

2) Re-hiring x86 ASM coders won't do the Wii any good, because the Wii doesn't use x86. It uses PowerPC.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[Floritard]

I hope so. Just moving to Actionscript 3.0 would surely increase performance greatly. And with the Wii looking more and more to be just a fad (haven't turned mine on in months), this could be an important step in keeping people's attention on the little white box.

I've read reports that the Wii has a pretty bad software attach rate. Most people just by the console to play Wii Sports. If they take it online for some free casual games then there's your market right there. I'm surprised Nintendo doesn't realize this and just release ad-supported casual games online. They're basically the same demographic. I could definitely see my mother playing all her silly match-3 games on her big-screen with the Wii.

Nintendo is probably concerned about losing control of their platform to third-party games websites where their own certification process won't reach, but it isn't as though Flash games can replace fully 3D retail titles anyway. And with how long it takes Nintendo to release its own first-party titles, and how dismally shitty alot of the licensed third-party software for Wii is turning out, it would actually be pretty shrewd to embrace Flash and really plug-in to that online casual market. Opera has seemed receptive to making the Flash support as good as possible, so maybe this new announcement will mean something.

With a fast and up to date Flash player in the Wii browser, the barrier to entry for game development on the Wii would be practically eliminated. How cool would that be.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[AKAImBatman]

1) The Wii does not use the official Flash player. It uses a player coded by the Opera folks, which uses the latest specs released by Adobe: specs which correspond to Flash 7.0.

Incorrect. Adobe releases SDK kits to companies like Opera for the purpose of creating Flash Players. The SDK contains a bare-bones implementation of a Flash player that Opera is able to port to the Wii. The problem wasn't that the Flash 8 specs didn't exist (they did), it was that the SDK was never updated to Flash 8. Apparently, Adobe wanted everyone to wait for the new Flash 9 kit.

A Flash 9 kit now exists, but it is significantly different from the Flash 7 kit that Opera currently uses. It's unclear when (if ever) Opera for the Wii will upgrade to the latest revision. Being associated with WiiCade and all, I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later. ;-)

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[AKAImBatman]

the Wii platform uses code signing with a fixed root CA to ensure that only executables approved by Nintendo can run.*

I think he was referring to the Opera browser for the Wii. Opera currently supports Flash 7, which is a few years behind the latest and greatest. If you have the Opera browser, you can go play some homebrew games on your Wii.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[tepples]

I think he was referring to the Opera browser for the Wii. I knew that. But Internet Channel can't be modded with a new SWF plug-in, so it'd have to be a new browser from the ground up.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[AKAImBatman]

But Internet Channel can't be modded with a new SWF plug-in

Ok, you totally lost me. Why would Opera not be able to update their browser with a new version of the plugin? There have been several updates released already.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[tepples]

Why would Opera not be able to update their browser with a new version of the plugin? There have been several updates released already.

Besides, the Wii CPU is on par with an iMac CPU from about 2002, with half the RAM.

But more importantly, what's in it for Opera to write a new SWF player? I don't have any statistics on the percentage of Wii owners who have bought Internet Channel, nor do I know how much of the $5 goes to Opera. But I do know that Nintendo doesn't often update existing software nearly as much as some other publishers do.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[naz404]

Don't forget that a significant chunk of the Wii games that are pretty popular are just 3D implementations of games that would be just as fun in 2D (I'm talking about the casual mini-games)

Also, AFAIK, console manufacturers receive quite a chunk of revenue in development licenses by 3rd party developers. Flash developers would by bypassing these toll fees to develop on the Wii...

Yep, a fast and up to date Flash Player on the Wii would be extremely, extremely cool :)

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[AKAImBatman]

Besides, the Wii CPU is on par with an iMac CPU from about 2002, with half the RAM.

Except the Mac didn't have four-player, motion-sensitive controls AND had the overhead of an OS/Desktop to worry about.

But more importantly, what's in it for Opera to write a new SWF player?

It's the #1 request they're hearing from their customers. A lot of the users on the Opera Wii forums on my.opera.com complain that a variety of Flash sites don't work for them. In addition, YouTube (which is the primary reason for the flash's existence in the browser) is moving toward the newer Flash standards and video features. They still supported Flash 7 last time I checked, but mucking around with some of their new, high-qual stuff shows that it isn't going to last.

But I do know that Nintendo doesn't often update existing software nearly as much as some other publishers do.

Are you kidding me? I've installed 6 or so updates since I got my Wii last year. Unless Sony and Microsoft are updating every other day, Nintendo is pretty competitive on that front. Which doesn't really matter, because the browser is a completely separate update. When it gets updated, the button in the WiiWare section says "Update". A message is usually sent out to inform users that the update is ready for download.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[notrandomly]

Opera won't be able to update their browser with a new version of the plugin because Nintendo is in charge. The updates released so far were released by Nintendo, through Nintendo's services. Opera is just the software supplier.

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[notrandomly]

Opera can't do anything without Nintendo's approval, so...

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[notrandomly]

Actually, Flash 9 is not available as an SDK either. The upgrade path from Flash 7 for anything that is not Mac, Windows or Linux is basically Flash Lite 3 (which only supports most of Flash 8). And there will be no Flash Lite unless Nintendo decides to go for it. But why would they go for an only slightly more updated Flash implementation when it's already outdated in the first place?

Then again, maybe this move by Adobe will allow Wii users to enjoy Flash 9...

Re:Nintendo Wii?

[tepples]

Except the Mac didn't have four-player And whose fault was that? Was it purely the fact that Macs haven't always had a television output?

Very clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Good response to Sun's JavaFX and Microsoft's Silverlight. The only way how to make Air survive...

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we also make sure that there are accessible (plain HTML) download links to the flv files so I can watch stuff via ffmpeg without being expected to install a parallel 32bit runtime and the proprietary nonsense that is flash player?

64 bit inux perhaps?

[rickthewizkid]

Does this mean we'll see a 64 bit flash plugin for Firefox?

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[larry bagina]

Sure, just as soon as you develop it.

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[verbatim_verbose]

Well, Gnash has a 64 bit flash plugin, and hopefully this information will help it advance and become better.

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[fwittekind]

Is far as I know, the primary hold up for a Adobe 64 bit flash plugin, is already open sourced.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/11/open_source_actionscript.html

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[xSacha]

What's wrong with nspluginwrapper?

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[twistedcubic]

crash, crash, crash

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[luguvalium2]

Don't forget swfdec, which is included in Fedora 9. I've tried it (and gnash) and they work fairly well. Unfortunately, one needs to add non-free codecs to get youtube videos working, but they do work.

Re:64 bit inux perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

last I check getting flash to work on 64bit was easy. (at least on ubuntu)

How about DNG?

[Fri13]

C'mon... Cant Adobe release DNG by somekind Free Software License so it can be implented to wider usage for Photographers?

Flash can be "unwanted" feature for others (just like DNG for others!).

Thank you Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all I can really say. This is going to be a very good thing for us open-sourcers.

Security

[Narpak]

I wonder if this impacts the security risk of just running Flash Scripts indiscriminately (love NoScript).

SVG

[otakuj462]

This puts another nail in the coffin for SVG.

Re:SVG

[Gavagai80]

Somehow I don't think SWF would be very useful to, say, KDE4. Or to just about any scenario where you want a static image that scales to any resolution. I've yet to see flash used for static images anywhere, for good reason. The reports of the demise of SVG are highly exaggerated.

Re:SVG

[redxxx]

pfffttt

"This puts another nail in the coffin for using SVG with scripting in web pages, as a real alternative to Flash or Silverlight."

Dead is an exaggeration, but the chance of it living up to the potential a lot of people saw in it are rapidly approaching 0.

You're right, it has a lot of utility for UI design and such, but as an actual document format seen by end users, it seems doomed(outside of very limited adoption in, say, FLOSS only Pre-Press work).

Re:SVG

[armandoalves]

Somehow I don't think KDE4 would be very useful to, say, SWF.

Re:SVG

[maxwell demon]

Since when do unborns get coffins?
Has there ever been actual use of SVG with scripting as Flash alternative (as opposed to use of SVG as what it is, Scalable Vector Graphics)?

Re:SVG

[redxxx]

There is pretty much no browser support for it, but it is part of the standard, and when SVG was new and shiny it looked like a real possibility. Because of the XML format, it looked very promising for dynamic content.

Re:SVG

[cwrinn]

I disagree, unless you are specifically refering to the use of SVG as an Open alternative to SWF. But SVG is much more than that. I simply don't see SVG and SWF being comparable in this manner.

Re:SVG

[gabebear]

I've been messing around with Actionscript 3 development since Adobe released the compilers for free and the only completely free way to import vector assets is via SVG. There are also a couple run-time SVG engines for AS3: uSprite and AS3SVGlib

I don't think SVG+SMILE is going to be the animation tool that some people were hoping for, but it has become THE format for exchanging vector art and will continue to become more important on the web.

Re:SVG

[AvitarX]

Very minor example, but the Tomato firmware for the Linksys WRG-54L (Linux capable one) has a real nice real-time bandwidth graph in SVG. It is similar to the google analytics flash graphs, with AJAX and real time updating.

Here is a link to a screenshot of an older version. It dynamically adjusts the y axis and the new version lets you set a smoothing and update interval. It all slowly slides left as new data comes in. It is really quite awesome, and uses SVG.

Re:SVG

[Ant P.]

Good luck convincing the people who made the thousands of icons in Gnome/KDE that they need to remake them in SWF format.

Re:SVG

[jsebrech]

SVG and Flash are not really competing that directly. SVG is the standard for vector graphics interchange. Flash is the standard for web-based vector animation. The two have completely different purposes. In fact, I've used them in combination, generating SVG server-side to have a standardized format, and using a client-side flash app that rendered the SVG, using specialized handling of some of the SVG elements.

Re:SVG

[HeroreV]

When did SVG become a document format?

File standards.

[Robert Frazier]

Adobe is pretty interesting. Not that I know a lot about them, but they seem to open up the file formats, and compete on the tools. Another example of this is DNG, their Digital Negative. It is available on some DSLRs as a default raw type (e.g., my Pentax K10D).

Well specified formats for archiving various types of content is where it's at, man.

Best wishes,
Bob

Re:File standards.

[mccalli]

Adobe is pretty interesting. Not that I know a lot about them, but they seem to open up the file formats, and compete on the tools.

Agreed, and to me this is a Good Thing(tm). There are lots of tools for reading and creating PDF - tools that have nothing to do with Adobe beyond implementing a format they originated. Do the same for the Flash ecosystem and we'll see open source tools, alternative proprietary tools and the continuation of Adobe proprietary tools also.

In other words, proper competition and to the end user's benefit. Definitely a good thing.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:File standards.

[Fri13]

If they just would open DNG to be compatible with somekind free software license so it could be used. Currently it isn't and cant be implented, exm, for the digiKam photo management software.

Re:File standards.

[multimed]

Adobe likes competition about as much as Microsoft does. They had a very fine competitor in Macromedia & the two companies pushed each other along creating better products for their respective customers. Then they merged, ending the competition on many fronts and killing some very good products in the process.

As far as competing on tools - Photoshop is probably a good case to look at. Steep educational discounts & looking the other way as the kids grow up using pirated versions of their tools to become the defacto standard. Then they start implementing heavy handed anti-piracy measures that actually gets in the way of legitimate, paying customers. Oh and don't forget, getting rid of pretty much all of their programmers (because it's not like you need to do any sort of innovation anymore) and hiring out the occasional minor tweaks (that they call "upgrades" and charge a small fortune for) to the cheapest provider possible.

The minute someone using their published swf spec provides any sort of real threat to their market share or revenue stream, Adobe will figure out a way to squash them. Macromedia had been releasing the spec for swf for years (though as others have noted with more NDA/non-compete strings attached). Whenever the heat got turned up, they'd just wait a year or two until releasing the an updated version of the spec. And Macromedia was 66.6% less evil than Adobe.

RTMP?

[stsp]

Does anyone know whether "SWF and FLV/F4V specification", " Flash Cast" and "AMF" (all mentioned in the FAQ) include RTMP in some way? In other words, will these specs help us watch south park with free software?

Re:RTMP?

[jonaskoelker]

In other words, will these specs help us watch south park with free software? I assume you have a free OS. Point firefox (MPL or GPL or LGPL) to mrtwig.net. Download the .avi torrent with rtorrent (GPL), and play it with mplayer (GPL). I mean, I've heard from a friend that this works. I've never done it myself.

You can already watch South Park using no non-free software. Do you expect the release to let you use even less non-free software? ;)

(that would make good material for a "Richard Stallman facts").

Re:RTMP?

[stsp]

:)
I know there are other ways to get south park episodes, but I was specifically referring to the streams at http://www.southparkstudios.com/ There is possibly more content out there streamed via RTMP, which (I think) is currently inaccessible to software other than Adobe's Flash, right?

Re:RTMP?

[quetwo]

Adobe opened up the RTMP protocol a few months ago with the release of the "BlazeDS" project. http://opensource.adobe.com/

Re:RTMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

adobe opened the AMF binary format not the RTMP protocol. Many open-source solutions have already implemented it like AMFPHP, WebOrb, PyAMF, Red5 and so on.
The RTMP protocol , which Red5 also implemented, is still closed.
On the other Hand, the Flash Cast specification will also be made available in a near future.

JFernandes

Re:RTMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give some references? I don't see any indication of RTMP being included in BlazeDS. In fact, googling for those two keywords yields a lot of reports that RTMP is specifically not included.

Re:RTMP?

[rekoil]

Or maybe not...

"Coenraets noted that the data management features were not being open sourced at this time. The RTMP binary messaging channel is also not being included."

http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/12/blazeds

Why? (Re:too little, too late)

[Timothy Brownawell]

If the specs are open you can just write your own. At that point, why does it really matter what license their implementation has?

"Open"

[mwilliamson]

I guess there taking the meaning from Open from OpenVMS...

Re:"Open"

[drinkypoo]

"Open" does not repeat not mean what the OSI wants it to mean. Sorry. "Open" had a meaning in computing before the OSI was a twinkle in Bruce's eye, and that was that it encouraged interoperability, usually simply by publishing standards but sometimes just by having a well-published API and terms that encourage you to use it. As such, it's more like the meaning of Open from SCO Open Desktop, which was "Open" because it was based on POSIX and Motif. (This is before the truly evil SCO, when it was merely the "why would you spend money on that crap" SCO.)

Re:"Open"

[Russ Nelson]

I don't think we have any opinion on what "Open" means. We have a strong opinion on what "Open Source" means.

Re:"Open"

[drinkypoo]

I don't think we have any opinion on what "Open" means. We have a strong opinion on what "Open Source" means.

Please see this journal entry, note especially this document to which I link. Whether you're trying to redefine the word "Open" (with a capital O, much like Free) or the phrase "Open Source", there was meaning before the OSI, and hopefully, it will have that same meaning when the OSI is gone.

Perens attempted to register "open source" as a service mark for the OSI, but that attempt was impractical by trademark standards. (ref) Of course it is. The phrase was in common use in the Unix community prior to the OSI being a twinkle in anyone's eye. And if you just do a little google archive search (don't know why I didn't think of this before today...) then you will see that the phrase "open source" was used in the media primarily to discuss state secrets available from non-domestic spies (e.g. foreign and free agents.) You can see the two come together in this New Scientist article from 1993.

I still have yet to see a good reason why any terms should be redefined here.

Re:"Open"

[Russ Nelson]

The phrase ("open source") was in common use in the Unix community prior to the OSI You exaggerate. A few people used it a few times. There was no common use like you see today. We started promoting it as having a fixed meaning written down, and the usage shot up.

Your understanding of trademark law is weak. A descriptive phrase like "Open Source" may be unregisterable initially, but over time can acquire (has acquired!) a secondary meaning, just like "Windows" now refers to a Microsoft operating system.

Yes, we know about the use of Open Source in the intelligence community. Given that it is a completely different trademark field, there is no conflict. The phrase was chosen in part because of the way the intelligence community uses it.

Re:"Open"

[drinkypoo]

You exaggerate. A few people used it a few times. There was no common use like you see today. We started promoting it as having a fixed meaning written down, and the usage shot up.

Even today there is no real consensus on what the phrase means. There is a common understanding that there is a difference between "Open Source" and "Free Software" but it is clear from conversations had here and elsewhere in the past that the community understands what "Open" means, and that "Open Source" means that you can get access to the source code, and nothing else.

Your understanding of trademark law is weak. A descriptive phrase like "Open Source" may be unregisterable initially, but over time can acquire (has acquired!) a secondary meaning, just like "Windows" now refers to a Microsoft operating system.

No, "Windows" only refers to a Microsoft operating system among uses related to computers. In addition, it is not considered to be all-encompassing; for example, we have other products with Windows in their name which are computer-related (like OpenWindows). People are still allowed to sell glass for houses as "Windows" since it's not clearly infringing. By the same token, the term "Open Source" has substantial use which does not fall under the OSI's definition. It is a clear attempt to take credit for the creation of an idea which existed before it, and then to railroad the use of that term in their chosen direction to seal the deal - kind of like the re-re-revision of the so-called "Holy Bible". The comparison is more than apt since this is an issue of ideology.

Yes, we know about the use of Open Source in the intelligence community. Given that it is a completely different trademark field, there is no conflict. The phrase was chosen in part because of the way the intelligence community uses it.

I pasted that link only to share that sense, because I found it amusing. The link to the press release in which the phrase "Open Source" is used (even in the headline!) is frankly the more telling one. It is clear that Caldera understood the phrase both in the original sense (you get the code) and the a more current sense (you're allowed to do things with it) and frankly, they have a better claim to the coining of the term than Bruce, ESR, or what's-her-head.

I realize that words change meaning all the time, but the attempt to change the meaning of the words "Open Source" constitutes an attack on the meaning of the word "Open" as it pertains to computing and is entirely inappropriate, not to mention that the view of history that supports the OSI's claim to the phrase is entirely revisionistic and therefore inappropriate and ridiculous. One reason that we have such trouble learning from history is that it is composed of so much bullshit, and this is just one more example thereof.

Interesting how things change

[acb]

IIRC, Macromedia's original rationale for keeping the formats secret was to prevent a certain unnamed competitor from embracing and extending them. Presumably they're counting on Microsoft being so committed to Silverlight that they're not going to turn on a dime, ditch their system (which their people believe, with some justification, to be technically superior) and replace it with a bastardisation of Flash.

Re:Interesting how things change

[DragonTHC]

I was just going to comment on this. Adobe is sticking it to silverlight.

bwahahahaha, now MS will never gain market share with it.

Re:Interesting how things change

[Mongoose Disciple]

bwahahahaha, now MS will never gain market share with it.

Yeah right. This is frickin' Microsoft you're talking about. They can cut deals to get Silverlight as the platform for content people want to see. They can push Silverlight installs as part of their OS. (They also can, and have, produced a platform that's way more accessible to developers than Flash, though how much that matters is debatable.)

Microsoft may not gain market share on merit, and they may not gain market share clean, but I wouldn't bet on them losing entirely.

Re:Interesting how things change

[julie-h]

Couldn't they just have released under the Apache license that doesn't allow incompatible forks?

Re:Interesting how things change

[Touvan]

To add to that, there also seems to be a lot more resistance to Microsoft attempts to embrace and extend, most of us having lived through the stagnant IE6 for far too long - and the java thing, etc. We all know what they are about, and are skeptical of anything that looks like that strategy (this includes their recent renewed interest in IE and standards, which is all about the mobile market to compete with iPhone and WebKit - we'll see how long they keep up their standards push).

Case in point - MS recently started contributing patches to PHP, and even released their own version of a fastcgi module (and seem to have broken the old fastcgi module with a security update or something). Sure enough, Wordpress currently will not install on PHP running on IIS with the official MS fastcgi due to an http header error (not that you can tell that from the gobbledygook error message you get from IIS).

They just will never learn, but the rest of us have. We'll be switching to LAMP soon.

Re:Interesting how things change

[Anonymous Coward]

Surly already having a product with more or less feature parity in the market makes it even easier for MS to implement this:

• Adding ActionScript on top of their DLR JavaScript implementation would be trivial (whatever you think of MS the DLR is very cool, it would be likely to out perform Adobe's runtime).
• Converting the SWF vector format to XAML would also be trivial (it already has a XML mapping).
• During the 'embrace' phase they would probably need to bundle the h264 codec (which again they have a much faster version of then Adobe).

Once moonlight to followed suit you could have a multi-platform (yes with proper 64bit plugins) SWF player that out performed Adobe's with the full backing of the industry monopoly.

As this would simply demonstrate that Silverlight has a supper-set of Flash's functionality it would be a marketing win and fully tick the 'extend' box from day one. (Not to mention solving Silverlight's chicken and egg problem.)

Any bets on how long the 'extinguish' phase will take?

Re:Interesting how things change

[dpilot]

> Once moonlight to followed suit you could have a multi-platform (yes with proper 64bit plugins)
> SWF player that out performed Adobe's with the full backing of the industry monopoly. ...
> Any bets on how long the 'extinguish' phase will take?

"Extinguish" is a two-phase operation. Phase 1 is to extinguish Adobe. Phase 2 is to trot out the patents and extinguish Moonlight and desktop Linux.

Re:Interesting how things change

[Ambidisastrous]

Good call. This means that Adobe (and the pile of hardware and media companies listed in the press release) are no longer afraid of Microsoft. It's actually kind of similar to Sun's finally GPL-ing Java, versus .NET.

Re:Interesting how things change

[Eighty7]

Or they could have, you know, GPL'd it. I love watching people fail problems that were solved decades ago.

Software RAID

[tepples]

Do you have the sourcecode for you machines BIOS? Some people do.

The firmware in the RAID controller of your servers? With software RAID 10, the firmware that performs the striping and mirroring is in the operating system's kernel, which is Free if you're using *BSD or *Linux. With hardware RAID 10, yes, you're usually limited to a single source of replacement controllers.

Re:Software RAID

[lukas84]

What about the BMC of the servers? The IPMI-Interface? The network card? The video cards bios?

Re:Software RAID

[maxwell demon]

The CPU microcode?

Re:Software RAID

[sjames]

BMCs and IPMI are a problem. Few network cards even actually needed the BIOS extender except to provide PXE (Coreboot users have several netboot payloads available). Some video cards really need the BIOS, others have source available and are booted by X or a framebuffer driver.

The source for all of the above is desirable for practical and aesthetic reasons.

Flash player has added such support too

[PortHaven]

So rather moot point

Actually, I think it's more pointed towards Apple

[PortHaven]

I don't think Silverlight scares Adobe all that much. Microsoft has a habit of railroading themselves into their microplatforms (IIS, ASP, .NET, etc)

But Apple likes to lock down their platforms and control them. The iPhone is a good example. And mobile is the future for many things. So by doing this, it will be hard for Apple (or anyone else) to keep Flash from being in it's future.

Relevant?

[Ilgaz]

I think you better check real World. I am telling as a person who had to convert (keeping originals) hundreds of Quicktime Mov files to Flash to give option to people who refuses to install anything to view videos. Of course I keep the original Quicktime Mpeg4 files on site.

Multimedia vendors need to make sure their application/plugin supports Flash (FLV) giving more performance, quality and additional options than original Flash player to stay relevant. It seems only Real Networks figured this fact with their Realplayer 11 which supports easy downloading of FLV content.

Too late for who? 1% of market? People actually started to ask Sony, Philips to add FLV video options for their high end/connected TVs. The big "iPhone no Flash" debate actually is "iPhone no Flash Youtube" debate, Apple paid a lot to Youtube to temporarily silence their consumers but yet iPhone flash would be hit. What kind of market you speak about?

I wished Apple, Real Networks, Microsoft and to some degree open source guys weren't that stupid and didn't make 1994's "Download huge embedded single file to act like streaming" FLV a de-facto standard and we were using UDP/RTSP/Bandwidth switching actual media plugins now but it didn't happen. Apple still puts that God damn blue icon to taskbar, pushes Safari to unsuspecting users, Microsoft still doesn't ship a God damn player to any OS rather than Windows and Real Networks still makes people afraid to install their player. On the other hand, Adobe Flash, 1.1 MB single click download for ALL OS. Enough said.

Re:Relevant?

[sjames]

Personally I'd like to see websites quit drinking the flavor of the hour video codec kool-aid and just stick with something widely supported and supportable without half a dozen patent trolls holding their hands out.

Perhaps if it was a lot less common to have to install yet another whatever to see a site, less people would get trojaned.

Re:Relevant?

[Ilgaz]

Well, if history didn't happen and users would install anything to view anything in convenience of Flash, I would choose Real Networks servers (Helix) and Realvideo/Audio architecture with fallback/alternative as pure mp4 advanced profile.

Sadly it doesn't happen. You should see the feedback I got because I went with only mpeg 4 standard Quicktime files. I had to add "Flash Video" option and the quality is incomparable low compared to my mpeg 4s. Note that I can't enable ASP features 3ivx (my commercial mpeg4 provides) because that JUNK, Apple provides can't play them (Quicktime plugin) while a Sony PSP, a dumb game console with limited memory/CPU happily plays them.

There are standards and a "de facto" standard. Sadly, FLV became de-facto. I was just pointing it out.

Re:Relevant?

[sjames]

I can sympathize. FLV isn't the highest quality around. I suppose people like it because flash IS everywhere. At least the two are substantially different other than being incompatible.

My big complaint is that with the dozens of codecs I have for xine including windows dlls that xine had to support because of codec vendors that don't seem to know non-Windows machines exist and still, people come up with goofy codecs that aren't in the list. What makes it worse is that they are just yet another codec rather than offering any real performance quality or size advantage over the other half dozen in their category. Incompatibility for incompatibility's sake.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[bhodikhan]

In the list of "industry leaders" I noticed Apple missing. Is Apple going to be that stubborn with regard to Flash on their iPhone? For all it's faults Flash is damn near everywhere. Why the hell is Apple still snubbing Flash even with Adobe opening up the format? Perhaps Apple wants to write their own iPhone Flash player? Could you write your own player just because the format is open? Seems like a tough task.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would they? at the moment for things like Ipod or Itouch, they use quicktime/mp4 just fine. Safari just uses the plug ins for flash as do all other OSs.

What do apple need 'flash' for?

More details

[jaaron]

If you didn't bother to RTFA, here are a few more pertinent details. The specific actions Adobe will take include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

This is huge in that it means we can finally start porting the Flash runtime to other platforms. It's not yet completely open source, but I'm encouraged by the steps Adobe is taking. They're at least moving in the right direction.

Re:More details

[nickull]

Thank you. I work for Adobe and have been involved in more open source and open standards stuff including PDF going to ISO, The core Flash runtime VM (Tamarin) going open source to SourceForge, the Flex Compiler going open source and the data services component going open source and free (BlaseDS). Adobe really is listening to groups like Slashdot and from now on, anyone who thinks they can write a leaner Flash Player can go ahead and do it.

Re:More details

[delt0r]

As I have asked elsewhere (without reply) what about patents, and codecs. The format is all nice and stuff but IIRC flash uses the VP6 & VP7 codecs from On2. On2 is not really all that open with its IP as the ffmpeg group found out (IIRC). Its like having a open avi format but you still have to pay for the codecs that we use.

Adobe IMO has a good reputation (ps and pdf). But there nothing about this i can find on the website. I really would like some more information about the IP issues. Without a clear statment about the IP involved it will be difficult to implement a true GPL 3 version at the least.

Re:More details

[delt0r]

So then can you clear up the IP issues with On2 VP6 and mpeg codecs that are used in the players? Does "free" mean that we all have a unrecoverable license to use these codecs (that means all the patents that are claimed over these codecs as well) with flash? Or does free just mean Adobe part of the license fees are waived?

Example: can I use flash (mpeg/VP6) as the movie format without paying license fees in a commercial video game? Note that no GPL code could be used of course.

Re:More details

[ystar]

The mere idea of higher ups at a previously assumed Big Evil Company paying attention to discussions on Slashdot (with critiques here often ruthless, multifaceted, and heavily biased towards consumer interests) is pretty shocking, and heartening.

If this signals a major shift in Adobe's operating culture, I think it's cause for celebration.

Re:More details

[nickull]

Not sure as I haven't read the documents in their entirety yet - this just happened yesterday at midnight. The official URL is www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200804/050108AdobeOSP.html If it is not answered there, please ping me personally at dnickull at adobe dot com and I'll find out for you (for better or worse). If these are things we are not doing right still, people need to know so please don't hesitate.

Re:More details

[Anonymous Coward]

adobe has a good reputation ?

they have a *terrible* reputation.
if you're not running linux x86, you're
out in the cold wrt flashplayer.
that includes all the free BSD derivatives.
you try giving someone new to desktop computing
a machine with an OS that's standards compliant
and loaded with all the software they're likely to
use, except flashplayer.
they'll scrub it and install xp just to be able to
browse youtube. guaranteed.

adobe suck ass.

Re:More details

[delt0r]

I said why... that is PS and PDF. Its not that they provide good products but open standards. Thats what I meant.

Re:More details

[Andrew_T366]

The official Flash 8 and 9 plugins will not run on Windows 95 or NT4...and thanks to backwards-incompatible changes, content developed for Flash 8 or 9 often will not display with Flash 7.

If the specifications are opened, I imagine it would be possible for a third party to write a Flash 8/9-compatible plugin capable of running on Windows 95/NT4 systems. (Or at least, I'd like to think so, odds of it actually happening to the contrary...)

Re:More details

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you help us out with like the code from the current Flash Player? That way everyone benefits.

Yeah, that would be great, thanks.

Re:More details

[slaingod]

I would have expected the more traditional: "I use Noscript and FlashBlock like all leet users, so it doesn't affect me." :P

Adobe/Macromedia has consistently made some pretty great products and has a good track record of opening up their specs for a lot of it, like PDF, Flex, etc. Flash player can run on 99.5% of the desktop browsers out there, which isn't perfect, but is damn good. They at least made an effort to get it to work on Linux, when *nix accounts for an insignificant part of the market, like it or not.

Re:More details

[ksdd]

As of Flash Player 9.0.115 (if memory serves regarding the version number) you can use a standard MP4 video file encoded as H.264 instead of FLV. Not sure if that addresses your IP/GPL concerns, but you're not tied to FLV and VP6 if you target recent player versions.

The original press release is here.

Re:More details

[CrkHead]

So, this means Flash is no longer evil?

Re:More details

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped using flash a couple years ago because it was a security risk, annoying and unavailable under x64 operating systems/browsers. I haven't missed it at all. On the contrary, the web seems like a much more organised place without it.

However, if Adobe were to fix two of those outstanding issues (security and x64 support), I might give it another go since Flashblock extension can handle the annoying part.

Re:More details

[TheDeivix]

I agree, they've done some other good things recently:

collaborating with mozilla in the tamarin project
open sourcing the flex libraries and compiler, which by the way is in fact an actionscript compiler, meaning you can develop any actionscript application with it, not just flex

Yep, i looks like they're moving in the right direction, i think they are aware of SVG and SMIL, and they realize that eventually they'll have to open source the player too if they don't want the flash platform to disappear.

Re:More details

[jjmaestro]

No, thank you for your help in pushing all that stuff into the open :)

Cheers!

Re:More details

[HeroreV]

Why would anybody be using such archaic operating systems to view Flash content? I could kinda understand if it was running some mission critical program that required it, or if is was part of some complex system that is running fine and would be a bitch to upgrade, but to view Flash? That doesn't make any sense.

Re:More details

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean we can save flash videos by right clicking instead of having to resort to hacks?

Re:More details

[Anonymous Coward]

The flv container doesn't require any specific codec. You can add your own royalty free codec if you wanted to. Youtube doesn't only use VP6 for example, you can use H.264 video also.

VP6 codec usage is minor.

Re:More details

[xtracto]

I do not know why people are so paranoid of Adobe. Shure, their PDF reader sucks really bad but IMO they do not seem to be "open source" unfriendly (for a company which business is to /sell/ software).

They provided the PDF specification for free (unlike other DOCument formaxls). They have released a [free] version of their reader for Unix like (linux/bsd/etc...) systems since a long time ago. Now they are doing the same with a technology that certainly *is* a defacto standard and which some other company would have chosen to guard so closed and milk all they could from it (shit... even the GIF guys tried to sue teh internetz).

And on top of that they have pretty much one or two of the best software in their respective markets (Photoshop, ilustrator, etc).

I do not see anything inherently bad in what they have done. And I deffinitely would not compare them to Microsoft.

Catch 22 for Adobe.

[Spy der Mann]

Adobe needs to put the Flash player (as well as the Flash program itself) under the GPL license if they want to be relevant.

And sign their death sentence? Adobe depends on the sale of their software. It's fair enough opening the formats. I'm thinking that Adobe has realized that closed formats have no future in the web. It's catch 22: If they don't open the formats, they risk extinction. But if they do, they give their keys to the competition (including F/OSS) in a few years.

Re:Catch 22 for Adobe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's not like they don't already charge for the authoring software. Like with PDF, they can always update their official viewer, or the spec, or both, and leave the third-party solutions playing catch-up for a month or two.
 
Forget Silverlight. I think Adobe is afraid of a few other things:

• There is a lot of buzz about newer smart gadgets, ranging from big phones to small laptops, for which Flash is too big and Mobile Flash is too crappy. Say they stick stick to their guns about licensing, unwilling developers have two options: use the current open-source tools, or use alternative frameworks entirely. Adobe is realizing that they'd prefer the former to the latter.
• SVG. It's good enough for the site nav animations and ads. Also, streaming video could always end up in a "real" format, and they'd be useless there. What does that leave Adobe? Songs about badgers, and yetis with baseball bats?
• The current desktop flash player (afaik) uses MMX to do its vector drawing. The mobile player is slimmed down, to avoid using hardware floating-point. But there's a lot of smaller, battery powered devices coming out that can do better than Mobile Flash, but the code just isn't there. Maybe they said, screw it, let's not waste time coding this ourselves?

Not that Silverlight isn't an issue...see US LoC fiasco, for instance. Microsoft's heart soul is in their software platforms. Yeah, they make money on games, and ads, and everything else. But having something like Flash around that can be programmed for and then run on any architecture is probably a nightmare for them. I personally think that Silverlight smells a bit like J++.
 
So I don't think Adobe sees this as an open vs. not open issue. It's more that they will do whatever it takes to keep their platform relevant, in the face of competition from SVG, Silverlight, better streaming video codecs, and yes even Java.

Wii?

[twistah]

Does this mean that Opera can finally implement something above Flash 7 on embedded devices like the Nintendo Wii?

Re:Wii?

[notrandomly]

Not sure. Nintendo would have to request it from Opera in any case. Opera can't just put stuff in there without Nintendo's approval.

When I hear "rich web experiences"

[Mateo_LeFou]

When I hear "rich web experiences" nowadays, I generally run.

To me this phrase means no context menus (right-clicking), no "open in new tab" and other *totally normal browsing behavior, no retrieving information for local storage ..

In sum, it means the *one way of navving the site that designers anticipated will be nice and rich. Point, click, grunt..

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[nahdude812]

They don't do this because it's a vector for non-Apple-approved applications to run on the iPhone. It's the same reason they refuse to allow Java to run on it. They want to control what people run on the phone so they can charge for services which free (speech/beer) software could enable for... well, for free (beer).

A great big lot of nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm anonymous because saying this could cost me my job: Basically Gnash has already throughly reverse engineered the FLV format, so now that Adobe has nothing more to lose ... they 'open' it.

Really this is just an attempt by Adobe to maintain a bit of control over the format that they'd lose if someone other than them had a good open source implementation.

So this will do very little positive for GNASH, while at the same time increasing the already common false notion that flash is actually open.

At the end of the day, even if Adobe opened everything they could (and didn't pull an OOXML), the video codecs that Flashs makes mandatory are throughly patented and the format will remain, likewise, throughly non-free. Same for the decent authoring tools.

So at the end of the day we're all suffer because an increasing part of the web is locked into a propritary format, that the public believes is really open due to Adobe's Orwellian doublespeak.

Re:A great big lot of nothing.

[WPIDalamar]

Last I knew, Gnash didn't have any AVM2 support, so nothing taking advantage of the latest API's would work.

Adobe really wants to get rid of flash

[tulcod]

I suggested this over a year ago. With all the competitors nowadays, Adobe can no longer maintain Flash as a closed-source product.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[gabebear]

All current mobile Flash is awful for several reasons:

• Screen size problems - Flash content is generally designed for desktop resolutions. This can be overcome with an iPhone(ish) interface
• CPU Speed problems - Flash can be a hog
• CPU architecture not supported by Adobe - only x86 and PPC are supported

The architecture problem is pretty huge... I think this new project is aimed at fixing that problem. Up until now you were looking at either using the official plugin and having a desktop CPU or having limited functionality like all current mobile implementations. Hopefully we will see more architectures with good Flash virtual machines. Part of the source for Adobe's Flash WM has been released to the Tararin Project.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget that Nokia has a very nice ARM based Flash Player on their N810 device.

Good news.

[mark-t]

So does this mean that Firefox will stop crashing about half the time when I close a window with a flash video?

Re:Actually, I think it's more pointed towards App

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, nearly every phone on this planet has J2ME and Sun is working on freeing their java implementations and still Apple manages to say no to Java on the iPhone. Free flash ain't going to help.

Apple hates Java and Flash because they can't control the platforms and those platforms easily allow sandboxing of apps.

Celebrate good times, c'mon!

[Digana]

Woohoo! Gnash, your job just got a heckuva lot easier!

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[gabebear]

I wasn't aware of the N800 Flash9, that's pretty neat. Flash8 was a huge disappointment throughout it's development, but Flash9 is looking to be as revolutionary of a platform as Flash5-7 were. Still the N800's Flash doesn't seem to be quite on par with Win/OSX/Linux versions, it doesn't support paperVision3D, which is only slightly disappointing.

Flash EULA forbidding competing implementations

[Ed Avis]

The EULA for the Flash player claims to forbid you from making your own implementation. This means that the Gnash project can't accept help from anyone who has installed Adobe's plugin. Whether click-through licences are legally binding is questionable, but in the end it doesn't matter whether they are binding or not, just whether they give an opportunity for lawyers to tie you up in long court cases, which is probably true.

Will Adobe be granting permission to work on Flash implementations to those who have installed their software? I didn't spot anything about that in their FAQ.

Re:Flash EULA forbidding competing implementations

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=539834&cid=23262086

And here's the spec

[Digana]

It takes a few unobvious clicks to navigate Adobe's website, but here are the specs.

Now let's get hacking! :-)

That can only mean

[Snaller]

... they think Silverlight is a threat.

Of course flash is still an abomination making it difficult for many people to use the web (try making most fonts larger to read them, or have such sites read out by voice software)

Containter formats, codecs and patents.

[delt0r]

Title sums it up really. What about the fact that FLV is a container format and not a codec. Do we still get sued by On2 when we use VP6? What about the licenses requirements with the mpeg codecs. Without these codec how useful is a flash player because at least youtube won't work.

Re:Containter formats, codecs and patents.

[Wesley Felter]

Whoa, you've posted the same question three times in this thread. Relax a little.

In the absence of any guidance from Adobe, we have to assume that player developers will have to pay license fees to On2 and MPEG LA.

Re:Containter formats, codecs and patents.

[delt0r]

You never know with modding. I have decided its a random process, so i guess its my lucky day if i cared about karma that is (was expecting a redundant somewhere at least).

The reason is that this directly affects me. I am currently developing a game and need a codec/container for cut scenes. But the licensing on things like mpeg4 are crazy. Bink is not so bad but still expensive. I'm keeping an eye on Theora, but both stability and performance are not quite there yet. So for the last 2 weeks I have been writing my own codec based on BTPC/APT. So far so good but theres still a lot of work to go. Something like this that really is free would be great.

As it is we can't really say anything useful has been made free at all. This seems to have been missed by a few.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[ConceptJunkie]

I find it amusing (and astounding) that apps written on Flash (minus video) seem to run at about 1% of what you could do with native programming. It's nice to see all those cute games, which are largely the kinds of things we saw on DOS about 15 years ago. It's not nice that those DOS-style games will peg a processor running at 100 times the speed of what those DOS games run on.

Hey.

[Anonymous Coward]

... No way! I never expected Adobe to do this, not even for selfish reasons. Maybe the world really is ready for Free Software.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[ozmanjusri]

Yep, it's beautifully useful.

I'm developing auditing apps in OpenLaszlo and deploying them on N800s. It's got to be one of the best RAD combos I've ever used.

As a Flash Developer...

[seanonymous]

I love the fact that I can write an app in Flash (an app, not a banner ad or some BS website navigation menu that doesn't let you right click and select 'open in new' tab, but a fully self-contained app) and have it run on Windows, Mac, Solaris, or Linux without having to deal with all the special case crap that one has to deal with when using JavaScript and trying to get it to run in Safari, Firefox, and that awful piece of garbage that MS spews out.

When I hear people complain that something isn't working properly in Gnash, it always makes me laugh. I write for Flash. I don't write for Gnash. And I'm happy that I don't write for some spec that can be interpreted in 50 different ways. (Well, I have to use SCORM and AICC, but that's another story.) What works in Flash for Safari on Leopard will work on Flash for IE on Windows 2000. It's very nice.

My point is that sometimes the best way to deliver a consistent platform is to make it proprietary, or, at the very least, have a tyrant in charge of the project. Don't get me wrong, OSS is massively important, and I'm not disparaging the quality of OSS, but can't we embrace both models, as well as all the shades in between?

Re:As a Flash Developer...

[Locutus]

not to start a flame war but I'd like to hear why you wouldn't consider Java for such an application task?

Is it because it is not pre-loaded on as many OEM PCs?

Is it you just like the Flash environment better than the Java env(jvm, lang, etc )?

LoB

Re:As a Flash Developer...

[naz404]

This is because Java provides a horrible user experience for the stuff that Flash does now.

Primarily the fact that your browser freezes when the JRE starts loading up and everything stops responding until it has fully loaded.

In terms of site usability experience, that's quite a big turnoff.

Moreover, Flash is really king for front-end applications. Java is really more for developers. It's just really so much easier deploying and building art & multimedia assets through flash than in Java (the vector engine kicks ass for some low-bandwidth apps. Flash bloat is due to poor author opimization, not because of flash per se.)

Finally, coding in flash is so much easier and faster than in Java. less wordy.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Not The Real Me]

"...In the list of "industry leaders" I noticed Apple missing. Is Apple going to be that stubborn with regard to Flash..."

Other missing industry leaders include Microsoft, whose Windows media streaming and Silverlight competes directly with Flash. Real Media, whose streaming media completes with Flash video. Then there is the last missing industry leader, Apple, whose Quicktime completes with Flash video.

Most news and multimedia sites have switched from Apple, Microsoft and Real streaming formats to Flash during the past two years.

"holding the family jewels close to the chest"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's gotta make your eyes water...

Dear Adobe,

[sootman]

PLEASE oh PLEASE oh PLEASE let the next Flash plugin incorporate 100% of the work you already put in to your now-dead SVG plugin! Making graphics out of thin air--nothing but an XML file with some basic info and a few (X,Y) coordinates--is SO sweet! C'mon Adobe, you used to* love SVG... right up until the day you bought Macromedia.

* note the dated references on that page to CS2

Isn't this the same scenario as Adobe Reader?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that PDF is an open specification has allowed several implementations to exist for PDF such as Ghostscript, xpdf, etc.

Great, but....

[Isauq]

A chance at finally having a flash player that doesn't eat all my CPU time is wonderful. But I wish they would do something about (read: open) the PSD format, too... I know, I know, it's probably not going to happen any time soon, but dealing with it is so frustrating. It's worse than scripting GIMP- at least that's (theoretically) possible.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why the iphone sucks! Windows mobile is FAR more open.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Moridineas]

Agreed (though wth some nice features like bring vector graphics to the masses, etc)

It's a shame. Not having to download anything, not having to install anything, and not having to run anything will win with 99% of computer users every day. Goodbye email clients--just use gmail. Goodbye chat clients, use gtalk. etc. Nevermind the lost speed, function, and flexibility..

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[debatem1]

Its all about developer time vs CPU time. Nobody's going to spend two thousand developer hours taking something from O(nlogn) to O(n) anymore except in very special circumstances, and this is one of those cases where *nobody cares*. Not the developers, not the consumers, not even the sites hosting them. And the few old-school (read: good) programmers are left throwing their hands up in disgust and inching that much closer to the 'get offa my lawn' guy.

great - now someone can make a better flash?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I hate flash - not th ersults - I basically don't care about the results, per se, but using flash is one of the most irritating, counter-intuitive, fucked up experiences in software.

Perhaps with SWF and FLV opened up, someone can construct an alternative to flash that's actually easy to use.

RS

Re:great - now someone can make a better flash?

[snuf23]

Well that's what happens when you take an application designed for making non-interactive 2D animations and turn it into a development platform.

Re:great - now someone can make a better flash?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Why is it that you and I see that, but so many others have this "flash-induced-reality-distortion-field" about them? It's really sad and pathetic. Silverlight has a better UI. Unfortunately, it's a total Piece o' crap. (sigh)

RS

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Not having to install anything is a kind of flexibility.

And JavaScript/ActionScript runtimes are getting absurdly fast. If Flash is still slow, it's due to some retarded programming somewhere -- either Adobe's, or the actual games. (I suspect Adobe, given how little Flash exploits proper hardware acceleration.)

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Moridineas]

I don't disagree with you either--there are an entirely different set of advantages for web apps / flash apps / etc. I would think your average slashdot user would be more likely to prefer older style apps, but maybe I am wrong.

My biggest complain about web development is that it's a total pain in the ass. HTML+JavaScript+Database+Backend language (Pylon? Ruby on Rails? PHP? Perl? .NET? Java? whatever lanaguage of the week)+platform and browser of the users choice, NONE of which work the same way. It's a nightmare!

Again, there are HUGE advantages to doing web dev, instant rollouts, bugfixes, accessibility etc, I would just like to see a sane platform for web dev!

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Locutus]

but now they are all delivered to a browser onver a network and not shared via BBS or sneakerNet.

One possible reason why everyone is trying to make a browser do all this stuff with what's delivered in the browser: There once was a company who had 80% of the browser marketshare and their browser had a published plugin API. Since plugins are native code, they ran quite fast and all kinds of fun things were happening inside of the browser. Many many plugins were made for this browser and many preload deals were struck. But this all became a threat to the company making the dominant OS the browser and plugins ran on. Companies reselling this OS were threatened and Internet Server Providers(ISPs) were threatened and/or paid to stay away from this one browser and their plugins. The browser soon dropped to single digit marketshare in just a few years. The effect also chilled the market for making plugins as all the work on those browser plugins were mostly lost as the new forced-on-the-market browser used different APIs and only ran on that one OS. Plugin vendors looked for other ways to keep this from happening again and instead built their applications out of the scripting tools already built into all browsers and though slow, they do work on incredibly fast CPUs the new computers have.

Plugins used to be the norm but they now are the exception. Today, the only standard/preloaded 3rd party plugins are Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Microsoft has also started spending many millions of dollars going after these last two products. MS Silverlight and MS XPS are the Windows-only products being used to get Adobe out of the preloaded browser plugin market. IMO

LoB

Re:Actually, I think it's more pointed towards App

[Locutus]

surely a company willing to spend billions to purchase customers and developers is no threat to Adobe. After all, there has been not a single example of this company using its vast wealth to purchase support and not a single example of them crossing the legal lines to make sure they get what they desire.

And hey, while we're at it, I've got this really cute little bridge to sell ya at a great price. It's orange in color, only two vertical supports, with a few cables holding everything in place so it's easy to move.

LoB

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[jsebrech]

The diversity for desktop development is as big as for web development, and the environments are as complex. Try writing a cross-platform desktop app, it gets complicated pretty fast. The main difference is that on the desktop the platform-provider has an authorized development toolchain that integrates well with the platform (visual studio for windows, xcode for mac), and it is acceptable to build apps only in/for that environment. For web development there's no such thing.

There are however simple ways of building web apps that let you stop worrying about html, css, javascript and just focus on the code. There's java + gwt if you tend towards java, and there's delphi for php if you prefer php.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[jsebrech]

And the few old-school (read: good) programmers are left throwing their hands up in disgust and inching that much closer to the 'get offa my lawn' guy.

Why is it "better" if you spend longer to code the same thing? The point of technology is to make life simpler. If the march of technology delivers us tools that lets us build the same thing in less time, I say great to that.

In essence, this debate is a repeat of the hand-optimized assembly vs compiled code argument. Compilers "won" because the performance loss was acceptable given the development time boost. This will be no different with interpreted languages.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[garbletext]

Because *other* people use it extensively? Parent was talking about the iPhone, which does not support flash, yet easily could.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

So now that they have done this, I can get native FLV and SWF support in both Firefox and MPlayer on Linux. This is great. Having said that, what is the newest incompatible format Microsoft (and others) came out with 2 weeks ago (or plans to release no doubt 2 weeks from now) that will be 'sooooo much better than those old obsolete formats' that anyone can use? I mean, ya know microsoft and incompatibility go hand in hand.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[debatem1]

It's not better to spend longer doing the same thing. It *can* be better to get something out the door quickly. It *can* be better to spend a bajillion hours optimizing it. It depends on the situation- but it is much easier to go from writing highly optimized code to pushing poorly performing code out the door in ten minutes than vice versa, and I'm not convinced most newer programmers can do it.
As far as the compiled vs hand-optimized argument, you make a cogent point. As newer tools make it easier to write code (good and bad), the tradeoffs we make become less obvious, hidden by layer upon layer of abstraction, and ultimately blinding us to what our programs are actually doing. That makes it essential that we understand very clearly how our tools work, and what the alternatives are, when making design decisions. And that's my problem with a lot of modern developers: its not that they write code quickly- its that they don't know when there's a better way to accomplish the same goal.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[Anonymous Coward]

"15 years ago"... that would be Doom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1993_video_games

And, how apropos, the list includes "Dinosaurs for Hire"! That's pretty much the point. Flash uses the resources of today's vastly faster home computers (the Pentium I 60 MHz was released in '93; most people had a 486) in place of an office of programmers.

What's weird about that? You might as well be astounded that people use a word processor instead of a secretarial pool. It's just basic efficiency to make use of what's plentiful.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[ConceptJunkie]

Why is it "better" if you spend longer to code the same thing? The point of technology is to make life simpler.

So I guess you don't mind when Vista takes 5 minutes to boot.

Just a thought

[TheDeivix]

Just a thought but i've been wondering this:

Adobe claims that Flash is the best platform to develop Rich Internet Applications.

What company is the one developing the most and best Internet Applications and reaching the broader audience right now?..... Google, are they using Flash?.... NO!

Not counting the Youtube video player, and the charts in Analytics it's amazing that the developers at Google prefer to go through the horrendous hassle of developing something as complex as a spreadsheet editor using something as archaic as javascript, developing it with actionscript would be faster, easier and the results would be much better, but it seems like Google doesn't want anything to do with Flash at the moment.

Will this recent move by Adobe change the way they're perceived by Google?... is that one of their intentions?

I've always thought that Flash should go completely open souce, and then Adobe should join forces with Google and Mozilla to create a full featured web platform and destroy Microsoft once and for all, i hope i live to see that day.

Re:Just a thought

[FredMenace]

the developers at Google prefer to go through the horrendous hassle of developing something as complex as a spreadsheet editor using something as archaic as javascript

Considering GWT (http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/), they probably code it in Java.

From the Gnash list

[Trogre]

SWF specs:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

FLV/F4V specs:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/

Re:JS/AS Runtimes getting absurdly fast

[naz404]

The slow implementations you're talking about are due to the retarded programming of the game authors. Most people in Flash come from a designer background and not a programming background, hence inefficient code. as for implementations of Flash getting faster and faster, the demo of Flash 10 they showed at Adobe Max was fast enough to run Quake 1 in fullscreen! Check the 2nd video in the link below from sneak peeks at Adobe Max in Chicago last year: http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/10/03/adobe-max-chicago-sneak-peeks/

Not much right there about codecs

[benwaggoner]

VP6 and VP7 don't even have B-frames. I'd say most of their interesting features are in the decoder size (aggressive deblocking, noise synthesis to hide artifact and add perceptual sharpness). Turn off the postprocessing features in VP6/7's DirectShow decoder, and it's quickly revealed as nothing special. And the encoder is SLOW; it's the last single-threaded codec of any significant use.

Sorenson Spark is the ancient H.263 codec, and so a predecessor to the still-ancient MPEG-4 Simple Profile. It's about as high end (and old) as MP3.

Sorenson Media has always shipped cross-platform Mac/Win products.

RealVideo 10 isn't bad for anime, but not really of much interest or use beyond that these days.

Re:Say NO to Closed Source software.

[naz404]

The Opera Browser is closed source, yet it kicks Firefox's ass and has been the most innovative browser in existence this past decade.

It is leaner (small installation size), meaner (better resource management - try opening 200 browser tabs in firefox I dare you! I've done it in Opera), and faster (Faster page loading times, etc) than all the other browsers out there right now.

Re:difficult for many people to use the web

[naz404]

You mean for *visually-impaired* people to use the web. (have difficulty reading small fonts or are blind and need screen readers) Most users are fine, thank you.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[The Munger]

I really don't understand your shock here. I don't deny that coding to the hardware directly could achieve much, much greater results but I don't think you're appreciating what was really going on back then.

For starters, I'm guessing you're talking about VGA resolutions, and the 320x200 type not 640x480 in 16 colors. My smallest screen has a resolution of 1024x768. VGA resolution is a tiny box in the corner. The machine I'm typing this has a 1920x1200 screen. Actual VGA has a maximum of 256 colors! Beyond clever palette hacks, things like alpha-blending or anti-aliasing are virtually impossible. Think about this; 320x200x8 fits into 64 *kilobytes* of memory. Just do the math on even 1024x768x16.

Pegging the processor? How much does it affect your interactivity with the rest of the environment? When I was writing real-time architectural software, we had an 'experienced computer professional' try and tell us that our software was using too much CPU. We ran at the fastest frame-rate we could, but played nice. You could quite happily have Photoshop plugging away in the background and it wouldn't be affected because we yielded gracefully. Flash does the same.

Compare this with DOS. There are no other applications running. Your game is pegging the CPU with literally nothing else running on the system (Oh OK, resident programs like mouse drivers). It is pretty much incapable of *not* pegging the CPU.

It may seem to you as if things have taken a step backwards, but I put it to you that what Flash does now would be impossible under a DOS machine from 15 years ago.

Re:difficult for many people to use the web

[Snaller]

No I didn't.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[stoanhart]

With the release of the SWF specs, say hello to OpenVG + Gnash + Gallium3D for hardware accelerated, open-source, vector goodness!

(and goodbye to pegged CPU's)

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[DECS]

The iPhone could "easily" support Flash if it either:

- used an old version that didn't properly render modern Flash content (like the Flash used in the PlayStation 3)

- used a Lite version of Flash that didn't render anything but a minor subset of Flash, and which will only work with basic FLA video players in its latest version (not officially out yet IIRC)

- used a completely reengineered, yet somehow backwards compatible version of Flash that perfectly ran PC targeted Flash content that currently plays like crap on the Mac with memory leaks and other bugs, but rewritten for the iPhone's ARM architecture with major integration into Apple's Cocoa Touch software.

So yeah, that'd be a piece of cake if Apple gave two shits about spending a year constructing a crutch to hold up Adobe's shitty platform that should go away and make way for a real reach Internet application platform such as HTML 5.

I don't think Apple is going to do that, and if Adobe could, they might have already fixed their Mac version.

It appears that you think is some sort of conspiracy, or that Apple has a moral obligation to devote its resources to supporting a shitty architecture that destroys the web, but only because there are a handful of useful things that could far more easily be redesigned to use standards that are already open.

Gone in a Flash: More on Appleâ(TM)s iPhone Web Plans

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[DECS]

Most news and multimedia sites have switched from Apple, Microsoft and Real streaming formats to Flash during the past two years. And now Google is making available its FLA/AVI videos in YouTube as H.264, directly in response to Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch/Apple TV. And iTunes is seeding all paid video downloads as H.264. The BBC is also vending H.264 specifically for Apple's products to use its iPlayer content.

WMA and Real are and have been principally streaming formats, which is not what FLA video does. Flash is just a playback controller that presents On2-codec compressed video. And of course, Flash is now moving to H.264. As everything gains the native ability to play H.264, why will they need to now download another new version of Flash just to orchestrate things?

Presenting video the only useful thing Flash does (the other non-useful things are banner ads and HTML replacement on the web with a slow-to-load vector slideshow), and now that's growing obsolete.

Re:

[clint999]

Am I the only one that is completely confused?

I think you're missing the point...

[PortHaven]

The point is to super-saturate all the markets (from the already soaked personal computers with 95%-98% saturation, to phones, PDAs, game consoles, etc).

And to endeavor to have the mass amount of content in Flash format. Then people will demand it from Apple and they'll have to get over themselves.

Re:JS/AS Runtimes getting absurdly fast

[SanityInAnarchy]

Quake 1 fullscreen, wow.

I hate to be a cynic, but come on. Quake 1 was released in 1996. It is 2008. According to Moore's Law, we are running on machines some four thousand times faster than Quake was designed for. Wake me up when we can play real games in Flash.

That said, at least it's better than people trying to build a 3D engine on top of 2D flash. Apparently, Flash 10 is actually going to have hardware-accelerated 3D.

And you're right, most Flash people are designers, but there's more than enough blame to spread around. I remember testing Flash on a 1.8 ghz amd64, versus mplayer and vlc on the same video. The Flash (on YouTube) used some 50% CPU in a window, and couldn't go fullscreen (at the time). None of the other video players (again, on the exact same video) used more than about 2% CPU, even fullscreen. So Flash is, at best, twenty-five times slower than a reverse-engineered, open source implementation of the same video codecs.

This particular problem has since been addressed, somewhat -- fullscreen flash is accelerated, I think. But I have absolutely no more faith in Adobe than I do in random Flash game developers.

Re:Apple's gonna write their own flash player?

[garbletext]

I think you are mistaken. My n800 runs a complete implementation of flash 9 on a 400 Mhz ARM. Some extremely intensive flash applications exhibit slowdown, but it's perfectly usable, including youtube, and renders content identically to its desktop version. I'm not sure where you got the idea that flash was incredibly resource intensive, as it's been around since PCs were about as powerful as an iPhone. The iPhone is a more powerful machine than the n800, with graphics acceleration to boot. (although its low resolution is a minor handicap) Adobe would port it for them in a heartbeat. Apple doesn't want flash because it would reduce their control over the platform, no more, no less.