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Adobe Flash Now Officially a Part of Google Chrome
MacGene noted that Google has announced plans to include Flash with Chrome. This step will make Chrome easier for Mom & Pop to use, but comes with a host of issues that have been discussed here before. I expect them to announce Silverlight Thursday.
The inclusion of Flash doesn't generate any issues that every other browser doesn't have. Since 99% of people end up installing Flash, it's probably just as well to include it. Those people who don't want it are all computer savvy enough to turn it off; for the rest, it's a service to have it included.
Now, with a bit of luck, Chrome won't become unresponsive when it stumbles across flash applets.
I love Chrome, but its poor flash handling (and stalling when downloading) drives me bonkers.
Do you really expect them to announce including Silverlight too? Why?
Think about it: What day would Thursday be?
Hey, not that it has anything to do with anything, but Rob is ripping the one-liners attached to article summaries today.
This article:
I expect them to announce Silverlight Thursday.
The Novell/SCO article:
No doubt this is the last we will ever hear of any of this.
The NASA/Toyota article:
We're really in trouble when NASA has no choice but to call Bruce Willis.
The slow-people-down-with-obstacles-article:
All of that is gonna work a lot better than my strategy of placing car-sized holes covered with twigs and branches randomly every half mile or so down the interstates.
Is CmdrTaco giddy with anticipation of some giant prank for Thursday? If he on the gigglejuice? Is he just happy spring is here?
Who knows... but it's nice to see some light-hearted editorialization for a change.
And, now, rightfully so, please mod this post into oblivion.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"Same thing we every night, Flashy. Try and take over the world!"
---
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Flashy?"
"I think so. But how do you sneak tracking cookies past Porn Mode on Firefox?"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Joke
Head
So here's the story; Google releases a new Chromium build that does three things:
1) A copy of the Flash plugin gets installed when Chrome/Chromium is installed, regardless of whether you already have it.
2) Chrome/Chromium now runs its copy of the Flash plugin in a sandbox, so that malicious Flash content can't access your computer.
3) Chrome/Chromium will now auto-scan for updates to the Flash plugin and install them in an automated fashion upon launch.
So basically, the real story is that this is a security update for Chromium, mitigating many of the vulnerabilities with the current setup of having the Flash runtime be run with user privileges from a central location for all browsers, and managed by no one at all.
There's also an announcement of a partnership between Google, Mozilla and Adobe to work on a new API for browser plugins, presumably involving browsers taking a more active role in managing their plugins, and allowing certain features like sandboxing and implementation of some type of common interface standards.
What we get instead is reporting of Google thwarting Apple's putative war on Flash, somehow breathing new life into the beleaguered standard, where Apple would surely do the opposite of whatever Google is doing. I'd not be surprised to see Safari adopt some very similar features in the near future, as they all make pretty good sense, at least for their desktop browser. If only these "journalists" knew enough about what they were reporting to recognize their need to eat crow at that point.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
what part of "don't be evil" do you not understand?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Netflix.
I have no particular desire to use Silverlight, but it's required for instant netflix streaming. And, honestly, it seems to handle it better than Flash. That's the only place I've ever needed it, but it's a pretty big reason to get it.
Presumably this integration will allow multiple flash apps on a page all running in a single flash process. This could have dramatic performance benefits in page loads and memory utilization.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...I see "This site requires Flash".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
For those of you who, like me, took a little bit to figure this out, Thursday is April 1; it's April Fool's Day.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
I kind of agree; flash, java applets, silverlight, can be real nuisances, and it's not really their fault; it's due to a flawed browser paradigm. The client (the web-browser) was designed poorly to handle scripting back in the 90's, and it's been constant headaches ever since. The way the client was designed is innately flawed.
I don't think switching to Python would make anything better. Actionscript, which is basically just modern Javascript, is a decent language... its only real problem is how it's integrated into the browser. If Python had been used in its place, all the cool kids would despise Python.
Java startup time is too big a hurdle. Even with the modern JVMs the startup time is far longer than the time needed to download the page content on a broadband connection. Flash won that war largely because it didn't lag nearly as badly (and tended to be less of a memory hog). Java may win on execution speed after startup, and it may be more OSS friendly, and it may be more flexible and better documented, but if your user experience is that it takes too long to start and it eats all their memory, the rest doesn't matter. They'll click away from the page and never visit again.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Download Chromium, the pure open source version.
The problems with client-side scripting have nothing to do with the language. Embedding another scripting language like Python would be unnecessarily confusing and would just add complexity where none is needed. What Flash provides that JavaScript does not are:
Notice that none of these have anything to do with deficiencies in the programming language. Indeed, the language used in Flash, ActionScript, is based on ECMAScript, which is the same fundamental foundation as JavaScript. So for all practical purposes, from a language feature perspective, there is already close parity. I won't go so far as to say they are the same language, but... they're so close that all you have to do is squint a little.
Adding Python to a browser is just a recipe for magnifying the existing compatibility problems by splintering development into multiple camps. That's precisely the way to guarantee that Flash never goes away. Now, instead of focusing on tools for one language, you have to focus tools on two---one for Python in FireFox and maybe a couple of other browsers, and one to deal with JavaScript for all the browsers that won't ever support something like that (IE). To describe this as a terrible idea is insulting to terrible ideas.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't see this as a bad thing. But honestly, why is Google doing this? I mean it takes less than 30 seconds to download, install Flash, and reboot the browser after initial Chrome install.
I personally think it may be a response to Apple not allowing Flash on the iPad and iPhone. Google has stakes in Flash, such as their charts on Google Finance. Google also may have done this in response to Apple's new plans for advertising. And lets not forget that much of advertising on the web is Flash content. If Apple were able to make Flash obsolete and boost up its advertising strengths in the process, Google may loose one of its huge cash cows. In the end, Google doesn't want Apple to have complete control of Internet technologies.
I didn't say Flash was a good platform, it's just better than Silverlight, because it has stable APIs and near universal support.
If not for Internet Explorer the web would be years ahead. Before IE even existed I was doing things with the web that Flash didn't offer for years. The IE took over and everything went stale because nobody was willing to cut off the 90% of Internet users to stupid to use a real browser. I liked it better in the days when we blocked users from our sites for being logged in from AOL, Prodigy, etc. We let the idiots in and it all went to hell just as we imagined.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The main problem is that historically, Flash developers have been extremely bad at implementing graceful degradation, or even content description targetted specifically at users who do not have the capabilities (physical or technical) to comply with a specific technology.
Javascript, over the years, has become extremely good at graceful degradation. Toolkits such as JQuery really stress the fact that Javascript should be used to augment a user's experience, without making support for said toolkit or language a requirement.
A common example of this are menus which show will display a submenu when hovered, but still work as a proper HTML link if clicked (intentionally or because the user's browser is unable to display the submenu). I have seen quite a few websites where the navigation relied extensively on Flash, and there was no way to browse anything else than the index if Flash was unavailable.
I think everyone realises that Flash is a dying technology. Its proprietary nature, lack of openness, CPU-hungry cycles and history of poor design have made it the black sheep of webdesign; the only reason it still is popular is because of YouTube. As a few in here have said, Joe Bloggs doesn't care about what technology powers the fancy and shiny flashing buttons on the interwebs. So, whether it's Flash or something else, they'll adopt anything as long as it just works. We just need to wait for websites to stop providing it.
Unless we're talking about very fancy vector drawing, there rarely is anything about content disposition in Flash that provides an advantage over HTML/Javascript. A few examples of this are LivePipe and JQuery Tools. Most of these are available through Content Delivery Networks, which drastically reduces load times.
Or if you don't like unstable browsers, try renaming the included Flash DLL. It's not like it's baked into the executable or something.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The problem is that the only viable alternative to Flash is Canvas.
Internet Explorer doesn't support it except through a plugin
Firefox supports it, but it's about 70% the speed of Chrome
Chrome supports it, runs it the fastest (as far as I can tell anyway) but it's still about half as fast (Atleast) as an equivalent thing made in Flash.
Javascript needs a serious kick up the arse from where it is now to even think of taking on Flash. It also needs a decent Developer GUI that can be handled by Artists (like Flash has)
I love Canvas, and I love Javascript. But for ease of use, and for rapid development, I use Flash.
Also, AS3 has a much better custom class syntax than JS that's much more similar to C++/C#.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.