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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.
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)
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.
...I see "This site requires Flash".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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
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.