The Shumway Open SWF Runtime Project

theweatherelectric writes "Mozilla is looking for contributors interested in working on Shumway. Mozilla's Jet Villegas writes, 'Shumway is an experimental web-native (Javascript) runtime implementation of the SWF file format. It is developed as a free and open source project sponsored by Mozilla Research. The project has two main goals: 1. Advance the open web platform to securely process rich media formats that were previously only available in closed and proprietary implementations. 2. Offer a runtime processor for SWF and other rich media formats on platforms for which runtime implementations are not available.'" See also: Gnash and Lightspark.

Comments

Bugs in the demo

[HatofPig]

In the race card demo the "best lap" time is actually just your last lap. And when you finish all 10 laps the clock doesn't stop, so your "final time" keeps increasing. I wonder if this is a bug in Shumway or the game itself. And I only get around 7 FPS on average, on Firefox in Linux/x86.

Re:Bugs in the demo

[girlintraining]

In the race card demo the "best lap" time is actually just your last lap. And when you finish all 10 laps the clock doesn't stop, so your "final time" keeps increasing. I wonder if this is a bug in Shumway or the game itself. And I only get around 7 FPS on average, on Firefox in Linux/x86.

Sounds like the app has a... (puts on sunglasses) race condition. YEEEEEEEEEEaaaaaaah!

SWFDec - SWF Decoder - another SWF implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Sounds great, would prefer ActionScript / Flex

[alostpacket]

I love the Free / OSS nature of something like this, but one of the absolute best** things about Flash is the ActionScript language (specifically AS3) (and to a lesser extent flex).

Since it is based on ECMAScript, it offers nearly everything JavaScript does and more. Classes, Inheritance, Polymorphism, both dynamic and static typing, etc, etc. And some things I find truly awesome such as the EventDispacter pattern and DisplayObject event bubbling.

So what are the chances of ActionScript being considered for something like this? Are there legal hurdles that make it a non-starter?

Also, how does this compare to other OSS flash players like Gnash? Conceivably this could solve the biggest problem with Flash, the lack of security involved when the player is proprietary.

**Yes, Adobe stagnated and got lax about security as well as bundled toolbars with the plugin as well as other privacy implication with SharedObjects. However, as a scripting and vector animating platform, Flash was amazing tech. And it makes damn nice RIAs and did great for video for its time. However it's clear that time is over due to some serious missteps on Adobe's part. So please don't get me wrong, there are many valid criticisms of Flash, but it was an innovative technology (and still is to a much less extent).

Re:Sounds great, would prefer ActionScript / Flex

[alostpacket]

Sorry to reply to myself, but it seems I'm tired and wasnt thinking -- Big clarification: The Shumway player does support AS -- as it support SWFs, and thus naturally, AS3.

Re:Sounds great, would prefer ActionScript / Flex

[drkstr1]

We got our first "no flash" order on a project awhile back, and I have cried a little on the inside every day I have worked on it. My first introduction to flash was compiling SWFs in Linux using the MXMLC compiler. In fact, I even wrote the Actionscript 3 syntax highlighting rules for KDevelop (Kate) 3.5, because that's what I had available on my system to use. The flash platform is an AMAZING technology stack, and it is sad to see it go to waste behind a wall of patents wielded by a bafoon of a company.

With a name like Shumway...

[grouchomarxist]

...it's gotta be good.

Re:With a name like Shumway...

[DudemanX]

I think it's an ALF reference. ALF's "real" name is Gordon Shumway.

Re:With a name like Shumway...

[surmak]

...as long as it does not eat your cat.

Re:No thanks

[gagol]

Please define "many browsers". Also, kudos for you if you want to contribute, just my cup of tea to work on stopgap measure when a new standard is getting supported in ALL mobile browsers and most desktop one too: http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html.

Just what I need! More Adobe middleware!

[DavidClarkeHR]

Don't get me wrong, I love illustrator, and I don't think I could live without InDesign.

But I do REALLY like the idea of html5 instead of flash. Sure, it was funny for awhile to call apple products crippled because they couldn't have a full web experience, but I've been having problems with Shockwave / Flash products for years.

It does need to remain supported, I agree. And opened up? Great!

But developed? Encouraged? Promoted? No thank you. I'd rather see the [blink] tag supported in facebook.

Does this mean we could possibly have CONTROL?

[fishnuts]

Does this mean developers might actually implement 'MUTE', 'FORCE STOP', or 'RESTART' context menu items for shockwave apps? I despise going to read a page with ads and other shockwave sidebar widgets that make noise or chew up CPU cycles and have no way to pause/mute/stop them. It also bugs that you must reload the entire page to get a flash app to restart.

It's beyond me why Macromedia/Adobe never wanted us to have those essential controls. The only thing we get, in some rare cases, are the ability to prevent the app/player from looping, or to turn down rendering quality.

Re:Oh, boy!

[tlhIngan]

I block flash and I block javascript. I only whitelist js for certain sites but mostly, its all blocked.

Which is why a browser-based method is better than a plugin-based method for stuff that Flash does. After all, if you allow Flash for one site, who knows what sorts of Javascript and resources it pulls from other sites?

But a browser based version or HTML5 means site-specific restrictions are honored - a Flash video that wants to pull in javascript from ad trackers can do it via the Flash plugin, but if it was in HTML5 or a browser implementation, will still remain blocked.