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The Shumway Open SWF Runtime Project

Posted by Unknown on from the now-there-are-four dept.

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.

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bugs in the demo by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!

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  2. Sounds great, would prefer ActionScript / Flex by alostpacket · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

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    1. Re:Sounds great, would prefer ActionScript / Flex by alostpacket · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

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  3. Re:Oh, boy! by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.