Well, I do require SMTP Auth on the internal mail server I run. If all those servers in the outside world also required authentication, maybe we wouldn't be so worried about having to lock down our own networks to prevent spam.:-/
Actually, isn't ActionScript an ECMAScript, just like JavaScript?
Like I have said before (and now it feels like a thousand times because idiots like you just don't listen!)... I didn't say it wasn't "part of" Flash, I said it wasn't Flash.
ActionScript is not Flash in the same way that JavaScript is not XHTML. Sure, you can put it in there, and hey, how to do it is even specified, but that doesn't make the two the same thing.
You haven't really been following the thread, have you? I've refuted this fallacy a million times already.
Well, you need to post something to back up your claims. The last example you posted looked like it would have worked better as a Java applet.
It's funny though, I don't see port 587 in/etc/services. It can't be very "standard." And how long would it be until the spammers learn about the new port anyway? (As for not allowing us to run servers, yes, our access provider doesn't permit it either, but since ours doesn't permit connection from the outside it's supposedly not considered by them to be a server.)
I had to actually phone them to ask them to turn it back on when it happened, because naturally they were blocking me sending an email to request it. But it's good that it's there now, even though it did mean a bit of inconvenience in the beginning.
Again, wrong. SVG documents are considerably larger than equivalent SWF files - the SWF file format is designed to be extremely small and is now compressed (and yes I know SVGZ exists, but it STILL doesn't beat SWF).
There is a lot of hot air coming from the Flash camps about this, but I never see anyone bring up a real third-party assessment of the two file formats.
I had a dig around Google to pretty much no avail, the only thing I found way this
little article which had SVGZ showing smaller files than SWF. But trusting one article obviously isn't enough because different types of picture might have different sizes, so it would be good to see some real, major, and most importantly independent studies on this, comparing the file size for the same image, for several different types of image.
Just how many standard SVG viewers are there on all major operating systems
Do you need more than one per operating system? Why?
In any case, there are at least two SVG renderers I know of on Linux, and that's just counting those generated from the GNOME and KDE child projects.
As for mobile phones, there was at least one phone released last year with support for SVG out of the box, and these guys have an SVG viewer that runs on J2ME so you can run it on any J2ME-enabled phone.
So I would reflect your question straight back at you, with the two reversed. Just how many Flash viewers are there on all mobile devices? I would say the answer might be "one", which seems pretty pathetic now, doesn't it?:-)
In the case of SVG, the use of XML syntax bloated the whole file. Using binary byte code (eg: WebCGM) shrinks the file a lot more than gzip deflate ever could.
Yet gzip compresses better than WBXML, which is a binary bytecode representation of XML. And of course then there are the next generation compression tools, and who knows how those will fare.
No argument against that, except how come Mozilla needs to download an unstable nightly build just to use it? The code is there, can't they just compile it into main trunk?
This irritates me too. I don't understand why they don't get it in, in any form, right now.
That depends on the type of XML module. XML is not licensed GPL, only some implementations are.
How? Writing the XML file with MSXML doesn't magically make it unreadable by libxml2.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mono or Portable.NET have a XAML plugin of some sort, actually. Of course, if Microsoft get any great competition from Linux due to such a plugin, they will just shut the project down, but they're probably big enough to buy out and shut down Macromedia as well.
That's okay, someone higher up already called it "verbose", I figured that's what they were talking about anyway. Nothing a little GZIP can't solve, in any case.
As for XAML, XAML looks like an almost exact clone of XUL, and XUL was around before Microsoft even announced XAML. Hell, Microsoft probably got the whole idea from XUL.:-)
And what was that about Flash being more ubiquitous? Java was on all these phones years before these articles about Flash having recently been ported to the same phones!
But in any case, Java and Flash are not competitors. Flash, like SVG, can even be connect to Java. At that point, SVG and Flash are just raw vector graphics tools, and the argument of which is "easier" becomes an argument about tools, not formats, which seems to be what you were on about anyway, since you mentioned ease of use of the tool, not the format.
Personally, though, I find writing a Java applet easier than dealing with the Flash GUI, but that's because different interfaces for writing software are easier for different people, and it depends what you're trying to make.
Maybe some day the presentation and the code will be so separate that I won't even have to make GUIs at all. That would be ideal... write the business logic and the GUI gets automatically created. You laugh now, but the concept is already being experimented with in several projects.:-)
Or, people could just use a standard format for their forms which can not only be processed by native clients with as much eye candy as the developer wants, but can also be embedded in SVG and XHTML.
VRML was cool. It evolved into X3D, which is still being developed, still being supported by software, and still has web presence here.
It's mystifying that it never took off, because I always figured X3D is a superset of SVG, since you should be able to draw any 2D image using a 3D model, right?
And so much Flash these days is simulating a 3D look by doing all the calculations and displaying 2D polygons. It would be much better if they would just use the real thing.
Most of the features people claim Flash to have are actually features of ActionScript. Even though ActionScript is stored in Flash files, that doesn't mean it's Flash.
And yet perhaps ironically, you seem to ignore that JavaScript can be stored inside SVG files, as well as being linked externally, and you also ignore that SVG can be manipulated by any code which is capable of manipulating a DOM at runtime. This includes JavaScript, Java, ActiveX components, or whatever you want, really.
But you're right in that they shouldn't be compared.
SVG is a standard format for rendering vector images of all kinds, and has uses throughout almost all systems which involve graphics of any kind, whereas Flash is merely a proprietary format designed to put animations in web pages.
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Well, I do require SMTP Auth on the internal mail server I run. If all those servers in the outside world also required authentication, maybe we wouldn't be so worried about having to lock down our own networks to prevent spam. :-/
Actually, isn't ActionScript an ECMAScript, just like JavaScript?
Like I have said before (and now it feels like a thousand times because idiots like you just don't listen!)... I didn't say it wasn't "part of" Flash, I said it wasn't Flash.
Beef isn't a beef burrito.
Sugar isn't Coca-Cola.
Understand?
Probably not.
Huh?
Slow one, aren't you?
ActionScript is not Flash in the same way that JavaScript is not XHTML. Sure, you can put it in there, and hey, how to do it is even specified, but that doesn't make the two the same thing.
You haven't really been following the thread, have you? I've refuted this fallacy a million times already.
Well, you need to post something to back up your claims. The last example you posted looked like it would have worked better as a Java applet.
It's funny though, I don't see port 587 in /etc/services. It can't be very "standard." And how long would it be until the spammers learn about the new port anyway? (As for not allowing us to run servers, yes, our access provider doesn't permit it either, but since ours doesn't permit connection from the outside it's supposedly not considered by them to be a server.)
It's funny though. People frequently do 2D graphics using OpenGL. So why not 2D images using X3D?
In that case, you might as well say that JavaScript is part of SVG.
Who said 'part of'?
Perhaps if you actually read my comment, you would have noticed that I didn't say that it wasn't 'part of' Flash, I said that it wasn't Flash.
HTH. Next time try reading twice, you might understand what was written the second time around. Then again, maybe not.
All SVG players I know of can handle JavaScript, though.
I had to actually phone them to ask them to turn it back on when it happened, because naturally they were blocking me sending an email to request it. But it's good that it's there now, even though it did mean a bit of inconvenience in the beginning.
Just remember to open back up port 25 to mail servers that people actually need to get to. :-)
I don't recall saying anything about an applet, actually.
No shit. Boolean should be a typedef, not a #define. Jesus, I would want to do more than scream. :-)
...all jokes must have basis in reality, in order to exist.
Again, wrong. SVG documents are considerably larger than equivalent SWF files - the SWF file format is designed to be extremely small and is now compressed (and yes I know SVGZ exists, but it STILL doesn't beat SWF).
There is a lot of hot air coming from the Flash camps about this, but I never see anyone bring up a real third-party assessment of the two file formats.
I had a dig around Google to pretty much no avail, the only thing I found way this little article which had SVGZ showing smaller files than SWF. But trusting one article obviously isn't enough because different types of picture might have different sizes, so it would be good to see some real, major, and most importantly independent studies on this, comparing the file size for the same image, for several different types of image.
Just how many standard SVG viewers are there on all major operating systems
Do you need more than one per operating system? Why?
In any case, there are at least two SVG renderers I know of on Linux, and that's just counting those generated from the GNOME and KDE child projects.
As for mobile phones, there was at least one phone released last year with support for SVG out of the box, and these guys have an SVG viewer that runs on J2ME so you can run it on any J2ME-enabled phone.
So I would reflect your question straight back at you, with the two reversed. Just how many Flash viewers are there on all mobile devices? I would say the answer might be "one", which seems pretty pathetic now, doesn't it? :-)
In the case of SVG, the use of XML syntax bloated the whole file. Using binary byte code (eg: WebCGM) shrinks the file a lot more than gzip deflate ever could.
Yet gzip compresses better than WBXML, which is a binary bytecode representation of XML. And of course then there are the next generation compression tools, and who knows how those will fare.
No argument against that, except how come Mozilla needs to download an unstable nightly build just to use it? The code is there, can't they just compile it into main trunk?
This irritates me too. I don't understand why they don't get it in, in any form, right now.
That depends on the type of XML module. XML is not licensed GPL, only some implementations are.
How? Writing the XML file with MSXML doesn't magically make it unreadable by libxml2.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mono or Portable.NET have a XAML plugin of some sort, actually. Of course, if Microsoft get any great competition from Linux due to such a plugin, they will just shut the project down, but they're probably big enough to buy out and shut down Macromedia as well.
That's okay, someone higher up already called it "verbose", I figured that's what they were talking about anyway. Nothing a little GZIP can't solve, in any case.
As for XAML, XAML looks like an almost exact clone of XUL, and XUL was around before Microsoft even announced XAML. Hell, Microsoft probably got the whole idea from XUL. :-)
And what was that about Flash being more ubiquitous? Java was on all these phones years before these articles about Flash having recently been ported to the same phones!
But in any case, Java and Flash are not competitors. Flash, like SVG, can even be connect to Java. At that point, SVG and Flash are just raw vector graphics tools, and the argument of which is "easier" becomes an argument about tools, not formats, which seems to be what you were on about anyway, since you mentioned ease of use of the tool, not the format.
Personally, though, I find writing a Java applet easier than dealing with the Flash GUI, but that's because different interfaces for writing software are easier for different people, and it depends what you're trying to make.
Maybe some day the presentation and the code will be so separate that I won't even have to make GUIs at all. That would be ideal... write the business logic and the GUI gets automatically created. You laugh now, but the concept is already being experimented with in several projects. :-)
Need I remind... just because the specification for something is on the web somewhere, doesn't make it "open."
Not without a restart of the browser, it doesn't.
- Flash in the Pan...
Or, people could just use a standard format for their forms which can not only be processed by native clients with as much eye candy as the developer wants, but can also be embedded in SVG and XHTML.
VRML was cool. It evolved into X3D, which is still being developed, still being supported by software, and still has web presence here.
It's mystifying that it never took off, because I always figured X3D is a superset of SVG, since you should be able to draw any 2D image using a 3D model, right?
And so much Flash these days is simulating a 3D look by doing all the calculations and displaying 2D polygons. It would be much better if they would just use the real thing.
First of all, your statement is patently false.
Most of the features people claim Flash to have are actually features of ActionScript. Even though ActionScript is stored in Flash files, that doesn't mean it's Flash.
And yet perhaps ironically, you seem to ignore that JavaScript can be stored inside SVG files, as well as being linked externally, and you also ignore that SVG can be manipulated by any code which is capable of manipulating a DOM at runtime. This includes JavaScript, Java, ActiveX components, or whatever you want, really.
But you're right in that they shouldn't be compared.
SVG is a standard format for rendering vector images of all kinds, and has uses throughout almost all systems which involve graphics of any kind, whereas Flash is merely a proprietary format designed to put animations in web pages.
Flash is no match at all.
With SVG, you can hook to JavaScript, or Java, or whatever you want. And if you think Java can't parse XML, you're sorely mistaken.