A good place to look for some accurate information would be macromedia's website: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/
They state quite clearly that they aren't releasing it as 'open source'. Instead the Flash SDK will be released under a royalty free license. You will not be able to distribute the source with any derived products.
However, the Flash file format IS genuinely Open. So you can write your own Flash player from the ground up.
Flash has several advantages over SVG (http://www.w3c.org/Graphics/SVG/). SVG is XML based, so will not be small. From my understanding, achieving Flash style animation in SVG will involve a lot more work.
However, SVG may have its place. A single renderer should be able to handle SVG and Flash formats, so the standards needn't compete. SVG will be hand craftable, so simple objects (can we say bullet-point spheres and horizontal rules?) won't be difficult to create.
What ever happened to Xara's incredibly tiny Flare vector format?
-- Andrem
Certificates don't infringe privacy
on
License to Surf
·
· Score: 1
There are two conflicting messages in this article: Robert Cailliau is calling for licensing and regulation to restrict Things We Don't Approve Of. And the W3C are working on a secure certificates system (and, incidentally, a privacy _protection_ system: http://www.w3.org/P3P/ ).
Just because Robert happens to be co-inventor of the Web (this is the first I'd heard of this), doesn't mean his views are particularly relevant, so I'm going to ignore this part.
A secure certificates system is, in my view, a very admirable cause. The point is that it would be an opt-in system: a server can ask for a certificate stating that you are over 18, and, depending on your Platform Privacy Preference, your browser will either decline, accept, or prompt you.
This doesn't mean that if you accept, your browser instantly transmits all your personal details. The privacy settings would enable you to specify your preferences for various categories of information - your gender, age, home town, etc. To a large extent, this would remove the need for Cookies, sign-on pages, and similar annoyances.
So users will know exactly what information is being transmitted to any given website - and what that information is used for, how it will be distributed, and whether any data gathered will be used anonymously. At the moment, there seems to be a strong feeling that Cookies and other tracking-devices are used to steal our souls while we browse the web. I think these W3C proposals will make the commercial side of the web a much safer place to surf. -- Andrem
The real problem isn't that Hollywood is making computer interfaces look overly glamorous. The problem is that real computer interfaces are too boring. You just wait and see - in a few years time, all those old films will look dead realistic, because the UI design of the future will be based on those Hollywood effects.
Windows 2061 will no longer suffer from BSODs - instead you'll see really pretty Animated Psychedelic 3D Rotating VR Screens Of Death.
When the CIA release their patches to the Gimp, we'll all be able to take a 2D picture, rotate the subject through 30 degrees about the vertical axis, calculate the effect of dropping an item into a shopping bag, etc.
My favourite computer bit is the line from Jurassic Park: 'Ooh, it's a Unix machine' - implying that this means it's immediately obvious how to use the interface to the (pretty 3D rotating) security system.
The reasons are different for each person, but they all boil down to the fact that people find it easier to deal with certain documents on paper. For some people - may be the more technophobic - that means they print everything.
Other people try to avoid printing where possible. For me, paper causes clutter, but that is precisely because you can spread paper out all over your desk. And walls and floor (I can't reach the ceiling). So I avoid printing a document out unless I'm going to need to flick through it, pull out interesting pages, scribble on it or hole punch it and put it in a tabbed folder.
Most existing software makes it difficult to interact with documents in these ways. There's no reason why a PDF reader shouldn't let you achieve similar things, but providing a comprehensive set of interactions would require a fairly beefy user-interface, with corresponding learning curve. If you aren't totally familiar with one user-interface, it takes a lot of mental effort to avoid switching back to the more intuitive alternative.
And paper is about as intuitive as you can get. There isn't a little button in the corner that you have to interact with before you can use the paper for anything. You don't need to search through the available options before you can start a game of tic-tac-toe.
So I think it boils down to the fact that if you are happy using the features available for manipulating an online document, the less likely you are to print it out.
Hmm. Windows has a lot to answer for too. By forcing the active window to the front, and by generally cluttering the screen so much with menubars, toolbars, statusbars and multiple-document interfaces that you have to maximise most applications, it takes you about as far as possible from the metaphor of windows as documents on a desk that you can shuffle about however you like.
Electronic paper will come eventually, you'll be able to scribble on it, fold it, spread it out over your desk, browse the web, play hangman or Quake, and the world will be a wonderful place.
Til then, join the queue of people trying to fiddle with the printer to get their documents to come out.
Slashdot Mirror
A good place to look for some accurate information would be macromedia's website: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/
They state quite clearly that they aren't releasing it as 'open source'. Instead the Flash SDK will be released under a royalty free license. You will not be able to distribute the source with any derived products.
However, the Flash file format IS genuinely Open. So you can write your own Flash player from the ground up.
Flash has several advantages over SVG (http://www.w3c.org/Graphics/SVG/). SVG is XML based, so will not be small. From my understanding, achieving Flash style animation in SVG will involve a lot more work.
However, SVG may have its place. A single renderer should be able to handle SVG and Flash formats, so the standards needn't compete. SVG will be hand craftable, so simple objects (can we say bullet-point spheres and horizontal rules?) won't be difficult to create.
What ever happened to Xara's incredibly tiny Flare vector format?
-- Andrem
There are two conflicting messages in this article: Robert Cailliau is calling for licensing and regulation to restrict Things We Don't Approve Of. And the W3C are working on a secure certificates system (and, incidentally, a privacy _protection_ system: http://www.w3.org/P3P/ ).
Just because Robert happens to be co-inventor of the Web (this is the first I'd heard of this), doesn't mean his views are particularly relevant, so I'm going to ignore this part.
A secure certificates system is, in my view, a very admirable cause. The point is that it would be an opt-in system: a server can ask for a certificate stating that you are over 18, and, depending on your Platform Privacy Preference, your browser will either decline, accept, or prompt you.
This doesn't mean that if you accept, your browser instantly transmits all your personal details. The privacy settings would enable you to specify your preferences for various categories of information - your gender, age, home town, etc. To a large extent, this would remove the need for Cookies, sign-on pages, and similar annoyances.
So users will know exactly what information is being transmitted to any given website - and what that information is used for, how it will be distributed, and whether any data gathered will be used anonymously. At the moment, there seems to be a strong feeling that Cookies and other tracking-devices are used to steal our souls while we browse the web. I think these W3C proposals will make the commercial side of the web a much safer place to surf.
-- Andrem
The real problem isn't that Hollywood is making computer interfaces look overly glamorous. The problem is that real computer interfaces are too boring. You just wait and see - in a few years time, all those old films will look dead realistic, because the UI design of the future will be based on those Hollywood effects.
Windows 2061 will no longer suffer from BSODs - instead you'll see really pretty Animated Psychedelic 3D Rotating VR Screens Of Death.
When the CIA release their patches to the Gimp, we'll all be able to take a 2D picture, rotate the subject through 30 degrees about the vertical axis, calculate the effect of dropping an item into a shopping bag, etc.
My favourite computer bit is the line from Jurassic Park: 'Ooh, it's a Unix machine' - implying that this means it's immediately obvious how to use the interface to the (pretty 3D rotating) security system.
-- Andrem
The reasons are different for each person, but they all boil down to the fact that people find it easier to deal with certain documents on paper. For some people - may be the more technophobic - that means they print everything.
Other people try to avoid printing where possible. For me, paper causes clutter, but that is precisely because you can spread paper out all over your desk. And walls and floor (I can't reach the ceiling). So I avoid printing a document out unless I'm going to need to flick through it, pull out interesting pages, scribble on it or hole punch it and put it in a tabbed folder.
Most existing software makes it difficult to interact with documents in these ways. There's no reason why a PDF reader shouldn't let you achieve similar things, but providing a comprehensive set of interactions would require a fairly beefy user-interface, with corresponding learning curve. If you aren't totally familiar with one user-interface, it takes a lot of mental effort to avoid switching back to the more intuitive alternative.
And paper is about as intuitive as you can get. There isn't a little button in the corner that you have to interact with before you can use the paper for anything. You don't need to search through the available options before you can start a game of tic-tac-toe.
So I think it boils down to the fact that if you are happy using the features available for manipulating an online document, the less likely you are to print it out.
Hmm. Windows has a lot to answer for too. By forcing the active window to the front, and by generally cluttering the screen so much with menubars, toolbars, statusbars and multiple-document interfaces that you have to maximise most applications, it takes you about as far as possible from the metaphor of windows as documents on a desk that you can shuffle about however you like.
Electronic paper will come eventually, you'll be able to scribble on it, fold it, spread it out over your desk, browse the web, play hangman or Quake, and the world will be a wonderful place.
Til then, join the queue of people trying to fiddle with the printer to get their documents to come out.