Live data from Hacker News

Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

blogs.adobe.com

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#11

Open Laszlo ( http://www.openlaszlo.org/ ) a pre-cursor to Adobe's FLEX, can generate rich web UI front ends with or without Flash. Devs can use an IDE for it (I believe an Eclipse plugin). This open source project is getting more interesting now.

Does Laszlo have a WYSIWYG editor? That's really the only component that's missing: the ability for any artist that just wants to draw a vector animation and hook up some simple events to make a game. If we can lower the barriers to entry on HTML5, it'll eclipse Flash in no time.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#12
post #3

His strongest argument to keep Flash relevant is "the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers" . Boy, they are in worse shape than I first thought. They will open source the parts they own of this beast, the problem is it will be too late to make a difference. Sure, he brings up the fact that they can update the majority of Web clients in less than a year . But what was it th…

The web didn't had at first a common format for images ... but now all modern browsers have support for GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

And it was probably a smart move on their part to avoid political issues. Apple will add Theora support if the demand increases. Mozilla will add H.264 support when the IP-issues are cleared.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#13
post #11

Open Laszlo ( http://www.openlaszlo.org/ ) a pre-cursor to Adobe's FLEX, can generate rich web UI front ends with or without Flash. Devs can use an IDE for it (I believe an Eclipse plugin). This open source project is getting more interesting now.

Does Laszlo have a WYSIWYG editor? That's really the only component that's missing: the ability for any artist that just wants to draw a vector animation and hook up some simple events to make a game. If we can lower the barriers to entry on HTML5, it'll eclipse Flash in no time.

Having a WYSIWYG editor for HTML5 or Laszlo is only a matter of popularity, since that would be a good business.

And as a dev, trust me, you don't need one for Laszlo.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#16
If Adobe wants Apple (and me) to care about the future of Flash, they have to make it not suck on Mac OS X. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple omitting Flash from the iPhone and iPad isn't a ploy to light a fire under the Mac Flash development team.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#17
Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues.

Not really. Most of that 75% is in h.264, a format supported natively by every browser/platform that doesn't support Flash (e.g. iPad) and some that do (e.g. Chrome). Even Microsoft, if and when they do implement , are likely to support it.

It may be messier than just assuming Flash is available (welcome to web "standards"!), but I would hardly call it "the dark ages".

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#18
Much more interesting to me than Apple vs Adobe is Macromedia vs Adobe.

Adobe was once a seriously great company (Jobs apparently talked wistfully about those days in his Q&A), which together with Apple pretty much created desktop publishing and everything that goes with it (like Photoshop, Illustrator, PostScript, PDF, PageMaker, InDesign). The world would be a much worse place without it.

It started going off the rails after founders Geschke and Warnock left but after the Macromedia deal went through in 2005 the lunacy just took off. The only bright spot since then has been Lightroom -- sorry Adobe Photoshop Lightroom -- and even that was a skunkworks project that they had effectively killed until Apple previewed Aperture. All the rest has been just hicky and nasty, and Flash has become endemic (Flash for Photoshop palettes? Really?)

It feels to me as though, rather than being acquired, Macromedia has actually overrun Adobe, to its serious detriment. There's lots of precedent for this in tech deals like this: there were big political struggles in Apple between the incoming NeXT people and the existing Apple people (those struggles emerged as Carbon vs Cocoa, and you can guess who won).

I don't have any insider information on this, but it's interesting to note that all this recent childish posturing and blow-harding about Flash has come from former Macromedia people (this link, the inane blue lego image, everything jdowdell writes). Meanwhile, old Adobe hands like John Nack have been pointing out that, actually, the company's future lies in making great communication tools, not in making sure Flash "wins" a pointless fight.

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#19
Why does CTO of Adobe want Apple to open up to them when Flash is not opened up to Apple and others ?

towards the later part of his text, he argues for an open access to all devices, yet his app is not open (to apple's accusation that flash crashes a lot and part of that is others can't fix the problems that flash causes their systems- flash being a closed system). Maybe one can illuminate

Re: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

#20
I wonder if anyone has done a feature by feature comparison between HTML 5 and Flash? That is what can I do with Flash, that I cannot with HTML 5 and vice versa? As of right now, I am forced to assume that Flash has an advantage over HTML 5 solely because most people are not aware of the potential benefits of HTML 5 over Flash.
Post reply on HN