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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#201

Post by tomlin »

gaius wrote: post #175
tomlin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble swallowing some of this. A few of these theories have been debunked successfully. I have a small problem with this "don't look at the man behind the curtain" routine. Proprietary is proprietary. Don't try and swing it. Battery Life: http://vimeo.com/9705969 , http://vimeo.com/9724682 Delays: http://www.neowin.net/news/adobe-quotapple-hurts-customers-f... Touch/Scroll: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2…

Apples position is that proprietary implementations of open standards is the way to go (tho' of course WebKit is completely open).

Thought:

Proprietary isn't bad. Open isn't great. Proprietary vs. open is bad. Proprietary + open is great.

Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations. Save the "VS." narrative for Street Fighter II.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#202

Post by mambodog »

zephjc wrote: post #10
cnicolaou wrote: post #4

There is an even more expressive quote for Adobe to peruse: "Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

Apparently CS5's Flash development suite can export to HTML5's including canvas support: http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash-html5-canvas-35409730 So that's one less reason to support Flash itself on an emerging platform (iPhone is pretty mature, but it is still very young compared to desktop OSs - see the bounty of new features and UI changes coming to iPhone OS4).

I worry that they are just retargeting Flash to HTML5/canvas instead of redeveloping/expanding the Flash production environment as a true standards-based authoring tool. It makes me think of exporting HTML documents from Word (or to be kinder, OpenOffice). Yeah technically it is [HTML5/Canvas/CSS3/whatever] but it's still the step-child, and will be treated as such. Given the HTML & CSS that Dreamweaver coughs up at the moment, my hopes are not high.

I'm also concerned about their choice to introduce FXG for web use instead of using SVG. The Wikipedia article on FXG links to a blog post by Mark Anders where he contrasts the role of the format vs SVG by saying "FXG was designed as an exchange format between tools that understand graphics, like Photoshop, Illustrator, or other 3rd party ones, and tools that understand Flex and MXML." Right. So why are they now introducing it as a format for the web (via JS/canvas)?

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#203

Post by ErrantX »

This kind of thing should be very actively encouraged.

Clearly there is spin in the post - but it is at least reasoned and tries to present a cohesive argument/point of view. More of that from every company please.

I think that even if you don't fully support or agree with the arguments (some of them have been debunked or much discussed after all) I think we can support this idea of company CEO's/management writing about their thought process in complicated or controversial decisions.

EDIT: Uh? I made the same point many others have.. is there any reason I've got the wrong idea?

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#204

Post by tomlin »

tvon wrote: post #189
tomlin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble swallowing some of this. A few of these theories have been debunked successfully. I have a small problem with this "don't look at the man behind the curtain" routine. Proprietary is proprietary. Don't try and swing it. Battery Life: http://vimeo.com/9705969 , http://vimeo.com/9724682 Delays: http://www.neowin.net/news/adobe-quotapple-hurts-customers-f... Touch/Scroll: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2…

Proprietary on the web affects everyone, proprietary on the iPhone affects only the iPhone.

And the iPad, then other mainstream consumption devices. This argument doesn't live in 2010.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#205

Post by ryoshu »

ugh wrote: post #15
ryoshu wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see Steve Jobs on the FUD side of things. On the upside, at least Apple has now officially addressed the conflict. Kudos for that.

Which arguments are FUD?

- "First, there’s “Open”."

SWF is open (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/). ActionScript 3 is open (http://www.ecmascript.org/docs.php, http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/). Want the Flex SDK? Here: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Get+Source+... Want a non-Adobe compiler? http://haxe.org

Adobe still has closed projects like Flash Builder 4 and Flash CS5. But saying that, "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary" is false. FUD.

- "Second, there’s the “full web”."

h.264 is more modern than Flash's support for...? Oh, right. Flash has supported h.264 for over 2 years. FUD.

- "Third, there’s reliability, security and performance."

Pardon me while I go name a WAP "at&t wireless." Yes, Flash has security issues. Google mobile Safari 0day. FUD.

- "Fourth, there’s battery life."

As mentioned above, h.264 was adopted by Adobe years ago. FUD.

- "Fifth, there’s Touch."

I wrote a multi-touch Flash API for custom hardware shortly after Flash 9's release. Multi-touch works fine in Flash. Rewire some events and it's seamless. FUD.

- "Sixth, the most important reason."

Has Steve Jobs actually ever used Xcode? Beyond the native, crappy tools that Apple offers, some of us developers prefer to choose the tools we like to use when we write software. We like to use various languages based on what works best for us.

Apple is screwing over developers and they are using Microsoft level FUD to convince us its for our own good.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#206

Post by astrange »

WilliamLP wrote: post #99

The most brilliant part of Apple's marketing here is leveraging infighting and unintended consequences in the free software community. They don't care about open standards - that they would is, on the face of it, absurd. What they do know is that they will evoke much support for championing JS/HTML/CSS as an open plaform, and that it poses no actual threat to their App Store control. This is because of two reasons: F…

> They don't care about open standards - that they would is, on the face of it, absurd.

They really do care about open standards. There is no reason why WebKit and several other projects have to be run in the open, after they stopped releasing several parts of Darwin, but they are.

At worst, this is because there is more than one person at Apple, and the people who want things to be proprietary don't care about this and have left it to the people who like open standards to deal with.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#207

Post by qeorge »

rjurney wrote: post #118
qeorge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little tired of the "IE6 is holding back the web" meme. Lots of hand-waving, no examples.

You've obviously never engaged in web development. IE6 support is often the most costly part of a project.

I am a professional web developer. IE6 is one of the many platforms I have to support. Between the different versions of Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome, and Opera its about 10 browsers that reasonably should be tested for a given site.

I guess what I was saying is give developers some credit. We've been working around a lot tougher issues than IE6 for a long time. Its a hurdle, not a brick wall.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#208

Post by joubert »

not_an_alien wrote: post #165
joubert wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flex is not flash

I won't blame you for the confusion, as the naming is mixed up, but "Flex SDK" is the command-line Flash (SWF) compiler. It's free and open source. It's used to create SWFs or SWCs. It's the same compiler the Flash IDE has built-in. I create full, rich Flash content with the Flex SDK, and has been doing it for a while. I don't compile with the Flash IDE. Not because I can't or because it's paid, but because using Fle…

Maybe im nitpicking, but mxmlc compiles apps written using the flex sdk to flash bytecode. The flex sdk is open source yes, but the flash runtime certainly is not.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#209

Post by zefhous »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #157
joubert wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you create a barebones cocoa touch app that basically just shows safari, and your app runs inside that as ja and HTML?

What's the point? Just point users to your URL instead.

You can also serve the content locally so you don't need to have a network connection.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#210

Post by richbradshaw »

qeorge wrote: post #30
subbu wrote: post #14

Sachin Agarwal of Posterous explains reason#6 much better with a good example. Link here http://sachin.posterous.com/ie6-caused-the-web-to-mature-slo...

I'm a little tired of the "IE6 is holding back the web" meme. Lots of hand-waving, no examples.

Ever website I've ever made has had to avoid new features due to IE incompatibilities. CSS transitions and canvas are obvious examples.
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