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HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

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Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#111

Post by lucian1900 »

TheEskimo wrote: post #106
runn1ng wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make "GPL version" with 1 fork though.

That is not true. The people who contributed the original Shunway code own the copyright to it. They are choosing to license it under Apache. You cannot change that since you do not own the copyright. They may choose to "relicense" it under GPL if all the contributed agree. What you suggest cannot legally be done. However, Apache is GPL compatible, so it can still be used in a GPL project, though its license will not…

You can make a derivative that also includes GPL parts, and the entire package will be GPL for practical purposes.

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#113

Post by Tloewald »

robmcm wrote: post #107
Anonmattymous wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I feel like by building things like this it just hampers all the work that is being built to replace flash. The best way to change things is to make it so that learning HTML5 and JavaScript becomes worth it, and that is easily done by just not supporting flash.

I think this is aimed at legacy support, I don't think anyone would target this as a supported runtime. Ironically most of the useful flash applications/games etc wouldn't run on these runtimes as they are using features not supported in HTML5. This sort of thing works best for crappy adverts and banners, which no one really wants anyway. This is highlighted by the fact the big competitor (Gordon?) is developed by th…

If it were widely adopted, people would target it. If it's not widely adopted, who cares?

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#114

Post by Tloewald »

richardjs wrote: post #97
Tloewald wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring flash does an even better job.

Sure, and not browsing the Web at all is even safer. But it's nice to see developments that make insecure technologies more secure.

Well, we assume it's more secure than simply running Flash, but we don't know. In fact it increases the overall attack surface since now there's bugs in Adobe's implementation and bugs in this implementation to exploit.

Let's suppose we believe our site to be secure because we've tested it on Windows and Mac and checked the flash doesn't cause issues, and we've tested it on mobile and the flash simply doesn't work. Now we need to test all over again.

Consider, for example, JPEG injection bugs. There are JPEGs embedded inside Flash content that are now being parsed by different code.

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#115

Post by ZenoArrow »

Jasper_ wrote: post #82
ZenoArrow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smarter for whom? Adobe? It's in their interest to keep the 'depreciated' Flash going as long as possible, whilst it still makes them money.

It actually still makes them money. The Flash authoring environment is still one of the more popular methods of doing production-quality animation. See http://coldhardflash.com for lots of examples. The Flash authoring environment is the best vector graphics editor I've used, even without the animation and scripting on top. They're still going to continue that, even if the Flash Player plugin is a bit behind.

"It actually still makes them money." That was what I was saying.

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#116

Post by willvarfar »

Tloewald wrote: post #114
richardjs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and not browsing the Web at all is even safer. But it's nice to see developments that make insecure technologies more secure.

Well, we assume it's more secure than simply running Flash, but we don't know. In fact it increases the overall attack surface since now there's bugs in Adobe's implementation and bugs in this implementation to exploit. Let's suppose we believe our site to be secure because we've tested it on Windows and Mac and checked the flash doesn't cause issues, and we've tested it on mobile and the flash simply doesn't work. N…

Well this is counter to my understanding. As shumway - like PDF.js - is ultimately using the exact same rendering engine and scripting engine via the same interface and in the exact same way as the HTML pages are already exposing, the attack surface just got massively smaller. If there is a jpeg injection bug, its a bug in the browser proper.

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#117

Post by willvarfar »

robmcm wrote: post #107
Anonmattymous wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I feel like by building things like this it just hampers all the work that is being built to replace flash. The best way to change things is to make it so that learning HTML5 and JavaScript becomes worth it, and that is easily done by just not supporting flash.

I think this is aimed at legacy support, I don't think anyone would target this as a supported runtime. Ironically most of the useful flash applications/games etc wouldn't run on these runtimes as they are using features not supported in HTML5. This sort of thing works best for crappy adverts and banners, which no one really wants anyway. This is highlighted by the fact the big competitor (Gordon?) is developed by th…

What features are they using that html5 doesn't cover?

I'm genuinely curious, as I do a bit of html5/webgl and formerly did a lot of flash/haxe, so I'm wondering what I missed...

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#118

Post by willvarfar »

Wintamute wrote: post #76
Tloewald wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A video element is a video. It's as well or poorly handled as, say, an image. (The QuickTime / MP4 container actually allows standardized text tracks etc. so it's capable of being more semantically tractable than most other media formats in the long run.) The other options are all, as you say, semantically impenetrable, but that's not all there is to it. WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and effi…

> WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and efficient graphic effects, whereas even native Flash was horribly inefficient at doing what it did. Fundamentally incorrect. Flash is actually an incredibly efficient file format for rich media, especially at vector animation. Look it up, you can fit amazing animations into just a few kb. Nothing can beat it on the web today for that purpose, and the Flash…

Fun unsubstantiated anecdote; when working for Symbian we unofficially optimised their then-new renderer for generic 2x speedups. But this was just weeks before the death of UIQ and that went nowhere...

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#119

Post by trycatch »

sabret00the wrote: post #47
trycatch wrote: post #34

I tried to use it ~1 month ago, it wasn't a great experience. I tried playing video and several games on Kongregate, and almost nothing worked, except Flash ads (only few games showed anything similar to loading screen -- most of them just didn't start at all). But the most problematic thing was its slowness. Even small almost static ads brought entire Firefox to its knees. I am looking forward for this project, but…

A lot changes in a month in terms of software development. Try it again and let us know if it still sucks by your standards.

I've compiled new version from git, but still literally nothing except ads work. I've tried various games from Kongregate, Armor Games and Newgrounds, including very old ones, various sites with Flash video, various sites with Flash charts -- nothing. And there are still very serious slowdowns even if Shumway is not on screen.

Re: HTML5 Flash Player (Shumway) lands in Mozilla

#120

Post by jaredsohn »

This is great step for allowing more user control / detection over sound within Firefox.

I recently open sourced MuteTab (http://www.github.com/jaredsohn/mutetab). If MuteTab were to also work on Firefox (it builds with OpenForge right now), it should be possible to get audio indicators working within Firefox, at least for HTML5 audio/video and for Flash that is supported by Shumway.

Although perhaps a native implementation of what I just described is in the works.

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