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Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

benjamin.smedbergs.us

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Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#31

Post by BrendanEich »

camus wrote: post #25

this project is a waste of time. The problem is not the player , but how flash can output content that use standard browser apis. This kind of emulation is a good demo , but doesnt work in the real world. Why whould i use that ? old browser will never support that tech ( It makes more sense to build tools similar to flash IDE that can export to HTML5 than wasting time trying to make legacy code run slow and blow up t…

Platforms where Flash is not supported by Adobe, or not allowed by the OS vendor:

- Linux

- Win8 Metro, depending on the whitelist contents

- iPad

- iPhone

- FirefoxOS (neé B2G)

As Stan the Man says, 'nuff said!

/be

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#32

Post by nnethercote »

cookiecaper wrote: post #24
nnethercote wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's kind of sad that they felt they couldn't pick up on Gnash or LightSpark or some of the other good open-source Flash work out there The whole point is that doing it in JS avoids the need for a native code plug-in, which cuts off an entire avenue of security problems. Same story as PDF.js.

There's a big difference between displaying a PDF file in JavaScript and compiling and displaying an active, real-time Flash game in JavaScript. A PDF file is just words and pictures on a page, same thing browsers have always done. They don't include animations, they don't accept user input, they don't connect to servers and stream files and send updates, and they definitely don't run real-time graphics code or path…

> You don't think they can figure out how to make an NSAPI plugin reasonably secure?

Nope.

> You don't think they can get the code portable enough to work on multiple platforms?

Not on platforms that expressly disallow it, e.g. iOS.

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#33

Post by caiob »

BrendanEich wrote: post #31
camus wrote: post #25

this project is a waste of time. The problem is not the player , but how flash can output content that use standard browser apis. This kind of emulation is a good demo , but doesnt work in the real world. Why whould i use that ? old browser will never support that tech ( It makes more sense to build tools similar to flash IDE that can export to HTML5 than wasting time trying to make legacy code run slow and blow up t…

Platforms where Flash is not supported by Adobe, or not allowed by the OS vendor: - Linux - Win8 Metro, depending on the whitelist contents - iPad - iPhone - FirefoxOS (neé B2G) As Stan the Man says, 'nuff said! /be

Thanks SJ.

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#34

Post by logotype »

BrendanEich wrote: post #30
freditup wrote: post #27

The main advantage to Flash is that you get a much more mature language (Actionscript 3) to work with over JS and you also get a whole host of great APIs that are easy to use. (From ByteArrays, to the Camera class, to different blend modes and filters, easy Bitmap manipulations, etc.). Now, JS is starting to implement some of these things which is good, but they still vary across browser, only work on the most modern…

You seem up-to-date on AS3 but not on JS. JS has typedarrays (even in IE10) now. /be

First of all, there are more things than typed arrays (vectors) in AS3, the main thing being a consistent runtime. Also the way you structure an AS3 project is different since the language supports packages/classes etc while in JS you (for better or worse) don't have these concepts so you end up with many different code styles. Even though browsers implement the some of the features, there are subtle differences in the implementations. This results, in real world scenarios, that this stuff are being abstracted away, layers and layers of abstractions, libraries for everything. I have my doubts that this SWF interpreter can be efficient.

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#35

Post by BrendanEich »

logotype wrote: post #34
BrendanEich wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem up-to-date on AS3 but not on JS. JS has typedarrays (even in IE10) now. /be

First of all, there are more things than typed arrays (vectors) in AS3, the main thing being a consistent runtime. Also the way you structure an AS3 project is different since the language supports packages/classes etc while in JS you (for better or worse) don't have these concepts so you end up with many different code styles. Even though browsers implement the some of the features, there are subtle differences in t…

There are too many layers in all doomed software, whether written in JS or AS3.

Subtle differences in implementations, you say? That is called the open web. Come on in, the water's fine. Pay no attention to the drowning plugins over in that cold corner...

/be

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#37

Post by mesh »

BrendanEich wrote: post #31
camus wrote: post #25

this project is a waste of time. The problem is not the player , but how flash can output content that use standard browser apis. This kind of emulation is a good demo , but doesnt work in the real world. Why whould i use that ? old browser will never support that tech ( It makes more sense to build tools similar to flash IDE that can export to HTML5 than wasting time trying to make legacy code run slow and blow up t…

Platforms where Flash is not supported by Adobe, or not allowed by the OS vendor: - Linux - Win8 Metro, depending on the whitelist contents - iPad - iPhone - FirefoxOS (neé B2G) As Stan the Man says, 'nuff said! /be

Just to clarify, those are Platforms where the Flash Player / Browser plugin is not supported or available. You can use the Flash development and authoring toolchain to develop content for many of those platforms.

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#38

Post by fzzzy »

ludicast wrote: post #20
BrendanEich wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No second wind here. Think instead of pdf.js and how it relieves you of the bloated security hole called Reader. PDF is a large format (extensions include SWF!) but pdf.js need not handle all of it to be useful in minimizing Reader activations. Similarly, Flash is going down, never to come back (thanks, SJ). So Shumway need handle only the tall head, possibly as a previewer if not a full Flash replacement. The long t…

Very well explained, you seem to know a lot about Javascript.

Yes, I would say Brendan Eich probably knows a lot about JavaScript. Probably more than he wants to know :-)

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#39

Post by camus »

BrendanEich wrote: post #31
camus wrote: post #25

this project is a waste of time. The problem is not the player , but how flash can output content that use standard browser apis. This kind of emulation is a good demo , but doesnt work in the real world. Why whould i use that ? old browser will never support that tech ( It makes more sense to build tools similar to flash IDE that can export to HTML5 than wasting time trying to make legacy code run slow and blow up t…

Platforms where Flash is not supported by Adobe, or not allowed by the OS vendor: - Linux - Win8 Metro, depending on the whitelist contents - iPad - iPhone - FirefoxOS (neé B2G) As Stan the Man says, 'nuff said! /be

My point is we dont need yet another emulator , but tools that help dev/designer/whatever great great content for the web. Nobody wants to run legacy code forever ,and i'm sorry , but the emulator doesnt work on any of my devices. So stop wasting your time , create software that people can use, not emulators nobody's going to run.

Re: Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript

#40

Post by camus »

thristian wrote: post #9

I have good hopes for this (Mozilla's HTML5-based PDF reader is my favourite PDF browser plugin), but I'm a little worried - there have been a lot of Open Source Flash reimplementations, and so far as I can tell they all have early success and pretty demos of older Flash content, but are completely useless on most real-world Flash usage, like nearly any site that shows a video. I'll note that Gnash does actually work…

that's the point , you cant keep up with the latest flash version = fail . You cant get good performances = fail , you cant run it on old browsers that dont have flash = fail . Nobody needs that. This has already been done , all the projects have failed. If i had skills i would not waste my time trying to fit a triangle in a star , i would develop tools to make perfect fitting stars. That's what people want.
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