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What's new in Flash 11

adobe.com

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Re: What's new in Flash 11

#41

Post by racecar789 »

ActionScript 3.0 is what JavaScript should be. Actual classes, typed variables, and a platform that works the same in every browser.

Contrarian view but I see flash improving its lead on html. Adobe doesn’t have to deal with a bureaucratic standards body and can act decisively when making platform changes. Ex: I’d like to see MS, Mozilla, IE, Chrome, Apple, Opera all agree to implement similar features in Flash 11 (and work the same in each browser). Then I’d like to see them agree on new feature sets when Flash 12, 13, 14 come out etc.

I just don’t see how five browser vendors can equal the agility of one flash vendor. Too much red tape in the html congress…

Yes, Flash is proprietary and it doesn’t work well for mobile. All I can say is that I’ve been burned one too many times by IE not showing CSS table borders on empty cells (last time I checked IE8 still requires that damned ampersand in each cell!). I’m fed up with browser incompatibility. All of the JavaScript frameworks (and now with Google making Dart) confirm that JavaScript is inherently outdated and broken. I gave up on html for Flex and am not looking back.

Just my humble opinion…

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#42

Post by joelhooks »

gerggerg wrote: post #37
ender7 wrote: post #30

Some of these are really welcome changes for me (native JSON, bezier curves, TLS sockets, DisplayObjectContainer.removeChildren). And yet... And yet I'm still planning on switching my web app to HTML5. This is coming from a guy who's sunk over two years of development into Flash. It's not because the runtime is buggy and/or crashy (it is, but it's not that bad). It's not because it's so much easier to develop in HTML…

air for mobile?

works really well. The native extensions should make it more versatile. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/native-extensions-for-air.ht...

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#43

Post by dmix »

Fizzer wrote: post #20
davidu wrote: post #2

I guess crashing isn't a feature. I'm not trying to be a troll, but let's be honest -- There has never been a version of Flash that hasn't piece a complete piece of garbage when it comes to stability and performance. If Adobe "got it" this list of "What's new" would include words like "removed" and "deprecated" and "eliminated." Those words don't appear once. They've just thrown more stuff into the kitchen sink that…

My experience doesn't match your statements at all. I run a Flash website (it's a game), and Flash is pretty much rock solid for me. My site has been up over 3 years, has over 80k lines of Actionscript, and I can count the number of times I've seen Flash crash on one hand. Even if you include reports from my users who have Flash crash on them, the number is less than 20. That's probably not too far from any software…

Thats somewhat anedotal for one website / flash game.

My own anecdotal experience from coming across flash sites while browsing for the last 11 years (that I remember) and spending two years developing flash sites, is that it has always been slow and crashes often. And most importantly the stability hasn't seemed to improve over time like everything else on the internet.

Especially on OSX.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#44

Post by ewrgsdfg »

ary wrote: post #29
MetaMan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crashing in a managed environment is never the developer's fault" !!! WHAT? Are you serious? Please educate us as to how that is done.

Because the whole point of it being managed is that you can't crash it, and if you can it's a bug.

Agreed.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#45

Post by notatoad »

melling wrote: post #15

Before everyone starts complaining about Flash, I challenge people to go 30 days without Flash. http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html http://www.cultofmac.com/67699/uninstall-flash-for-mac-os-x-...

going on 8 months without flash on any of my home machines. i prefer it, i find that the content from flash websites tends to be poor quality or unneccesary distractions, my internet is better without it.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#46

Post by BillPosters »

dgroves wrote: post #33
melling wrote: post #15

Before everyone starts complaining about Flash, I challenge people to go 30 days without Flash. http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html http://www.cultofmac.com/67699/uninstall-flash-for-mac-os-x-...

I have been flash free for so long I can not even recall when I last used flash...

So what? I've been Native App-free for months now. I encourage everyone to go without using native apps for a few weeks. Unchain yourselves from Apple's closed, flash-hating club.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#47

Post by thomasgerbe »

davidu wrote: post #2

I guess crashing isn't a feature. I'm not trying to be a troll, but let's be honest -- There has never been a version of Flash that hasn't piece a complete piece of garbage when it comes to stability and performance. If Adobe "got it" this list of "What's new" would include words like "removed" and "deprecated" and "eliminated." Those words don't appear once. They've just thrown more stuff into the kitchen sink that…

"There has never been a version of Flash that hasn't piece a complete piece of garbage when it comes to stability and performance."

YMMZ. I'm using Chrome right now and I'd say despite playing lots of Flash games and watching players that use Flash, most of the crashes that happen are due to the browser.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#48

Post by daleharvey »

stilist wrote: post #16
melling wrote: post #15

Before everyone starts complaining about Flash, I challenge people to go 30 days without Flash. http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html http://www.cultofmac.com/67699/uninstall-flash-for-mac-os-x-...

Been doing it for months. Dip into Chrome for a couple games and to skip QuickTime bugs affecting YouTube/Vimeo (QT loads the whole stream, then drops and begins re-downloading if I pause and resume). Now that the rdio client is Flash-free it’s pretty easy for me to live without Flash.

When I upgraded to lion I decided to not bother installing flash on firefox

The only time I switch is to watch youtube / vimeo or a news video, very occasionally youtube gives me a html5 video which is nice, I dont understand why the rest dont already support html5

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#49

Post by BillPosters »

As an HTML/JS developer I really appreciate these powerful features that HTML5 will never have, and wasn't designed to have.

People who say "use HTML5 instead of Flash" obviously have limited experience in actually building HTML web apps and sites.

Ever tried making a javascript pre-loader? Not gonna happen. There's no jquery.bytesLoaded to the rescue. Even before the web-app has loaded, HTML is struggling to stay in the same game as Flash or native apps. Pre-loading sound files and other assets and relaying the bytes loaded to the user as a progress bar just isn't possible in HTML. You might be able to cook up a half-baked progress loader in JS, but it will suck, I promise.

It's obviously true that for SIMPLE things like menus and other interface features, HTML5 is the choice. But when you start getting seriously rich and multimedia heavy, then you need flash or native apps. And I prefer the Flash development and deployment freedom over native app lock-in any day.

Flash should be allowed as an optional plugin on iOS devices, simple as that. Then people who want it can have it, and people who cry about Flash can turn it off and stick with their iTunes account.

Re: What's new in Flash 11

#50

Post by beej71 »

namityadav wrote: post #18
beej71 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe has been working on a variety of HTML5 tools, so we can presume they "get it". It must cost them a fortune to support Flashplayer (which they give away for nothing). I'm sure they'll drop it the moment there's enough HTML5 penetration on par with Flashplayer's capabilities.

I'm sure Adobe is working on HTML5 tools. But, It must cost them a fortune to support Flashplayer (which they give away for nothing) The cost of supporting the free Flashplayer is paid for by the lock-in that this enables. Afterall, Dreamweaver doesn't have the kind of market dominance that Flash Professional has.

Yes, however, the desired "lock-in" is to the tool, which sells, not the Flashplayer. People are used to developing with Flash Professional and have AS3 codebases, etc. If Adobe successfully targets HTML5 instead of Flashplayer, these people can (and in all likelihood will choose to) continue to use FlashWhatever Professional and even their AS3 codebases.

The player is merely a medium, though by authoring it, Adobe can advance the state of the art more quickly than the browser makers can agree on anything. This does make Flash Professional a more compelling environment.

But let's pretend for a moment that 95% of browsers got feature-coherent on the level of Flash. Why would Adobe care if the player were "all browsers", instead of Flashplayer?

Would they care because if they were targeting all browsers, they'd be effectively targeting a level playing field in terms of the base technology? Would it end up like Dreamweaver, which also targets a common base technology?

I'm going to argue "not necessarily, and in this case, no". And the reason is that anyone today can target Flashplayer. The playing field is already effectively level on Flash. Tons of software outputs SWFs. There are even Flash Professional wannabes, but they're not as good as GIMP is compared to Photoshop, and we know where that thread leads.

Speaking of that, consider Photoshop. It is hugely popular in spite of the fact there is zero infrastructure lock-in. Literally bazillions of programs can view and edit Photoshop-produced files. It's thriving while Dreamweaver, relatively, stagnates.

Dreamweaver's lack of dominance, IMO, is likely related to other factors. (I'm not sure why, but I don't know any professional web developers that use it.)

Iff Adobe could get Flash-quality and quantity on 95% of browsers using HTML/CSS/JS, I'll still bet you a pint they stop work on the player. Chrome 14 just added audio synthesis, so we're getting there!

Adobe's not going to stop working on the Flash Professional-style tools, though, even if it is outputting HTML. People buy Flash Professional for the features it provides both to the designer and for the end result. No one actually cares if there is a plugin in the middle or not.

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