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Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

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Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#71

Post by saurik »

pluma wrote: post #52
sp332 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With access to the source, it should be possible to export them to HTML5 using Adobe's flash authoring tools. I've never tried it though, and I don't know how good the HTML5 versions would be. Edit: huh, it kinda runs with Mozilla's Flash-runtime replacement, Shumway. Another few rounds of bugfixes and we might not need any Adobe code to play these files just as they are.

The problem with most current Flash-to-HTML5 conversions is that they only barely support ActionScript, if at all. So anything meaningfully interactive (like minigames) is pretty much out.

Shumway makes it sound like "we got this" (which then discourages someone like me--someone who has a ton of knowledge of compiler design and a lot of background specifically with JavaScript-based language but almost no interest in duplicating effort, someone who would normally see this call to action and go "oh, I'll add this to my todo list"--from even spending much time researching the current space). Are you saying Shumway only "barely" supports ActionScript?

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#72

Post by Tloewald »

eosrei wrote: post #68
Tloewald wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash's speed on desktops is not the main strike against it, although it was actually quite bad for many things (the 3d stuff worked better for it because it bypassed its aging 2d rendering engine which no-one left at Adobe understood or could fix). Flash's speed on mobile was abysmal and Adobe tried and failed to fix it for years (after Steve Jobs' famously pointed all this stuff out). The fact that Flash would stor…

Oh yes, the security was a huge problem. I absolutely do not want to go back to the land of Flash for many reasons. Haha! The dictator reference is specifically in regards to intrusive CPU/battery-wasting Javascript ads. Which, I expect to see many more of if I ever disable adblock. Edit: I just checked out your article and the referenced one. Chris Black responded to your issue with his code in the follow up article…

How does he justify erasing the background twice each update? Bear in mind each erase is the single slowest operation in the loop, and if you scale up the complexity of an animation it will become increasingly irrelevant.

Seriously, he is full of it.

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#74

Post by jo909 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

Cool. Now if only Amazon would eat its own dogfood. Their Prime Music/Cloud library music player still requires Flash in order to use.

Amazon is not doing this with the intention of "killing" flash.

They do this because flash ads are now no longer seen by a large enough group of users which makes them bad advertising vehicles.

Maybe at some point the Prime Music people will decide that a large enough group of users are no longer able to use their service, but that is a totally different decision with different motivations.

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#75

Post by joshstrange »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #26
sp332 wrote: post #8

You know Flash is dead when Homestar Runner says it's dead! http://www.homestarrunner.com/flashisdead.html For those who don't know, this site was a legit phenomenon in the early 2000's, and it has always been 100% flash-based. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestar_Runner

How hard would it be to convert those Flash videos into mp4s for archival in the IA? EDIT: Looks like they've been uploaded to Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/homestarrunnerdotcom

I did this for Strongbad emails years ago using some off-the-shelf flash to mp4 converter but a number of the videos had issues because they were interactive (and not just at the end but sometimes in the middle). I got the majority of them (at the time) converted so I could watch them on my iPod video. This was before I went full-on-data-hoarder and so I deleted them forever ago. Recently I tried to do it again and have all the swfs downloaded but haven't found a great way to mass convert them so I can put them in Plex (media server). If anyone has a good way to do it on linux via the command line I'd be very interested.

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#76

Post by sp332 »

saurik wrote: post #71
pluma wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with most current Flash-to-HTML5 conversions is that they only barely support ActionScript, if at all. So anything meaningfully interactive (like minigames) is pretty much out.

Shumway makes it sound like "we got this" (which then discourages someone like me--someone who has a ton of knowledge of compiler design and a lot of background specifically with JavaScript-based language but almost no interest in duplicating effort, someone who would normally see this call to action and go "oh, I'll add this to my todo list"--from even spending much time researching the current space). Are you sayin…

There are several such projects - swfdec, lightspark, gnash, etc. From what I've seen of them, they all underestimated the amount of effort. Most of them just petered out. So if you're going for it, I would worry less about duplicating effort and more about setting realistic goals for the project.

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#77

Post by prapam2 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #20
melling wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2. Give current flash devs a reasonable alternative" Developers need to follow the market. The market doesn't follow us. Otherwise, you're stuck working on legacy projects.

Perhaps I should have worded it better. The market is the people who hire those devs (ie, bank websites, video streaming sites, etc, etc, etc) and they are currently saying: "we still need flash for some things, so we're not ready to kill flash just yet." Give THEM a reasonable alternative, and flash will go away.

Why would bank websites require flash?

Re: Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads

#78

Post by pluma »

sp332 wrote: post #76
saurik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shumway makes it sound like "we got this" (which then discourages someone like me--someone who has a ton of knowledge of compiler design and a lot of background specifically with JavaScript-based language but almost no interest in duplicating effort, someone who would normally see this call to action and go "oh, I'll add this to my todo list"--from even spending much time researching the current space). Are you sayin…

There are several such projects - swfdec, lightspark, gnash, etc. From what I've seen of them, they all underestimated the amount of effort. Most of them just petered out. So if you're going for it, I would worry less about duplicating effort and more about setting realistic goals for the project.

The big problem is that AS2 and AS3 are drastically different from each other and neither of them can safely be ignored.

Supporting even one of them in its entirety is a Herculean effort. Supporting both is insane.

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