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The Future of Flash
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Aug 08, 2006 09:46 AM
from the next-gen-of-shiny dept.
from the next-gen-of-shiny dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Flash, and News.com has an article looking at the company's plans for the future of the technology. No longer just a choice for 'innovative' web designers, Adobe is positioning Flash as an application development platform, with special emphasis on video delivery and mobile device applications." From the article: "On Tuesday, the company intends to launch a microsite showing the evolution of Flash over the past 10 years, including video interviews with developers. Those videos will no doubt be played with the Flash Video Player, something many high-profile Web sites, including YouTube, have chosen to use as well. The success of Flash in the next 10 years rides largely on whether leading-edge customers like YouTube will design their Web sites with Flash, Lynch said. Adobe, which gained the Flash technology when it bought Macromedia, is trying to build an 'ecosystem' of developers and partners, he said. "
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Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI SLASH-TARDS -- What Flash can do: (Score:5, Informative)
Flash should be used where one needs to use Flash, and HTML/JS/CSS (+XML+XSLT) likewise.
Flash behaves consistently cross-browser, cross/platform -- and most features cannot be disabled by the user. (compare that to a user being able to turn off JS, or Java -- something often mandated in a corporate environment.) It's either "all on" or "all off." (w/ a few minor exceptions, eg: local storage and camera/mic access.)
Flash has a large install base. It's arguably the most widely available platform for delivering media-rich "applications" over the web.
Flash does not rely on anywhere near the number of kludges and workarounds necessary to replicate similar features -- where possible -- in different browsers and browser *versions.* (Unlike various browser technologies, supported features are more stable across updates of the Flash Player.)
Not to sound like I work for MM/Adobe, but, here's what the Flash Player can do at *run time*:
The Value Of The Web Arguement (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.fishdan.com/ | Last Journal: Monday April 16 2007, @02:26PM)
I asked a Macromedia/Adobe Flash Evangelist recently why they have not yet implemented a toggle for flash like the Firefox Extension, [mozdev.org] so that users could chose to turn flash on for one page and off for another (or possibly even more granular if you wished). He told me flat out "because then our customers wouldn't like it because it would be too easy for you to avoid their ads. We want you to have a "one or the other" choice -- either all Flash or none. We think the quality of good/userful/entertaining flash out there is what makes Flash an attractive advertizing platform. If you could pick and choose what you saw, Flash would be just another rich media option on the web."
I found his honesty refreshing. And I see his point -- if you could easily pick and chose flash (as I do with the FF Flashblock extension) you'd probably never see a flash ad. I was surfing on a friends computer (on IE even) and his web experience SUCKS. Flash ads everywhere, they make noise without permission, they are ...ummm...FLASHY. And irritating. I honestly don't know how people get around with flash enabled all the time. For me if the choice is as he put it -- either no flash, or flash with no control over it, I'll take no flash.
It's silly for us to get into the arguement over whether or not content on the web should be free or supported by advertisments, because neither of us will affect the other's opinion. I don't block every ad, but if one annoys me, I do block it. I think the ad companies have the right to try to show me ads, and I have the right to try to block the ones that annoy me. So for me, I'll never consider flash an option until users have the ability to selectively choose what pages are allowed to run flash, and which flash apps are allowed to run on a given page.
Also for everyone in my company, because I block .swf at the router
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what SVG is supposed to be for -- and it has the distinct advantage over flash in that it can be integrated with that "HTML/DHTML/AJAX/whatever" stuff you mention.
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blog.thebarproject.com/ | Last Journal: Friday April 21 2006, @10:16AM)
On the Flash side, flash's serious, serious advantage is one of its most recent - it's really the best video-on-the-web delivery platform available. It's almost ubiquitos distribution, and cross-platform support is the tops.
Then there are other advantages - Flash has a brilliant, mature buffering mechanism that can be programmatically controlled.
And the creme-de-la-creme (that's TOTALLY spelled wrong I'm sure) is that you can build your own player! For instance, at my last job, we built a player that would actually detect dropped packets, missing files, etc - handle everything brilliantly. For larger files, we could run a small proprietary animation instead of stupid buffering messages in QT or WMP - and if the buffer were too slow or suddenly dropped, that could all be handled programmatically. Oh - and the video compression was on par with QT or WMP.
All that was done with Flash 7. Flash 8 and especially 9 add fantastic video-speicific features that weren't in 6 or 7.
Video is where Flash shines so brightly above the competition. I mean - I love QT HD trailers of movies at 400mb, but Flash video on the web is Flash's major advantage right now, and doing video in any other format is really pointless.
(Note: Most companies are picking up on this too - YouTube and Google Video for one, but ESPN moved all their stuff as well, as did ABC (owns ESPN) etc.)
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Informative)
In that case, your problem is simply that you don't understand the nature of the Internet. The only way to not distribute something is to -- wait for it -- not distribute it!
In other words, even if you use Flash you're still giving away your movie because there's no way to stop the person at the other end from making a copy that they can keep. In fact, there's even a Firefox extension [mozilla.org] expressly designed for this purpose. If you think Flash will stop distribution, you're just fooling yourself.
Okay, you're talking about something completely different than I thought, apparently. In your previous post I thought you meant implementing a custom video player UI in Flash, that would run in a Flash player. But now you appear to be talking about implementing a modified version of Flash Player itself such that it would be a stand-alone application capable of running on platforms that Flash (as distributed by Macrom^WAdobe) doesn't support (which doesn't make any sense to me). Which is it?
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Informative)
And that's just what's on the top of my head now.
I was a big fan of SVG when it came out. But I'm just not seeing it as a popular success in the long run, not without a ubiquitous viewer shipped with IE. My view is that SVG will follow in the path of VRML - still a success in some niche markets, but forgotten by most.
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be mistaken about what SVG and flash are for. I've built a web-based CAD app before, and ended up implementing a combination of the two. Comparing SVG to flash is like comparing HTML to PHP. Flash is good for run-time manipulation of vector graphics, but it is lousy at vector graphics exchange (since you can't edit an swf). SVG excels at vector graphics exchange, but the cross-browser support for run-time manipulation is virtually non-existant. I ended up building an SVG editor in flash, which is a sensible combination when you look at the strengths of each.
Anyway, I know a lot of people here hate flash, so as an ajax and flash developer, let me be burst a few bubbles:
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://seenonslash.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 11 2007, @04:02PM)
Re:Flash as an application development platform (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.agileagenda.com/)
Ever try making a commercial frontend app with it? Write once, debug everwhere. As an example the two java apps I use on a daily basis, Oxygen and Eclipse both didn't work with the intel macs when they were released.
Java is wonderful for certain applications. The app I'm currently working on uses a java backend with a flash frontend. We certainly could have made it a java frontend as well, but doing that would have cost a lot more for no real world benefit and would have most likely provided an inferior user experience.
It's all about picking the most appropriate tool for the job.
Flash is to much of a Hog. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://tsfraser.googlepages.com/index.html)
Maybe in 10 more years I can watch it on Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://localhost/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 13 2007, @09:00AM)
Re:Maybe in 10 more years I can watch it on Linux (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.enderandrew.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 03, @11:44PM)
1 - Go the 32-bit route for Firefox.
2 - Use Flock and their 64-bit Flash clone.
3 - There is a plugin wrapper that allows you to use 32-bit plugins in a 64-bit version of Firefox.
With Ubuntu64, you can use Gnash, or whatever it is called, but it only supports up to Flash 7.
Re:Maybe in 10 more years I can watch it on Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday September 11 2006, @09:36AM)
Re:Maybe in 10 more years I can watch it on Linux (Score:4, Informative)
(http://fuzzie.org/)
The future of flash... (Score:4, Insightful)
My plans for Flash (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.dutchvirtual.nl/ | Last Journal: Friday August 10, @07:04AM)
(empty space)
That's right. I have no plans for Flash.
Flash is my second favorite... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday December 09 2004, @09:25AM)
I've started using Flash inside my dev enviro... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not again! (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
*shudder* Never again!
i dissed them for lousy linux support on news.com (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.soulfire.cc/)
but ya flash blows
they have terrible or no support for most architectures/OSes out there
and for a 'web application' platform thats just flat out unacceptable
they did release a 32bit only version 7 for linux, but there have been what? 2 other versions and a 3rd coming since then? and none of them work on linux..
also they dont have 64bit support
and as far as i know it ONLY works on x86
so if you write your interactive web application using ajax then it works on nearly every operating system known to man.. or flash and it works only on one
Not just a Flash in the Pan (Score:4, Funny)
Flash (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.gargoyleslanding.com/)
Flash is old-school ajax (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash is far more robust and elegant than the slashdot crowd gives it credit for being. It has a powerful object-oriented language and frameworks enabling ant builds, unit testing, aspect-oriented coding, and almost every other buzzword out there. If you gave up on it 5 years ago, check it out again. It so isn't your daddy's flash these days.
Or better yet, keep insulting Flash while I keep making money off it.
Re:Flash is old-school ajax (Score:5, Insightful)
As an application development platform? Sure, why not. As a web application development platform? No chance.
The fundamental problem with Flash is the same as it ever was. You have a presentation format that wraps up presentation, scripting and content into one binary bundle that couples everything together so tightly it's impossible to decompose. You might as well stick a Powerpoint presentation on the web. Virtually all of Flash's other problems that people complain about are merely symptoms of this one underlying design flaw.
With a normal web application, you can do all kinds of things with the various pieces. On a slow connection? Turn off the graphics. Indexing content? Just parse the HTML. Security worries? Switch off scripting. Hate the design? Use a user stylesheet. Missing a feature? Add it with Greasemonkey. Concerned with a particular part of the web application? Link directly to it.
Flash either makes these things impossible or way more difficult than they should be because everything is tightly coupled instead of loosely coupled the way all the other web technologies are. By itself, this single factor limits interoperability, which is the whole basis for the WWW's strength. Sure, you might be able to produce a fancy interface, but you're doing it at the expense of cutting off ties to the rest of the web's technologies. It's Flash's fundamental design flaw that Adobe/Macromedia don't seem to understand or care about fixing.
Ajax, on the other hand, works with all the other WWW technologies. It doesn't invent its own way of representing content, it uses HTML. It doesn't have its own layout system, it uses CSS. Its constituent components already all exist, and, more importantly, lots of other software is built to manipulate them.
For example, if I have my browser set up to automatically make tables sortable, this works with tables in an Ajax application because Ajax applications would just use a normal, standard HTML table. The same thing hasn't got a chance of working in Flash because it doesn't build on top of existing technologies, it throws them all away and does its own thing.
Flash isn't a way of creating web applications. It's a way of creating traditional applications and making them appear in a browser window. If that's what you want, then fine, go ahead and do that. But don't pretend they are web applications, because they've thrown away everything that makes the web so powerful and replaced it with something else.
Flash FTW (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.agileagenda.com/)
However over the past month I've been imersing myself in the Flash world and have been amazed.
Did you know...
- You don't have to use the Flash IDE to create applications, you can use:
Eclipse (My preferred environment for this)
FlashDevelop
Notepad/Emacs/vi + a compiler
A crapton of other environments
Flex Builder (another adobe product)
- You never have to deal with a timeline if you don't want to.
- Real object-orientated programming is possible.
- Actionscript 3 (available in Flash Player 9) is clearly targetted at developers and not designers and removes many of the oddities of AS2 that you may have heard about.
- Real applications, not web toys can be created.
- With the upcomming apollo runtime, native applications can be created with full access to all machine resources.
- There's a ton of open source libraries out there
Want an IoC container like Spring? Sure!
Want a port of the java swing library? Sure!
- The new version of Flex Builder (the environment targetted at developers) is simply an eclipse plugin.
- Adobe is now making tools and libraries available free of charge to developers. (not the whiz-bang IDE's, but compilers, libraries, etc.)
Re:Flash FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/)
Right on, like ActionStep [actionstep.org]. We've built indi [getindi.com] in it and it looks good, it's fast, and the API is continually improving. Good times.
Re:Flash FTW (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.agileagenda.com/)
- Full accessibility, including screenreader support, is built into Flash. To utilize that is about as difficult as implementing that support for a traditional desktop application. There is no need to have weird hacks.
- Actionscript is the language the flash player is the environment it runs in (the VM?) and it provides an API that is fully accessible from actionscript without touching adobe design tools.
- Flash has it's own control panel for privacy concerns that rivals most browser controls (not counting addons) for html content.
- Just because there are crappy flash things out there (animated ads, stupid games, etc.) doesn't mean real applications can't be built. You don't blame C for the latest internet worm, why blame flash for the latest annoyance.
- It can be indexed by search engines.
- The new target is at full blown applications. Think of something like iTunes. An application running on your computer that communicates extensively with online services. With an added bonus it can be delivered on-demand over the internet in addition to a traditional download/install or cd/install.
- Macromedia dropped the ball on linux flash player. Adobe's picking it back up.
Re:Flash as an Application Development Platform? N (Score:4, Insightful)
Flex (or Flash) is an API and can be made to develop complex applications. Though the question of "complex" is debatable. I think 10s of thousands of concurrent users with 10s of millions of daily transactions will be complex enough.
I've yet to see the Ajax app that performs to a high degree of accuracy to the same extent.
Server side execution of certain things? Sure, how do you want to go about it? RPC, WS, HTTP? These are obviously all wierd Adobe programming techniques that aren't used by millions of people across the planet. We're linked upto massive multiple clusters all running various Java servlets to perform all our server side needs, such as, for example working with that massive centralised DB.
Try looking at it from a security point of view as well. Flash is prone to fewer attacks. It is much harder to spoof a Flash application, you can't simply through up a look-a-like page, you can't use simple cross site scripting attacks, no SQL injection, simply fewer common techniques will stime it.
HTML is no greater universal than Flash, Flash has different players (which can be compensated for by directing the user to get the latest), HTML has all its IE/Firefox/Opera/etc problems.
In the end, Flash CAN be annoying, if simply used to create an annoying moving image... much like a gif can be annoying if used to create an annoying moving image, but it IS powerful and will only get more so.
Flash is evil (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html [useit.com]
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/main.html [webpagesthatsuck.com]
http://dack.com/web/flash_evil.html [dack.com]
Make it searchable (Score:4, Insightful)
Ajax is no 'threat' - never was. (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all it's clear that if Adope doesn't screw around to much they can't do much wrong. It's still the most widespread plattform ever with nearly zero-fuss cross plattform deployment via the web. You get a high profile independant VM, with a security model and security policy that remains unmatched in RIAs. And a rock-solid ECMA compliant OOP language along with it.
Ajax just isn't in that league. Nice for the one or other drag-and-drop gadget or small-scale data sync but that's about it.
XUL maybe will get there someday, if they get their stuff sorted out and manage to build a hassle-free XUL-Runner plugin for all major browsers. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
CELEBRATING 10 years? (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Oh, and try the Flash-Fried Content, and don't forget to tip your web servers. Ba-da-bing!
Can they really celebrate... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday April 03 2006, @07:23PM)
Macromedia made flash ubiquitous on the web, like it or not.
Then Adobe-come-lately appears on the scene, and we start getting "flash bugs"; every single site requests local storage; Flash causes more browser crashes than ever...
Sorry, Adobe, but you don't get the credit here. The profits, yes, but no Kudos for you!
Matryoshka Dolls (Score:3, Funny)
The Future of Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @03:30PM)
Re:Not to shabby (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.beautifully-webdesign.net/ [beautifull...design.net]
The thing about Flash is that many designers and artists use it to create pieces of art, animated or dynamic in form. For these people, Flash is used to a different end than what a typical commercial or information website might use it for, which in many cases amounts to abuse of Flash.
I think it's a little hippocritical of the general slashdot user to complain about the restrictive political climate and it's often infringing acts on the creative rights of their citizens, yet dismiss Flash as a merit-less platform for art, music and other creative ideas. Somehow, I think these slashdot users are also the same people who spend too much time on sites like albinoblacksheep or newgrounds.