Adobe's Flash future uncertain

64-bit Linux had issues with Flash for quite some time since Adobe refused to release a Flash plugin for it...

64-bit Windows still doesn't have a Flash plugin... (You can use a 32-bit browser, but that shouldn't be necessary)

You end up with users compalining "Youtube" doesn't work and changing operating systems, due to decisions Adobe made that a OS vendor have no control over...
 
inferno said:
Its all just a propaganda war against flash. Apple will profit from the use of their version of flash, and so they are going on and on and on about how bad flash is. Truth is that their version is even worse, and its less developed.

Apple even paid a security company to tear apart Flash in order to find security issues. Once one was found, they mailed every major news site and the bug made headlines. Since when do bugs in Flash make headlines? Since apple they do.

Its really pathetic.

Oh and I'm lolling at the "3 million units sold" ipad stats. 3mil is nothing compared to other popular gadgets such as cellphones and laptops. They tooting their own horns and everyone is falling for it.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise that this article was about Apple. Oh wait it isn't. Its about Flash.
This article has once again been hijacked by a band of Apple-haters.

The article asserts that Flash's future is not about Apple. And the author is correct. Apple cannot kill Flash, it can only participate in the stoning.

Since Jobs came out with his document against Flash others have come out against it, Microsoft being the most famous one. M/S concerns about Flash are almost identical to Apple's.

So why don't more people comment on the thrust of the article. Will Flash survive? Should it survive? etc.

To me too may big boys are supporting HTML5 over Flash. Having said that Flash have a huge existing market. So, Flash will need to find a way to subtlety migrate their product set to HTML5. Or it will die one day.
It may be be a long and slow death during which time Adobe will make lots of money out of Flash.

As for Apple well business-wise they are doing very well. They have decent products that people are free to buy or ignore.
BUT again this article is about Flash and its future. Apple only have a role to play there.
 
HTML5 will eat into Flash's video market, but I am not about to drop flash to write a game in HTML5 since for one, it is way too easy to get to the game's source code then (being javascript). With that said though, I don't use flash and never will, I use the other thing that will eat into flash's game market and that is game engines like Unity3D which allows me to compile a game to be embeded into the browser while all the user have to do is install a very small plugin.
 
Aspects that weren't mentioned

In regard to Flash, many of you failed to thoroughly address the issues:
  1. Flash isn't merely about the format itself but the development tools as well. Deployment time for a simple animation in Flash IDE vs any of the JavaScript libraries (jQuery) isn't even comparable.
  2. Both H.264 and VP8 struggle licencing issues in terms of Open Standards that HTML5 should stand for. There's strong resistance (and quite rightly) to both of these formats from Firefox and Opera that are not in control of either of these formats. Plus, even if VP8 makes it into a Open-source Software in its current form, there are loads of infringements in regard to GPL.
  3. Considering the above, HTML5 isn't more open than Flash. Flex SDK is Free (OSS) and available for all developers. SWF is an open format. Furthermore, open-source tools exist for
    Flash authoring, e.g. AXDT: open-source cross-platform alternative for Flash development.
 
fyi ain & midrange

On May 19, 2010, Google, which acquired On2 in 2010, released VP8 codec software under a BSD-like license and the VP8 bitstream format specification under an irrevocable free patent license[16] at its May 2010 Google I/O conference.[17] This made VP8 the second product from On2 Technologies to be open-sourced to the free software community following the 2001 release of the older VP3 codec, which was later donated (under the BSD license) to the Xiph.Org Foundation as the Theora codec; the most vocal urging for Google to release the VP8 source code came from the Free Software Foundation, which issued an open letter on March 12, 2010 asking Google to gradually replace the usage of the Adobe Flash Player and H.264 on YouTube with a mixture of HTML5 and an open-sourced VP8.[18]

On May 19, 2010, the WebM Project was launched, featuring contributions from "Mozilla,[19] Opera,[20][21] Google[22] and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors" in a major effort to use VP8 as the codec for HTML5.[23] In the WebM container format, the VP8 video is used with Vorbis audio.[24][25] Internet Explorer 9 will support VP8 video playback if the proper codec is installed.[26] Android is also officially planned to be WebM-enabled in the 4th quarter of 2010.[27]
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vp8

the concerns around vp8 sound like mpeg-la fud to me.
 
Last edited:
MoHaG said:
Nope, that is javascript and XMLHTTPRequest...
Click to expand...

So you have said that flash is NOT a corner stone to web 2.0. I'm afraid you're wrong there, youtube had a huge influence over the web and brough forward streaming video for this mythical "web 2.0", and flash was a big part in that. Like it or not, flash was a big contribution to web 2.0

flash as a video player, which is the one thing that it is good for
Click to expand...

And online games, and adverts and applications. It's still very far ahead of javascript. Leading brands are using flex for online applications for a reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X