What is Flash actually?

[Seadog]

Flash was developed when the majority of users had desktops with no battery issues. laptops were not used for internet unless they were plugged in somewhere. The power demand was a non-issue. But with the increasing mobile society, power consumption is important. New technologies are needed to make mobile computing a better experience. That means better batteries, better system battery management, and off system experiences that do not use a great deal of juice.

There was a time when a great number of sites required Internet Explorer to function. Then the consumers raised a ruckus and they created web sites that recognized other browsers. Flash was a necessity once, but its antiquity is too apparent and the consumers are letting people know that with their experiences with and without Flash. I have to feel that the majority of users of Flash have began the process of moving away from it. The only ones left are those who are too lazy, or do not understand what is going on and do not want to upgrade their site. And that is a common problem with those who think that computers and computers systems are forever.

 

[Thphilli]

The only ones left are those who are too lazy, or do not understand what is going on and do not want to upgrade their site. And that is a common problem with those who think that computers and computers systems are forever.

That is kind of an (wth, you can't say a synonym for obtuse? And you star it out to make it look like im swearing?) statement. What would they upgrade their site to? HTML5? The spec is completely unfinished and isn't going to be for years. Flash is fully supported by everyone at this point other than one companies line of mobile products and even their users are desperate for workarounds to support it:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iswifter/id388857173?mt=8#
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skyfire-web-browser/id384941497?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puffin/id406239138?mt=8

HTML5 is awesome, dont get me wrong, but its not ready to replace flash yet.

 

[D_LA_ROC]

In case some people missed this, Adobe Flash is coming to iOS!!!!.. Removed forum link

FREE MY iPAD2 

 

[Seadog]

You seem to think everyone with an opinion contrary to yours is mentally challenged. If you would learn to debate without making personal remarks, you might get taken seriously. Very few standards are finished before they become common usage. There is no law that says they have to be. It is the vendors who decide when they support a standard. Which changes even after the final approval. Any major process will overlap from phase to phase. In a lot of construction jobs, you will see work being done before the final design prints are completed. If you didn't, nothing would get done. In almost every field, the standards lag the actual implementation. That is because it builds on a previous standard that has become inadequate. For example, a type of PVC pipe in use is found to be vulnerable to certain chemicals that may attack its gasket. The gasket is redesigned, and the new gasket becomes part of the next standard. The manufacturer has already done all the research to improve the gasket. The standard is only an industry method of passing the base design requirements out to all vendors. Then when the standard is posted, the vendor will say it meets standard xyz (pending) and when the standard is approved, they drop the (pending). Until the new standard is approved, the new design still has to meet the old standard, so anything new is always a refinement of an old design.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Yes - please let's have no personal or disrespectful comments. We're watching this discussion carefully.

Tim

 

[Thphilli]

You seem to think everyone with an opinion contrary to yours is mentally challenged. If you would learn to debate without making personal remarks, you might get taken seriously. Very few standards are finished before they become common usage. There is no law that says they have to be. It is the vendors who decide when they support a standard. Which changes even after the final approval. Any major process will overlap from phase to phase. In a lot of construction jobs, you will see work being done before the final design prints are completed. If you didn't, nothing would get done. In almost every field, the standards lag the actual implementation. That is because it builds on a previous standard that has become inadequate. For example, a type of PVC pipe in use is found to be vulnerable to certain chemicals that may attack its gasket. The gasket is redesigned, and the new gasket becomes part of the next standard. The manufacturer has already done all the research to improve the gasket. The standard is only an industry method of passing the base design requirements out to all vendors. Then when the standard is posted, the vendor will say it meets standard xyz (pending) and when the standard is approved, they drop the (pending). Until the new standard is approved, the new design still has to meet the old standard, so anything new is always a refinement of an old design.

Yes, thats all well and good, but you said that the "only ones left are those who are too lazy, or do not understand what is going on", which is not true.

And if you take someone saying "kind of an ignorant statement" as an attack on you, you might want to grow thicker skin. It's also not a "personal remark". The statement you made is

"Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular"

which is the definition of the word I used. I said nothing about you personally and I certainly didn't call you mentally challenged or ANY derivative of that. Might need to grow some thicker skin.

 

[DrHouse]

Over the years, i've seen a lot of developers getting excited over flash technology for the same reason: it looks cool! When asked about issues of having a single provider for development tools, they don't care, cause it's cool... When asked about maintenance, they don't care cause it's looks so cool... When asked about compatibility, they don't care cause they assume that everyone on the planet will have the Flash plugin and it's so easy to download. How could they miss such a cool thing...

Ask any development team what is their solution to get a new feature, and there is a good chance that you will hear the word "cool" somewhere... Because they heard about that new plugin that makes things easier for them, because they're working with the latest and newest framework, etc... Rarely you will hear that they are concerned about the future, the maintenance, the stability... They are like kids with a really big chest toy in front of them...

It's a reality that have to live with and thank god there are managers to hold their horses. Flash is just another toy that devs saw as: hey, we could do that in flash, would be cool!

And believe me, I am talking from experience...

VicoPad addict!

 

[Mtnmedic]

In case some people missed this, Adobe Flash is coming to iOS!!!!..http://bit.ly/gsoI70

FREE MY iPAD2 

Live streaming video only.

Michael "Spam, spam, bacon, eggs and spam. Hold the bacon and eggs." Sent from my iPad 2 using iPF

 

[SweetPoison]

I realize that some of these posts are over a week old ~ but since this was just bumped and Flash topics can be argumentative ~ let us all remain calm and breathe.

And be respectful please.

Yes - please let's have no personal or disrespectful comments. We're watching this discussion carefully.

Tim

And this is the second warning. And last.

 

[col.bris]

I agree with sweet poison let's just step back and take 3 breaths. Ok Think before you post

 

[DrHouse]

I agree with sweet poison let's just step back and take 3 breaths. Ok Think before you post

Four pages and still keeping control... We're keeping it clean, almost...

VicoPad addict!

 

[Seadog]

The fact remains that today, almost all the well tended sites with Flash have either eliminated it, or added the ability to see video and other features without it. To not do so is short sighted.

Technology and regulations are two items that are constantly undergoing change. I deal with both in my job, as do most people. For Adobe to continue their dominance in this arena, they will have to do more than minor upgrades to Flash. They need to completely rethink it. Come out with a new program that is backward compatible with Flash, but will eventually drop support after giving people enoungh notice to move on. When Apple went to OSX, they still supported OS9 for a few years, then OSX dropped support for G4 systems in OS10.5. If Adobe was to do something like that, they could once again be a growing force. They just need to reverse from their bloatware trend. And it is not just Adobe. Most agree that MS Office and many other programs suffer from bloatware. Office would be much better served if they offered a basic pckage for the bulk of the users, and add-on modules for special features. How about selling single language packages? Make additional languages an add-on.

 

[Seadog]

HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, a core technology of the Internet. It is the latest revision of the HTML standard (originally created in 1990) and currently remains under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers etc.).
Following its immediate predecessors HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a response to the observation that the HTML and XHTML in common use on the World Wide Web is a mixture of features introduced by various specifications, along with those introduced by software products such as web browsers, those established by common practice, and the many syntax errors in existing web documents. It is also an attempt to define a single markup language that can be written in either HTML or XHTML syntax. It includes detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable implementations; it extends, improves and rationalises the markup available for documents, and introduces markup and APIs for complex web applications.
In particular, HTML5 adds many new syntactical features. These include the <video>, <audio>, and <canvas> elements, as well as the integration of SVG content. These features are designed to make it easy to include and handle multimedia and graphical content on the web without having to resort to proprietary plugins and APIs.

There is misconception about HTML5 as an altenative to Flash. It is an upgrade to HTML4 which is one of the prime methods of writing web pages. To embed video on web pages using HML5, you still need to use java script or CSS3. It has been release as a working standard, but has not been fully finalized. By the time it is fully set as a standard, HTML6 will probably be in its working standard. The primary feature of HTML5 is the inclusion of many of the virtues of HTML4 and XHTML. It also eliminates the need for Acrobat in streming video for supported web browsers. However, earlier web browsers do not support HTML5, so they cannot take advantage of it. for example, only IE9 supports it, so those using IE6 or 8 are locked out. And since IE9 does not support XP, they are SOL.

 

[Seadog]

Any Flash player has to be able to animate on top of video renderings, which makes hardware accelerated video rendering at least not as straightforward as with a purpose-built multimedia player. Therefore, even when only displaying video, Flash players are more resource-intensive than dedicated video player software.
Comparisons have shown Adobe Flash Player to perform better on Windows than Mac OS X and Linux with the same hardware.

Some web browsers default to not play Flash content before the user clicks on it, e.g. Konqueror, K-Meleon. Equivalent "Flash blocker" extensions also exist for many popular browsers: Firefox has NoScript and Flashblock, and Opera versions since 10.5 feature native Flash blocking. Opera Turbo requires the user to click to play Flash content. Internet Explorer has Foxie, which contains a number of features, one of them also named Flashblock. WebKit-based browsers under Mac OS X, such as Apple's Safari, have ClickToFlash.


Flash's security record has caused several security experts to recommend to either not install Flash or to block it. The US-CERT recommends to block Flash using NoScript. Charlie Miller recommended "not to install Flash" at the computer security conference CanSecWest. As of October 31, 2010, The Flash Player has over 100 CVE entries, 65 of which have been ranked with a high severity (leading to arbitrary code execution), and 40 ranked medium. In February 2010, Adobe officially apologized for not fixing a known vulnerability for over 1 year. In June 2010 Adobe announced a "critical vulnerability" in recent versions, saying there are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.[47][48] Later, in October 2010, Adobe announced[49] another critical vulnerability, this time also affecting Android-based mobile devices. Android users have been recommended to disable Flash or make it only on demand.
Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report states that a remote code execution in Adobe Reader and Flash Player was the second most attacked vulnerability in 2009. The same report also recommends to employ browser add-ons wherever possible to disable Adobe Flash Player when visiting untrusted sites. McAfee predicted that Adobe software, especially Reader and Flash, would be primary target for attacks in 2010. Adobe applications had become, at least at some point, the most popular client-software targets for attackers during the last quarter of 2009.

The only usage of Flash that is probably still dominating the web, is on-line video games. IMHO, a lot of the on-line gambling will probably support Flash use, because they are being run by outfits that are looking at every means possible to take your money. If they can't get it from the gambling, they might get in your Adobe weakness to get a lot more from use.

If a person wants to use Flash programs, I would not care. If you want to gripe about the iPad not supporting it, my attitude is don't blame Apple. Limited support (very limited) was allowed by Apple.

In September 2010, Apple eased its restrictions by allowing deployment of Flash applications on iOS using Adobe Packager. According to Adobe Labs, Adobe Packager “offers Flash developers a fast and efficient method to reuse existing code from ActionScript 3 projects to deliver native applications on iOS devices”.

Now you see that Adobe is making moves too. Peope here are tired of hearing how it is Apple's fault for not support a technology that has serious issues. No one buys a pickup and expect 40 mpg. They do not buy a sub-compact and expect to tow a large trailer. Why do people expect the iPad to support a technology that is not within its design parameters?

 

[pawnslinger]

It is nice to see the moves that are being made/planned by Adobe. Perhaps one day this will all be moot.

As a new iPad user, I felt the need to buy Skyfire, because many of the websites I frequent still use Flash, unbeknownst to me. I did not do much web browsing on my iPhone, so I didn't realize how much of an affect loss of Flash would have on me. Skyfire works great though... and I have even discovered some new Flash based sites that I like a lot.

So a big thank you to the developers of Skyfire.

It seems the decision by Mr Jobs to restrict Flash on Apple mobile platforms has had an unintended consequence, and new business opportunities have come into existence.