Flash!......aaah...aaaaah!

[skater_j10]

No, Flash Gordon is not approaching, but Adobe Flash 10.1 for Mobile Devices is!

I couldn't find a post about this yet on the forums, so here it goes: check it.

It seems like TI is pretty ready and willing to have flash availability on their OMAPs, oh man I am pumped if this is the case. I can't wait to be able to play flash games on the Pandora, a programmer friend of mine now programs indie games almost exclusively in flash and I really wanted to play his games on a portable, I may now have my long awaited chance. It's funny I actually rekindled my relationship with the Pandora after trying to find an answer for playing Matt's games on a portable device, I had heard rumours about it a long while ago but never did hear anything about until I started searching again and ended up being able to jump on the tail end of the pre-order list. I have now idea how easy or hard it will be to port flash to the Pandora but I am filled with hope right now!

Weird, I haven't typed this fast in a while.

 

[second exodous]

JUST LET IT GO MAN, IT IS TIME TO LET GO!!

Ok, that is the last time I'll post that picture, but I love it so much. I don't like Apple so much but Flash has crashed my browser so many freaking times since it came out that it deserves to die a horrible painful death. And I guess by people hanging on it is like keeping a vegetable plugged into life support, so yeah, keep it up.

 

[skater_j10]

Come on, vegetables are people too! By the way I like the pic, I lol'd a bit, but you gotta face it many of us noobs (and maybe others) still like the flash....er I mean...Flash.

By the way are you using IE? Cause that just tends to crash on it's own

 

[Wolenber]

I'm looking forward to flash just for Robot Unicorn Attack. Playing that on a Panda is going to be amazing.

 

[Alpha2]

Flash isnt going anywhere, not with Adobe behind it. And yeah any combination of IE and Windows (of any kind) is eventually going to lead to a crash whether by flash or some random animated gif.


and yeah there's just something addictive about Robot Unicorn Attack. Canabalt is also a good time waster.

 

[God Ginrai]

JUST LET IT GO MAN, IT IS TIME TO LET GO!!

Ok, that is the last time I'll post that picture, but I love it so much. I don't like Apple so much but Flash has crashed my browser so many freaking times since it came out that it deserves to die a horrible painful death. And I guess by people hanging on it is like keeping a vegetable plugged into life support, so yeah, keep it up.

You need to let it go. Flash, while it has its flaws, is a viable medium that has a lot of good work done using it. If you don't like it, then don't use it, but don't complain about other people using it, because it can't crash your browser if you choose not to use it.

-God Ginrai

 

[Jourdy288]

That would be pretty cool on the Pandora... Flash... PORTABLE FLASH PORTAL!

 

[God Ginrai]

Newgrounds on the Go. That's what makes me happy thinking about Flash on the Pandora. ^_^

-God Ginrai

 

[-Tj-]

I hate Flash. Despite having said that, it's an undeniably integral part of a lot of the internet. I'm loving the possibilities HTML 5 holds, but till that takes over, it would be nice to have Flash on my Pandora. Damn those sites that only display their product info and links in Flash!!!!! >_<

 

[korky]

Well there is a slight hope, maybe Fenic will be updated to be the same as the full desktop firefox, which has just been released and runs flash as a separate process, i.e. if it balks then your browser will still continue to work ;o)

 

[God Ginrai]

I hate Flash. Despite having said that, it's an undeniably integral part of a lot of the internet. I'm loving the possibilities HTML 5 holds, but till that takes over, it would be nice to have Flash on my Pandora. Damn those sites that only display their product info and links in Flash!!!!! >_<

Flash is fine, and HTML 5 will never get rid of it, but coexist alongside it. However, those sites that only display info and links in Flash are indeed poorly designed. There is nothing wrong with using flash in a site, but there should also be a nonflash version available as well.

-God Ginrai

 

[PhillipJ]

Flash is NOT fine. It's stupidly inefficient (http://3laws.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/you-will-fail-at-everything-forever/), insecure (http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/alerts/SA10-162A.html) and unstable (personal experience, although it seems better after upgrading to v10). None of those things are inherent problems though, they're more symptoms of a company that's had virtually no competition for years and so no reason to be less shit. If HTML 5 is widely adopted and starts to encroach on Flash (and AIR? Not sure what AIR does really) territory then Adobe will have to make Flash suck less and then maybe it will be fine.

 

[Alpha2]

I had to read up on this whole HTML5 thing but it seems to me like it's not anywhere near supplanting Flash in general use for another 5 years or more. and I dont think I saw anything in it's wiki about being able to make flash style games with it. As long as people see flash as a quick solution to producing animated interactive graphic elements it's going to stick around.

 

[dflemstr]

I had to read up on this whole HTML5 thing but it seems to me like it's not anywhere near supplanting Flash in general use for another 5 years or more. and I dont think I saw anything in it's wiki about being able to make flash style games with it. As long as people see flash as a quick solution to producing animated interactive graphic elements it's going to stick around.

HTML5 has a Wiki? What!?

Anyways, here's the overview:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

 

[Blue Ion]

Jesus, an other flash mindless bashing thread, apparently since apple said its hip to bash it, then everyone is doing it. Keep in mind I don't deny that flash has its problems, be it being slower and perhaps buggier, but aside from the fact flash has crashed my browser far less times than what it crashed on its own without flash, it isn't the piece of shit apple and all the apologists says it is.

For starters, flash is just a virtual machine, a goddamn interpreter, on its own, it does NOTHING, all it does is take a program, and run it. Flash is not directly responsible of making your computer slow, the flash programs are, the people that make flash with tons of transparency effects, gradients with a video behind are the ones to blame since with their useless floritures they are putting more strain on the vm, but guess what, the same will happen with java, with python or even javascript or html5 as now it is known.

You may say, "but html5 versions of pages are faster", true, that is because as with new technology, their players are just stubs, a bare framework that all it does is play a video, which is fine because once the add all the shit it will be back to square one, I'd like to hear your fans (both types) going crazy with hmtl5 as it chews down your cpu.
Also keep in mind that flash has to go through several more layers to get the image to you than a simple overlay with no acceleration whatsoever, putting it under a serious disadvantage.
Just for the kicks, I fired up the html5 version of youtube and its flash version, and lo and behold, flash kept my cpu at 30%, html5 at 27%. Not the magical and revolutionary cpu reductions evangelists preached.

You may say with flash there won't be a need for a plugin anymore, but don't forget that by using h264 in html5 you effectively exclude all open source browsers as they can't pay the exorbitant fees to the mafia at the MPEG group. Which means, back to square one with video availability as users will have to install an other type of plugin for the video. In fact we will be worse than before as Mozilla Firefox with a woopping 25% of market share will be unable to support that type of video. For that point, luckily Google's WebM is there to save the day, but as usual Apple is pressing against it as hard as it can, shocker.

You may say flash is less secure as with binary blobs, and guess what, I also say the same. Any binary blob is more insecure by definition, less eyes to peek at the code, less chances of fixing vulnerabilities, but guess what (again) it is no different than java in its time (and nowadays), general drivers or just like Windows and Mac OS.

I find this html5 bashing trend a good oportunity to give adobe a big slap in the face and start moving once again. This is an excellent opportunity for modularising flash and releasing all possible components open source while keeping those that allows those nervous media providers sleep well at night (read, drm). After all Adobe source of income is the development tools, not the player.
A modular opensource version will allow easy porting between devices, using acceleration where available, and leaving less work to adobe when having to port restricted parts.

I know this massive post will go largely ignored, and that it will be like pissing on the ocean. Also I had more arguments, but I'll keep them now since the longer the post is, the less people read it. At least I got much of it out of my chest.

Cheers.

Edit: Now that I have cooled down a little, what I was trying to say is that flash and html5 can coexist as platforms for complex programs and games or more simple but readily available one respectively. Remember flash authoring tools have almost a decade of maturing while html5 is still too new.
Also I realize the amount of flash bashing here is lower than many other places but I had a rough morning and felt like releasing some steam.

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

Only time flash has ever crashed my browsers is when its trying to use my webcam... (IE and Chrome)
None of my browsers have ever crashed or experienced slowdowns, for as long as i have used windows.

And no, I never liked firefox.

 

[paulguy]

My gripe with flash is mostly just taking power away from the user. The flash plugin exposes next to nothing to the user whereas stuff like HTML 5 allow the browser to expose whatever, which will likely be much more with most browsers having a developer tools plugin/extension/addon. I'll also have much closer control to what it displays (like ads) and other configuration.

HTML 5 will never replace flash for stuff like animations though. I could see some really neat games happening though once browser support is better and a bit less buggy.

 

[WizardStan]

I dont think I saw anything in it's wiki about being able to make flash style games with it.

People have already created demo games in HTML5, clones of Super Mario and Mario Kart. Not great, but examples of what can be done with it.
There was also an attempt to implement the Flash spec entirely in Javascript and HTML5; you could actually load (a very small subset) of Flash files into it and they would work "just fine" (slow).
So yeah, HTML5+Javascript will (eventually) be very capable of doing what Flash can do. Mostly.

 

[itsmyusername]

-,- predicted!!

...

 

[second exodous]

I can't believe people stand up for flash with all it's problems. Before Adobe owned it it seemed to work marginally better but not much. I don't have anything against Adobe but it has gone down hill as far as stability and security goes. I'd like it if Adobe let it free but they never will so it just has to go away.

HTML 5 is speced to replace flash, it has a way to go to replace it but I see Adobe throwing a monkey wrench in there somehow, new company to hate where right now there is no reason to.