Where's Adobe Flash going?

[lulzfish]

I'm hoping it will die alone, and slowly, but I don't really know if that's possible.
What do you guys think about Flash and the SVG / SMIL / <canvas> / <video> standards that are supposed to be replacing it eventually?

edit: I got Gnash working! :lol: It's still slow and horrible, but it doesn't crash and it's free.

 

[dflemstr]

I'm hoping it will die alone, and slowly, but I don't really know if that's possible.
What do you guys think about Flash and the SVG / SMIL / <canvas> / <video> standards that are supposed to be replacing it eventually?

edit: I got Gnash working! :lol: It's still slow and horrible, but it doesn't crash and it's free.

Flash has unmatched performance since it gets compiled into bytecode-ish stuff before being written to the .swf file. The open standard simply will never support this (afaik). But otherwise, the open standards beat Flash by multiple horselengths, if someone makes tools for them (Like that Adobe Flash Studio thing or whatever it's called).

Gnash, by the way, doesn't really have the oomph/compatibility needed for my purposes, so I'll probably never use it. I'm looking forward to when/if Adobe open-sources Flash (yeah, as if).

 

[arrrgh]

edit: I got Gnash working! :lol: It's still slow and horrible, but it doesn't crash and it's free.

What does it matter that it's open source if it doesn't work properly?

 

[Klaus]

edit: I got Gnash working! :lol: It's still slow and horrible, but it doesn't crash and it's free.

What does it matter that it's open source if it doesn't work properly?

And about flash: What does it matter that it works, if it's unfree?

The GNU-guys have done quite a job with gnash. It's still in an early stage and needs a lot of optimizing. Be patient.

 

[lulzfish]

What does it matter that it's open source if it doesn't work properly?

Because it means I'm stickin' it to the man.

 

[Skofo]

edit: I got Gnash working! :lol: It's still slow and horrible, but it doesn't crash and it's free.

What does it matter that it's open source if it doesn't work properly?

Slow is better than crashing constantly.

As to where Flash is going, I mostly hope six feet under, but the fact that so many awesome animations were made in it makes me want it to stay but become freedomware. Perhaps there will be a way to convert Flash animations to SVG...

 

[dflemstr]

Perhaps there will be a way to convert Flash animations to SVG...

Hey, why not actually?
ActionScript is pretty similar to ECMAScript (aka Javascript) and SVG is completely vectorized in every way (obviously).
It would be problematic to use certain frameworks, like Flex for example, but it could work for basic clips...

 

[samuraicrow]

I'm hoping it will die alone, and slowly, but I don't really know if that's possible.
What do you guys think about Flash and the SVG / SMIL / <canvas> / <video> standards that are supposed to be replacing it eventually?

It would sure be nice if we could get rid of Flash.

As for the bytecode, it's just LLVM bitcode, a BSD-like licensed open-source JIT compiler that can be used by anyone whose license isn't incompatible with BSD. :wink: I think Chrome already uses LLVM internally for its JavaScript engine and will be used by Python internally before too long also (if the Unladen Swallow project has its way).

 

[lulzfish]

I'm sure there could be an open source bytecode-based implementation.

I like the idea of Flash, but the way Adobe's implemented it is horrible.