Adobe releases Flash Player 10.1 for Mac - Page 4

I think 10.1 as-shipped supports Core Animation, at least when the browser does.


Half the CPU usage (Gala vs 10.1) is nice, but some testers were actually doing better than browser HTML5 performance.. So there are definitely a lot of variables at work.

For streaming H.264 video? I doubt that, but I'm open to some proof of that.

Canvas isn't a good test for this because it's still in a proof-of-concept phase, not ready to be used even though supported by all major browsers. We need WebGL in place but most importantly we need rich development tools that make coding for Canvas as easy as coding for rich animation in Flash. This is the very last hold out for Flash and one that it will not give up easily or quickly. Like HTML5, Flash has many facets and nothing will best Flash on that front for the foreseeable future.

The future already looks bleak from my perspective.

One of the main reasons that Canvas is not a suitable replacement for Flash is that to animate anything, the entire canvas must be redrawn. You cannot embed a canvas within a canvas either. But with Flash you can animate small portions of the screen such as roll over buttons while the rest of the screen is doing something else. Flash is built from objects that can relate to one another, while a canvas is a discreet object to itself. Depending on the application, having independent related objects can save a tremendous amount of processor work.

With Flash however, there will always be a performance hit simply because it is a plug in and not compiled into the browser.

Whooosh..... There go those goalposts.

Originally, you said that Flash use was growing by leaps and bounds. When I pointed out just a sampling of major sites that are creating non-Flash sites, you back up to claim that none of those sites used Flash FOR VIDEO.

The funny thing is that even with your attempt to reframe the discussion, your'e wrong. Youtube used to be 100% Flash and is now offering html 5 for video.

Face it. People are abandoning Flash left and right. Whether you like it or not.

But don't worry, Adobe still has lots of money. You'll probably get paid for all your work as a shill for Flash.

That is why canvas is still a proof of concept and not a fully deployed technology.

I would not go as far to say Flash is being abandoned. It is a huge part of the internet.

HTML5 is a better development framework for mobile devices. Web services are recognizing where things are going and responding to the reality.

Maybe but the the current proposal is very definitive about the complete redraw requirement.

And everyone would happily follow if there were easy ways to develop these technologies but abstracted javascript frameworks is not the solution because everyone and their brother has one and they are all different and incompatible with one another.

what is with some of you that simply can't read a post???

Point out where I said those sites don't use flash for video, currently. Come on, spit it out. I made reference to the fact that at one time those site didn't use it, because flash didn't have the ability to have video...

Of course those examples were mostly major sites who WERE using flash for video and are now using another method of delivery! The point was, since flash is mainly an application development and interactive platform, this isn't -that- big a deal. But I guess that was a little too much to figure out. The line where I said those sites -weren't- using it for video, was to illustrate that at one time not very long ago, flash did not have the ability to run .flv files at all, and all those sites didn't use flash video (since it didn't exist), and flash -still-, dominated at 98% penetration rate. Holy moses this is not... rocket science!

Please learn to read first k?

That's true in the long run. But for right now Webkit dominates the mobile web. So its not as much of a problem.

personal attack removed - Mr. H

The fact that sites that used to use Flash exclusively are moving away from Flash IS THE ENTIRE DEAL. That's what the discussion is all about - in spite of your incessant attempts to change the subject.

All we heard for months was that there were so many things that REQUIRED Flash and now all these sites are doing exactly the same things without it (Hulu, Youtube, CBS, NY Times, Farmville, etc, etc, etc). Your repeated claims that nothing could replace Flash were just wrong. Your current claim that noone is leaving Flash is not only wrong, but it's laughably wrong.

Maybe so but it has no relevance with regard to which browser you target, it is just very tedious to write pure JS without a framework but still the cleanest and most legible. That is what I prefer. But the frameworks can speed things up a bit.

Apple seems to prefer prototype and scriptaculous, some of the older well established frameworks but that sort of like choosing between .net and php. It doesn't matter as long as you don't try mixing them. Some like Dojo, or jquery, Spry, etc. They all write Webkit compatible code. They are all just different. If you are planning to get fancy with the CSS then you need to use the browser prefixes anyway.

And by the way, mobile web accounts for only around 1% of all web traffic so it isn't a huge market.

Thanks, solipsism. I watched your video... quite clear. Also, I've checked and "gotapple" is gone (for the moment)... shilling on other threads or sites.

No one is attempting to change the subject. You are attempting to make the subject about delivery of video and nothing else, and in the process you are entirely missing the point of Groovetube's arguments. I suggest you go back and read his posts over and over until you get it. Flash is not just about video delivery, in fact it is only relatively recently in the context of its lifetime that Flash has been able to deliver video.

For all the things that Flash does apart from video, there is (sadly) currently no big exodus from Flash. If a small business goes to a web-developing-house to buy a website, you can bet that 90% of the time they'll be given a website that uses Flash, along with all the usability problems highlighted in my post I linked to earlier.

No? So Farmville is all about video? CBS? NYTimes?

What about all those automaker's web sites that used to be 100% Flash - but are now accessible on iPhones?

Or what about Disney.com?

You appear to not have any concept as to the scale of the world wide web.

Farmville I doubt is leaving Flash. They are going to release an App but that is a tiny fraction of their audience. It will remain on Flash for the regular desktop.

That may be true.

What does it have to do with the oft-repeated argument that Apple needed to support Flash because Flash was so essential to modern computing?

it is, apparently, to you.

But you don't seem to realize that:

1) flash was the dominant interactive tool -before- it even had the ability to even do video, video was simply a feature added much later. WHich did indeed get used a lot. It still does what it did without video very well, not only that, it has progressed extremely rapidly. Mac platform player suckage notwithstanding. That's a fact.

2) flash is a full application development platform with a very powerful programming language which is now in it's 3rd complete overhaul. It'
s capabilities and what it's used for, leaves video, in the dust. It simply cannot be compared to something like real player. That's silly.

I'll say it again. If flash dies, it won't be html5 or the video tag that does it.

I think it can easily be argued that Flash for video streaming is the most used and useful feature of this tech for the last decade. It allowed for cross browser and OS video playback after the fall of Real when MS had crippled browser development and Firefox was slowly forging a path for open standards.

There is clear evidence that Flash for video is being dropped in favour of other avenues. This shows that Flash's hold isn't absolute despite their installed base. Groovetube keeps changing his argument, whether he realizes it or not. He makes a blanket statement and then when he's called out on it he falls back into an area that Flash is clearly dominate and has no threat for the foreseeable future to remake his point.

The fact is, Flash is having problems on multiple fronts. It's one thing to defend against one attack, but when you have ads being delivered by webcode instead of Flash because too many people are using ad blockers; when you have MS pushing Silverlight hard which is why Adobe finally added HW acceleration and H.264 in the first place; when video streaming is being added to HTML5 making even HW decoded Flash content pale in comparison; when you have simple graphics being made easily with HTML, CSS and JS; when you have a surge of smartphones about to outpace PC sales all running full web browsers that can't support Flash and when they do finally support it won't be optimized for most of the Flash apps due to the relatively anemic ARM processors and touch-screen controls; and cheap native apps being made for these smartphones that make for a better UX over Flash apps, I have to wonder if Adobe can defend Flash on these fronts. I don't think they can. I don't think anyone could.

It's going to take a long time for Flash to fall, but when people think of fast and efficient code for your smartphone it won't be Flash they'll be thinking of. Right now, I can think of plenty of sites that use Flash when using a desktop browser, but if you change your User Agent to a mobile browser their site renders without any Flash content at all. That is a huge exodus from the norm was before the iPhone came along. Now we sites offering an option for Flash or HTML5 for video in a just a few short months. And the newest poster child for the ultimate Flash site, Farmville, is now going with a Xcode app to connect its users.

Each of these fronts needs to be dealt with as a separate issue because one loss for Flash on a single front doesn't mean a loss for Flash as a whole, but it does show that Flash is vulnerable and it is showing a trend. I don't know what other evidence is needed to see that Flash is no longer the only option to deliver rich content to users via the internet.

Last decade? I'm really not sure about that. Isn't it only the last five years or so that Flash has become dominant for video? Before that it was Windows Media that seemed to be winning, followed by Real and QuickTime. It will forever baffle me how Flash became dominant when QuickTime had equal capabilities (including UI skinning) with better client performance.


agreed


No, really, he hasn't changed his argument at all. I suggest you go back to the start of the thread and read only his posts. This was one of his earliest posts in the thread where he explicity states he is not talking about video delivery.



I agree with all of that to some extent. It's just that some here seem to think that Flash is going to die... yesterday. It's going to take a lot longer than that, if at all. I think it rests on what percentage of the smartphone market the iPhone ultimately ends up with, and how quickly, if at all, the iPhone + iPad become significant www clients in terms of share of traffic.

Even if the iPhone has a small percentage of the smartphone market and the iPad has a small percentage of the tablet market I still don't see Flash on those ARM devices as being wildly popular even after it's a default install on all Android, WebOS, WinPh7, Maemo and Symbian devices. The demos I've seen are just not convincing me that it's even near ready for the average user.

I think those system seem to get a lot faster and Flash need needs to get a lot more efficient before it will even start to break free from the performance and battery life issues that plague it. I have yet to see any evidence of that.

The companies that have financial resources to rewrite all of their code to accommodate 1% on the market are probably banking on earning it back by selling stuff to the affluent iPhone user demographic. The average small company that simply needs a web presence will not see the need to spend that much money on such a small minority. Furthermore I would estimate that more than 90% of those smaller companies have asked their developer for Flash on their site verses the other way around of the developer recommending it.

there is plenty of evidence that the new flash player has made major strides, relatively speaking given where -it was-. That's not to say it's solved all of the issues, and it's 'there'. I don't think it is. But if it doesn't work out on android/symbian, flash for mobile is not going to do well.

For flash video, speaking in terms of 'decade' isn't at all accurate. Flash 6 (mx) first got the ability to embed video in swf format. WHile we all jumped on because it was a much asked for feature, it was horrible clunky, and suffered badly from audio sync issues. Flash 7 saw the intro of the flv format, but it still wasn't there. It wasn't until flash 8, where improvements were made that companies began taking notice, and between flash 8 flash 9 when youtube and others emerged. That was maybe 5 years ago. Flash was still before that point, the dominant interactive/app technology on the internet. -before- it had video. There is a huge wealth of flash work out there like I said, that isn't video, ads, -or- games. In fact, I rarely do any of those.

a decade ago, we were at flash 4. Which html5 is trying, to emulate.

as a dev who came to the mac platform before most of my peers, I was committed to os x, and trying to improve things on my platform. WIndows was getting too much favour. I've had my issues with macromedia, I've never loved them as a company. I've never had problems with adobe. But it seems to me, after the merger, the things I disliked about macromedia, seemed picked up by adobe. Maybe it's just me. I've hated the way adobe has ignored the mac platform, and to me, this major kick in the ass, is just what adobe needed. Full on, kick to the junk.

I don't know what will happen in the end, I have my theories having worked in all the technologies mentioned very closely. But I find it tiresome when people make such crazy assumptions so early in the game. Because I really think, it is early in this game.

But in the meantime, apple is kicking ass with some major innovation, though it seems unlike a year ago, some companies are showing signs of catching up, well copying really, which is what happened way back when with windows. Perhaps apple will be lucky enough, to hang on to Steve Jobs a little longer this time round. Ballmer has pretty much ended Microsofts relevance it seems.

that's exactly the case. Ironically, I find myself talking clients -out- of flash quite often when I see it's really gratuitous, and is only going to degrade the site really, not add to it.

It's really rather hilarious how when you want to put Apple down, they're "1 % of the market" but when you want to attack them, they're a monopoly.

Is it too much to ask for you to take one position and stick to it?


Furthermore, we're talking about the mobile market. As of today, 99+% of mobile devices do NOT have Flash and less than 1% have it. So if you're interested in the mobile market, why would you use Flash?

I guess that's why Disney, Youtube, Hulu, CBS, car companies, NYTimes, Farmville, etc, etc, etc are all developing non-Flash sites.

Maybe you misunderstood or I was not clear enough. The 1% is the TOTAL mobile market not just IOS.

The wise business isn't planning for today, they are planning for tomorrow. The mobile web is at its infancy but is growing fast. Its projected that by next year people will buy more smart phones than PC's.



U.S. Mobile Web Usage Grew 110 Percent Last Year

I think this is where we fundamentally differ. The iPhone has been around for three years. Steve Jobs said he challenged Adobe to give Apple something that works well, and they were unable to do it. All Adobe has to account for all of that time is a beta of Flash running on mobile phones, with no real clear date on an official launch.

You guys think everyone is just going to sit around and wait for them. That is not happening.

Agreed but a short term graph doesn't indicate a long term trend. Purchases are not directly proportional to web page views. It is already known that RIM phones sell more but view fewer web pages. I personally don't browse that much on my iPhone because it is tiresome to browse the Internet on a tiny screen. Everybody needs a phone but buyers looking for anything but a smart phone will have a difficult time finding anything without a touch screen and a browser, Question is will they use it as such?

This is just like Bill Gates prediction of the internet back in 1996.

Anyone who attempts to predict the future is a fool. Myself included as I am sure I predicted something.

no, I don't think that. And people will stop waiting at some point. I've always maintained that adobe has a limited time to make it happen and show it can do it on a mobile platform. I've always thought they needed a mobile to have enough power to run it (1GHz?) perhaps now that's a reality it can. I don't know, we'll see. it looks promising from here. That's the best I've got.


yep.

Not being argumentative, but do you have a link for this as i would like to read the interview where he said that?

thanks that answers that question. So apparently Adobe showed them something,

Ah no because one of the links in the "10 games" collection is actually for a collection therefore the total is roughly 16.

That being said though there are far more and the best thing is that you can also download the source code much easier than for a Flash game.

I don't think that was ever in doubt.

Unfortunately, what Adobe showed them was a box full of smelly dog poop. Three years later, they had improved it and it's now a box of dog poop that doesn't smell quite as bad.

Well, they still aren't ready for Mac OS and they aren't even close to ready for Linux, so it's not really surprising that they aren't ready for mobile, and they never will be ready. In one sense, we should be fair to Adobe and acknowledge that supporting a complex piece of software on 3 platforms is a difficult task, and supporting it on, several new platforms with completely new requirements would be nearly impossible for anyone. I don't think Apple or Microsoft or Google or pretty much anybody could do it either. But, this is exactly why Flash will not make it into the next evolution of the web, despite Adobe's efforts to hold up progress and cripple HTML5.

So there are two forces at work here. First there are platforms like iOS and, increasingly, because of ad blockers and things like ClickToFlash, "desktop" systems where Flash simply isn't running and where content publishers are increasingly loosing, or never had, eyeballs, which correlates directly to revenue. Second, there is the internal pressure of actually making Flash work on so many different platforms, with so many different requirements and constraints, which will destroy it from the inside: more crashes, more security holes, more platforms with bad performance, ...

The entire Flash ecosystem, which some of you think is solid, is a house of cards. The demise of Flash is like an untreatable cancer. Undetectable in its earliest stages, barely detectable now, and metastasized. The body doesn't even know that it's sick yet, but as it continues to grow, it's pace of development continues to accelerate, until it eventually overwhelms the organism. There is no effective treatment. It may be possible to give it a little extra time, but its death is inevitable.