Flash sucks up CPU cycles on the Mac to the point of ridiculousness (usually over 100% on a muti-cpu machine). It's just a fact. it has nothing to do with the browser, and nothing to do with the architecture or design of the OS. Flash is crap software. It's Adobe's fault for programming it that way.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
PS - to those saying that CSS can't replace Flash anytime soon, it easily could if someone would make a WYSIWYG tool for it.
Face it nothing performs or has the features to compare with Flash. Even for simple video play back. The HTML5 viewers are not up to the task I'm afraid. Well I guess if you just want a stripped down player maybe. Even Dreamweaver, which is arguably the best web code authoring environment available can't do WYSIWYG completely because code is conditional. How do you display if this condition show picture else if this show log in box else error message. To think you can code anything advanced with WYSIWYG is simply naive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
If Adobe was smart, if they really *did* care about "open-ness" and if they wanted to keep their users happy, they would simply make an animation tool that exported CSS either instead of, or as well as, Flash files.
It's not that hard. Someone will do it soon now, it might as well be them.
You might want to look at Flash it already does a lot of that. And the basic SWF protocol is already open sourced.
It seems that the trolls on here couldn't care less about Flash, they just seem to be Apple-haters in general, which makes their arguments meaningless and rather pointless to argue with them.
The issue here is that Apple has decided to not include Flash on the iPhone platform, which regardless of Mac OS X numbers, has a huge share of mobile Internet usage compared to all other platforms out there. I believe Apple has sold some 75 million devices in 2.5 years which currently account for 50% of the world's mobile Internet traffic.
Anyone who thinks Adobe is not worried about that is completely delusional. A majority of the mobile browsers in use are based off WebKit or Opera, both of which excel at adopting new standards. Any ad agency that targets mobile devices can look at the numbers and say, if we create the ad in HTML, CSS, Javascript, it will run on almost 100% of the mobile devices out there right now... Or if we create the ads in Flash, it may work on a fraction of them.
And while the mobile market is small compared to the "desktop" market, it will continue to outpace desktop sales and if Flash isn't as ubiquitous in the mobile space as it is on the desktop, then there's no reason to default to it. This of course scares the hell out of Adobe who makes all of its money from selling development and content creation tools.
To me this appears to be an attempt on Adobe's part to just try and "make peace" with Apple regarding Flash. If Adobe can make Flash stable and less of a resource hog on Mac OS X, maybe they can get Apple to allow them to create a version for the iPhone platform or at least an iPad version. Fat chance, I say.
Personally, after two and a half years of surfing the web on my iPhone, I can honestly say there's only been a handful of times when I was upset over not being able to watch some video, because there was a Flash only version. For the most part though when I do come across a Flash video on a website, 90% of the time I can easily switch over to the YouTube application, search for it, and watch it there.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
Well, just how much horsepower should you need? I have a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 2.5 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and a GeForce 6600 with 256 MB VRAM. Flash runs like crap on it.
Yes, Flash has sucked ever since Adobe acquired it, but so what? They've had plenty of time to fix it and haven't. What's even more bizarre is that it was one of the core technologies they were after from Macromedia, and it would seem to be important to their business, and yet it's still a dog.
We all know Flash on Mac is crap. The problem seem to be that Flash get garbled-up and you'll have to restart the browser to make it fly again.
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.
I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.
I can't imagine doing some of the things in HTML5 that am currently doing in Flash.
That's a big issue, the tools. Having a standard that is capable is not enough, someone needs to release the tools to get the stuff made.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trevc
I've had to support a lot of flash actionscript ... if I could make an IDE that uses a couple of javascript frameworks and HTML and released it now as a Flash alternative ... it would make money (if it worked! ;-) )
What Adobe needs to do is to spend a lot of time/money and optimize and bug-proof their plugins on BOTH platforms as flash 10/Firefox on my windows box crashes more than my OSX box. I'd had to see all the bug reports in from Safari and Firefox where Flash is the culprit.
This is Apple's issue with using a proprietary runtime on the iPhone and iPad. They would have no control over the perceived stability of the platform. Perhaps, if Flash just worked, there wouldn't be a problem, but could you imagine the impact it would've had if every time you opened mobile Safari and the damned thing crashed?
The iPhone gets enough flack for not having Flash. If it did have Flash and was slow, buggy and crashed all the time, can you imagine the number of Apple/iPhone haters that would be around blaming Apple for it!?
We all know Flash on Mac is crap. The problem seem to be that Flash get garbled-up and you'll have to restart the browser to make it fly again.
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.
I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.
Flash workes very well on both my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Mini. I have virtually no problems and I am using the Flash 10.1 beta.
Second,
Do you really think that a switch to HTML5 would is any way change the annoying ads? All that would happen is the ads would switch from Flash to HTML5 so this argument is a moot point...Period...
I really do not understand why all of the Apple fan boys hate Flash so badly... I think it works just fine on my computers...
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
Hey welcome to the forum. The deal with transparency and gradients can be optimized a bit in your Flash file. Here is the golden rule of Flash optimization: NEVER scale anything unless you have to. For example if you made your gradient the exact size you needed in Photoshop and then saved a png it will save you a ton of processing over just bringing some other file and scaling it in Flash. Also the same for transparency. Don't scale it, ESPECIALLY if it is vector type. I know this limits the beauty of your design but life is full of compromises.
What is really illogical about these Flash haters is that they are probably perfectly content to have WoW use up 200% CPU all night long. But if Adobe bought Warcraft it would instantly become the most wretched piece of software ever written.
The issue here is that Apple has decided to not include Flash on the iPhone platform, which regardless of Mac OS X numbers, has a huge share of mobile Internet usage compared to all other platforms out there. I believe Apple has sold some 75 million devices in 2.5 years which currently account for 50% of the world's mobile Internet traffic.
This is exactly right, and why all the previous posts citing Apple's MacOS market share are irrelevant. Adobe have screwed themselves, and I think it's too little too late as far as fixing Flash on the Mac. That ship has sailed.
That's not Adobe's fault. I use Click to Flash as well because the bathroom analogy perfectly describes the problem. Flash ads! But I have Flash ads now that can't be blocked by Click to Flash and also run on iPhone so good luck with that.
Flash workes very well on both my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Mini. I have virtually no problems and I am using the Flash 10.1 beta.
Second,
Do you really think that a switch to HTML5 would is any way change the annoying ads? All that would happen is the ads would switch from Flash to HTML5 so this argument is a moot point...Period...
I really do not understand why all of the Apple fan boys hate Flash so badly... I think it works just fine on my computers...
Flash doesn't run well on any of my PPC based Macs. Also, in my experience, Flash has never performed well on the MacOS. This dates all the way back to the Macromedia days.
The bottom line for me (and many other Mac users evidently) is that it runs very poorly and causes applications to crash frequently. What part of that don't you understand?
Seriously though, until HTML5 becomes standard and all sites switch it won't really matter. Flash isn't terrible on my 2007 Macbook, but it's nothing to write home about. Are animated GIFs also done using Flash cause Safari seems not to like those very much.
I'd like to see some improvements, but don't have much hope. Shame I need Flash to view my content!
Yep it is that easy. The code is still in beta but looks very promising. Right now it only runs simple time line Flash files, nothing complicated but plenty good enough for ads which is likely to be the first commercial use of the technology. I doubt the developer wants to be known as the guy who ruined the iPhone but it probably will happen anyway.
I think the argument is that Adobe's implementation of the Flash plugin for OSX is the problem - that its gotten bloated and inefficient. In this case, it shouldn't have anything to do with the hardware OR the OS, but Adobe's code is the problem.
Especially with Flash, Adobe has to consider the whole market, not just the content creation market, in which Mac may have a little more market share than it does in the whole market. In the market that can consume flash content, Mac has nowhere near 15%.
But if I'm a Creative, and Adobe couldn't care to fix its flash player on the platform I am using (which could include building flash content), what confidence do I have that they will fix the Creative software that I am using?
What is really illogical about these Flash haters is that they are probably perfectly content to have WoW use up 200% CPU all night long. But if Adobe bought Warcraft it would instantly become the most wretched piece of software ever written.
This is nonsense.
There is nothing illogical about it. Mac users have been relegated to second class citizenship by Adobe many years ago, and we're FUCKING sick and tired of it.
What part of that don't you understand?
We're also sick and tired of websites slinging mostly garbage content using buggy Flash technology that causes our browsers to crash. Flash can't die soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
Actually, running a MacPro with 8 cores and 10 gigs of ram.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Face it nothing performs or has the features to compare with Flash. Even for simple video play back. The HTML5 viewers are not up to the task I'm afraid. Well I guess if you just want a stripped down player maybe. Even Dreamweaver, which is arguably the best web code authoring environment available can't do WYSIWYG completely because code is conditional. How do you display if this condition show picture else if this show log in box else error message. To think you can code anything advanced with WYSIWYG is simply naive.
Most everything you say here is just nonsense.
HTML 5 viewers are actually far superior in every regard than Flash video. Your comments about WYSIWYG are just ... bizarre. Not sure what you are even getting at. My point was simply that an animation builder needn't export to Flash, it could also export to CSS.
HTML 5 viewers are actually far superior in every regard than Flash video. Your comments about WYSIWYG are just ... bizarre. Not sure what you are even getting at. My point was simply that an animation builder needn't export to Flash, it could also export to CSS.
I'm not surprised that you don't understand what I meant partly because I didn't state it very well but mostly because you don't understand the nature of programming conditional statements.
Let me try to spell it out more clearly.
Lets say you have a weather checking page. If it is sunny, show a picture of a sun, it it is cloudy show a cloud, if it is raining show a picture of rain, if you can't connect to the service show a message that says Please try again later. Now imagine you are coding that page what the hell do you expect the WYSIWYG environment should show? all of the above?
Flash can't die soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
That might happen about the same time that fax machines are no longer found in offices. Right now you would be hard pressed to find an IBM Selectric in an office (although we do have one) so sure someday, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on the demise of Flash.
Comments
Flash sucks up CPU cycles on the Mac to the point of ridiculousness (usually over 100% on a muti-cpu machine). It's just a fact. it has nothing to do with the browser, and nothing to do with the architecture or design of the OS. Flash is crap software. It's Adobe's fault for programming it that way.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
PS - to those saying that CSS can't replace Flash anytime soon, it easily could if someone would make a WYSIWYG tool for it.
Face it nothing performs or has the features to compare with Flash. Even for simple video play back. The HTML5 viewers are not up to the task I'm afraid. Well I guess if you just want a stripped down player maybe. Even Dreamweaver, which is arguably the best web code authoring environment available can't do WYSIWYG completely because code is conditional. How do you display if this condition show picture else if this show log in box else error message. To think you can code anything advanced with WYSIWYG is simply naive.
If Adobe was smart, if they really *did* care about "open-ness" and if they wanted to keep their users happy, they would simply make an animation tool that exported CSS either instead of, or as well as, Flash files.
It's not that hard. Someone will do it soon now, it might as well be them.
You might want to look at Flash it already does a lot of that. And the basic SWF protocol is already open sourced.
The issue here is that Apple has decided to not include Flash on the iPhone platform, which regardless of Mac OS X numbers, has a huge share of mobile Internet usage compared to all other platforms out there. I believe Apple has sold some 75 million devices in 2.5 years which currently account for 50% of the world's mobile Internet traffic.
Anyone who thinks Adobe is not worried about that is completely delusional. A majority of the mobile browsers in use are based off WebKit or Opera, both of which excel at adopting new standards. Any ad agency that targets mobile devices can look at the numbers and say, if we create the ad in HTML, CSS, Javascript, it will run on almost 100% of the mobile devices out there right now... Or if we create the ads in Flash, it may work on a fraction of them.
And while the mobile market is small compared to the "desktop" market, it will continue to outpace desktop sales and if Flash isn't as ubiquitous in the mobile space as it is on the desktop, then there's no reason to default to it. This of course scares the hell out of Adobe who makes all of its money from selling development and content creation tools.
To me this appears to be an attempt on Adobe's part to just try and "make peace" with Apple regarding Flash. If Adobe can make Flash stable and less of a resource hog on Mac OS X, maybe they can get Apple to allow them to create a version for the iPhone platform or at least an iPad version. Fat chance, I say.
Personally, after two and a half years of surfing the web on my iPhone, I can honestly say there's only been a handful of times when I was upset over not being able to watch some video, because there was a Flash only version. For the most part though when I do come across a Flash video on a website, 90% of the time I can easily switch over to the YouTube application, search for it, and watch it there.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
Well, just how much horsepower should you need? I have a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 2.5 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and a GeForce 6600 with 256 MB VRAM. Flash runs like crap on it.
Yes, Flash has sucked ever since Adobe acquired it, but so what? They've had plenty of time to fix it and haven't. What's even more bizarre is that it was one of the core technologies they were after from Macromedia, and it would seem to be important to their business, and yet it's still a dog.
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.
I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.
I can't imagine doing some of the things in HTML5 that am currently doing in Flash.
That's a big issue, the tools. Having a standard that is capable is not enough, someone needs to release the tools to get the stuff made.
I've had to support a lot of flash actionscript ... if I could make an IDE that uses a couple of javascript frameworks and HTML and released it now as a Flash alternative ... it would make money (if it worked! ;-) )
Not an IDE, but an alternative Flash runtime...
http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/
What Adobe needs to do is to spend a lot of time/money and optimize and bug-proof their plugins on BOTH platforms as flash 10/Firefox on my windows box crashes more than my OSX box. I'd had to see all the bug reports in from Safari and Firefox where Flash is the culprit.
This is Apple's issue with using a proprietary runtime on the iPhone and iPad. They would have no control over the perceived stability of the platform. Perhaps, if Flash just worked, there wouldn't be a problem, but could you imagine the impact it would've had if every time you opened mobile Safari and the damned thing crashed?
The iPhone gets enough flack for not having Flash. If it did have Flash and was slow, buggy and crashed all the time, can you imagine the number of Apple/iPhone haters that would be around blaming Apple for it!?
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.
I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.
Flash workes very well on both my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Mini. I have virtually no problems and I am using the Flash 10.1 beta.
Second,
Do you really think that a switch to HTML5 would is any way change the annoying ads? All that would happen is the ads would switch from Flash to HTML5 so this argument is a moot point...Period...
I really do not understand why all of the Apple fan boys hate Flash so badly... I think it works just fine on my computers...
However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.
Hey welcome to the forum. The deal with transparency and gradients can be optimized a bit in your Flash file. Here is the golden rule of Flash optimization: NEVER scale anything unless you have to. For example if you made your gradient the exact size you needed in Photoshop and then saved a png it will save you a ton of processing over just bringing some other file and scaling it in Flash. Also the same for transparency. Don't scale it, ESPECIALLY if it is vector type. I know this limits the beauty of your design but life is full of compromises.
What is really illogical about these Flash haters is that they are probably perfectly content to have WoW use up 200% CPU all night long. But if Adobe bought Warcraft it would instantly become the most wretched piece of software ever written.
The issue here is that Apple has decided to not include Flash on the iPhone platform, which regardless of Mac OS X numbers, has a huge share of mobile Internet usage compared to all other platforms out there. I believe Apple has sold some 75 million devices in 2.5 years which currently account for 50% of the world's mobile Internet traffic.
This is exactly right, and why all the previous posts citing Apple's MacOS market share are irrelevant. Adobe have screwed themselves, and I think it's too little too late as far as fixing Flash on the Mac. That ship has sailed.
That's not Adobe's fault. I use Click to Flash as well because the bathroom analogy perfectly describes the problem. Flash ads! But I have Flash ads now that can't be blocked by Click to Flash and also run on iPhone so good luck with that.
Ummm. They are animated Gifs.
Ed
Ummm. They are animated Gifs.
Believe it or not, it is Flash swf running inside a javascript framework therefore we have Flash running on iPhone.
First,
Flash workes very well on both my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Mini. I have virtually no problems and I am using the Flash 10.1 beta.
Second,
Do you really think that a switch to HTML5 would is any way change the annoying ads? All that would happen is the ads would switch from Flash to HTML5 so this argument is a moot point...Period...
I really do not understand why all of the Apple fan boys hate Flash so badly... I think it works just fine on my computers...
Flash doesn't run well on any of my PPC based Macs. Also, in my experience, Flash has never performed well on the MacOS. This dates all the way back to the Macromedia days.
The bottom line for me (and many other Mac users evidently) is that it runs very poorly and causes applications to crash frequently. What part of that don't you understand?
Believe it or not, it is Flash swf running inside a javascript framework therefore we have Flash running on iPhone.
If it's that easy, what's all the fuss about?
Somehow, I think it's not that easy.
I'd like to see some improvements, but don't have much hope. Shame I need Flash to view my content!
If it's that easy, what's all the fuss about?
Somehow, I think it's not that easy.
Yep it is that easy. The code is still in beta but looks very promising. Right now it only runs simple time line Flash files, nothing complicated but plenty good enough for ads which is likely to be the first commercial use of the technology. I doubt the developer wants to be known as the guy who ruined the iPhone but it probably will happen anyway.
I think the argument is that Adobe's implementation of the Flash plugin for OSX is the problem - that its gotten bloated and inefficient. In this case, it shouldn't have anything to do with the hardware OR the OS, but Adobe's code is the problem.
Especially with Flash, Adobe has to consider the whole market, not just the content creation market, in which Mac may have a little more market share than it does in the whole market. In the market that can consume flash content, Mac has nowhere near 15%.
But if I'm a Creative, and Adobe couldn't care to fix its flash player on the platform I am using (which could include building flash content), what confidence do I have that they will fix the Creative software that I am using?
What is really illogical about these Flash haters is that they are probably perfectly content to have WoW use up 200% CPU all night long. But if Adobe bought Warcraft it would instantly become the most wretched piece of software ever written.
This is nonsense.
There is nothing illogical about it. Mac users have been relegated to second class citizenship by Adobe many years ago, and we're FUCKING sick and tired of it.
What part of that don't you understand?
We're also sick and tired of websites slinging mostly garbage content using buggy Flash technology that causes our browsers to crash. Flash can't die soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.
Actually, running a MacPro with 8 cores and 10 gigs of ram.
Face it nothing performs or has the features to compare with Flash. Even for simple video play back. The HTML5 viewers are not up to the task I'm afraid. Well I guess if you just want a stripped down player maybe. Even Dreamweaver, which is arguably the best web code authoring environment available can't do WYSIWYG completely because code is conditional. How do you display if this condition show picture else if this show log in box else error message. To think you can code anything advanced with WYSIWYG is simply naive.
Most everything you say here is just nonsense.
HTML 5 viewers are actually far superior in every regard than Flash video. Your comments about WYSIWYG are just ... bizarre. Not sure what you are even getting at. My point was simply that an animation builder needn't export to Flash, it could also export to CSS.
A
Most everything you say here is just nonsense.
HTML 5 viewers are actually far superior in every regard than Flash video. Your comments about WYSIWYG are just ... bizarre. Not sure what you are even getting at. My point was simply that an animation builder needn't export to Flash, it could also export to CSS.
I'm not surprised that you don't understand what I meant partly because I didn't state it very well but mostly because you don't understand the nature of programming conditional statements.
Let me try to spell it out more clearly.
Lets say you have a weather checking page. If it is sunny, show a picture of a sun, it it is cloudy show a cloud, if it is raining show a picture of rain, if you can't connect to the service show a message that says Please try again later. Now imagine you are coding that page what the hell do you expect the WYSIWYG environment should show? all of the above?
Flash can't die soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
That might happen about the same time that fax machines are no longer found in offices. Right now you would be hard pressed to find an IBM Selectric in an office (although we do have one) so sure someday, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on the demise of Flash.