posted by StephenBeDoper on Mon 29th Jun 2009 19:37
I've noticed an increasingly-widespread tendency for people to take a negative view of using Flash for the display of video content on web pages. Personally, I have no great love of Flash ("FlashBlock" is the only Firefox extension I use) - but that said, I still think that Flash is currently the best way to deliver video content on the web. According to the last stats I saw, Flash is installed on approx. 95% of computers used for web surfing. So using Flash to deliver video means that most people can view it without having to install any additional software (whether they use Linux, Mac, or Windows). And even on platforms with no Flash player (E.g, BeOS, my preferred OS), I can still grab the FLV file (increasingly, the MP4 file) and play it through VLC.
While I agree that Flash video is not an ideal solution (something that the <video> tag should eventually/hopefully give us), it's certainly an improvement over the bad old days of Quicktime, Windows Media, and
Post a Comment
Member since:
2005-07-06
I don't think it is video that gives flash a bad name. I think it is all the blinking eyeballs, scurrying spiders, zooming cars, blinking text, etc. So many pages look like a trip to a carnival. It all reminds me of the blink tag, and early java applets that scrolled LED-looking text.
And to top it all of, Flash seems to consume 100% cpu on a lot of my machines. It doesn't seem worth it.
That's why some users don't like flash.
Member since:2007-03-26
Member since:2005-07-06
I think it is all the blinking eyeballs, scurrying spiders, zooming cars, blinking text, etc. So many pages look like a trip to a carnival. It all reminds me of the blink tag, and early java applets that scrolled LED-looking text.
I don't think anyone would defend those uses of Flash - those are precisely the reasons I have FlashBlock installed. I was specifically asking about the negative view of Flash as a method for displaying video (which I probably should have been clearer about in the post title).
Member since:2006-03-20
Remind me of the old animated gif days that made your eyes bleed.
But you also forgot to mention the big fat privacy issue, which would be soon a global reality with browser local storage.
Flash plugins allow website to store any data they wish without any expiration (and usually a lot more data than cookies) and in a very obfucated way ( binary format,even if there is a lot of decoder that is unacceptable ) and the most "not hidden way" to manage them is through the adobe website ( what if adobe goes out of business or decide to remove flash support ? ). pretty much any modern tracking web bug uses flash because it is very stealthy from a user point of view.
I don't know if any private browsing tool sandbox flash behavior.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-03-26
I've seen that issue mentioned frequently, but I can't say I've encountered it myself. My previous laptop only had a mobile P3 1.3Ghz CPU (slower than most current netbooks, at least going by clockspeed), but it had no problem playing back flash video.
Windows?
I have flash disabled on every platform I run as it just cripples the system when more than 1 tab is open.
I've found the Windows flash plug in to be better than Linux's (which is unspeakably bad), but even then, Windows flash is still light years behind other multimedia plugin players
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
I've seen that issue mentioned frequently, but I can't say I've encountered it myself. My previous laptop only had a mobile P3 1.3Ghz CPU (slower than most current netbooks, at least going by clockspeed), but it had no problem playing back flash video.
Which browser do you use? Try using Flash on Mac, Linux or OpenSolaris and you'll see why there is a 'love to hate' stance many (including me) take towards it. We don't hate the technology nor the idea behind it, what we hate is the crap implementation of it by Adobe. Now, if there was an alternative implementation to Adobe's own one, and had 100% feature parity - I don't think you'd see a single complaint here.
Adobe know that their plugin is a giant pig but they refuse to do anything about it; they promise to open up the specifications but when they do it amounts to little more than lip service given that a good portion is still closed off. They claim they're willing to support and create a community but here we are and nothing has been done yet. They complain about Microsoft and yet every business policy they make is supporting the said monopoly they despise. Adobe and their implementation are the problem, not the technology.
Member since:2005-07-06
Which browser do you use?
For personal use? Typically Firefox. For work? Typically all of them, for testing purposes.
Try using Flash on Mac, Linux or OpenSolaris and you'll see why there is a 'love to hate' stance many (including me) take towards it.
The Mac that I use for testing is an old 733Mhz G4, and it's able to smoothly playback most typical Flash video. Granted, it does start to choke if I try play a 640x480 h.264 MP4 file through Flash - but it only does a little better if I play the file directly in Quicktime.
I can't really speak to Linux, as most of my *nix usage is done over SSH these days. But I do remember my previous roommate running some flavour of Linux a year or so back, with a browser plugin that directly played the FLV files without the need for Flash. There was also a similar youtube-specific hack for BeOS/Haiku a while back, which used VLC to play the FLV files directly.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-06-30
As the comment title suggest, you have stated that you would grab the FLV and play via VLC. Then the logical question is, why are you doing that? You could do the same for AVI, WMV, QT and RMVB too. What makes flash a better alternative to them then?
What this boils down to, in the end, is the fact that flash is a behemoth that needs to completely die, and by using the technology, sites that deliver flash video actually contribute to the network effect that keeps flash alive. Not to mention the fact that each instance of flash, be it an ad or a video, is a separate process that potentially eats up all your resources. Given that people use tabs / more than 1 window, it is no surprise that the probability of trouble is very high, and that makes people hate flash again...
Now, if we have no alternative, we would have to embrace the devil. However, given that Kroc has made "Video for Everybody" available, it is not an excuse to be sloppy and use flash only. This way, flash will not be a _requirement_. It will be a monstrosity safety net (what an oxymoron) to fall back onto, but not a requirement. That is the only possible way out of flash for the world.
News
Linked by David Adams on 02/14/12 17:25 UTC, submitted by Anonymous
It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.
0
Linked by David Adams on 02/14/12 17:24 UTC
Today Samsung AV product lead Chris Moseley had comments about Apple's rumored entrance into the television marketplace that sound eerily similar to that which Palm CEO Ed Colligan's said a few years back about how Apple's ability to simply walk into this market and figure it out like they had managed to do after years of research.
Linked by snydeq on 02/14/12 17:23 UTC
What your interface communicates to users can be just as important as what your software does, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister in discussing the latest edition of the 'Microsoft Manual of Style,' a style guide aimed at designers and developers who create Microsoft software, as well as those who write about it. 'The gist of much of Microsoft's advice is that a user's relationship with computer software is a unique one, and it's important to craft the language of software UIs accordingly,' McAllister writes. 'Occasionally, Microsoft's recommendations verge on the absurd. For example, you might not think it necessary to admonish developers to "not use slang that may be considered profane or derogatory, such as 'pimp' or 'bitch,'" but apparently it is.'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/14/12 1:07 UTC
"It's tough being a journalist, especially if you're covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you're stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What's worse is that all these people who are getting rich don't seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don't seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in on this gold rush. But how do you make gobs of money when your only marketable skill involves writing blog posts?" Absolutely brilliant down to the last letter. Coincidentally, I hold no shares, interests, or anything, in any company whatsoever. I'm a freelance translator by day. Not that anyone cares, but hey, full disclosure and all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:51 UTC
"A hybrid solution that takes the best parts of iOS's one-by-one acceptance and Android's expressed and obvious intents seems like a proper model here. In fact, Apple has many of the pieces in place elsewhere." This is a big issue. Nor Android's model (just list a bunch of confusing permissions), nor Apple's model (individual modal dialogs for each permission) is particularly workable - I doubt regular users check them on Android before installing an application, and in the case of iOS, Apple didn't think it was necessary to secure the address book, so every application has access to it without alerting users. Justin Williams proposes a hybrid solution.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:44 UTC
"Although current discussion of the Linux desktop tends to focus on the disharmony around Unity and the GNOME shell, the true revolution on the desktop is taking place out of sight of users. The Wayland display server is expected to reach version 1.0 later this year, and is seen by many as the long term replacement for the X Window System, with real potential to improve and transform the performance of the desktop for Linux users."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/13/12 23:40 UTC
Mozilla has announced plans to integrate its Firefox web browser with Metro for Windows 8 - including Gecko. "Windows 8 contains two application environments, 'Classic' and 'Metro'. Classic is very similar to the Windows 7 environment at this time, it requires a simple evolution of the current Firefox Windows product. Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points. The feature goal here is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts." I haven't checked - does Microsoft allow different rendering engines?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/12/12 23:23 UTC
"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 23:46 UTC
"This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 15:39 UTC
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.More News »
Sponsored Links
