Submitted by “What follows is a list of the APIs that the current Linux Flash Player 9 development version is using. I debated whether it was appropriate to publish this information. Then I remembered that anyone who knows what they’re doing should be able to figure this stuff out by themselves anyway once the final Player is released.”
This looks like good news for Gnash.
What exactly? Good news why?
When is Adobe going to release flash player 9 for Linux?
No wonder RMS is dead against propritery software. It has the potential to cut out the linux users.
When is Adobe going to release flash player 9 for Linux?
Nothing is official yet but flash 9 won’t be released until 2007.
I’d be happy for ANY reasonably compatible Flash player for Linux on PowerPC.
I expect Gnash will get there eventually, though.
I still don’t get it. Who uses flash today? Advertisers? Marketing? Why are people so interested in having the last Flash player version? It’s slow, and makes any internet site unusable. I (and not only me) just turn to other site when I find some flash based site.
I see you never watch videos at youtube or google video, or play games at newgrounds.
flash isnt necessary for youtube: http://blog.whats-your.name/post/2006/07/16/youtube-without-flash and everything else is just annoying ads, so..i dont see the point. nobody is going to write an app in FLEX unless its some proprietary intranet where they can control the installation…
There’s a VideoDownloader plugin for FireFox, and I think there might be at least one other alternative that provides the ability to download the videos off Google Videos, YouTube and some other sites without having to use flash player.
I haven’t actually tried it yet, but it aught to be worth a try if you watch videos on either of the two sites.
I still don’t get it. Who uses flash today? Advertisers? Marketing? Why are people so interested in having the last Flash player version? It’s slow, and makes any internet site unusable. I (and not only me) just turn to other site when I find some flash based site.
Flash can be abused, but it has a number of business applications. We use it for for webinars and training material, for instance. It saves our customers and suppliers from having to install additional components or add-ons, which isn’t always possible or straight forward for them.
Deployed as a front-end for server or web-based services, it can be a much more effective and easier-to-work-with platform-agnostic interface than ajax or java-based ones. This is one of the areas Adobe is banking on making some big money in terms of development tools.
It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty much become a de facto standard and it “just works” as long as you have a browser.
And Windows, for now anyways.
Some need to create a unique experience.
Some need to push video content to as many users as possible(NYTimes, Guba.com, etc.) Some need to display captions along with these videos such as case studies, tutorials, presentations, newscasts.
Some need to build once, display in various segments(Kiosks, PSP, DVD, CD, Mobile) and other platforms seamlessly.
Some need total control over every element in an environment that surpasses HTML(AJAX included).
—
There’s a huge, active and supportive community that continues to grow around Flash Technology. With a healthy ecosystem, businesses are adapting and starting to offer services and technologies around it (BrightCove.com, Code.tv(fp8^) and here is one for you UnitedVirtualities.com(fp8^)). There is even a huge OpenSource community(osflash.org).
There’s a new shift happening with the release of AS3 (ActionScript 3.0), a fully ECMA compliant language with an approx. speed increase of 10x for code execution. I won’t be suprised if even more developers follow suit with this and FLEX2, gone are the days of staring at a timeline.
Flash is not the end to all with delivering content just yet, however it has been making in roads from day one — what started out as a basic tool for animation has grown into a solid option for developing next gen. applications.
Who uses flash today?
The online interactive tutorial I took a year and a half ago for work was all done with flash.
Many professors create flash based demos for their WebCT/WebCampus classes.
video.google.com and youtube.com use flash for video playback. I just use flashblock:
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
that way I can play flash movies and stuff without having to view flash ads.
I prefer “normal” video formats, like MPG/Theora. And no, I have never seen videos on those new sites, or played flash games. Usually I download videos with bittorrent. Am I missing something important/revolutionary?
Am I missing something important/revolutionary?
Yes. The important thing is: not everyone thinks the same things you do.
While it would be nice for youtube and google video etc. to post their videos in a real video format (e.g. XviD/MP3), they don’t. People still want to watch them. Therefore they need flash.
And some content is even suited to flash, e.g. homestarrunner.com and that cool Japanese stick-men fighting animation (can’t remember what is was called).
Anyway I digress. You obviously knew all that. You’re just being and ideological idiot. I expect you’re deluded that linux is easy to use too.
“You’re just being and ideological idiot. I expect you’re deluded that linux is easy to use too.”
Nice troll. Short, insulting, to the point.
This is OSnews, by the way. If you’re really serious about this linux-is-easy-to-use-delusion thing, I suggest you update your bookmarks to http://www.digg.com.
And on a side note, yes, youtube is the coolest thing that happened on my computer since napster. And it works flawlessly with flash 7 in any distro I’ve cared to try.
And on a side note, yes, youtube is the coolest thing that happened on my computer since napster.
Agreed
And it works flawlessly with flash 7 in any distro I’ve cared to try.
Works? Yes. Flawlessly? Not quite. The famous A/V sync bug will shows itself when you try to have som fun at Youtube.
Works great with gnome and esound, what sync bug?
Try playing Dance Dance Karnov under Linux. The audio is horribly out of sync, making it completely unplayable.
http://www.somethingawful.com/features/dancedancekarnov/index.htm
And on a side note, yes, youtube is the coolest thing that happened on my computer since napster. And it works flawlessly with flash 7 in any distro I’ve cared to try.
Really? Give it a shot on any architecture that isn’t i386. And that situation isn’t likely to change for a while either, as apparently even Flash 9 for Linux won’t have an AMD64 version.
That’s why we need an open-source Flash, not all that ideological stuff.
It can be an useful alternative to video streaming…
Given the impressive installation base of the Flash player (according to a NPD report: 98%, in reality: probably around 90%), you can set up preview movies without having to bother with different formats (mainly WMV, RM and QT). The video codec coming with Flash 8 (On VP6) is quite good, even at limited bitrates.
My department is going to promote the accomplishments of our students by making some of the best filmed demonstrations available on the Internet. While a link to an high-quality XviD movie will only be a click away, we know that most people will be able to enjoy the demonstrations without hunting for codecs, including many Linux users (like myself). Furthermore, it will save us some bandwidth since most people are going to be satisfied with the lower-resolution previews.
While an open-source solution would have been favoured, you just cannot ignore your audience… In our case, they are mostly Windows users. Our goal is promotion: asking people to download codecs for viewing the contents would go against it. Note that I am a huge fan of Xiph (my whole music library is in OGG), but the Theora format is still alpha.
It might not be a revolution, but it can be quite handy. Perhaps not for you, but for us.
You may consider Theora “normal” but it’s by no means widely used in anyone’s book.
i gotta agree with sbenitezb. flash does suck. i also find other sites when i come across something flash based. we wont go into my dispise of homestarrunner. also, linux IS easy to use.
“Am I missing something important/revolutionary?
Yes. The important thing is: not everyone thinks the same things you do.”
I would call internet revolutionary, not to some way of delivering homemade videos. You are giving it too much importance.
“While it would be nice for youtube and google video etc. to post their videos in a real video format (e.g. XviD/MP3), they don’t. People still want to watch them. Therefore they need flash”
They don’t “need” flash.
“Anyway I digress. You obviously knew all that. You’re just being and ideological idiot. I expect you’re deluded that linux is easy to use too.”
Ofcourse I knew all that. It’s just I prefer to download movies and series with bittorrent and watch that instead of homemade low-quality ones.
And I’m not an idiot. It happens that I see all this flash ads and sites polluting the web and I don’t like it.
I find Linux easy to use for my needs. I don’t expect most people to use it. In fact, I don’t care if their PCs explode because of malware, as much as I don’t get affected. Really, as much as I don’t get affected I don’t care what people does. I happen to care when I get affected by people’s idiocy.
> They don’t “need” flash.
Maybe, maybe not. But they *use* flash, so as an end-user I’m stuck without flash. As for the flash game sites, they *need* flash (if Java was an alternative, we’d see more Java games than there currently are).
“While it would be nice for youtube and google video etc. to post their videos in a real video format (e.g. XviD/MP3), they don’t. People still want to watch them. Therefore they need flash”
You can download xvid versions of videos on google from their player if not directly from the web. I think there is or used to be links on the right side of the page for that.
“While it would be nice for youtube and google video etc. to post their videos in a real video format (e.g. XviD/MP3), they don’t. People still want to watch them. Therefore they need flash”
You can download xvid versions of videos on google from their player if not directly from the web. I think there is or used to be links on the right side of the page for that.
I don’t see how anyone can “draw” a GUI with flash and make a business application with it more easily than with HTML. It’s a designers tool, not a programmers tool. And I know what I’m talking about because I evaluated flash as an alternative method to create visual interfaces for the web. It’s hard, not standard (checkout SVG/SMIL for this) and requires a plugin. I expect a business applications to be simple and easy to use, not an animated show colors.
“It’s a designers tool, not a programmers tool.”
I might have agreed with you on this on Flash 4, and maybe 5 and 6.
But once AS2 hit with flash 7 (2004), there are actionscript compilers, drawing APIs, etc. for making swfs without ever touching the IDE.
Flash is suitable for both designer and programmer, and is a darn fine tool at both.
HTML has it’s place in some cases, but it’s just not up to the task of any sort of engaging experience. Subtle effects and animations are a nice addition to many an app. Just the freedom of visual cues you can make is so liberating after dealing with the usual HTML/CSS/JS day in and day out.
Not every app needs to be plain looking.
Flash offers some very rapid development time and also somw nice eye candy (if you want it) to boot without much fuss at all.
While Flash is proprietary and I hate it, it is important. The internet is becoming multimedia oriented and Flash is a big part of the multimedia equation. Demos, movies, tutorials, websites and games are increasingly created with Flash. I even use Flash for my own demos because it has high quality free authoring tools. Plus about 90% of browsers are Flash enabled. Denying the importance of Flash is premature. Hopefully, there will be a good “free” implementation before long.
“Hopefully, there will be a good “free” implementation before long.”
What your looking for is here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
Beware it’s still under heavy development.
he said ‘good’ It doesn’t matter how good gnash gets it’ll never play proprietary flash video (google/youtube) and lets be honest thats what most people want it for in the first place.
To my knowledge, FFMPEG can encode movies in the Sorenson Spark format, used by Flash 7. Given it can encode, I guess its counterpart, libavcodec, can decode…
As long as gnash can use gstreamer (since I doubt the FSF would add support for a closed format in a GNU project), I am pretty sure it will be able to support it — once it’s in a usable state, anyway.
What exactly is a “proprietary flash video”?
Anyways, I think you should read the GPL again. To violate it, a player would have to link against code contained in a flash animation (definition of linking is rather vague in the GPL; especially visible in this case) *and* you’d have to distribute the linked whole to others (you’re not going to do that). So I don’t think there’d be a problem.
NO he said good “free” player… and gnash is the best “free” player out there.. if enough people want a free reversed engineered player the project will go forward as more people hack on it.
* GUI elements (dialog boxes): GTK
* Audio I/O: ALSA
Finally the sound in Flash will work as it should without “tambourin dances” as we Russians say…
I thought google video offered some choice to formats? Could be wrong I guess.
When it comes to embedding video – and audio – content on the web, a legion of developers thank the good lord for Flash on a regular basis.
When you have a media-file you want to serve up to your public, you have three choices:
1) Open it directly (not embedded in a page), thereby letting the user’s OS figure out how to play it. Line of least resistance, passing the buck; not terribly ‘seamless’.
2) Attempt to embed it by using pages and pages of tortuous Javascript detection to guess what OS, browser and media-plugin the user has. Pain… lots of pain.
3) Drag and drop it into a Flash movie, and embed the Flash in the page. Just works, and is pretty agnostic insofar as it supports reams of mainstream video formats.
Nevermind the hi-end proprietary video delivery applications e.g YouTube et al, at the simplest level it’s the easiest and most consistent way to get that content seen by the most users.
I am not employed/bribed by Adobe.
You’re right that Flash is a designer’s tool, not a programmer’s tool, but did you check out Flex 2.0? I haven’t used it, but it appears to have some real advantages over HTML.
I don’t see why open source Flash players couldn’t play Flash video; source code for a VP6 decoder is floating around and the FLV file format has been known for a while. Of course, you’ll have to download the packages from somewhere like Hungary to make it work…
I hope the linux version comes out soon. Myspace is moving to it and i’m already tired of the warning messages.
so flash 9 won’t have sound at all on freebsd?
i guess i’ll have to stay with 7, then… unless the gnash people can get a browser plugin working on freebsd amd64…
adobe really needs to get with the times and use some sort of framework that can output to alsa or oss.
“i guess i’ll have to stay with 7, then… unless the gnash people can get a browser plugin working on freebsd amd64…
“
Or wait for the FreeBSD developers to port ALSA to FreeBSD, the FreeBSD kernel is GPL compatible anyway
Does anyone know when Linux Flash Player 9 Beta will be available? I know the final release is scheduled for Early 2007. But, I figure there must be a beta released sometime in 2006.
thanks,
Osho
why the hell use flash? flash is slow and propietary.if you use other technologies your web page/game/proyect could be used in any computer, in any OS but if you use flash are tied to only x86 and windows.because other OSs included linux not have full flash implementation only partial
or nothing at all
Or wait for the FreeBSD developers to port ALSA to FreeBSD, the FreeBSD kernel is GPL compatible anyway
why would they do that? OSS works great. the only thing ALSA would be needed for is flash player, and i don’t think they usually add huge things like that to the kernel just to make one closed-source program work.
we wouldn’t even have this problem if linux could do OSS right.