OSNews

It's true the majority of Flash use is media related like YouTube. But then it's a little more than just playing media.

Let's take Youtube videos as an example. The video it plays is of course in the Flash piece. The video *control* is also in Flash. And at the end of videos, it shows related videos, or you can replay the video or share it, which are also part of the Flash.

Of course, you can do it another way with a change in design (in case of youtube, they really don't need to change design because all these functions are available outside the Flash piece), but then, that's their design.

i dont know how often i have made use of those available "features". but i suspect that the number would be single digit.

This is mostly true, except you are forgetting about the many games that are developed in flash, and the fact that Flex is becoming more popular

Yes.



As it has been mentioned before, this is the main playing field of "Flash", but not its only one. Of course, regarding multimedia content, we seem to share the same ideas. Video playback should be handled at the user's site (i. e. from within the browser), just like libraries and plugins to it with any other content (images, audio files, Java applets). The user should be able to use whatever player he likes, for example, ebmedded inside the web page, playing in an external player, maybe in fullscreen, or maybe just save the file onto disk. Encapsulating and streaming techniques for video and audio content existed before "Flash", even good free alternatives, but as long as they are not widely used, users (or, to be more correct, the creators of web browsers and plugins) won't adopt to free standards.

Furthermore, "Flash" seems to have developed into an "HTML replacement"; this makes web content (if you can call it that way) completely unusable for disabled people. For example, blind users win't see anything. This is not entirely a problem of "Flash" itself, no, it's a problem of web developers unable or unwilling to encapsulate "Flash" content in a correct manner. HTML (and scripts) to allow to do it correctly. And what animated GIFs have been years ago, that's "Flash" today: a means to make web pages look ugly, overloaded with blinking, jiggling, beeping and blurring animations, oh what a joy - if you suffer from ADS. :-)

Things that are important to see should be put into a form that allows anyone to see it, or at least get a clue why it isn't possible to see. Todays browsers handle nearly any web content out of the box - you don't need an OS-specific plugin to see a PNG image or to connect to a web page that requests an SSL connection. And if your OS comes with the proper codecs, plugins and programs, you can play music files, watch movies and run Java applications. No big trouble.

In my opinion, anything that isn't entirely free (and "Flash" isn't, I'm sure we don't need to discuss this) has no place within a free (and barrier free) web. Don't get me wrong: There are places where "Flash" is a great solution, but as long as its availability is restricted, ... I think you get my idea. (A personal note: I'm living fine without "Flash" for years.)

One important argument seems to be that "Flash" hooks so deeply into the system that it cannot be implemented in an OS agnostic manner. That's poor. Even Java can run on any system. Why can't "Flash"? (I may give the answer just right now: Because it is not intended.) Should something that seems to see itself as a "standard" be allowed to decide what OS a user has to run?

thanks, i was starting to feel a bit alone...

btw, can one reliably develop flash based content without some kind of tool from adobe?

i think that is the classic plan for all these systems. give away the "player", charge a fee for the "recorder"...

its been done that way in one form or other since the first realplayer plugin...

Edited 2008-05-01 05:04 UTC