Tag: flash

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Adobe Announces Plans To Discontinue Flash, Will Stop Supporting Entirely in 2020

[Ding, dong, the witch is dead][link]:

>But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.
>
>Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners – including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla – Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.

My own experience with Flash was mostly terrible, and it really did tear your battery life to shreds, but without it we wouldn’t have Homestar Runner, and for that I am thankful.

[link]: https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html “Flash & The Future of Interactive Content | Adobe”

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Photobooth.js

[Accessing the user’s camera using only Javascript.][link] No flash. Performance isn’t real-time on my old MacBook Pro, but it’s “good enough” for things like single shots (e.g. a Photo Booth).

5 years ago this would’ve been voodoo of a high caliber, now it’s one line of jQuery. (via [Waxy][via])

[link]: http://wolframhempel.github.com/photobooth-js/ “Photobooth.js”
[via]: http://waxy.org/links/ “Waxy Links”

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Adobe Discontinues Flash for Mobile Devices

[Buried inside this inane, rambling, corpspeak, document is the fact that Adobe is abandoning Flash for mobile platforms][link]. This is a good thing for everyone, Adobe included.

[link]: http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html “Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5 Adobe Featured Blogs”

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CSS Shaders

[Adobe’s John Nack:][link]

>So, yeah: Adobe’s using Flash-derived technology to make HTML5 more competitive with Flash.
>
>Crazy, right? Not at all: this increases your ability to present visually rich experiences, and that increases Adobe’s ability to sell you tools for creating those experiences.  The different playback technologies are just means to those ends.

Working with Opera, they’ve put together a spec and submitting it to the W3C. Latest nightly of WebKit has it implemented. Really good to see Adobe looking forward like this.

[link]: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2011/10/css-shaders-hell-yeah.html “John Nack on Adobe : CSS shaders: Hell yeah.”

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HTML5 Audio Safari Extension

[Another in the recent line of “replace Flash whenever possible” Safari plugins,][link] which replaces popular Flash-based audio players with the HTML5 <audio> element. See also: [The YouTube5 extension][yt5], which does the same for YouTube embeds.

[link]: http://shauninman.com/archive/2010/11/05/html5audio_safari_extension “HTML5 Audio Safari Extension // ShaunInman.com”
[yt5]: http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/10/27/youtube5-version-2/ “Youtube 5”

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Another Look At Flash on Android

The actual article title is “[Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad][link],” but I’m not exactly shocked by it. Anyone who has tried to use Flash on a machine with a < 2ghz processor knows exactly how well it performs. Schadenfreude aside, look at what it does to the browser itself. One could argue that the web browser is the most important app on a mobile device and as [Gruber notes][grub], before the page even loads the Flash content is making it hard to scroll, hard to tap. If there is one cardinal rule of touch-based devices it is this: If at any point your app becomes unresponsive to taps or scrolls, your app is broken. [link]: http://newteevee.com/2010/08/31/video-flash-on-android-is-startlingly-bad/ "Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad" [grub]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/01/tofel-android "Daringfireball's Linked List: Worth Watching Again: Kevin Tofel’s Demo of Flash on a Nexus One"

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Vimeo Releases Embeddable HTML5 Video Player

[Another shot across the bow of Flash][link]. Vimeo embeds will use the HTML5 player automatically in browsers that support the codecs involved.

[link]: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/vimeo_releases_embeddable_html5_video_player.php “Vimeo Releases Embeddable HTML5 Video Player”

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“Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples”

[Big benefits in Scribd’s switch from using Flash to create and display their content to using plain ‘ol HTML5, CSS, and Javascript][link]:

>Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months.

Anyone surprised? Make your content easier to read and interact with and more people will do so.

[link]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/19/scribds-decision-to-dump-flash-pays-off-user-engagement-triples/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 “Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples”

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Smokescreen: a Flash player in JavaScript

[Very impressive.][link] If I were Adobe I’d be contributing to this project right now.

[link]: http://simonwillison.net/2010/May/29/smokescreen/ “Smokescreen demo: a Flash player in JavaScript”

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Dynamo Player Embeds Micro-payments In Flash Video Player

[This would be cooler if it weren’t flash][link], and enabled the player to show a sort of ‘teaser’ before the prompt to pay up.

[link]: http://newteevee.com/2010/05/07/micropayment-enabling-dynamo-player-gets-beta-version-going/ “Micropayment-Enabling Dynamo Player Gets Beta Version Going”

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Scribd in HTML5

[Scribd presentation using HTML5 to explain their HTML5 technology.][link]

[link]: http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5 “Scribd in HTML5 | Scribd”

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Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash

[An actual post by Steve Jobs on why the iPhone doesn’t support Flash][link], and why it’s not likely to in the future. Well-written, and covers pretty much every logical base.

[link]: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ “Thoughts on Flash”

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Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas

[It’s nice to be able to link to something GOOD that Adobe is doing.][link] With Apple putting the kibosh on their Flash -> iPhone bridge, this is an even bigger deal. Apple does not, yet, control HTML.

[link]: http://www.9to5mac.com/Flash-html5-canvas-35409730 “Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas | 9 to 5 Mac”

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“A conversation I have every month or so”

[and me.][link] It really shouldn’t have to be said, here in 2010, but shit. Restaurants: Have your hours, at least, in a plain HTML document. I don’t even need your menu.

[link]: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-have-every-month-or-so “venomous porridge – A conversation I have every month or so”

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MPEGLA Announces H.264 To Remain Royalty-Free (For Free Content) Until 2016

[This is a good thing][link], for now, but licensing-wise H.264 is actually probably *worse* than Flash. It works great with a hardware decoder, but why should I trust the MPEGLA to not pull the rug out from under the internet in 6 years? Of note: The 2016 deadline only applies to “Internet Video that is Free to End Users.” Who gets to define “free?”

The press release should’ve been subtitled “Your Move, Adobe.”

[link]: http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/Media.aspx “MPEG LA – The Standard for Standards – Media”

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Jeffrey Zeldman on Flash, the iPad, and Standards

[You can always count on Zeldman to say things like][link]

>As the percentage of web users on non-Flash-capable platforms grows, developers who currently create Flash experiences with no fallbacks will have to rethink their strategy and start with the basics before adding a Flash layer. They will need to ensure that content and experience are delivered with or without Flash.

But it’s still good to have him say them.

[link]: http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/01/flash-ipad-standards/ “Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report”

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Rebuttal.

(photo sources: [douglubey.com][doug], [chris.pirillo.com][ch], [deconcept.com][de], [adobe.com][ad], [cutesoft.net][cs], [adrianparr.com][adr])

[doug]: http://douglubey.com/images/FlashPlayerPluginCrash.JPG “Doug Lubey”
[de]: http://blog.deconcept.com/ “Deconcept”
[ad]: http://adobe.com “Adobe”
[cs]: http://cutesoft.com “Cutesoft”
[adr]: http://adrianparr.com “Adrian Parr”
[ch]: http://chris.pirillo.com “Chris Pirillo”

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Gordon, A Flash Runtime Written in JavaScript

[The demos are pretty impressive][link], for what it is. Works on iPhone.

[link]: http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/ “Gordon”

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Browser Debugging Flowchart

[This in-depth flow chart could be very helpful for people in IT Departments world-wide][link].

[link]: http://blog.davebc.com/post/233408442/browser-debugging-flowchart-via-lkm “1FPS Browser Debugging Flowchart via lkm”

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Adobe and “Open Government” is Utter Bullshit

[Chris Foresman takes on Adobe’s push for government use of it’s Flash, PDF, and other assorted proprietary formats][link]. It’s funny when an article that just presents facts can be so scathing:

>After just a cursory browsing, here are some of the usability and data accessibility issues we observed. You can’t select, copy, or paste any text. Your browser’s font override features won’t work, so you can’t adjust the font or its size to be more readable. Your browser’s built-in in-page search won’t work, and you can’t use the keyboard to scroll through the text. …

Sounds pretty open to me.

[link]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/adobe-pushes-flash-and-pdf-for-open-government-misses-irony.ars “Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony – Ars Technica”