4 ms·

Great effort but I really don't want this. I've lived without Flash for a year now and all is good. We just need to break the crack addiction!

by spongle 13y ago

ekianjo 13y ago
It's not because you pretend Flash doesn't exist that it disappears from the Internet.
Wintamute 13y ago
There's no real conceptual difference between a <canvas> element, a <video> element, a WebGL experience, a NaCl app or a Flash <object> on your webpage. They're all somewhat non-semantic, hard to search, rich media black boxes. So what's your particular beef with Flash, especially when rendered via HTML5? Or do you just hate all tools that enable creativity beyond a plain text website equally? Or did you just drink the Flash-should-die KoolAid without really thinking about it?
- mohawk 13y ago
  I can tell you what my problem is with flash: the reference implementation by Adobe stinks.
- spongle 13y ago
  Yes there is. You misunderstand. My beef is with NaCl, objects, Applets and ActiveX etc as well, mainly because they run outside of the browser's engine, sandbox, security model and conceptual model. you also have to ship them externally to the browser. Canvas, video, webgl fine.
  - biot 13y ago
    From the fine article: "Shumway is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance." By your criteria, you should be fine with this.
    - spongle 13y ago
      Well if it wasn't for the numer of turtles in the pile on the way down it'd be fine. This is a whole other layer on top...
  - riquito 13y ago
    You end up seeing a canvas, does it matter what application was used to draw it? (by the way I don't like Flash either for different reasons)
  - roarroar 13y ago
    What's so great about the "security model" of the browser? It's a patch work of horrible decisions.
    - spongle 13y ago
      Nothing at all. It's shit. But one security model is better than having two security models.
      - captainmuon 13y ago
        If the components are sufficiently isolated, I'd much rather have many smaller components (with individual security models) than one monolithic system. That's why e.g. the Unity3d plugin is so great. A complete 3D engine (with state of the art graphics, the ability to load almost any 3d format on earth, ...) does not belong into the browser. I don't want that code on my work PC. OTOH, its great to have the ability to run games in the browser. The performance is much better than WebGL (because it contains compiled code, and because it is a complete, tuned, engine and not just an opengl implementation). And it's fairly safe, since it's built with Mono/.NET, you don't have problems with shellcode injection etc..
      - roarroar 13y ago
        So.. stay with the shit model forever? Good idea! NaCl is part of an effort to fix all this bullshit, and it's at least sort of going in the right direction.
  - rorrr2 13y ago
    NaCl is sandboxed. http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/getting-started/getting-started-background-and-basics#TOC-Native-Client-NaCl- http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/getting-started/getting...
- Bjoern 13y ago
  Draining excessively my CPU and Memory for no good reason, being insecure, etc.
  - captainmuon 13y ago
    I suspect this will not use less memory and CPU than a native plugin.
- pietro 13y ago
  > Or do you just hate all tools that enable creativity beyond a plain text website equally? That would be my stance. "Creativity" mostly translates to flashy adds, and while there are numerous examples of fun, engaging and useful Flash animations, they are vastly outnumbered by Flash banners, and the math is really simple: Blocking Flash is a huge net positive.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  A video element is a video. It's as well or poorly handled as, say, an image. (The QuickTime / MP4 container actually allows standardized text tracks etc. so it's capable of being more semantically tractable than most other media formats in the long run.) The other options are all, as you say, semantically impenetrable, but that's not all there is to it. WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and efficient graphic effects, whereas even native Flash was horribly inefficient at doing what it did. NaCl likewise is intended to deliver near native performance to embedded functionality and isn't designed for a proprietary production front-end, better than Flash on both counts. Canvas affords JavaScript the ability to natively generate graphics that would otherwise be impossible or very difficult. Flash is pretty horrible to talk to with Javascript. So yes, other things are impenetrable, but Flash is impenetrable and lacks the virtues of those other things.
  - Wintamute 13y ago
    > WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and efficient graphic effects, whereas even native Flash was horribly inefficient at doing what it did. Fundamentally incorrect. Flash is actually an incredibly efficient file format for rich media, especially at vector animation. Look it up, you can fit amazing animations into just a few kb. Nothing can beat it on the web today for that purpose, and the Flash IDE environment is unsurpassed as a toolchain for the creation of that sort of content. Of course you can abuse it, like any other tech, and pump too many large images, videos, sounds or whatever into a SWF.
    - Tloewald 13y ago
      Flash's file format is fine w.r.t. compression. (It's beastly to parse, but that's a consequence of history.) It does a terrible job of rendering graphics though (probably because the guys who wrote the lowest level parts of the engine did so a long time ago and have moved on). When Steve Jobs wrote his letter about Flash a big part of the deal was Flash's impact on battery life because it was so inefficient -- and Adobe struggled to fix this for years and then gave up. I remember back when some Adobe blogger published a comparison of Flash to canvas animations showing Flash to be significantly faster. I, and several others, posted trivially optimized versions of the canvas code that crushed Flash like a bug, and this was Flash at the end of a long period of optimization where it carefully draws only the regions of the screen that changed, versus a pretty naive canvas implementation pretty much double-buffering its animation. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362
- kapowaz 13y ago
  There may not be any conceptual difference, but there is a very significant difference in how these things you describe are used. Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. Besides security concerns, this approach is damaging to the overall experience of that site, since developers end up needing to re-implement native controls and functionality (scrollbars, form elements and keyboard navigation to name a few) in order to provide users with affordances they would otherwise take for granted. More often than not, the developer doesn't re-implement these features and so users are left with a sub-optimal experience (even if it is more ‘on brand’, or replete with gratuitous effects and animations). This is to say nothing for the accessibility implications. Since the advent of smartphones and tablets that can't display Flash content, sites that do this have started to die out in favour of a combination of native applications and true HTML implementations. If the experience they're going for calls for a video or canvas element (3D or otherwise) then great, go for it. But the scope of that part of the experience is implicitly reduced, and so it doesn't result in a sub-par experience across the board (I might not be able to see your fancy WebGL 3D canvas effects, but the links to your ‘contact us’ page still work). What I'm worried about is that by providing a compatibility path, Flash's imminent demise will be put on hold, and the sub-optimal experiences I described above see a resurgence. And that's not a good thing.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. But if it's rendered as part of the page instead of in a black-box plugin, doesn't that whole problem go away?
    - Yaa101 13y ago
      No, It's about what is inside the Flash that defines your experience with it. For me the best trade-off is still to use a flash-block and grant the flash running time when I choose to do so.
  - Recoil42 13y ago
    >Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. This same argument is true for Canvas, SVG, WebGL etc.
devx 13y ago
This will actually make Flash go away faster, since now more devices and browsers can start ignoring supporting Flash.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  This isn't ignoring flash, it's supporting some random subset of it with different bugs.
gpvos 13y ago
The main problem for me was that it was a proprietary, terribly buggy and insecure piece of code. In principle, Shumway should fix that. The other problem is autoplaying audio and video, which is annoying in the extreme. So I hope there will remain a click-to-activate option for this.
- nfoz 13y ago
  Isn't autoplaying now pretty much impossible to stop, short of disabling JavaScript (where that's even an option)? Web pages have become an alternative, yet equivalent mechanism to flash.
davidcollantes 13y ago
Another nay vote from me as well. I do not use Flash at all. Do not need it, nor want it.

Great effort but I really don't want this. I've lived without Flash for a year now and all is good. We just need to break the crack addiction!

by spongle 13y ago

Great effort but I really don't want this. I've lived without Flash for a year now and all is good. We just need to break the crack addiction!

ekianjo 13y ago

It's not because you pretend Flash doesn't exist that it disappears from the Internet.

Wintamute 13y ago

There's no real conceptual difference between a <canvas> element, a <video> element, a WebGL experience, a NaCl app or a Flash <object> on your webpage. They're all somewhat non-semantic, hard to search, rich media black boxes. So what's your particular beef with Flash, especially when rendered via HTML5? Or do you just hate all tools that enable creativity beyond a plain text website equally? Or did you just drink the Flash-should-die KoolAid without really thinking about it?

mohawk 13y ago
I can tell you what my problem is with flash: the reference implementation by Adobe stinks.
spongle 13y ago
Yes there is. You misunderstand. My beef is with NaCl, objects, Applets and ActiveX etc as well, mainly because they run outside of the browser's engine, sandbox, security model and conceptual model. you also have to ship them externally to the browser. Canvas, video, webgl fine.
- biot 13y ago
  From the fine article: "Shumway is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance." By your criteria, you should be fine with this.
  - spongle 13y ago
    Well if it wasn't for the numer of turtles in the pile on the way down it'd be fine. This is a whole other layer on top...
- riquito 13y ago
  You end up seeing a canvas, does it matter what application was used to draw it? (by the way I don't like Flash either for different reasons)
- roarroar 13y ago
  What's so great about the "security model" of the browser? It's a patch work of horrible decisions.
  - spongle 13y ago
    Nothing at all. It's shit. But one security model is better than having two security models.
    - captainmuon 13y ago
      If the components are sufficiently isolated, I'd much rather have many smaller components (with individual security models) than one monolithic system. That's why e.g. the Unity3d plugin is so great. A complete 3D engine (with state of the art graphics, the ability to load almost any 3d format on earth, ...) does not belong into the browser. I don't want that code on my work PC. OTOH, its great to have the ability to run games in the browser. The performance is much better than WebGL (because it contains compiled code, and because it is a complete, tuned, engine and not just an opengl implementation). And it's fairly safe, since it's built with Mono/.NET, you don't have problems with shellcode injection etc..
    - roarroar 13y ago
      So.. stay with the shit model forever? Good idea! NaCl is part of an effort to fix all this bullshit, and it's at least sort of going in the right direction.
- rorrr2 13y ago
  NaCl is sandboxed. http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/getting-started/getting-started-background-and-basics#TOC-Native-Client-NaCl- http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/getting-started/getting...
Bjoern 13y ago
Draining excessively my CPU and Memory for no good reason, being insecure, etc.
- captainmuon 13y ago
  I suspect this will not use less memory and CPU than a native plugin.
pietro 13y ago
> Or do you just hate all tools that enable creativity beyond a plain text website equally? That would be my stance. "Creativity" mostly translates to flashy adds, and while there are numerous examples of fun, engaging and useful Flash animations, they are vastly outnumbered by Flash banners, and the math is really simple: Blocking Flash is a huge net positive.
Tloewald 13y ago
A video element is a video. It's as well or poorly handled as, say, an image. (The QuickTime / MP4 container actually allows standardized text tracks etc. so it's capable of being more semantically tractable than most other media formats in the long run.) The other options are all, as you say, semantically impenetrable, but that's not all there is to it. WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and efficient graphic effects, whereas even native Flash was horribly inefficient at doing what it did. NaCl likewise is intended to deliver near native performance to embedded functionality and isn't designed for a proprietary production front-end, better than Flash on both counts. Canvas affords JavaScript the ability to natively generate graphics that would otherwise be impossible or very difficult. Flash is pretty horrible to talk to with Javascript. So yes, other things are impenetrable, but Flash is impenetrable and lacks the virtues of those other things.
- Wintamute 13y ago
  > WebGL has the advantage of delivering very lightweight and efficient graphic effects, whereas even native Flash was horribly inefficient at doing what it did. Fundamentally incorrect. Flash is actually an incredibly efficient file format for rich media, especially at vector animation. Look it up, you can fit amazing animations into just a few kb. Nothing can beat it on the web today for that purpose, and the Flash IDE environment is unsurpassed as a toolchain for the creation of that sort of content. Of course you can abuse it, like any other tech, and pump too many large images, videos, sounds or whatever into a SWF.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    Flash's file format is fine w.r.t. compression. (It's beastly to parse, but that's a consequence of history.) It does a terrible job of rendering graphics though (probably because the guys who wrote the lowest level parts of the engine did so a long time ago and have moved on). When Steve Jobs wrote his letter about Flash a big part of the deal was Flash's impact on battery life because it was so inefficient -- and Adobe struggled to fix this for years and then gave up. I remember back when some Adobe blogger published a comparison of Flash to canvas animations showing Flash to be significantly faster. I, and several others, posted trivially optimized versions of the canvas code that crushed Flash like a bug, and this was Flash at the end of a long period of optimization where it carefully draws only the regions of the screen that changed, versus a pretty naive canvas implementation pretty much double-buffering its animation. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362
kapowaz 13y ago
There may not be any conceptual difference, but there is a very significant difference in how these things you describe are used. Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. Besides security concerns, this approach is damaging to the overall experience of that site, since developers end up needing to re-implement native controls and functionality (scrollbars, form elements and keyboard navigation to name a few) in order to provide users with affordances they would otherwise take for granted. More often than not, the developer doesn't re-implement these features and so users are left with a sub-optimal experience (even if it is more ‘on brand’, or replete with gratuitous effects and animations). This is to say nothing for the accessibility implications. Since the advent of smartphones and tablets that can't display Flash content, sites that do this have started to die out in favour of a combination of native applications and true HTML implementations. If the experience they're going for calls for a video or canvas element (3D or otherwise) then great, go for it. But the scope of that part of the experience is implicitly reduced, and so it doesn't result in a sub-par experience across the board (I might not be able to see your fancy WebGL 3D canvas effects, but the links to your ‘contact us’ page still work). What I'm worried about is that by providing a compatibility path, Flash's imminent demise will be put on hold, and the sub-optimal experiences I described above see a resurgence. And that's not a good thing.
- sp332 13y ago
  Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. But if it's rendered as part of the page instead of in a black-box plugin, doesn't that whole problem go away?
  - Yaa101 13y ago
    No, It's about what is inside the Flash that defines your experience with it. For me the best trade-off is still to use a flash-block and grant the flash running time when I choose to do so.
- Recoil42 13y ago
  >Flash, when used badly, becomes a self-contained sandbox for the entire experience of a website. This same argument is true for Canvas, SVG, WebGL etc.

devx 13y ago

This will actually make Flash go away faster, since now more devices and browsers can start ignoring supporting Flash.

Tloewald 13y ago
This isn't ignoring flash, it's supporting some random subset of it with different bugs.

gpvos 13y ago

The main problem for me was that it was a proprietary, terribly buggy and insecure piece of code. In principle, Shumway should fix that. The other problem is autoplaying audio and video, which is annoying in the extreme. So I hope there will remain a click-to-activate option for this.

nfoz 13y ago
Isn't autoplaying now pretty much impossible to stop, short of disabling JavaScript (where that's even an option)? Web pages have become an alternative, yet equivalent mechanism to flash.

davidcollantes 13y ago

Another nay vote from me as well. I do not use Flash at all. Do not need it, nor want it.