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Flash is more popular than the browsers they run in?

• higherpurpose 13y ago
  Yes it is. Flash is one entity that runs across several browsers. By definition it's more popular than each one of them. If there's a bug in Chrome, it affects only 30 percent of the browsing market - the Chrome market. If there's a bug in Flash, it affects 95 percent of the browsing market. That's why it would've been much better if Adobe open sourced Flash a long time ago, because then each browser could do their own implementation of Flash, just like they do with many other open specs today, and then if there was a bug in Chrome's Flash, it would've only affected the Chrome market. It's too late to open source Flash now, but we're doing that instead with alternatives like the HTML5 video tag and WebGL (for animations).
  • riffraff 13y ago
    didn't they open the SWF format a few years back? I remember google & co starting to index flash files in the last decade (still too little to late, arguably).
    • freditup 13y ago
      Yup, they're available here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html
• vinayan3 13y ago
  Flash is the most distributed piece of software in the world. A few years ago it was installed on 1 billion devices. A very nice security target.