OT - Flash 8 Review

[Travis Newbury]

Well we upgraded to Flash 8 and it is truly a welcome upgrade. A few of
the things I really liked:

1: Support for dynamic displaying of progressive jpgs, png, gif, and of
course swf and jpg. This will keep the swf size even smaller.
2: File uploading and downloading using the host OS.
3: The parent application can now communicate directly with the swf
rather than through fsCommand.
4: The new video stand along encoder (though I wish it supported a camera)
5: Video alpha channel support (now we can get really fancy)
6: Skinable Video component.
7: Support for photoshop filters (on Text, Movie clips and buttons)
8: You can now treat your vector graphics as objects (like Illustrator
or freehand)

Things I don't like:

1: They brought back the "actionscript helper". I think this is a bad
thing because it facilitates not learning actionscript.
2: They need more codex support !!
3: The development interface still blows.
4: They need to support only strongly typed variables.

Flash 8 is a welcome upgrade. It allows an swf to have a little more
communication with the host computer supporting host level file
uploading and downloading. The new support for communication between the
host application and the flash is very welcome indeed. This allows for a
very easy integration of flash with a browser or with a executable
application. And the video is better than ever (though thy need to go
further). Now with the alpha channel support you have the ability to
blend your video with other objects. Plan on seeing for pretty awesome
video integration into SWFs.

It was a little pricey ($300) for the upgrade. But the functionality
was worth it. Macromedia has made the jump from a cute little animation
thing to a very nice application development tool that lets you design
application that work across multiple platforms with a single code
source (kinda of what Java would have liked to do). Creating an
application that looks and functions identically on any OS desktop,
browser, PDA, or cellphone is now a reality.

 

[Jim Higson]

Travis Newbury wrote:


I'm a bit unsure - are you upgrading a new flash runtime/format or developer
tool, or are the two closely tied together? I admit I've never looked very
deeply into Flash.

Creating an
application that looks and functions identically on any OS desktop,
browser, PDA, or cellphone is now a reality.

Agreed, but not with Flash - Macromedia's Linux support is pretty poor.

As far as I care, the biggest problem with flash is there is no way for the
browser to look at the semantics and filter just the annoying uses, so
pretty much everything gets blocked.

BTW, has an SVG viewer ever been implemented in flash? If so it could be a
good stopgap while we wait for browser support to catch on.

Jim

 

[SpaceGirl]

Travis Newbury wrote:


I'm a bit unsure - are you upgrading a new flash runtime/format or developer
tool, or are the two closely tied together? I admit I've never looked very
deeply into Flash.




Agreed, but not with Flash - Macromedia's Linux support is pretty poor.

Flash 6 player and Flash 8 player are both available under Linux. Also
Flash Lite (mini version of the Flash Player) is now shipped with most
major PDAs and even a few cell phones, not to mention being used for a
UI on at least one games console and several interactive TV set-top
boxes now.

As far as I care, the biggest problem with flash is there is no way for the
browser to look at the semantics and filter just the annoying uses, so
pretty much everything gets blocked.

BTW, has an SVG viewer ever been implemented in flash? If so it could be a
good stopgap while we wait for browser support to catch on.

SVG format is dead. The biggest (almost only) commercial backer is/was
Adobe, and now that they own Flash (they bought Macromedia) there is no
incentive at all for them to continue that support - expecially when
none of the major browsers natively support SVG (you need a fat
plugin/player for IE - FireFox 1.5 comes with support but that's not out
yet) PLUS Microsoft are bringing out their own rival product called
Metro built into Windows Vista... It'll be a Metro Vs. Flash fight, and
I doubt SVG will get a look-in. There's also a huge technical flaw in
SVG - the files it generates are utterly HUGE; making it not exactly
ideal for WWW!


--


x theSpaceGirl (miranda)

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# to duplicate this post.

 

[Jim Higson]

Flash 6 player and Flash 8 player are both available under Linux. Also
Flash Lite (mini version of the Flash Player) is now shipped with most
major PDAs and even a few cell phones, not to mention being used for a
UI on at least one games console and several interactive TV set-top
boxes now.

I have (or at least, think I have) version 7. If 8 is out, for Linux it's
not yet appeared in Macromedia's apt repository, but I'll keep an eye out
for it.

Anyway, the plugin is bad. The sound and graphics always loose sync after a
while, it completely ruins Strongbad.

SVG format is dead. The biggest (almost only) commercial backer is/was
Adobe, and now that they own Flash (they bought Macromedia) there is no
incentive at all for them to continue that support - expecially when
none of the major browsers natively support SVG (you need a fat
plugin/player for IE - FireFox 1.5 comes with support but that's not out
yet)

PLUS Microsoft are bringing out their own rival product called
Metro built into Windows Vista...

I thought it was called Sparkle. If I remember correctly, Metro is the rival
to PDF (or perhaps, to Postscript).

It'll be a Metro Vs. Flash fight, and
I doubt SVG will get a look-in.

I think comparing SVG to 'multimedia' formats like Flash is looking at it
the wrong way. SVG is a graphics format, and as a vector graphics format
has a lot of advantages over raster formats

Flash etc can do some neat stuff, but we can't (and probably will never be
able to) do css like:

background-image: foo.svg;
background-size: 100%;

With SVG this is all possible and will open a lot of really cool things in
HTML styling. In the above example I might have an image that exactly fills
the width of the window regardless of the users' resolution.

For display of simple vector graphics such as graphs on a site Flash is
overkill and doesn't fit in as nicely with the rest of the document.

There's also a huge technical flaw in
SVG - the files it generates are utterly HUGE; making it not exactly
ideal for WWW!

Not really. Looking at some of the graphics I use, which were drawn as SVG
in inkscape but rasterised for the web, in most cases the SVG is much
smaller than the paletised PNGs and rather higher quality since it can be
scaled to any size and never be pixelated.

If size is still a problem, the http response content-type header can be set
to gzip and the XML compressed. Almost all browsers support gzip
compression for all file types and for SVG it usually cuts down the size by
about 70%. (Granted, this could also be done for flash)

 

[Travis Newbury]

I have (or at least, think I have) version 7. If 8 is out, for Linux it's
not yet appeared in Macromedia's apt repository, but I'll keep an eye out
for it.
Anyway, the plugin is bad. The sound and graphics always loose sync after a
while, it completely ruins Strongbad.

The encoded video or sound and the timeline. If the former then flash 8
probably fixed the issue as there were a large number of video
enhancement and bug fixes, if the latter then it is probably a coding
issue from the developer.

 

[kchayka]

As far as I care, the biggest problem with flash is there is no way for the
browser to look at the semantics and filter just the annoying uses,

I think a bigger problem is the inability of the user to have any
control over silly author choices, particularly where text size and
non-stop animations are concerned.

I find most Flash is unusable due to microscopic text and the inability
to override it. Flash's zoom feature, when it works at all, is mostly
crap since there is no control over either the zoom factor, or the area
of zoom. It seems the author has the ability to disable all user
controls in the player, too. That's really sad.

I just downloaded the Flash 8 player, and there is virtually nothing
different from any prior version. I just submitted my umpteenth bug
report on the player's shortcomings, but I doubt anything will come of
it. MM doesn't seem to care.

 

[Jim Higson]

I think a bigger problem is the inability of the user to have any
control over silly author choices, particularly where text size and
non-stop animations are concerned.

I find most Flash is unusable due to microscopic text and the inability
to override it. Flash's zoom feature, when it works at all, is mostly
crap since there is no control over either the zoom factor, or the area
of zoom. It seems the author has the ability to disable all user
controls in the player, too. That's really sad.

I just downloaded the Flash 8 player, and there is virtually nothing
different from any prior version. I just submitted my umpteenth bug
report on the player's shortcomings, but I doubt anything will come of
it. MM doesn't seem to care.

Try Opera, the full zoom feature improves this quite a lot. Homestar runner
can play fullscreen.

Agreed, it is madness that most flash sites keep their windows small. On a
high-res laptop (like 1920 pixels wide) their interface is miniscule. There
must be a reason for this, but it seems to go against the idea of using a
vector format.

 

[Travis Newbury]

I just downloaded the Flash 8 player, and there is virtually nothing
different from any prior version.

Your feelings about Flash is obvious from your post. So the fact that
you found virtually nothing new, and even submitted your um-teenth bug
is no surprise.

Hey, Flash (and anything else) is not for everyone.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Agreed, it is madness that most flash sites keep their windows small.

Your complaints about flash seem be be more with the designer/developer
than the product.