whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

I really havent understood the flash obsession this community has especially considering the fact that most of the members here are open source lovers.

Flash was an important tech in the last decade. But now we must let it go. We now have HTML5. We dont need Flash anymore. Most of us need Flash to view videos on youtube. But you dont need flash for that, just visit m.youtube.com on your microb and get hardware accelerated videos. Or you could try youtube.com/html5 with FF4. HTML5 now has native support with the <video> and <audio> tag for the webm and ogg codecs.

The current developments in HTML5 have the potential to completely replace Flash.
Major browsers already support native audio/video.
We have SVG for scalable vector graphics.
Canvas tag for pixel based graphics.
WebGL provides API for 3d modelling in the broswer which is based on OpenGL.
Development are going on to integrate webcam,microphone natively into the browser.

Yeh, there are some websites that will stick with Flash. But, we as open source lovers must fight for the open web. After all, the very reason we dont have Flash 10 support on our N900 is because its closed. We are the mercy of Adobe or Nokia, whateva. Do we really want the situation to continue in the coming decade also? I am not an Apple lover but iPhone has no support for Flash, Maemo/Meego doesnt need either.

So for the love of open source and free Internet, I appeal everyone to stop giving a damn about Flash.

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

O"Really...........

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

Flash file format is open. It's just that setting up a good player is hard because Adobe's players are closed, and because most graphics cards are closed so good luck setting up hardware acceleration.

HTML (time to stop calling it HTML5, the group that develops the html stsndard has dropped the version numbering last I heard, now it's just progressively updated HTML) is not a flash replacement, it was never meant to be a flash replacement, and it's not going to be for a while. It will replace some aspects of flash as time goes on, but Flash is just going to keep improving beyond that. By the time HTML has high-end applicability that Flash currently has, Flash will be further still.

The "community" obsesses about Flash because there's thing a lot of the community members regularly do on the internet that involves Flash >9.4 content, which we can't do on our N900s. Even if html becomes the savior from Flash you want it to be, that doesn't help the people who can't do stuff on flash-dependant sites now.

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

tldr answer: pR0n

:D

P.S I personally don't give a fig about Flash and prefer to bypass or block it as appropriate. RTMPDump FTW!

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

No it wont.

HTML already does 80% of the stuff Flash is used for. With device API, the 20% will be also be covered.

Are you a flash developer?

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

Flash was made a big deal of for the N900 by Nokia itself. Then users were taen by surprise when Nokia no longer supported the very next version of Flash. Nokia itself never made a forthright statement about why it abandined Flash so quickly, preferring what I would have to refer to as F.. Y... silence, its preferred mode of dealing with customers who expected it to live up to their expectations.

The first really lay-it-on-the-line statement about Flash support was made quite recently by the Council here, not by Nokia.

I think that your statement that there is an obsession with Flash is false; there is a general perception among many customers that Nokia is shifty and not to be trusted because of its actions with regard to Flash.

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

For most: Porn.

For me: Live streams videos: Ustream (kinda works), Justin.TV (doesn't), Livestream (doesn't), Vimeo (doesn't), Blip.Tv (Doesn't) and so and so...

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

No I'm not a flash developer. I am barely tech-savvy at the "developer" level at all. I can compile stuff for the N900 in the sdk using make, and I can read Python and C enough to have a vague clue of what I'm doing. If I was though, it wouldn't in any way alter what I said. Also, 80% is a meaningless figure unless you qualify - 80% by use volume/amount, or 80% functionality? I can easily believe the volume thing - most of it is people watching/listening to content of some sort. Not so sure about the 80% functionality though.

Again though, even IF that's the case, there's still the problem of N900 users now who want to do X, whatever X may be, but can't because of an outdated Flash lib. Of course, the Nokian silence on the matter made it harder for some people to just accept it, since it kept hope going longer, but most people would still keep wanting flash for the above reason - if they had it, they could do more, and some of what they want to do, falls withing that category of stuff dependant on having better Flash.

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

What are the use cases of flash anyways:
Audio/video - html does that
Flashy Ads - svg + javascript
Real time updates/communication - AJAX
Games - svg/canvas + javascript
3D graphics - WebGL
That IMO covers 80% of what flash does.

If its just about doing more, Android is better than N900. But N900 here represents something more than a just a phone. The open source aspect of N900 is what sets it apart. Its not jailed. I find "Flash" in the open ecosystem of Maemo a bit of Irony.

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

Don't mix up the aspect that the N900 is "open" and the term "open source" software. Even Maemo is not a 100% open source platform. Neither the OS itself or the drivers. So I can't see any irony here...
If someone release a browser with HTML5 capability for the N900 and every contend I find interesting switch over from Flash to HTML, I'm gladly throw Flash to the bin but I don't believe we will see this scenario anytime soon...

Re: whats with the FLASH obsession?
 

Fair enough @ the feature set - maybe. I don't know how easy it'll be to get open HTML visual content with hardware acceleration, and without that, you're in the same situation as Flash - it's full potential won't be openly available, even if the standard is open, if you're stuck hoping your device's graphics hardware has the right support in-driver. But that problem even with Flash is less a Flash issue and more a graphics hardware industry issue - if that wasn't an issue projects like GNASH would be a lot closer to competitiveness.

Anyway, Flash provieds those features in a single code language, as I understand it. Is it just as easy to integrate all or some of those through HTML?

And Android isn't better at doing more than the N900. We could debate that ad-nauseum of course, and it does more of some things, but it doesn't let me compile on-board itself as easily, doesn't let me just flash a new kernel image fron on-board the device, doesn't take USB sticks, and it doesn't print.

Anyway, what's not about doing more? Your original point certainly is: Flash does more currently (that doesn't even have to mean that it has to; it just does. I go to armorgames.com or whatever, and the games there are Flash; my astronomy class I just took for a science credit at my college - did homework through a site heavily Flash-linked, as far as I could tell; go to any mainstream entertainment site - whether "pron", sports, news/commedy talk shows, web video games, etc - they are most likely flash-only), and it doesn't matter if HTML can do as much - I discussed that from the beginning as a seperate point largely for my own curiosity, and if you're right, great, but it doesn't address the fundamental issue: Flash is used by sites out there, so Flash is wanted on devices now. You change that out there first, and only then you ask people to stop caring about having flash support on their devices. (Apple gets away with it because the people using their crap are already a mix of "sheeple" and people who care about other stuff more than 'full wed' usability; plus all major venues just produce their own apps for them.)