Flash Makes Splash in Gadgets

An anonymous reader writes "Flash is winding its way into a growing number of gadgets and devices, according to an article at DeviceForge. Although Macromedia normally requires licensees to sign up for massive quantities of licenses before they can build its 'Embedded Macromedia Flash Player' into devices, the company as authorized NEC subsidiary Vibren to supply embedded Flash licenses in lower volumes to makers of POS (point-of-sales/service) terminals, personal organizers, PC replacements, small-screen airline entertainment devices, real-time securities trading terminals, digital signs, and more. Brace yourself for some juiced-up electronic billboards!"

Wirelessronin.com

[cgsamurai]

Our company, http://www.wirelessronin.com/ [wirelessronin.com] does exacly this, and we are a Macromedia partner.

We are still waiting for the Flash 7 SDK, but at the moment, we use the v5 and 6 SDK's running on Embedded Linux in all of our devices.

HUGE biz, LOTS of cash to be made.

flashblock is my favorite plugin.

[guidryp]

http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

A must have for firefox. I can't stand flash. I don't know why poeple put this crap on their pages.

Now it is a a good thing that they are cramming this into other devices?

Flash...do that all the time.

[djeddiej]

Macromedia also has Flash Communication Server, which offers streaming video within Flash-based apps. I know. I am doing it. So expect things like live-support streaming, perhaps from a tiny device like your mobile phone, and Flash animations to make it pretty, all driven from a database or some XML data source. As someone pointed out earlier, there is $$$ in this market. Also, I do not necessarily agree that SVG is going to "win" out over Flash, but there will definitely be some form of fusion of the technologies (Flash SVG hybrid) at some point -already Macromedia has Flex, its XML data transport, and Central as well (asynchronous data streaming). Lots of things going on here.

Agreed

[EvilMidnightBomber]

How to remove it from ie [techspot.com]

Re:Leapster etc., this is Java's missed opportunit

[Burstgoof]

Agreed, expecially because Macromedia is creating Flex. Flex is a Flash front end with Java servlets running it. Check out the demo of the online store in Flex at the Macromedia site. It really is the future of web applications.

Flex is an imitation of Open Source Laszlo

[SimHacker]

If you're interested in Flex, but don't want to shell out huge wads of cash to Macromedia, check out Laszlo, the system that inspired Flex. Laszlo is now Open Source, and it's a wonderful way to program Flash, without using the horrible proprietary Flash authoring tool! www.laszlosystems.com [laszlosystems.com]

Re:SVG vs. flash... format vs API?

[SimHacker]

SVG is wonderful, but seems to have lost its steam. Adobe has appearently forgotten about it. Batik development has been stalled. SVG has some nice advantages over Flash, but it's hard to beat Flash's 98% penetration. Most people already have it installed, and it works well on small devices. I'd love to see SVG get its shit together, but it's going to be a long time the way the companies that were once sponsoring it like Adobe, Canon and Kodak, have appearently given up and gone on to other things. I'd love for somebody to prove that I'm wrong, but Flash has kicked SVG's ass in the market.

But now that I've found Open Source Laszlo [laszlosystems.com], programming Flash is quite fun and easy! I can live with that.

-Don

Flash Rant

[g00z]

I'm cutting and pasting a journal entry I made a while back because I see a lot of the same crap that people like tcomplain about when it comes tflash on slashdot whenever there is a story about flash. I'm a flash developer and it does keep food on the table; however, just because it's a good deal of what I dfor a living doesn't mean I think it's perfect.

Just tvent a little bit, I really hate flash sometimes. There are smany things that make it a pain tdeal with, it's not funny. Yesterday it was the sandbox issue where flash can't access data outside it's own domain, and today it was the realization that flash is just todamn slow tuse for fast paced action games. Here is my top 10 reasons I love and hate flash:

Top 10 Reasons I Hate Flash:

10. Poor buffering of streaming mp3's

9. Inability for projectors tlaunch files outside of the root directory of the Flash movie

8. Lack of "onload" feature for Loadvariables()

7. Lack of videsupport

6. Separation of Movieclip and Button class objects

5. Unexpandable work area

4. Usage of flash in advertisements

3. Even after you set line tnone, it goes back tblack once you click something

2. New "sandbox" security protocol in Flash MX that is retroactive

1. Extremely slow screen re-draw

Top 10 Reasons I Love Flash:

10. Easy tunderstand

9. Built in sound mixer

8. Scalable vector graphics that can be drawn on the fly

7. Ability tstream mp3's and pull JPG's in on the fly

6. Ability tpull/push data from server based applications

5. Ability texport as a stand alone executable

4. XML Socket support

3. Support for PNG's and TRUE alpha channels

2. Most cross platform multimedia development tool there is

1. Actionscript, Actionscript, Actionscript

On this whole note, here is an open letter I wrote about a year agon the adoption of flash for front ends tnew web technologies. It's fairly venomous, but it was sinta hostile email I had gotten from a company I was freelanceing for at the time.

Flash Findings:
Debunking the Myths

What follows is a slightly modfied rant that I sent as an email ta client concerned about using flash for a front end interface ttheir flasgship product as opposed tDHTML. Hopefully this can provide some insight tpeople that don't fully understand the potental uses for Flash and are currently believing some common myths as truths:

Most of the things that concern clients and other developers about the prospect of using Flash for a project are either untrue or not of concern. Please excuse the rant/angry tone of this -- but there are alot of misconceptions about Flash that make me angry. I've been hearing them a while from people on slashdot. There is alot of ignorance surrounding Flash and I'm here tdebunk this.

1. Closed source

Not entirely true. The Flash file structure is actually quite open and the specifications are available freely from Macromedia. Anyone can write a program that creates flash files or a flash player. As example, there is Adobe Livemotion (www.adobe.com) that creates flash content. If flash is closed source in a traditional Microsoft sense, why does Macromedia's biggest competitor, Adobe, have a flash authoring tool? There are alsother open source flash authoring environments available, just poke around freshmeat.net and you can see for yourself. It may not be full on GPL/BSD open source, but the specifications are available -- unlike almost every other closed source format/application out there today. This is a non-issue anyway. Is your project itself open source? Didn't think so.

2. Breaks Browser paradigm

Back/Forward buttons

You shouldn't even have a need thit back in a browser any more. The web has seriously advanced since the days of HTML 1.0 and Mosaic. If a site is laid out correctly, all desired information should be availble tthe user with one mouse click, removing the need for a back b

SVG Phones

[wombatmobile]

There's a lot more happening with SVG for embedded devices. Like all these phones [svg.org].

Re:can't wait

[Infonaut]

I can't wait until embedded device designers take a cue from web designers and start using Flash for navigation

How many web sites do you visit on a regular basis that make use of Flash for navigation? From what I've seen, the majority majority of web development professionals have learned the uses and limitations of Flash. Most of the superfluous Flash I see these days is relegated to entertainment-oriented sites that are trying really hard to impress 18-25 year olds.

Re:Flash Rant

[3) profit!!!]

Cut and paste

Once again, a good programmer knows how tcode his own routines.

on (key press)
if (key.down="X" and key.down=CONTROL) {
mdm.clipboard = this.selection;
this.selection = "";
telltarget ("alertbox")
gotand play ("selectedtextcut");
end telltaget
}
end on

Easy as proverbial pie. What I'm saying here is, yah. You can cut and paste in flash.

What if you're using X Windows, and you select text to copy, and middle mouse button to paste? Usually the browser is able to modify the presentation and interface to meet the user's needs. When using flash, the user's options are ignored for the sake of animations, vector graphics, etc. Also:

Number two, if the flash site does not follow the old model of third-generation www sites (See above) and uses a new convention - AKA dynamic content as generated by user input (See Application) then, bookmarks and the lot become irrelevant. Can you hit the back button in Quake III Arena when somebody shoots you? (Oops! I didn't want tdie. Take it back please. Im a baby) Can you "bookmark" a spot in a Q3 map because you think it looks neat?

A web browser is NOT an FPS. An FPS is a game designed to be fun and fair; a web browser is an application designed to present HTML to a user. What would be bad in a game is fine in a web browser ('view source' for example). I'm not sure exactly what your point is here.

At last!

[Qbertino]

Finally a Flash rant that doesn't come from a total dickhead.

But you've got some serious wrongs in your rant. Haven't got much time so I'll speed through a few (my refererenc is Flash MX 2004 Pro, btw):

10. Poor buffering of streaming mp3's


Completely wrong. Works perfectly if you write your own AS 2-liners that control delayed playback dependent on bandwidth. Which is what you should do in the first place anyway.

8. Lack of "onload" feature for Loadvariables()

Bad example. Loadvariables() is an ancient artifact thats only left in for compatability reasons. Load an XML document with your stuff (loadvariables() sucks anyway. I remember hacking a dynamic flash app with that in Flash 5. Creepy.) and you can check loadstatus and totalload anytime you want.

7. Lack of videsupport

Incorrect. Importing into swf doesnt bloat Quicktimes and FLV is the best streaming format out there. Or do you want the plugin to be a full range video player? Isn't that a bit much for a VM with so much features allready? I'd rather keep VM size down then support all video formats in existance. We get new ones every odd week anyway. No use trying to keep up with that.

6. Separation of Movieclip and Button class objects

Yeah, shure. Stop the nitpick allready. Heavens crickey, that button thing is a built-in for those who are used to clicking together their apps by hand since Flash 3 using the old style paradigms of keeping your brain switched off. AS is a full range PL with a set of libs. Don't like them? Ignore them and build your own.

THat's for a quick comment of mine. Aside from that: Congrats to a rather educated remark on flash in a long time. Rare thing here on /. .

Re:Clueless you are !

[iwan-nl]

I've been payed to do actionscripting for a flash site in the past. I have to agree that flash is powerfull. There is really no limit in what you can do with it. On the other hand i agree with most other slashdotters that flash is mis/overused on MANY occations. Too much animations can slow older machines to a crawl and are often unnecessary. This can easily be avoided though, if you have a designer that knows what he/she's doing.

Flash does however offer one really important feature that html/js does not: Cross browser compatibility without the hell of checking the user-agent string and writing different js and css for different browsers. A flash site will look and feel the same in ANY browser, provided you use a limited ("websafe") palette and few animations. This cuts down development- and QA time quite a bit.

Another thing i like about flash is that it's graphics are vector based. In my experience it is possible to create a flash site with a smaller footprint than it's html/jpg equivalent.

Bottom line: Flash does not have to be annoying when it's used in the right project for the right reasons.