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!"

can't wait

[anotherone]

I can't wait until embedded device designers take a cue from web designers and start using Flash for navigation and suddenly a simple thing like "adjusting the contrast on my monitor" takes 10 minutes.

right, Macromedia Flash. ok...

[bersl2]

Now can we get back to work on SVG, so we at least have the possibility of an open format.

Re:flash is evil!!

[gandell]

Then there's the good ones that actually load rather quickly, have easy to use interactive graphics, and multimedia features. You can't lump all flash as evil...flash is a great way for users on dial up to get interactive websites with loads of graphics for a small cost of bandwidth. Using flash, one can create a web gallery that any user will sit through...

Try doing that with standard html or php...do you want to site while it loads 20 gifs that are more than 100k apiece?

Flash is the future, my friend...and as long as they keep the processor cost relatively low, I welcome it to my pda.

Well...

[qw0ntum]

At least these POS machines will be able to start using something besides Windows CE, in all its glory.
Flash-based POS's seem like they could be much more focused, as they wouldn't need much fancy stuff to run simple, colorful apps on. It should probably lead to smaller, more focused POS things. Think mini-billboards, interactive and all that good stuff.

Re:flash is evil!!

[ironfrost]

Flash IS evil, but that's not the reason. The reason is that it doesn't use the browser commands. You can't go back. You can't bookmark. You can't open a list of interesting links in new tabs while you finish reading the original page.

Flash has it's uses, but making complete websites isn't one of them.

SVG vs. flash... format vs API?

[otis wildflower]

Here's a Q.. In the last few years Flash has added stuff like networking, DB access, dynamic generation of content, etc.. How much of this is actually in SVG?

AFAICR SVG was just a vector content format. Do SVG viewers implement stuff along the lines of Flash or do they just display SVG content?

Can you program a network-capable video game in SVG according to a single standard?

The way I see it lately, Flash is eating applet Java lunch and is quickly approaching full-blown Swing app territory... And what is inherently wrong with Flash being the view layer ala HTML, Qt, MFC, etc... I mean, of course, besides its proprietary nature...

Re:flash is evil!!

[Sabaki]

Don't you mean "poor UI design is evil"? Both the issues you describe seem to boil down to bad design and authoring.

The only inherently bad thing I think think of that that's inherent in Flash for computers browsing the web is the fact that it won't work on all browsers, either because the browser doesn't support it, or a firewall blocks it. (Also they make handicapped access harder, but hardly anyone talks about that.)

And none of those issues are likely to be a problem in a device designed up front to use Flash (although processor use could become an issue.)

The technology should not be blamed just because some people use it poorly.

Re:flashblock is my favorite plugin.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand flash. I don't know why poeple put this crap on their pages.

Because some of it is incredibly good, talented, and absolutely amazing as an artform.

Just because some people are bad at using Flash is no reason to chuck the baby out with the bathwater.
There are bad examples of all types of art, or webpages, or /. posts :) Remember Sturgeon's Law.

Dduatta

[Anonymous Coward]

Dduatta [albinoblacksheep.com] If the fact that an ordinary set of people can produce something like this without a full animation studio doesn't impress you with the possibilities of the form, you clearly just don't like animation.

Re:flash is evil!!

[DoraLives]

Humph! As far as I'm concerned, things went directly to hell just as soon as I was no longer able to simply tell the story and had to start scratching them damn marks in those doubly damnable clay tablets. Once that shit started, we lost all control of the medium. And ever since then, it's been one disaster after another. Scrolls, books, photographs, phonograph records......pfaugh! I'm going back inside my cave and I'm not coming out again until all this stuff blows over.

Rich noise

[liangzai]

"The simplicity and richness of a Flash interface makes devices more user-friendly and enhances the customer's experience with rich content."

Theoretically, it could, although in actuality it will only add to the already prevalent information noise, since most "rich content" will be ads (or just meaningless graphics) disturbing the user process. When withdrawing money, you will have a number of presentations and offers from the bank, and perhaps from third parties (porn ads, contact ads, whore-o-scopes, dick/boob enlargement ads, ...).

Also, current installations of very simple text- and/or video based devices intermittently display the typical Screen o' Death, since these devices typically rely on Windoze systems. This kind of failure will only increase with the more complex Flash, unless implementers start deploying Linux, OS X or other more robust systems (and this will probably not happen, since most implementers are clueless). Flash itself, being rather complicated, also has a large array of bugs.

Re:flash is evil!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Without Flash, there would be no StrongBad.

The system is down. The system is down. The system is down down down down

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

[m00nun1t]

I think the problem is much broader than that. It's about the authoring experience. It's relatively easy to create some funky animations in flash, and relatively difficult to do so in java. I remember there were a few programs kicking around years ago which allowed non-programmers to produce animated java applets, but none of the ones I used even remotely touched flash for easy of use and power, much less performance.

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

[Eric Giguere]

It's true, in some ways client-side Java was ahead of its time in terms of technology. I think the biggest problem was the botched job that the browsers did in implementing Java support. Like how Netscape supported Java 1.1 except for the new AWT classes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Sun would have been better off developing the Java Plug-in right from the start instead of relying on Netscape and Microsoft.

Eric
Deploying Java applets [ericgiguere.com] (old set of tips)

Re:Adblock/Flashblock

[the angry liberal]

I hope someone comes up with a way to block these flash animations on these devices. The last thing I need is a cash register showing cartoons at me.

The ATMs around here all have commercials on them. You know, the places where everyone says "pay attention to your surroundings" while the Bank is saying "stare blankly into our 20 second ad while risking life and limb at an ATM in downtown Atlanta".

While on the subject of ATMs, who else wonders why your prefered language isn't marked on your account so you don't have to make that selection at each ATM stop?

Re:Flash Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that need this functionality, one can easy write some javascript that will make the back button on browsers inoperative

Must... resist... urge... to... kill...

Clueless you are !

[bushboy]

I can't believe how damn clueless some people are regarding technology like Flash.

Everyone judges the damn content on freakin' banner adverts, instead of having a deeper look into how incredibly powerful it is.

Pffft.

Mod this moron down

[bushboy]

What the hell is informative about this parent post ?
I'd love to know - the person who wrote it is a clueless moron.

Re:Flash Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

A few points

Re: Security...
The XMLSocket is just a regular socket and provides no encryption. You'd have to roll your own Actionscript crypto routines I think, not something I'd relish. Also, if you're targetting Flash 7 there's the restriction on not being able to open an XMLSocket to ports 1024, which means that you'd be screwed by firewalls.

Also, the Flash player (at least on IE) doesn't play nicely with content-expiry http headers that tend to have to be set on data that is sensitive. If you set expiry to zero (as a lot of enterprise level security gateways do) then IE gets the data but Flash doesn't get to see it. This kind of thing makes EAI a pain in the ass with Flash.

IIRC Flash can read and set cookies just like Javascript becuase you have to call out to a Javascript function in the page containing the swf.

If Macromedia want to do one thing to make Flash a better tool for enterprise application development they should ditch the FLA format for source files. These are binary and are a nightmare to work with if you've a team of more than two people. And try diff'ing them.... Yuck.

Re:Flash Rant

[maxwell demon]

Of course you can program every single method in flash. But the flash app does not adapt to the environment.

What if someone with viewing problems has special settings to display web pages differently (f.ex. with extra big font and increased contrast)? The flash animation will simply ignore his settings. Of yourse, you can make a flash animation with extra big fonts and increased contrast. But the fact is that your flash app will not adapt. It will be those big fonts and high contrast only if you had the idea that anyone might need this (and are bothered enough to make the extra effort to program it in). And even then I guess you have to tell the flash app explicitly that you want that special setting, instead of automatically taking the browser defaults.

And besides, in my experience Flash is almost exclusively used for advertisements anyway.

To evil!

[guet]

Flash is the future, my friend

A future where one company (Macromedia) controls the format everyone uses for websites? What's to stop them abusing that monopoly; the temptation would certainly be there.

You get a taste of what that experience would be like when you right click on a flash animation today (perhaps an advert, perhaps a graphic). Macromedia controls that menu, not the user, because it's *their* plugin. Incidentally, if I right click and choose 'Settings...' I get a dialog asking if I want to allow ultracomercial.com to 'access' my microphone and webcam. Although I have no intention of letting them, the fact someone thought this was a good idea at Macromedia scares me.

That's not a future I'd be happy in. While Flash is very flexible (via scripting etc) and the tools easy to use (or at least it was and they were when I looked at it a few years ago), I'd prefer a future where a format like SVG was common and supported. SVG is open, searchable, usually text (so easy to manipulate/copy/save by servers and end-users alike), and thus easy to output from common scripting languages. Once one person has written a library to do this, anyone can use that language to output dynamic graphics on their server, using whatever scripting language/platform they choose.

Shame they made the initial spec so huge that no-one wants to implement it all.

Considering Flash as a platform, we've been here before with ActiveX or XAML trying to take over the web, and we should be wary of the same sort of experience. Yes, I know ActiveX is not Flash but the aim of both companies is the same.