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I'm an open standards api supporter and open source fan, but I can't help but find irony in a post in Mac forums discussing open vs closed platform support.

Am I the only one that this made chuckle a bit?
 
Add the number of Mobile Safari users to the number of Safari users plus the number of Chrome users and Firefox will still be far, far ahead. My point is that when a browser with a decent market share (remember - it's #2 and significantly above everyone other than IE) puts its weight behind a format, it won't die quickly, even if it does have a lower quality-per-bit than H.264.

I don't know how you came up with those numbers. Apple, Google, Nokia, and Palm all support and use Webkit. Every hardware manufacturer supports H.264. Firefox has very little say. As it is, Firefox is hanging by a thread. They make all of their money from Google. Google has their own web browser and they are going to basically have a OS built around it. Google at one point or another is going to stop giving money to Firefox.
 
How much CPU does the 3D CSS effect suck up? Seems like just more useless eye-candy to me.
 
Google has their own web browser and they are going to basically have a OS built around it. Google at one point or another is going to stop giving money to Firefox.

Good point. Seems that the IT area ebbs and flows with too many options at one point in time, and too few at others. Browsers, Unix versions, Linux distros, and other competing tech widgets seems to go through several cycles before the dust settles.

Html5 will be interesting as to how it affects Chrome, Safari, IE etc. How many browsers does the market need? Apple and MS seem to have their own roads picked out, but the other players are an open question.
 
Safari 4 crashes a lot, period. Both on OS X and on Windows.

The iPhone needs to support Flash. Sop whining and get your heads out of whatever dark place they are. Flash is fine, and there are too many sites that use it.

You're loopy. First off I have very little problem with Safari with the exception of Flash. Secondly, if Flash suck so much on OSX, how do you think it will do with 60omhz processor with 256mb RAM (only on 3GS, rest have 400mhz128mb) running mobile OSX. You'd bitch and moan about how Battery life sucks and Safari crashes 10x/day.

Thanks for completely twisting my words. I never said battery life wasn't important. I never said that processing power wasn't important. I never said that content providers wouldn't switch. Believe it or not, "a matter of months" is a lot of time and money.

The problem is that the people decrying Flash as a waste of battery life and processing power are being beaten by their own arguments. If you don't visit sites that use Flash then you won't have a problem. Wait, you mean to say that MOST of the sites you visit use Flash in some form? So Flash is so widely used that it's difficult to avoid it in casual web-surfing? Wow, that DEFINITELY sounds like a problem. Let's work to get rid of this widely-used format. :rolleyes:

Yes let's get rid of this proprietary format that abuses battery and processes on my computer. Just because many sites have use it doesn't make it a standard and doesn't mean we have to design hardware/software around a plugin. H.264 is already widely used and is being adopted more and more everyday. It is better for video and your computer. It being a better technology alone should warrant widespread use.

The main sites that are guilty of Flash are the brand name websites that just follow what happens in the technological community. The change is already happening.
 
I've been on the Internet as long as there has been one, especially one with video. I seem to remember that when video was becoming popular on the net, Apple's Quicktime was the best codec to use, since Windows-based codec players were buggy.

Macromedia created Flash and it's runtime plugin to give the Internet a much needed element of user interaction aka animation, not at first, considered as a video player. As the popularity of video on the Internet grew, so did the unauthorized downloading of it. That made Flash's plugin popular for adding a little security to images and movie files.

Most people at that time could easily download content in Quicktime and other video players. When content providers, like youtube, saw that Flash could be used to stop the average Joe from stealing their video content, the age of Flash video was born and it become a new form of video codecs.

IMO, it was the ability to throw a monkey wrench into the illegal downloading of video content that made Flash-based video players so popular for displaying video on the Internet. Flash user animations and interactive UI elements were privately popular, but they were discriminative toward the technology of people with disabilities so would have never become universal on important sites. Adobe's site excluded, since they were and still are in denial of this problem with Flash.

I agree with what you said. The problem is now that Flash can no longer protect your content. There are too many ways you can rip that .flv file off the website or even run a screen recording app.
 
It looks nice in this demo, but I fail to see the general usefulness in a web-browser?

Good point...

I actually think PHP/SQL sites are the best (plain ones with no fancy jazz). When I look at such graphics I think... what if I'm not at home using my fibre optic connection?

What if I'm my mum/dad?

What if I'm in a different country where broadband simply isn't as fast...

I'm a BIG fan of low-bandwidth sites... making this standard would only make more high-bandwidth sites that look cool, but take a year to load. Just like flash! Christ... Flash is responsible for SO MANY sites that just don't load.

An example for Aussies (like me although I live in Japan) is Bigpond TV... all flash with Windows Media video's. This site hosts lots of sports broadcasts + Australian TV stuff (the content is very useful while living abroad, but the delivery can drop dead.) Video's just don't play!!! I have Flip4Mac and Flash... all up to date, and video's simply don't play. So I thought... oh... must just be because I'm using a Mac. NOPE... cracked open VMWare and got the same issues with XP and Vista. Opera helps load things a bit better (no idea why.)

So... I don't like big bandwidth hungry sites. I'd much prefer people did everything using PHP, compressed their graphics so that they're insanely small, and rather than using Flash for video's just offered an RSS feed showing the latest video's (or something like that!) Why use flash in conjunction with movies when you don't have to?
 
I agree with what you said. The problem is now that Flash can no longer protect your content. There are too many ways you can rip that .flv file off the website or even run a screen recording app.

Just download a firefox plugin and you'll be 'right mate... all it does is inconvenience those who want to rip movies... ever so slightly :p
 
You're loopy. First off I have very little problem with Safari with the exception of Flash. Secondly, if Flash suck so much on OSX, how do you think it will do with 60omhz processor with 256mb RAM (only on 3GS, rest have 400mhz128mb) running mobile OSX. You'd bitch and moan about how Battery life sucks and Safari crashes 10x/day. ...

Not loopy, just a consumer who wants access to the 80% of video on the web I can't access, and 25% of the sites that I cannot view, or can view only partially.

Oh, and it is only Safari 4 that crashes, both on OS X and on Windows. Firefox seems to manage just fine on both platforms.

On mobile, did you totally miss the post about Android supporting Flash Player 10, or the post about EVERY other mobile platform either supporting Flash, or being close to supporting it. If they can do it, is the iPhone somehow deficient?

And, I was able to run Flash fairly well on my old HTC (WM), so I expect that my new G3 S should be able to do it as well.

And yeah, Flash is not perfect, and maybe another standard will take over in several years, but do you really think until that time comes, the solution is for iPhone user to be left behind, with a blank screen on much of the web?

It's the same BS excuses as with the 1st gen iPhone's lack of 3G, and the fanboys are lapping it up....
 
Silverlight will go nowhere and flash is losing its stranglehold as less websites are using it everyday.

The iPhone will never support Flash. They want to kill it off. It is the reason you see them pushing standards like http live streaming and CSS3

I haven't typically read into these flash/silverlight conversations, but I am sort of curious now. If Apple (or any company) wanted to kill off Flash, why don't they create a user friendly application (like Flash) that allows wannabe/amateur/hobbyists, like me, to create for the format they want us to use.

I'm not programmer, but with Adobe Flash and quite a bit of time, I know I could mimic what was just done in that demo. I'm sure a pro could do it on flash in no time at all.

The photoshop-like interface has made creating with flash a breeze. Is there an application available that has a GUI for CSS3 (or anything)? As I said before, I haven't done much research on it because with Flash, I haven't had a need for it.

I feel Flash has a huge following because anybody can do it. You could hire your buddy down the street to make a Flash advertisement. What is Apple doing to push their desired format?

Thanks for your insight.
 
Apple doesn't care about Flash people!!



George-Bush-doesn-t-care-about-black-people-Kayne-West-says-2.jpg
 
Not loopy, just a consumer who wants access to the 80% of video on the web I can't access, and 25% of the sites that I cannot view, or can view only partially.

Oh, and it is only Safari 4 that crashes, both on OS X and on Windows. Firefox seems to manage just fine on both platforms.

On mobile, did you totally miss the post about Android supporting Flash Player 10, or the post about EVERY other mobile platform either supporting Flash, or being close to supporting it. If they can do it, is the iPhone somehow deficient?

And, I was able to run Flash fairly well on my old HTC (WM), so I expect that my new G3 S should be able to do it as well.

And yeah, Flash is not perfect, and maybe another standard will take over in several years, but do you really think until that time comes, the solution is for iPhone user to be left behind, with a blank screen on much of the web?

It's the same BS excuses as with the 1st gen iPhone's lack of 3G, and the fanboys are lapping it up....

Look at the results. Firefox barely handles Flash any better. I realize that you want to watch your videos as do I. Just because these other phones will support it, does not mean it will work well. Those other phones are looking for any competetive advantage against the iPhone. Flash will kill your battery life and hurt multitasking on those phones. Also Flash is not something that was built to scale well so you'll notice a lot of inconsistencies between the desktop and the mobile version.

I'd rather Apple use their leverage to change the web with the iPhone. If they used Flash, it would seriously hurt adoption of h.264. As it is now, YouTube and Dailymotion have moved to h.264 because of the iPhone. MLB AT Bat is using http streaming on their app because of the iPhone. Hulu will be coming out with an app that uses h.264 because of the iPhone.


Just download a firefox plugin and you'll be 'right mate... all it does is inconvenience those who want to rip movies... ever so slightly :p
LOL, DownloadHelper. The only reason I use Firefox.:D
 
I'd rather video providers pushed non-Flash, than Apple pushed Flash support...

Really?! And I'd rather that I was richer than Bill Gates, and don't have to pay taxes, and live forever....

Apple must get Flash on the iPhone. And it will, after people kick and scream, in v.4.0 or something. Just like it did with copy/paste, after two years of pathetic excuses.

You wanna watch Hulu? Take a look at this video, and you'll see where the idea for the next ad for Android, or WM6.5, is coming from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbQyrC-mhDA
 
I agree with what you said. The problem is now that Flash can no longer protect your content. There are too many ways you can rip that .flv file off the website or even run a screen recording app.

Yes security is no longer relevant. I use a screen capture program to get youtube videos, and ironically, it uses a H264 codec as default with video quality and better audio. As I see it, heavy Flash-based web sites are no longer relevant either, particularly since Flash still doesn't play well with many assistive technologies.

Add the above compatibility reason to the mobile platforms concern with battery life and the drain on system sources, and it's time for technology to replace the Flash player in the mobile device arena. It still has a place on the desktop as a runtime editor for easy development of standalone programs.
 
How much CPU does the 3D CSS effect suck up? Seems like just more useless eye-candy to me.

Are you kidding? Anyone that doesn't see the usefulness in this is obviously not a web designer/developer. How many people have their own portfolios, blogs, etc. with photo sharing and the sort? Not to mention the brutal wave of social network sites taking over the world. Having this in the browser without additional and the latest plugins is epic. Yes, I know that Flash is in every browser and almost native with every machine but this is a nice step in a different direction. I won't lie, I like Flash and use it often but being able to do something like this in your HTML document without Flash is sweet.

I was going crazy on that site and the CPU usage spiked to 24% at the very most and I have 10 other tabs open. If I open two tabs in FF, it uses around the same amount of memory as Safari sometimes more. I've been an avid FF user, but I think the improvements in Safari are going to push it ahead even further.
 
Not loopy, just a consumer who wants access to the 80% of video on the web I can't access, and 25% of the sites that I cannot view, or can view only partially.

Where'd you get those figures from?
80% of video uses flash?

I'd say 80% of video is either YouTube (which uses higher quality h. 264 if you're on an iPod/iPhone) or dodgy video's that have been uploaded to some guy's ftp in bulk from his camera or something (which use MPEG 2/MPEG 4 or something like that). Oh... or Windows Media format (which I don't see iPhone users crying out for.)

I'd actually say that around 80% of "flash video" is Windows Media files, protected using Flash... so even if there was an iPhone version of flash, they wouldn't work because there's no Windows Media support.

Not that I care... most good sites that I frequent seem to say "if you're on a Mac... GO HERE!! If you're on a PC... go here!!"

If sites use heavy flash and lots of WIndows Media Video files then the only reason I will frequent them is through necessity. I know of no such sites that I currently frequent due to necessity (except Bigpond Video which I mentioned above... while it uses the popular flash/windows media video pairing... it runs like garbage on Mac & Windows PC's... so... not sure why a port of flash would make it any better on the iPhone... it's just poorly designed.)
 
I haven't typically read into these flash/silverlight conversations, but I am sort of curious now. If Apple (or any company) wanted to kill off Flash, why don't they create a user friendly application (like Flash) that allows wannabe/amateur/hobbyists, like me, to create for the format they want us to use.

I'm not programmer, but with Adobe Flash and quite a bit of time, I know I could mimic what was just done in that demo. I'm sure a pro could do it on flash in no time at all.

The photoshop-like interface has made creating with flash a breeze. Is there an application available that has a GUI for CSS3 (or anything)? As I said before, I haven't done much research on it because with Flash, I haven't had a need for it.

I feel Flash has a huge following because anybody can do it. You could hire your buddy down the street to make a Flash advertisement. What is Apple doing to push their desired format?

Thanks for your insight.

I recommend that you learn some HTML, Javascript, and then CSS/3. It's pretty easy to learn all three and it's better to know it than depending on Flash. You can find help for this anywhere on the Internet. If you want to get a little view of what CSS3 is about check
http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Get_Started_with_CSS_3
http://m.sixrevisions.com/css/20-useful-resources-for-learning-about-css3/

Part of the problem with Flash is that most don't know how to use it and it leads to poor websites that abuses a computer.
 
That looks superb but I imagine such a website (since I can't test it right now) is going to require one fast connection.
Don't get me wrong I love all this tech but I'd be happy if they considered the bulk of internet users with less than adequate connections and pushed for better compression... But that's another story for another day.
 
Really?! And I'd rather that I was richer than Bill Gates, and don't have to pay taxes, and live forever....

Apple must get Flash on the iPhone. And it will, after people kick and scream, in v.4.0 or something. Just like it did with copy/paste, after two years of pathetic excuses.

You wanna watch Hulu? Take a look at this video, and you'll see where the idea for the next ad for Android, or WM6.5, is coming from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbQyrC-mhDA

Instead of the 10 taps for the video to start and 15fps video, I'd rather have this: http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/17/rumor-hulus-iphone-app-looks-sharp-due-soon/
 
Thats amazing. I wish Microsoft would use the power of the GPU for something usefull in Windows 7.
 
H.264 is already widely used and is being adopted more and more everyday. It is better for video and your computer. It being a better technology alone should warrant widespread use.

I agree. Being a better technology SHOULD warrant its widespread use. And every man, woman, and child SHOULD have a roof over their head and food on their table. But as we all know, there's often a difference between what SHOULD be and what really is.

The fact is that the internet is permeated with Flash, whether it SHOULD be or not. So knowing that a huge number of sites use Flash, my alternatives are to fight the whole of the internet, one forum at a time, or...install a plug-in and deal with it. For me, the choice is easy. Apple has chosen option A, and I honestly hope they win. The problem is that until a winner is selected, there are millions of iPhone users, myself included, who are incapable of viewing content on MOST websites.
 
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