Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Officially Debuts With New Privacy Controls

[KnightWRX]

Now carefully read your own post and see the problem. Flash in Chrome is maintained by Google, not by Adobe.

Hum, no it's not. Google only packages and ships Adobe's implementation of Flash. They don't actually maintain a Flash clone (that would require tons of ressources on their side, just look at how far Gnash is along and they have been at it for years).

What Chrome shipped yesterday was the genuine Adobe 10.3 version of Flash. Now carefully step away from the keyboard.

I agree.

Yes Flash is buggy and can grind the newest Mac to a halt

But then again, I can grind the newest Mac to a halt using only a Bash script. Or an Objective-C binary. Or HTML5's Canvas. Or...

Flash isn't "buggy". Some developers like to push the plug-in to its limits and Apple isn't particularly friendly about providing the proper APIs on every Mac.

Let's face it, Apple released the VDA framework in April 2010. That framework, which Flash uses to decode H.264 in hardware, is only supported on the 9400m, the 9600m and the 320m.

Uh... most of Apple's current line-up is based on ATI or Intel GPUs. Hello ? Apple ? Anyone home ? How about extending the framework to support more GPUs ?

 

[caspersoong]

They are taking too long to make Flash usable. I am using a PC and I am also using the clicktoflash extension because Flash sucks IMO. The only time I use flash is at Youtube.

 

[erzhik]

People can complain all they want, but fact remains that we still need flash. Maybe not because we want it, but because websites require it. So people, stop your bitching.

 

[Slix]

Nope, I still don't use Flash.

 

[megsandbytes]

People can complain all they want, but fact remains that we still need flash. Maybe not because we want it, but because websites require it. So people, stop your bitching.

I personally don't mind flash, as long as it's used properly and not overdone and over the top in your face. A few flash elements here and there are not a big deal really.

 

[macUser2007]

...

Now imagine how bad it is on mobile devices.

While some are imagining, some of us are running Flash on our mobiles.

Again, it runs perfectly fine on my Nexus S. I don't even think about it, I just browse whatever I want. Flash just runs. That's why I dumped my iPhone.

 

[dyn]

Hum, no it's not. Google only packages and ships Adobe's implementation of Flash. They don't actually maintain a Flash clone (that would require tons of ressources on their side, just look at how far Gnash is along and they have been at it for years).

What Chrome shipped yesterday was the genuine Adobe 10.3 version of Flash. Now carefully step away from the keyboard.

You forgot to comment on the part where Chrome was running a patched Flash version when there was a security bug before Adobe even got around to fix it... Apparently they do have a ton of resources

Gnash is not a good example. Gnash is an open source Flash player. This causing licensing and patent problems because most OS licenses do not allow for things like that. Flash is a proprietary piece of software that is closed source. The Gnash developers therefore have to reverse engineer Flash which is not something that can be done quite easily because of all sort of regulations. Most OS projects that use reverse engineering have a separated group that is only allowed to do reverse engineering and document their findings. They are not allowed to work at code since that is forbidden by US law (and maybe some others as well). If you have to reverse engineer stuff it will take quite a while. If you have to build code from documentation and make it work properly it is going to take you again a lot of time. The way that project is setup it requires a lot of developers. Google on the other hand is big enough to make some agreements with Adobe, especially since they own YouTube which uses it extensively. Google has the enormous amount of engineers, the money and the relationship that it takes for something like this. Quite a big difference.

Flash isn't "buggy". Some developers like to push the plug-in to its limits and Apple isn't particularly friendly about providing the proper APIs on every Mac.

In that case it is just very easy to push Flash to its limits A lot of people have a lot of problems with Flash regarding stability and performance (which somewhat has a relation to stability). It is not an Apple/Mac issue since the platform doesn't matter (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. users report the exact same issues so it is definitely not the platform). But, Adobe woke up and is doing some great jobs on Flash 10. It is not that bad any more.

Apart from that you don't need an API, you can do without one. Adobe did so on Windows.

Uh... most of Apple's current line-up is based on ATI or Intel GPUs. Hello ? Apple ? Anyone home ? How about extending the framework to support more GPUs ?

Or updating the documentation if they did so already (in my experience in more than 90% of the cases it is the documentation that is outdated/incomplete, not the actual implementation so I'm putting my money on this one).

 

[KnightWRX]

You forgot to comment on the part where Chrome was running a patched Flash version when there was a security bug before Adobe even got around to fix it... Apparently they do have a ton of resources

And I doubt that shipping 10.3 at the same time Adobe did means they shipped anything else than vanilla Flash.

And for that "Google shipped a patched" Flash story, I think you're misunderstanding. They simply shipped Adobe's fix first :

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chrome-Security-Update-Patches-Flash-Player-Plug-In-195193.shtml

Google ships vanilla Flash.

In that case it is just very easy to push Flash to its limits A lot of people have a lot of problems with Flash regarding stability and performance (which somewhat has a relation to stability).

It's also very easy to push Bash to its limits. Seriously. Copy paste this in terminal :

 :(){ :|:& };:

It's easy to push anything to its limits. I played Flash games for hours and hours on Newgrounds back in like 2001. On a P2-333. On Linux. It worked.

Why do people have so much problems in 2011 on dual core processors running about 1000x more instructions per second ? I simply don't get it. Oh right, the "fans spin up". Yeah, such an issue of stability, fans spinning up...

Apart from that you don't need an API, you can do without one. Adobe did so on Windows.

Hum, no you can't do without one. Not for hardware access which is required for on GPU h.264 decoding. Modern operating systems do not let you access the hardware directly, you will need to talk to the driver, which will need to expose an API.

Now, if you're a good vendor, you'll do the work of making sure your driver exposed APIs are all covered by one standard API for the developers. Windows did that. Apple did, in 2010 with VDA. Before then, you had to use the QTKit framework, but that requires that you use a QT control and you have no control over doing overlays on your video, which Flash needs.

You have just showed us you don't really know about programming on modern operating system, just bow out of this part of the conversation please.

Or updating the documentation if they did so already (in my experience in more than 90% of the cases it is the documentation that is outdated/incomplete, not the actual implementation so I'm putting my money on this one).

Updating the documentation is the easiest bit. There's 1 paragraph to modify. The fact it even took Apple this long to release VDA shows me they don't care about it and I wouldn't put my money in the fact it has been updated.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Updating the documentation is the easiest bit. There's 1 paragraph to modify. The fact it even took Apple this long to release VDA shows me they don't care about it and I wouldn't put my money in the fact it has been updated.

Apple haven't really cared about the technical improvements of Mac OSX for a long time beyond LLVM and Clang. Most end users couldn't really care if there's HW video decoding, GLSL1.3 (more nerd complaints here) so Apple doesn't really bother. What earns Apple money is what users see and experience on the platform and development is catered as such.

 

[KnightWRX]

Most end users couldn't really care if there's HW video decoding

I'd say most Mac users that whine about Flash are whining about lack of hardware video decoding. They just don't say "Hey, why won't this thing support hardware video decoding!", instead it looks like "Hey, Flash is so unstable, it makes the Fans Spin Up™ on my Mac" (as if fans spinning at full RPM are an issue of stability...).

 

[MorphingDragon]

I'd say most Mac users that whine about Flash are whining about lack of hardware video decoding. They just don't say "Hey, why won't this thing support hardware video decoding!", instead it looks like "Hey, Flash is so unstable, it makes the Fans Spin Up™ on my Mac" (as if fans spinning at full RPM are an issue of stability...).

Well that's just because its what they perceive. They don't care if it has hardware decoding or not, they just want flash to not suck. HW decoding is just a way to meet that realization of a more efficient Flash, it could* be achieved in other ways.

* A highly qualified could

 

[montycat]

The biggest security update would be removal of Flash from your system.

There are several work related websites that require me to have Adobe Flash installed. I never have issues with Flash and dont really care. I just want to enjoy the internet and have it work.

 

[roadbloc]

I fail to see why everyone hates flash. I've yet to have a problem.

 

[Repo]

I fail to see why everyone hates flash. I've yet to have a problem.

Same here.

 

[mack pro]

I use Flash, too. On my Mac. I'm enjoying the entire internet as well . . . using a ****** video standard. It's there so we're forced to put up with it.

Now imagine how bad it is on mobile devices.

Works great on my mobile device maybe the problem is your hardware and not Flash.

 

[Daveoc64]

You have just showed us you don't really know about programming on modern operating system, just bow out of this part of the conversation please.

Your posts are spot on.

 

[Michael383]

I fail to see why everyone hates flash. I've yet to have a problem.

No problems here either. Flash works fine on my 2011 15" MBP.

 

[MrNomNoms]

Everything is working really nicely here; low CPU utilisation when playing back videos on YouTube/Vimeo/Fora.tv, love the new preferences panel feature where Flash can keep itself updated rather than me hunting down updates or Apple having to bundle updates.

As for those complaining about Flash, if you're having problems with it how about giving some more information besides "it sucks" - assuming you actually want help rather than a justification to post pointless complaints on this forum.

 

[KnightWRX]

As for those complaining about Flash, if you're having problems with it how about giving some more information besides "it sucks" - assuming you actually want help rather than a justification to post pointless complaints on this forum.

Flash sucks because it is a proprietary (albeit, now with 95% complete published specification) platform that does not follow standard Web conventions. It is not available for every platform and device out there in a consistent way that means it limits the ability of users to view web sites developed for it. It is under the control of a single entity and as such creates a sort of vendor lock-in for its users.

Solaris on sparc ? Nope. Linux is supported right ? Where are the MIPS, PA-RISC, PPC, ARM, Alpha versions of the plug-in ? Oh, that's right, Linux x86 is supported only. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. HP-UX. AIX. Where are those ? iOS ? Symbian ? PS3 ? Xbox ? (actually, no sure about those last 2, never actually used my PS3 to surf the web). Of course there's Gnash, but like Mono, Gnash developers have to deal with the 95% complete specification and catch a moving target that has a 10 year head start.

Next on the list : I'm on a Flash site right now, car manufacturer. In one of their Flash controls, I see some text I want to cut and paste into a search engine. How do I do that ? I can't select it. Right-clicking lets me zoom in or out and see some settings... Can I see the source at least to what is rendered on the page to grab the text there ? No, "Show Source" only shows me and embed tag with a .swf reference.

Flash also sucks because it brought vector graphics to the web to Microsoft. Since Microsoft loves "proprietary" and "vendor lock-in", they then proceeded to ignore SVG for close to 10 years. Linux browsers (KHTML, which became Webkit) supported it. Mozilla browsers supported it. Opera supports it. Microsoft ignored it. Since back in the early 00s, the Web was basically a Microsoft thing thanks to their killing of Netscape, SVG never amounted to anything. Let's hope Canvas brings it back as vector graphics are useful for some designs.

Finally, it used to be that you had to drop cash to write Flash content. A lot of cash. Now less so with the Flex SDK (free and plugs into Eclipse, also free), but still, the real tools are paid for. That creates a barrier to entry to most developers who want to learn the technology and create content with it.

That is why Flash sucks. Not because of the quality of the actual plugin. Of course, leave it to Mac users to not understand the issues behind the technology. Adobe has addressed some of these issues with the spec release and the free Flex SDK/Air stuff. But it still remains that Flash is very much an undesired bastard child on the open web, which should be free, open and vendor agnostic in all of its aspects.

 

[UTclassof89]

Flash sucks because Microsoft ignored SVG??

And because some developers elect not to leverage capabilities of the tool (make text selectable)??

And because you have to pay for the premiere authoring tool (like you do with image, HTML, and video editors)??

interesting logic.

 

[KnightWRX]

Flash sucks because Microsoft ignored SVG??

And because some developers elect not to leverage capabilities of the tool (make text selectable)??

And because you have to pay for the premiere authoring tool (like you do with image, HTML, and video editors)??

interesting logic.

Not everyone values openess and vendor diversity yet compatibility I guess. But yes, that's the gist of it. Tim Berners-Lee's Web was open to everyone. Flash, IE extensions, ActiveX, SilverLight, QuickTime Interactive are all attempts at closing it down and locking it to single vendors.

It might be interesting logic to you, until you encounter a device/piece of software you like to use that is being artificially locked out of some portions of it. You have to have used Linux as a desktop OS to understand the value of openness and interoperability. Not everyone wants to be locked down.

And wait, the premiere authoring tool for HTML is free. It's your plain old text editor. And there's tons of free image/video editors out there that "do the job". With Flash, it used to be the only option was to pay.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Flash sucks because Microsoft ignored SVG??

Thats not what he said, read the paragraph again.

And because some developers elect not to leverage capabilities of the tool (make text selectable)??.

Quite frankly the developer shouldn't even have to leverage the tool. This is what intelligent default settings are for. In most UI development tools labels and text boxes are highlightable by default, Flash is the only exception I can think of.

And because you have to pay for the premiere authoring tool (like you do with image, HTML, and video editors)??

Well when the only properly supported free alternative is eclipse, the choice is pretty ******. I loathe to do Java work in Eclipse, I'd hate to try use it for something like ActionScript.

 

[UTclassof89]

I disagree that browser plug-ins are an attempt to "lock down" or "close off" anything. Browsers were deliberately built with open-ended architecture exactly so vendors could add functionality w/o waiting for W3C to add to the official HTML/CSS spec. They allow anyone to add that capability to their browser of choice immediately, and for free.

It's a good thing.

Browsers w/o open-ended architecture (Mobile Safari) aren't "open".

(and no, the premiere authoring tool for HTML is not a text editor! Most people use Dreamweaver due to the many productivity features that text editors lack)

 

[KnightWRX]

I disagree that browser plug-ins are an attempt to "lock down" or "close off" anything.

Then you don't understand the issues behind these plug-ins. Read my post again and read up on vendor lock-in. That you are for "vendor lock-in" and against the idea set forth by Tim Berners-Lee is one thing. At least try to tell why this is a good thing. No, getting a few toy widgets quicker isn't a good argument. If your toy widget is good enough, it will be standardised and a specification will be written, which will then be vendor agnostic and all implementations will be interoperable, giving more people the option of using it.

Browsers being "open" because of plug-in architectures doesn't matter. What matters is the web itself being opened. Plug-ins from vendors are an attempt to lock down the web.

Also, one thing I missed :

Accessibility. Browsers have built-in functions and HTML can be interpreted in ways to make it accessible to disabled people who might not have a graphical screen to read off of. It is a completely text based format. Flash. Not so much.

(and no, the premiere authoring tool for HTML is not a text editor! Most people use Dreamweaver due to the many productivity features that text editors lack)

I fear for the future generation of web designers. The generic text editor is the absolutely most powerful/flexible HTML/CSS editor there is. And the point was you have to turn to Adobe for Flash tools. Some now happen to be free, if not ideal. For HTML/CSS ? Any vendor out there can make tools, free or paid for. All these tools will create content compatible with browsers as long as the tool, the developer and the browser all adhere to the same specification.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I disagree that browser plug-ins are an attempt to "lock down" or "close off" anything. Browsers were deliberately built with open-ended architecture exactly so vendors could add functionality w/o waiting for W3C to add to the official HTML/CSS spec. They allow anyone to add that capability to their browser of choice immediately, and for free.

They tried to make their proprietary solution the only way to experience the internet through these plugins. Instead of using a normal object imbed an letting the OS handle playing of media, we had this proprietary way of doing everything, and it always sucked. Flash had a little wriggle room because what it did was unmatched at the time. Thats not really true anymore.

Browsers w/o open-ended architecture (Mobile Safari) aren't "open".

Irrelevant.