The video only proves that loading additional content takes additional time. Turn off the images, and the loading will be even faster. Turn off javascript and performance will be even better! News?
Being able to play web games on mobile, is really a cool thing. Turn on the 'on-demand' mode and Flash wont load/play content by default.Compared to how poorly iphone handles even basic javascript effects, the flash experience on Android is excellent.
I really appreciate the effort that has gone into building the demo. But i disagree with you.It is extremely easy for developers to provide fallback content when Flash is not availble.
As a developer, here is why i(personally) wont choose CSS3 animations for building similar content anytime in the near future:
-Works only on webkit browsers
-Performance is really bad on Chrome. Compared to most of the heavy weight flash content out there, this is just a very basic animation.
"It is extremely easy for developers to provide fallback content when Flash is not availble."
Really? How? I was an actionscripter for years before I dropped Flash from my arsenal and worked at a game company that would've loved to provide their games on systems without Flash.
Flash Player is not completely open sourced, because of H264( the patent pool of which, Apple is part of). Adobe pays the licensing fee for using H264 . Adobe has released enough code and specification to let anyone build a flash playing software. Completely open sourcing Flash Player wont be possible unless H264 is open and patent free.
So if Apple really wants, they can build their own Flash Player without Adobe's approval.
I will respectfully disagree here. Yes, you are totally correct that Adobe has released the specification for a lot of things. However, Adobe is still causing problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC#RTMP_SWF_Verification. Right there we see that Abobe's Flash uses RTMP to stream video and servers can implement a simple ping request that the client has to return. This ping request is considered by Adobe to be a copy protection mechanism (similar to me putting a note on my unlocked door saying "please don't steal my stuff" I guess) and they have gone after people who have implemented it (more info: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/24/iplayer_xbmc_adobe_s...).
Flash is mostly open. There are still portions that Adobe isn't so open about. Plus, when something is created and maintained and extended by a single company, it's very different from something like HTML. I mean, Adobe can implement something, launch a working player and then tell people about the specification for it. At which point, alternative implementations are always behind. And there's a part of me that says that any situation where one company is essentially 100% of the market can't be open. Openness means coding to a spec and making sure that your stuff works on multiple implementations. If I'm a Flash developer, I'm not going to code to a spec - I'm going to code to the Flash player since it's the only implementation of the spec that people really use.
So, Adobe does restrict certain things, there isn't an open development of the spec ala HTML, they haven't open sourced the vast majority of the Flash player that doesn't rely on licensed technologies (and whose open-sourcing would greatly help). . . Adobe likes being the only game in town for Flash.
Frankly, even when you look at the WebM stuff, you can see that Google is trying to make it a place for more than just Google. The WebM project website (http://www.webmproject.org/) is actually copyrighted by the WebM Project - not Google! There's no Google branding - Google is barely mentioned more than other companies like Opera. That's open. I'm guessing Google would love contributions and enhancements from non-Google people. That's different from Adobe. That's a community process. And it is different.
Flash still feels very much under Adobe's thumb. No, it isn't closed like many technologies (and that's a positive thing), but there's a meaningful difference between the openness of Flash and the openness of HTML and other truly open technologies.
So, I tend hate comments on the web because people like to "win" and are often disrespectful of others and I wanted to reply to you because I think you added something valuable to the thread (and that we don't acknowledge that enough online).
Often there are more than one ways of looking at things (see the quote in my HN profile). Flash can totally be considered open and just no one has put the effort in like Adobe has to make a good player - and you're right that Apple could make a mostly complete Flash player if they were willing to put the effort in. But, from my perspective, it isn't as open as I'd like. Adobe/Macromedia did stymie alternative players for many years - even including clauses in their players EULA that you couldn't work on an alternative implementation. Those days are gone and Adobe publishes the Flash spec (which is an awesome step that we should acknowledge no matter where we stand on the Flash debate). However, there are always little things like RTMP which have edge cases that aren't as open. And my personal opinion is that open technologies don't come from one company or person and can be improved by everyone.
Even if a technology comes from one person or company, that can be the catalyst of a broader community that works on it. Take WebM. Google is the company behind VP8. However, as the WebM site says, "A key factor in the web’s success is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP are open for anyone to implement and improve." That implies that Google is expecting others to contribute and for it to become like HTML or JavaScript or Canvas. That's exciting for me (compared to Flash where improvements just come down from on high). And, to be honest, if Adobe were totally committed to openness, they could try to get the WC3 involved in Flash. There are standards bodies that could take over Flash or they could start a project like WebM with Google, Mozilla, and others to openly implement Flash (with H.264 and other parts as compile-time options to be included). Yeah, it's easy for me to say that sitting here in the cheap seats, but Adobe could put in more of an effort. Even Microsoft has been helping the Moonlight folk to implement Silverlight.
Flash being as open as it is, is important and I know that I've written it off a little too much in the past. I don't want to take that away from you, Adobe, or anyone. However, WebM looks like it'll be more open - that I could contribute (if I had the knowledge and skill). But even not having the skill, I know that everyone from Google to Mozilla to Adobe itself can help make it awesome! The open nature of the web has just been awesome. It's really exciting to me in a way that Flash just isn't. Yes, often times there's bureaucracy and it's annoying to get new things adopted and coordinated - and maybe Flash offers a nice single-source that can push the boundaries of new technologies without worrying about multiple implementations.
There's no reason that HTML5 video and WebM mean that Flash has to die or that it has no place on the web. Maybe Flash can be thought of as a kind of proving ground for things that won't be implemented by multiple vendors until they've proven themselves - kinda like video (Adobe implements video, it catches on like wildfire, the W3C starts incorporating video into the HTML spec using a more community process). I don't want to sound like an Adobe-hating person who thinks they're just evil even if I prefer HTML5 over Flash. However, for the long term, I think that open, community involved technologies are better and the direction we should be going in rather than a single-sourced technology even if the spec is being published for it.
Fine, maybe it doesn't need to die. All it needed was some healthy competition from companies dumping resources into HTML5. It was starting to get a bit uppity, going unchecked for so long. And with any luck, perhaps Adobe could be pressured into releasing the runtime as a standalone open source project to which they are the major contributor, like the WebM organization for Google, which would be the best possible outcome.
Pledging support for VP8 doesnt mean they will stop supporting H 264. Will be a disastrous business move to do so with the current market penetration H264 has.
Adobe supports several video codecs in the player (including VP6). Because of the kind of reach H264 already has,I dont think Adobe will ever ditch H 264 for VP8(if that is what you mean by 'VP8 based Flash'). They already support VP6, and as you might have already heard, will support VP8 in the future.
When coding a flash app, keep all interface elements externally as an imagemap(an external png with UI elements in it and an xml which defines the coordinates of ui elements in the png). Then reskinning would require only updating the imagemap rather than recompiling the swf.
By hiding the flash core ,basically they are exposing the flash apis to javascript .This would be helpful for frontend developers who are not comfortable with flash, but want to build a decent mp3 player .Other than the advantage for developers , i dont really think there is any functional advantage for the end user.
(1)You can build complete Flash applications using freely available Flex SDK & command line compiler. You dont have to stick on to Adobe Flash IDE or Adobe Flex Builder.
(2)'Cheesyness' depends a lot on how you implement fonts and how how much of a professional designer you are. Its is a function of your imagination and professionalism. See kontain.com
(3) Just like any other language, workflow tediousness depends on the kind of IDE you use. If you are of the developer kind and tries to use Flash IDE's timeline based designer workflow, it will be a disastrous experience.
Having said that , i wish Adobe open-sourced the Player.
Why would you use flash for something like kontain.com? It feels so weird. Nearly everything you see there could easily be done with html. Doing it in Flash only means that you are going to create a lot of inconsistencies with the way everything normally works. Strange context menus. Strange selection colors. Strange click behaviours. And so on.
Why would you want that? That’s crazy. Flash should be used as a last ressort. Video. Games. That sort of stuff. Use friggin’ html for the rest and do not confuse your users.
Yikes. Whoever created kontain.com did not know what they were doing. Not only does it break some basic browser functionality, like opening a link in new tab, but because it is all flash it is also painfully slow. It takes 9 seconds to display the first page (which is very simple and would render in under 2 seconds if it was done in HTML) and 14 seconds for every photo page. I bet it also doesn't play well with mobile browsers.
Using this site as an example of "professionalism" is just wrong.
Contain seems slower than javascript based sites. Any idea why? If you leave the flash UI framework and do it all yourself is there a big performance hit?
A possible (and most common) reason for slowness is that the developers might have coded it such that all UI graphical assets required sitewide (buttons,icons and other graphical assets) are preloaded before the actual content starts rendering (rather than loading graphical assets on an, as-it-is-required basis).
Using generic flash frameworks and components definitely increase the file size as they usually come with a lot of functionality (thus code) and legacy code that you might never really use.So if time allows,building your own components is highly recommended to keep file sizes low.
It is possible to build real fast sites with Flash. As an example, if a page contains 20 small thumbnail images (means 20 separate http calls in an html environment), it is possible to load a single zip file with all 20 thumbs into flash and unzip and render it at runtime.Thus reducing the number of http calls from 20 to 1.
As lowdown commented above, the performance of a Flash app depends on how the developer approaches the problem.
As many other commenters pointed out, a 100% Flash based environment is definitely not a great choice for a social network site like Kontain. But the site's neat design and rendering is a great example to show that Flash sites neednt always be cheesy or flashy or flexy.
Computer education is compulsory as part of curriculum in high schools here in Kerala(south Indian state).Every state controlled schools, no matter how remote, does have computers and trained teachers.
The government has so many programs (akshaya.net) in place to make sure that everyone(not just students) get access to good education. Education is one thing the Kerala government has done right.
Having said that , i dont really know the situation in other parts of India.The point is , its not as bad as you think.
Every country has urban and rural areas. So maybe nebula has seen only the slums :P and not seen places like Bangalore or Pune or elsewhere.
Anyway, OLPC-India targets govt schools. And if given to the state of Kerala, I would fully support it. Kerala is the state with the highest literacy rate (sometime back I heard it's 98%. so their state govt seem to be efficient in the area of education). There are govts that are corrupt. And I guess some of those OLPCs will go to corrupt bureaucrat's kids. But still a part of it would reach those for whom it was bought - the govt school kids. Many schools don't have blackboards? The situation won't get worse anyway. Think of it as money being used for a purpose rather than going to another bureaucrat's pocket in lump some.
P.S: Even if one of those who got an OLPC, gets bitten by the geek-bug / entrepreneur-bug. Turns out to do something for his locality/surrounding sometime later. I would say the OLPC has done it's job :)
FTA: “Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect.
Definitely not banned.