Flash Player for Linux will only be available via Google Chrome's Pepper API

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22. February 2012, 11:07:22

Flash Player for Linux will only be available via Google Chrome's Pepper API

On the Adobe blog there an interesting post

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html


For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.



I dont like the idea of being stuck with Flash Player 11.2 for 5 years...

How will Opera handle this situation?

22. February 2012, 12:39:24

dleonx

Posts: 125

In 5 or more years probably (almost sure) Flash won't be web multimedia standard anymore. HTML5 is the future web multimedia who also happen to be cross Operating System. I think I ever read somewhere; even YouTube is looking forward for that. So we need no worry about getting any Flash plug-in anymore or any other plugins (except Java?). And what do you know? Opera browser also seems moving to that direction.
At least that is my rough knowledges. whistle

22. February 2012, 18:05:44

Umm... 11.2 is released shortly. 5 years is long time and flash wont be phased out just like that. Until then everyone else would have improvements and we'll be stuck with this crap.

22. February 2012, 18:31:11

Licaon

Posts: 17

Originally posted by dleonx:

So we need no worry about getting any Flash plug-in anymore or any other plugins (except Java?). And what do you know? Opera browser also seems moving to that direction.


Yeah, don't worry, HTML5 video still does not work in Opera, maybe in 5 years, right?

22. February 2012, 18:58:42

dleonx

Posts: 125

Originally posted by Licaon:


Yeah, don't worry, HTML5 video still does not work in Opera, maybe in 5 years, right?



Hard to argue with that.bigsmile But who know?
That code "PPAPI" mentioned in the link OP gave, seems open source. Probably it can be integrated to other browser too (hint).

23. February 2012, 10:07:50

FeyFre

Posts: 127

That code "PPAPI" mentioned in the link OP gave, seems open source. Probably it can be integrated to other browser too (hint).

I am completely against this solution. There is NPAPI, and it does work. There are a dozens of NPAPI-plugins and they work on *NIX. PPAPI is declared as very experimental by developers. The only one acceptable IMHO is to write external NPAPI-PPAPI converter(layer) for one particular family of platforms(nix).
Those who desires to introduce PPAPI into Opera: if you have time to waste this does not mean Opera Development Team have such time.

23. February 2012, 13:14:53

Opera Software

ruario

Posts: 977

Originally posted by Licaon:

Yeah, don't worry, HTML5 video still does not work in Opera, maybe in 5 years, right?



I use it daily. What is the problem for you with HTML5 Video?

23. February 2012, 13:17:45

Opera Software

ruario

Posts: 977

Having PPAPI support is not the only issue:

Originally posted by Adobe:

...the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.

23. February 2012, 15:59:56

dleonx

Posts: 125

Originally posted by ruario:


I use it daily. What is the problem for you with HTML5 Video?



Confirm! Arch Linux Official Opera here. I also have no problem lurking at html5 page. yes
Other two major browser also has no problem. whistle


23. February 2012, 22:21:30 (edited)

Licaon

Posts: 17

/LE: hey Ruario the Opera *nix guru himself bothered to answer me, hope the tone of my post is ok, just testing these made me a bit sad

For one thing I did not post just in spite or something, I'm rather tired of Flash and every few months I join the Youtube HTML5 beta ( with or without WebM helper extensions from addons.opera ) just in the hope that I can use it instead without the need to threaten the browser stability, without juggling between hardware acceleration in Opera and/or /etc/adobe, between 32 and 64bit versions or between 5 versions of the plugins from the last year or so, just to find the right combination ( ATM using 32bit version dated 2011-11-01 no hardware acc. but on 64bit Opera w/ or w/o OpenGL backend, KDE4.7.4, no composition ) that would allow me eventually to see 1 video at a time, 'cause opening another tab with some Flash content would yield in all the other tabs a big grey square instead of any Flash content. I also retest all these on almost every new Opera alpha/beta release and on every new nVidia closed source video driver just in case Opera devs or nVidia devs just by some miracle have fixed all the Flash issues. On the other hand i try to trick the faults by hitting download and closing the tab or remembering to start Minitube for instance.

Ok, now to HTML5, first, on other sites than YouTube one rarely sees a HTML5 <video>, but they do not play, I saw a couple but only because NoScripts was blocking some domain that was hosting the Flash player, once unblocked the video worked but using Flash. Next, the pink elephant in the room, Youtube, has this HTML5 test drive thinghie that one enables, it should play WebM videos but not h.264 ( it says so right there for me at least ). I just enter the test drive, I search for WebM content, I play it, I check so it's clearly WebM HtML5 and not Flash.

What do I get ?
1. Stutter.... a lot, ok, I'll leave it to buffer ( at least it buffers now: http://my.opera.com/Community/forums/topic.dml?id=907181 ) it helps a bit
2. The position circle is 3 pixels ahead of the red played bar... meh... not an issue
3. Pausing... sometimes it works right away, but sometimes it still plays 4 more seconds before actually pausing, this has to do with the bad responsiveness of the video controls i guess
4. Fullscreen, should I even mention this? Ok, i'll even hit F11, it's ok, now every control thingie of the video crawls down at a sloooooow pace, good luck trying to pause, you'll scream away trying to adjust the tricky volume slider that keeps appearing and dissappearing every 3 seconds.
5. Video stops playing if I don't move the mouse... not clear enough? i have to move the mouse or else the video stops... it's a WTF/WTH/WWJD moment...

I'm glad it works for you guys/gals, do detail your hard/soft setup... :-\

7. March 2012, 15:51:51

schemestrom

Posts: 251

Originally posted by gradinaruvasile:

How will Opera handle this situation?


Opera will continue contributing in non-proprietary solutions like HTML5.
But no worries regarding Flash:
1. Even though Windows 8 will be a piece of junk, several copies will be sold in its tablet version. The Metro Internet Explorer (which will be the preferred IE on tablets) doesn't support flash and because of many users (assumption: especially those who voluntarily buy a Windows 8 tablet) using the default browser web designers will have to start to support HTML5.
2. There are still Gnash and Lightspark. I don't know about Lightspark (produces segmentation faults for me as soon it has to play something), but Gnash works fine with Youtube, Steam and some other sites. On the rest of the web it doesn't work, though. I guess that these teams will speed up their development in the future if there is really no other alternative.

8. March 2012, 08:44:04

dleonx

Posts: 125

Flash is only a Multimedia plugin. Alternatives/Replacements are already available or will be available to solve this issue(?really?).
My thought, Adobe seems also felt really sick to this aging Flash (Macromedia Legacy) and send it over to Google to be maintain. I don't blame them though, being blast off from 3 main computer planets for decade could make them hang a hamster. They could already prepared something else. Hah.. Flash in fact indeed a money maker for them.
The problem is not "a browser must support plugins" or the other around. It is in fact the problem of the Web Page maker to support the widest audience they want, (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.), for what ever reasons that page supposed to be. I past some pages that seems solve that already when Flash support on Linux or BSD is really a nightmare (which is still). In future if someone want to deliver just say a Flash advertisement to you and see that your browser didn't support it, they will use any other resources to make that happen (already happen).

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