A Blog From Behind the Trenches

Youtube + flash 10 + Opera 9.6 + Kubuntu 8.04 is broken for me, the sound doesn't work well (video is smooth but sound is choppped, skipped and generally borked).

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=253598

S V G ! S V G !
))

Well, according to your own MAMA, 40 to 50% of web sites use flash (I don't recall the exact figure), so it's not going away anytime soon.

I think most of the Flash content are actually banners. And they will not go anywhere soon: GIF format almost died for banners, APNG not supported by IE, so if someone believes in good effect of animated banners they will choose Flash.

Flash video gets 2nd place I believe. And here again will be no alternative for a while: Windows Video and Real Video formats are dying, Apple's MOV is somewhat lives as high-quality downloadable alterternative to Flash video. OGG Teora video just started its way to some browsers, no released browsers with its support so far.

So, Flash unfortunately will not go anywhere in 5 years for sure.

But for interactive content such as dynamic graphics we already have pretty decent alternative: SVG/Canvas/JavaScript/HTML/CSS thing.
Just look at these projects:
Raphaël

Raphaël uses SVG and VML as a base for graphics creation. Because of that every created object is a DOM object so you can attach JavaScript event handlers or modify objects later. Raphaël’s goal is to provide an adapter that will make drawing cross-browser and easy. Currently library supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

Plotkit

PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support.
HTML Canvas: Safari 2+, Opera 9+, Firefox 1.5+, IE 6 (in emulated mode)
SVG: Opera 9+, Firefox 1.5+ (see note), IE6 with Adobe SVG.

Flash 10 works far worse in Opera than did Flash 9 with Opera at NBA.com sites: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=253659

Thanks for those links FataL, I'd sort of been looking for things like that (only sort of, because I'd never gotten around to actually searching for them!)

Anonymous writes:

what about silverlight 2? it was also released that same day, and it DOES NOT work in Opera. what is Opera statement on the issue (or your personal comment)?

because Opera users werent able to stream Olympics already, and no improvements are seen.

@haavard: I wasn't sure what the nba.com issue was initially ... I had suspicions but was unsure, but now have been instructed by someone who knows javascript that the detection coding for Flash is not appropriate for version 10.

So, yes, Flash works fine in Opera it seems iff Opera gets the Flash code at all. The coding at nba.com sites seems to offer Flash 10 pages appropriately to IE only and not to other browsers. Some day they will figure it out, I suppose.

Re Silverlight: Apparently, it's basic browser sniffing

Anonymous writes:

well, it isnt just browser sniffing. I've read somewhere that browser sniffing kills SL2 at start, but circumvented SL2 still doesnt work - text inputs, keyboard input in general does not work, some animation routines etc. not mentioning the default JS ajax framework used by Sl2 to feed data (ms.ajax) isnt 100% Opera compatible.

it is a great problem, quite a few mainstream pages use Sl2 already, and Opera is the only problem that has a problem with it. Olympics were streamed in Sl..

is Opera going to do anything with it?

Olympics were streamed in Sl..

NBC dumps Microsoft Silverlight after Olympics

NBC streamed all its NBCOlympics.com videos using Microsoft's Silverlight backend tech, but the network dumped Microsoft before last night's NFL kickoff — streamed live over NBCSports.com and NFL.com — opting to use Adobe Flash instead. Why? Because, as SAI notes, while 40 million US visitors to NBCOlympics.com didn't have Silverlight installed, Adobe Flash is already installed on some 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. NBC's move didn't pay off last night. The feed was unwatchable over a broadband connection, serving up freeze fames, blurry action and skipping back and forth as the it tried to buffer.

I hope that Flash will not go away, instead developers start use it wisely. Flash is CONSISTENT unlike JS+HTML+anything else. It works in any browser and works just the same. That can not be said about open technologies.

I don't want anything to dominate, as a web developer I'm simply tired with all the problems I need to solve each time for each browser. And such problems simply does not exist in the world of Flash. Actually I'm not a flasher, but I worked (and working) a lot with Flex and this flash-based framework greatly improves my productivity and lets me concentrate on resolving tasks instead of fighting with IE and FF.

Lagging two versions, yes, but I know which version to target. It gives consistency once again. And what with SVG? Which mobile browsers support it? Many devices are coming with mobile IE so we get the same situation as with desktops.

If we had only one browser (Opera) that would be just cool, but we have too much of them.

Another problem is that (X)HTML + CSS are very limited. There are a lot of layouting problems which can not be easily resolved with this infrastructure. I don't think that browser hacks and JavaScript tricks are good. In ideal HTML should contain only data and CSS all the presentation, but current standards does not satisfy this ideal. And while participating in HTML5 mailing list I understood that HTML5 will not resolve that issue.

Yep, we are at mercy of Adobe, but in current situation sometimes it is better to use Flash. I'm not against open standards, but they simply don't work sometimes. Even so open minded Firefox sometimes can not show SVGs on wikipedia correctly...

Ook, let me perphrase: hope that open standards and their support will soon be better then flash (:

Anonymous writes:

this whole 'flash vs standards' is rather waste of time.

there is nothing 'standard' now that can even mimick basic flash functionality. yes, there are some impressive svg/js/css/html examples, that with LOTS of effort allow you to mimick PARTS of flash. you know what is their problem? performance. flash is simply many many times faster. maybe browsers are not optimised (but why should they, if noone uses svg for it) yet, but well.. flash is. and it really runs VERY fast for what it does.

standards will not emerge anytime soon, because there is no real need for them. you can do everything you like in flash, use a free player for it, develop it in a VERY stable and reliable, and not so expensive tool.

real competitor is silverlight, because it has support of .net platform, that is very easy to use, and thus very popular. and you can develop it for free, with EXCELENT tools (visual studio).

js/svg/css/html on the other hand are FOUR different, badly standarised, badly supported languages that still require author to do lots of hand writing. choice is obvious. direct costs of development far outweight possible future 'good perks' of standarised code.

yes, it WOULD be better for open, well written standards to succeed. but, well, flash is better documented and implemented now than any of w3c standards, like it or not. and it is envolving with considerable speed. unlike css or html, that stands still in the same place for years.

btw. someone mentioned 'open standards flash replacements' being developed. please, post links etc. Im very curious about this.

Anonymous writes:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2058

"On the same day Opera shipped a browser update with patches for three separate security vulnerabilities, hackers are openly discussion a new zero-day flaw that exposes Windows users to remote code execution attacks.

With Opera 9.61, the Norwegian browser maker corrects an issue where History Search could be used to reveal browser history (rated extremely severe); a Fast Forward bug that allows cross-site scripting (highly severe); and an information disclosure flaw in news feeds (also highly severe).

But even as Opera users were scrambling to apply the latest patches, a public discussion on the Full Disclosure mailing list exposed a zero-day vulnerability that could lead to cross-site scripting and even remote code execution attacks.

The discussion began with this Roberto Suggi advisory on the History Search bug fixed in Opera 9.61 but quickly expanded to raise the possibility of code execution attacks.

Within hours, researcher Aviv Raff discovered a way to execute code from remote and released a harmless proof-of-concept exploit that launches the Windows calculator.

I can confirm that a separate exploit exists that launches harmful code remotely against fully patched versions of the Opera browser.

Until Opera can fix this new issue, users are strongly urged to consider a different browser or avoid clicking on links on untrusted Web pages."

Opera these days is truly is poor, releasing buggy releases and full of security holes.

A bit like how Firefox 3.0.2 was released last month dealing with security issues, followed less than a week later by another security release. Security bugs are everywhere!

What this latest security issue really shows is the irresponsibility of the security "researchers" to publish an exploit before telling Opera about it. There's no way anyone would go to the trouble of releasing a new version of any software with a known code execution vulnerability.

Anonymous writes:

someone is a bit clueless and acuses all anonymous users to be one person.

it isnt one person. I dont comment on security, because I know nothing about that topic.

as for the flash comment in mobile context. computing power of handheld devices is growing WAY faster than 'standard' alternatives for Flash are developing.
devices like iPhone or mobiles like HTC are perfectly capable of running fullblown flash apps computing-power-wise. it is a matter of time when majority of users will be able to use such devices, but this timespan is much shorter than time needed for 'standard' solutions to emerge - they are not even defined yet, there are endless debates, drafts etc. it is a normal thing when people are doing it for free, with not financial motivation to speed things up. Flash developers have such motivation and they are working really fast.

and if that happens, standard solutions are not going to be needed. because flash will provide both cross-medium (desktop/mobile) and cross-browser compatibility that no other tool offers now.

ps. as for the 'multiversion' nature of flash. we deal with it everytime given that there are still lots of firefox 1.5 users, firefox 2.0 users. same goes for ie and opera: there are lots of versions, and webdevelopers are dealing with that one way or another.

btw. Ill ask again - WHAT standard flash alternatives are there? SVG isnt a solution, we both know that.

SVG IS a solution, it all depends on the problem. I personally can't wait to see the end of Flash. What I think SVG is missing is decent authoring tools. SVG is technically capable of pretty much everything Flash can do. I should admit I'm not familiar with the internals of Flash, but that's how it looks from the outside. I personally have a few specialized applications where SVG is the only solution.

BTW, Opera is the only browser now, that still can't print SVG.

Anonymous writes:

"The question isn't device power. The question is Adobe's ability to deliver Flash on all platforms, which they have so far refused to do. Why do you think Wii is limited to Flash 7? Because that was the only version available to Nintendo."

well. it is just the matter of computing power. high enough computing power means, that flash 'for mobiles' will no longer be needed. code versions for different platforms arent as great problem as creating many different versions feature-wise. the day the average mobile device can run normal flash, the day whole debate about mobile/multiversion/etc flash will be over. and that day is approaching very fast, simply because even the cheapest phones use very fast cpu's - because these are the most common == cheapest. volume makes market..

"Yes, there are multiple versions of browsers out there, but guess what, open standards should degrade gracefully, and you have a choice in browsers as well. You aren't stuck with a single browser vendor."

what you say is theory. not real life situation the disscusion is about. in real life there arent any open standards that are finnished and agreed upon (ECMAScript it the closest to that, mainly because it was developed a bit to the side of that w3c mess). w3c specs are so vague in parts, that you cant expect all browser vendors to choose single path. and you (Opera) and Mozilla are BOTH guilty of pressing your own solutions instead of following the setled one. flash is propertiary, yes, so what? you tell me that THEORY is better? yes, it is. but show me REAL flash alternative, that has even the slighest potential to replace it. silverlight is only one I can think of (mainly due to EXCELENT authoring tools and .Net behind it). SVG has no tools, is very slow and is completly unsuitable for tasks like movies.

"I have addressed this already (including the "what alternatives" question), so please read the comments before posting anything. Otherwise you are just trolling."

yes yes yes trolling. I cant see links to flash alternatives here. so you are either lying or purposedly put me into bad light. post these links please. if you know them.

ps. references like 'angry anonymous user' are below certain level of politeness.

Anonymous writes:

"you (Opera) and Mozilla are BOTH guilty of pressing your own solutions instead of following the setled one"

Examples?

Yes, noticed that Flash 10 is big improvement in Opera...how frickin' annoying that Adobe has 95% share in all browsers, and didn't test it in FF/Opera before releasing.

Apparently, Anon #1, or #2, or @n, after 10 years of closed-web efforts by various browser makers and "animation" code makers, still just don't it. Companies discriminiate against Opera, it's getting less, but they still do.

Case in point: Siverlight3 not being supported in Opera by Microsoft until later.
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/show.dml/2451183?startidx=100#comment5817216

Adobe has the hard job of updating the code for each OS and device that they write the flash player code for, they have to adjust for the difference in environment, all the user can do is wait till the product is released, then send feedback.


http://my.opera.com/Chas4/blog/2008/10/15/adobe-flash-player-10

I have found a trick to loading flashed based videos faster, you pause the video and let it load, I have noticed that they load faster with the video paused while loading.

Akaforty writes:

Thank you, works great!

Anonymous writes:

I had trouble with flash 10 freezing on fedora 9 until I uninstalled libflashsupport with "sudo rpm -e libflashsupport"

Shaun writes:

Flash has it's problems, but also has it's overwhelming advantages. Just like this site, which is using a captcha security code that is stored in the DOM (and not skewed at all so a screen reader could pick it up), so if I (or any of you) was feeling malicious I could just dump all over this forum, but I'm a nice guy :) and think that forums are useful (when not destroyed by spammers). Side note on the captcha it times out eventually which is not conducive to stop bots and irritating from a user perspective, should only produce a new string at each page load.

Talking about what will be, from either side is really pointless, since what really matters right now is what is out there. As far as mobiles go, I don't think flash is the way to go at all. It's nice if someone could view your site on a phone but if you actually have some real content the screen space it takes up is going to be more a problem and usability is going to be limited (especially with proc intensive animations going on), even with browsers that like on the iPhone with the zooming and panning concept, really a second version of the site or web app needs to be created specifically for phones. For this purpose Java works great as there are JVMs that work on all sorts of instruction sets and therefore mobile devices. (despite it's problems as well http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oreillynet.com%2Fonjava%2Fblog%2F2007%2F11%2Fdalvik_googles_tweaked_nonstan.html&ei=lPY2SbLeKtzL-QbWlMnACA&usg=AFQjCNGeUr76IQkBFgyVoGId15uqS2BxzQ&sig2=FtSZ_5Y-3TjSSNyLhXHj9g)

Alternatively apps could be written in C++ using XCode or some other IDE that is made to address the mobile platform could be used and will run more efficiently than any interpreted language. Languages should be chosen on a per-job/project basis based on their advantages and disadvantages not based on your opinion of the syntax, developers or the companies the work for.

It would be great if Flash could become an open source project. I'm sure Adobe will be considering this after their recent success with opening up to the community with the Flex SDK after failing to sell it at top prices.

On Silverlight:
Silverlight is sweet aside from it's total lack of cross platform/browser compatibility. WPF is sweet as well can do some really wicked 3d work with interactive 3d objects (can wrap interactive maps, like forms er buttons onto a 3d object as a texture). WPF makes use of DirectX which does it's best to use the clients graphics hardware to it's fullest.

On SVG:
Sorry to say but I'm at a loss here what can you do with SVG how developed are the libraries that are out there. Are you limited to creating animations by hand through iterative changes or are there libraries that will do this for you? Does it have any support for actually embedding video or does this need to be done separately (hopefully HTML 5 tag)? If it is separate could you say animate video or create planes (that appear to be 3d) with video on them? Seems to me like SVG only partially covers the things Flash and Silverlight can already do, although I'll agree that you should always go with the minimum in terms of what you or your site/web app need to do.

Interesting conversation either way.

Flash 9 and Opera worked perfectly fine for me.

Now Flash 10 messed it up! I can watch YouTueb videos, but if I click HD, the video gets choppy. Then skatereel.ea.com is always choppy as well.
Same issues in Firefox (except skatereel doesn't work at all).

Everythign works smoothly in IE. THis makes me believe it's Adobe's fault (yet once again)

HD videos take longer to load since they have a bigger file size. I have also noticed that sometimes the video gets choppy or green when switching to HD videos on youtube

Chas4: I'm not stupid, I let the video load. In fact, I let it load completely.

GeeZuS I did not say you were stupid, youtube for me does not default even tho I set it to always play HD if available. Youtube has not fixed the bug of the videos a user has watched it is about over 1000 off. I get the green when youtube glitchs up on HD videos, I also am using Flash 10 it may have been some change I don't know.

On other sites with bad flash coding it freezes Opera and Safari, and gives me a message to stop exicuting scripts on the page because it is cause the browser to hang.