Results tagged “flash”

A couple of weeks ago I commented upon Apple's decision to not support Flash on any of their mobile devices:

I would prefer to say "Flash is a hack," but I think Flash is too elegant to risk maligning it with such a word. Make no mistake though, as ubiquitous and well implemented that Flash is, it is just a shim, which evolved to address a major short coming on the web, mainly that the underlying specifications and browser creators could not adopt or drive adoption fast enough the technology to make animation and richer application development possible.

Today, Steve Jobs posted a letter detailing this same decision (a letter worth reading in full):

Flash was created during the PC era - for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards - all areas where Flash falls short.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

I echo my sentiment again:

In just a few short years, when the gap Flash helped bridge is finally closed by well implemented and broadly adopted web standards, and the world of application development is expanded to include not just Objective-C and Flash programmers, but the entire world of HTML/CSS and Javascript programmers, hopefully a number of us will look back at this moment and say, "I can't believe I cared so much about this."

I know for many people, especially Adobe, the decision not to support Flash is an incredibly sensitive subject, but speaking as a web developer, I applaud them for taking a principaled stand in support of open web standards. The alternative, the reluctant support of an older and more obsolete technology to placate a dwindling group of laggards, can only saddle the entire web development industry with the burden of supporting a platform that is increasingly harder and more costly for us to support.

Need I remind web developers of the ire they feel when a client requires them to support Internet Explorer 6 and what it does to the products we build for them? Need I remind you of the hack after hack after hack we must implement and re-implement just to appease the CEO of a company who is too old and too lazy to upgrade their frack'n browser already?

Flash is the mobile and open web's IE6 and I am glad that a company with the market muscle to actually make a difference is taking a stand for what proponents of the open web have been saying for years.

Update:

Kottke chimes in:

Jobs sort of circles around the main issue which is, from my own perspective as heavy web user and web developer: though Flash may have been necessary in the past to provide functionality in the browser that wasn't possible using JS, HTML, and CSS, that is no longer the case. Those open web technologies have matured (or will in the near future) and can do most or even all of what is possible with Flash. For 95% of all cases, Flash is, or will soon be, obsolete because there is a better way to do it that's more accessible, more open, and more "web-like".

Thank you goes out to Arin for letting Harper watch a scene from the Sound of Music on YouTube, and being cajoled into watching other renditions of "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti" on YouTube, thus completely lodging this song in my head.

On the bright side, I did get to see a pretty ingenious marketing flash mob of sorts:

More than 200 dancers were performing their version of "Do Re Mi", in the Central Station of Antwerp. with just 2 rehearsals they created this amazing stunt! Those 4 fantastic minutes started the 23 of march 2009, 08:00 AM. It is a promotion stunt for a Belgian television program, where they are looking for someone to play the leading role, in the musical of "The Sound of Music".

The coolest thing I know about right now is jQTouch, a jQuery framework for implementing mobile web apps. I first saw this at SXSW when its creator showed it off to a crowd that had just finished watching a demo of how to build iPhone apps in Objective-C. Which each step of his demo, the crowd in the room literally cheered as they saw how jaw-droppingly simple building slick iPhone apps just became.

Here is a recently released demo of some of the amazing things the relatively young jQTouch is capable of, which in this case is a fully HTML, CSS and Javascript powered version of the iPhone's iCal application.

So what makes this so smooth and seamless? Mainly that CSS3 is hardware accelerated on the iPhone making CSS and Javascript powered transitions and animations super smooth - just as smooth as any native application in fact.

So while you perhaps marvel at how amazing jQTouch is, let me bring this back to something that makes this framework so relevant in light of the recent hullabaloo associated with Apple's changes to its SDK Agreement which essentially forbids the use of flash enabled apps on the iPhone and iPad.

Flash is a Shim

I would prefer to say "Flash is a hack," but I think Flash is too elegant to risk maligning it with such a word. Make no mistake though, as ubiquitous and well implemented that Flash is, it is just a shim, which evolved to address a major short coming on the web, mainly that the underlying specifications and browser creators could not adopt or drive adoption fast enough the technology to make animation and richer application development possible.

Amazingly, Apple is poised to unwedge this shim that we have all become so unwittingly dependent upon. By refusing to put Flash on the iPhone and iPad they are going to force the market and technology developers who want to play in that market to learn and embrace the bleeding edge in web standards. They are going to do in just a few short years, what even the largest and most well intentioned companies like Google, in all of their open-sourcey-goodness, could never do: force market adoption of the technologies that will render Flash obsolete.

And thank god. The web has too many crutches like Flash, which solve a problem just well enough that they stifle developer communities from addressing problems at a lower level.

So while some express their ire at Apple for not supporting Flash, like my wife who just wants to play a damn Flash-powered movie on Hulu on her iPad, I applaud Apple for the courage it took to make what it must have known would be the unpopular decision it did. Because in just a few short years, when the gap Flash helped bridge is finally closed by well implemented and broadly adopted web standards, and the world of application development is expanded to include not just Objective-C and Flash programmers, but the entire world of HTML/CSS and Javascript programmers, hopefully a number of us will look back at this moment and say, "I can't believe I cared so much about this."

I just finished reading Trolls Among Us from The New York Time Magazine. I was struck most by this quote from Fortuny in which he explains how he feels justified in hacking the Epilepsy Foundation's web site with seizure inducing flash animations:

Hacks like this tell you to watch out by hitting you with a baseball bat, demonstrating these kinds of exploits is usually the only way to get them fixed.

Which on one hand I can see the rationale behind, or at least how one could come to that rationale -- mainly that we live in a society in which people do bad things to one another, and each of us needs to be actively involved in preventing those people from doing bad things to us.

In my mind however, this rationale is a lot like saying, "people are vulnerable when they leave their doors unlocked; and the only way to get people to lock their doors is if I rob them."

You see, for me, I want to live in a society where I can leave my doors unlocked and not be afraid. I resent Threat Level Orange. I resent anyone that insists I be afraid, no matter how altruistic their intentions.

So yesterday was a day just like any other day, except that I had the pleasure of listening to a Movable Type user rant about our claimed, but "lacking" support for podcasting. Man, it hurts hearing such a passionate user become so frustrated.

But it is precisely at times like those that we at Six Apart swallow our pride and listen to our users. Not hear them. But actually listen to them.

And you know what, Todd is right about at least one thing: Movable Type's support for podcasting could be better. A lot better. So I went ahead and slapped together the first Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type 4.0, and I call upon Todd (and the rest of the Movable Type user community) to help me make this the best podcasting plugin for any blogging product.

Now I put together this first pass really quickly - in just a couple of hours actually, which I think is a testament to how easy it is to build a plugin on Movable Type for anyone who knows a little Perl, not to mention evidence to what it means to be a true Media Platform (see also the YouTube, Flickr and Amazon asset integration provided by Media Manager).

But I digress. I purposefully put together the most minimal feature set possible and still meet Todd's basic requirement: the ability to link to an externally hosted MP3 file and have Movable Type encode the necessary enclosures within an RSS and/or Atom feed. For fun I am redistributing a free flash MP3 player licensed under the creative commons to make it easy for users to allow readers to listen to their MP3 files directly from their blog.

But now I need to pass the baton to Todd, ProNet (especially Budd) and any other serious podcaster (Niall?) to help me shape the remaining feature set for this plugin. As a Product Manager myself I am reasonably certain think I could define a feature set myself, despite how clueless Todd may think I am, but I really do want this plugin to be something informed directly by the community. So please, everyone, chime in.

Todd, I am personally sorry you had a hard time with Movable Type. I sincerely hope this plugin will begin to provide the functionality you need, and I hope we can continue to evolve its feature set together as a team.

Overview

The Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type allows users to easily link to and include MP3 at any URL in their Movable Type blog and to manage those podcasts as assets within Movable Type's asset management system.

Download

• RSS Feed Template
• Podcast 1.17

Features

• Link to any podcast on the Internet. All you need is a URL.
• Let the plugin automatically extract the content type and content length of the podcast being linked to.
• Automatically embed a streaming, flash based MP3 player into your posts to allow your readers to listen to your content easily.
• Manage podcasts as assets within Movable Type's asset management system.

How it Works

Once a podcast is in Movable Type's asset management system one can then use Movable Type's default template tags to encode podcasts as enclosures within RSS and Atom Feeds.

Installation

Before we proceed, make sure each of the following prerequisites have been satisfied.

Prerequisites

• User has MovableType 4.01 or greater installed
• User has LWP installed

Instructions

To install this plugin follow the instructions found here:

http://tinyurl.com/easy-plugin-install

Adding Podcasts to Your Feeds

Some of your feeds must be edited manually to make this plugin fully compatible with podcasting services and people wishing to subscribe to your podcasts.

• See the official Movable Type Documentation

Atom Feeds

The following can be inserted anywhere within the <mt:Entries> tag within your Atom feed. While iTunes supports Atom, the RSS feed is recommended as it is the most well documented format for iTunes and podcasting support (see below).

<mt:EntryAssets>
<mt:SetVarBlock name="assettype"><mt:AssetType></mt:SetVarBlock>
<mt:if name="assettype" eq="podcast">
    <link rel="enclosure"
         type="<mt:AssetMimeType>"
         title="<mt:AssetLabel>"
         href="<mt:AssetURL>"
         length="<mt:AssetProperty property="file_size" format="0">" />
</mt:if>
</mt:EntryAssets>

RSS Feeds

See download links below.

Licensing

The Podcast Plugin for Movable Type is available for free but must be used in accordance with the terms of your Movable Type license (either free for personal use, or for commercial use when used in conjunction with your Movable Type Commercial License).

The Flash Player is bundled with this distribution, but should be licensed separately if you intend to use this plugin for commercial purposes.

Support

Support is provided through Movable Type's forums.

News flash: The Atom Publishing Protocol has officially entered last call: the last step on its way to becoming an official Internet standard.