Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash [Part 1 of. By Prince McLean Pitted against Microsoft's efforts to crush Flash using its own copycat Silverlight platform, open source projects seeking to duplicate Flash for free, and Apple's efforts to create a mobile platform wholly free of any trace of Flash, Adobe has scrambled to announce efforts to make Flash a public specification in the Open Screen Project.Will it help get Flash on the iPhone?
Here's the first segment of a three part series with a historical overview of the wars between Flash and Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, and the open source community, the problems Flash faces today, and what future Flash can hope for as an open specification. A Brief History of Flash Flash originated at FutureWave Software as SmartSketch, an innovative drawing tool. In 1995, the software was repositioned as FutureSplash Animator, with support for cell based animation. It turned out that the easy to use Flash rapidly sidelined Macromedia's existing Authorware and Shockwave.
Flash Wars: The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash [Part 2 of 3. By Prince McLean While widely deployed as a web plugin and among the few web technologies that have become a household word, Adobe's Flash has more than a few substantial enemies that would like to see it replaced, cloned, or erased.
Additionally, Flash faces a number of significant obstacles that are its own fault. These also erode Adobe's position and have helped force its hand in opening the Flash specification. Here's a look at the external competitors of Flash, and how Flash has hurt its own chances to establish itself as a web platform in the future. The Many Enemies of Flash Microsoft now sees Flash as a competitor to Windows, as it performs the same cross platform, application deployment role Java attempted to deliver a decade ago.
While Microsoft seemed rather invincible in the 90s as it more or less terminated Netscape, client side Java, OpenGL graphics, Office alternatives, and other competition, its more recent efforts to crush rivals haven't been as successful. Flash Wars: Adobe Fights for AIR with the Open Screen Project [P. By Prince McLean Flash has plenty of enemies and obstacles, but it also enjoys wide deployment and familiarity.
Two areas where Flash can offer real value is in displaying and packaging video on the web, and in serving as a Java replacement for developing applets. Here's a look at how Adobe is working to defend its strengths in the face of competition, and how its efforts to open the Flash specification in the Open Screen Project play into these efforts.Challenges to Flash Video Flash rapidly took over the market for embedding videos into web pages and popularized the proprietary FLV video container format.
However, as the industry has moved to support the more advanced and open H.264 video codec, Adobe has been forced to drop its obsolete old FLV container and migrate toward H.264 itself, both as a codec and as a container file. Flash Fights for AIR in Rich Internet Applications. John Nack on Adobe: Sympathy for the Devil. Sympathy for the Devil In the last couple of years, it has become trendy to bash the Adobe Flash Player.
I need to say a few things on that subject. First, let’s be very clear: I’m not on the Flash team. I don’t speak for them. (I don’t speak for anyone but myself.) I came to Adobe ten years ago to build an open standards (SVG)-based Web animation tool. Flash is flawed, but it has moved the world forward.Open standards are great, but they can be achingly slow to arrive.Talk of “what’s good for standards is bad for Adobe” is misinformed nonsense.Flash will innovate or die.
Let’s be clear: It’s fine to say that Flash is flawed; it is. Macromedia was the only company that delivered truly ubiquitous (99% penetration) video playback. All these years later, we still don’t have a standard, browser-native alternative, much less one that’s achieved widespread viewership. I don’t doubt that some video standard will eventually emerge & make its way into most if not all browsers. . – On Standards –