Google betas Flash-free YouTube sans open codec. High performance access to file storage Google has publicly released an experimental YouTube player that uses the HTML5 video tag, as it continues the (very) slow process of moving the world's most popular video-sharing site away from Adobe Flash. As you may or may not expect, the player does not embrace the open and license free Ogg Theora codec. Announced yesterday on the YouTube blog, it sticks with H.264, the same video codec used by the current version of YouTube. Among other things, this means it will not work with Opera or Firefox. And it can only be used with Internet Explorer if you turn the Microsoft browser into a Google browser using Mountain View's controversial Chrome Frame plug-in.
A Google spokesman indicated that the choice of H.264 over Ogg does not mean the company has picked H.264 for an eventual Flash-free version of YouTube. "Support for HTML5 is just a TestTube experiment at this time and a starting point," he said. Is It Time for the Web to Abandon Flash? - PCWorld Business Cent. The public battle between Adobe and Apple over bringing Flash to the iPhone, and now iPad, platforms has heated up the debate over the life expectancy of Flash as newer technologies, specifically the emerging HTML5 standard, enter the scene.
Adobe Flash helped to fill a void for a cross-platform multimedia experience on the Web. With the glaring exception of the iPhone and upcoming iPad, Flash can be found on virtually every other operating system--desktop and mobile, and for every Web browser. Flash is almost a standard in and of itself. Just try surfing the Web without installing the Flash Player software and you will quickly see just how pervasive Flash is. As close as it is to being a standard, though, it is still a proprietary technology from one vendor. The advantage that HTML5 has over Flash, and other proprietary Web development platforms like Microsoft's Silverlight, is that it is a protocol standard--or at least it will be once it's finalized, not a single-vendor solution. Adobe Defends Flash, Calls Apple Uncooperative - Reviews by PC M. Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch this week defended Flash as superior to HTML 5 and accused Apple of being uncooperative as it relates to putting Flash on the iPhone or iPad.
"We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on [the iPhone and iPad] if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen," Lynch wrote in a blog post. Apple's upcoming iPad tablet, which was unveiled last week, will not include Flash support. In a town hall with employees, Steve Jobs reportedly said that Apple avoided Flash on the iPad because Flash is too buggy, and HTML 5 is the wave of the future, according to Wired.
Lynch was not convinced. He said that Flash is currently available on the iPhone via standalone apps like FickleBox and Chroma Circuit – apps that will work on the iPad as well, he said. But will HTML 5 steal Flash's thunder? Adobe screw-up leaves Flash flaw unpatched for 16 months | Zero. Adobe has acknowledged that an internal screw-up caused potentially dangerous serious Flash Player flaw to remain unpatched for more than 16 months after it was first reported by an external security researcher. "It slipped through the cracks," said Emmy Huang, a product manager for Flash Player. Adobe's mea-culpa follows the public release of proof-of-concept code demonstrating a Flash Player browser plug-in crash.
Matthew Dempsey, the researcher who found and reported the flaw in September 2008, explains the issue: If a Flash 9 SWF loads the same URL twice with the first returning a Flash 7 SWF and the second time returning a Flash 8 SWF (or vice-versa), the Adobe Flash Player plug-in will attempt to dereference a null pointer, crashing the browser. Dempsey's code, which completely crashes the browser, was tested with Safari 3.1.2 and Firefox 3.0.1 with Adobe's Flash Player plug-in 9.0.115.0, 9.0.124.0, and 10.0.12.10 on OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5. Here's the apology: So what happened here? Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug. High performance access to file storage An Adobe product manager has apologized for allowing a potentially serious bug in Flash Player to remain unfixed for more than 16 months. The admission, by Emmy Huang, product manager for Flash, came a week after Apple CEO Steve Jobs lambasted Adobe engineers as "lazy" and said when Macs crash, "more often than not it’s because of Flash.
" Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch struck back, insisting that at Adobe, "we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs. " The crash bug at issue in Huang's blog post published over the weekend was reported in September 2008, but it has yet to be excised from release versions of Flash. She said a beta version of Flash scheduled for official release later this year has fixed the problem. She went on to say the flaw should have been patched in one of the interim updates released over the past 16 months.
The bug in version 9 of the software was reported by security researcher Matthew Dempsey on Adobe's Flash Player bugbase. Adobe to Jobs: 'What the Flash do you know?' Adobe has fired back at Steve Jobs after the Apple boss allegedly attacked Adobe Flash for being "buggy" and referred to the Flashmakers as "lazy. " "I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs," Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch wrote today in a back-and-forth with commenters on an Adobe corporate blog, "and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today. " We weren't aware that only non-buggy products achieved widespread use.
But there you have it. According to Wired, at an Apple "town hall" meeting after the introduction of the Flashless iPad, Steve Jobs unloaded on Google, calling the search giant's "don't be evil" motto "bullshit," before rounding on Adobe. "They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it," he said. Adobe CTO Lynch - as might be guessed - has a different take. But he also threw a few darts at HTML. He also took on cross-platform performance complaints. Did Steve Jobs just kill Flash? Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs (R) talks with guests during an Apple Special Event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts January 27, 2010 in San Francisco, California. CEO Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. introduced its latest creation, the iPad, a mobile tablet browsing device that is a cross between the iPhone and a MacBook laptop.
Photograph by: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images , FP What was Steve Jobs thinking? Since its launch in 1996, Flash has come to power nearly everything online that isn't static: streaming video players, interactive graphics, animated ads, and more. Apple has never publicly stated its reasons, but they're easy to guess. If we don't use Flash, what will we use?
Adrian Ludwig, group manager for the Flash platform at Adobe, says that his company isn't worried about the incursion of HTML5. Adobe adds that it isn't worried about the iPad. Or there's a third option: Web sites, afraid of missing out on a potential new audience, will rush to make their sites compatible with the iPad. Adobe Flash on the Road to Nowhere. This Wednesday was probably the first day on the (potentially long) path to Adobe Flash decline: the most popular video site out there – YouTube – started offering videos in Flash-less mode for browsers which support HTML 5 and h.264 video codec. This means that today the option is available for Chrome and Safari. Then at some point they will likely add the Ogg codec and support Firefox, or help Firefox get native h.264 codec support. And then IE9 ships and all latest browsers will play videos natively. Flash will no longer be required for video, and why would anyone want it then?
The whole story of Flash in retrospect is going to be an interesting one. They tried: kept improving the tools, added offline, even tried open-sourcing it, and getting to the mobile market – but Flash has not become an application platform – video is what most people use it for, and this exact segment is now under the HTML 5 fire. Can anything help Flash now?