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Occupy movements are clearly the trend du jour in the world of protests right now. So much so that a bunch of web and mobile developers have settled on the name “Occupy Flash” for their movement to rid the world of the ubiquitous plugin. They are calling on both ordinary users and developers to boycott Flash. They feel this is the only way of expediting the web’s impending transition to modern open standards.
The movement’s founders are frustrated with Flash’s numerous flaws that require constant security updates among a host of other things: “It doesn't work on most mobile devices. It's a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of web technology. Websites that rely on Flash present a completely inconsistent (and often unusable) experience for fast-growing percentage of the users who don't use a desktop browser. It introduces some scary security and privacy issues by way of Flash cookies.”
Some of you could argue that this whole anti-Flash movement is pointless as the plugin’s fate has already been sealed and its headed toward certain death. But the people behind the Occupy Flash movement believe that the plugin could hold out for a very, very long time à la Internet Explorer 6.
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jonnyohio
November 20, 2011 at 1:03am
I am a web developer and every single client I have has moved away from flash...it's not even an option anymore because no one wants to alienate certain device users who are potential customers. I don't see the need for a movement because full -time devs like me are getting familiar with HTML five and have been dropping our use of flash on websites over the past year. It's going to be a thing of the past soon and adobe knows it.
Xylogeist
November 18, 2011 at 10:34am
I don't get the stigma towards Flash Player. I love designing flash games and I've always found it easy and affordable to work with. If flash player disappeared my entire website would tank, we've got 40 games running on that platform and no programmers on hand that know anything else. What else would we do to make games? Silverlight? HTML5? Give me a friggen break...
Cregan89
November 18, 2011 at 3:03pm
Thousands of games are written in HTML5/JavaScript:
It can be done, I write high performance JavaScript applications everyday. You're a developer, stop being lazy and keep up with technology or face the consequences.
Incognito
November 20, 2011 at 11:14am
High performance JavaScript. Bahahahaha, that's an oxymoron if I have ever heard one.
dgrmouse
November 18, 2011 at 11:40am
You like to develop in it, so end-users are obligated to also like it? That's the same foolish reasoning that has allowed Java to survive for as long as it has. I think that middleware for gaming semi-devs, like you seem to be, is fine. I do not, however, believe that it needs to be incorporated into website interface, ad-serving, download control, or any of the other myriad purposes Flash is being used for. I have a TON of awesome tools for handling HTML - everything from proxies to browsers to feed-grabbers and parsers and so forth. Why would I want to encourage you to use a platform that takes all that away from me?
Danthrax66
November 18, 2011 at 12:29pm
Funny thing is that html5 which would replace Flash renders video in JavaScript LOL. So we are replacing one security exploit for another arguably bigger one.
Cregan89
November 18, 2011 at 2:09pm
First of all, HTML5 doesn't 'render video in JavaScript'. JavaScript simply requests a video file from a web server and binds it to an HTML5 video element. You can then use various JavaScript API's to control the playback of the video, but at no point does JavaScript ever 'render' anything. The browser renders the video, most likely through some low-level graphics framework written in some form of C.
Secondly, as an expert JavaScript programmer, I'd love to know what exactly it is that makes JavaScript a 'security exploit'? (The wording of which doesn't make any sense so I can't wait to hear this one...)
keyzs
November 20, 2011 at 9:55am
aren't JavaScripts either within the HTML code (which can be easily viewed from source) and or saved into another folder as a .js file (which can be easily linked and viewed)?
doesn't this make for an easier security exploit????
firefox91
November 18, 2011 at 8:59am
I will stop using Flash when websites stop pushing content through it. Until then, I am still using it because it does work and gives me the data I wanted.
majorsuave
November 18, 2011 at 8:21am
Wow, angry teenagers and their expensive iPhones whine because they cannot play Facebook games?
It would be better for all of us to get rid of Apple instead of Flash
CaptainFabulous
November 18, 2011 at 8:02am
I think "Occupy Apple" would be a far more productive endeavor.
majorsuave
November 18, 2011 at 9:19am
Exactly, it would be far more practical to boycott devices that don't support Flash.
Why would I want to cut myself from the excellent Flash content that has been created in the past 15 years or so?
keyzs
November 20, 2011 at 10:37am
Couldn’t agree with you more!!
The causes of all these issues are many thanks to the rotten half eaten fruit company and their obnoxious leader.
As you are in the content development business I am sure you would have come across Macromedia Director. Macromedia, now owned by Adobe, are the two companies who had worked hard from the beginning to support both the PCs and Macs. Director died mostly because Flash had a smaller footprint, could do a lot more and was portable on both platforms, while Director required a separate Projector to be compiled on individual platforms in order to work respectively; yet not without problems though.
companies and businesses have a bottom line principle of generating profits hence at this point in time the iSheep are the major contributors; be that their fortune or otherwise.
I can understand the advancement of technology, the need for change and the resentment to learning new languages as I too am in development. The SICKEST GRIPE on this issue is the way Flash is being killed off. Flash didn’t die naturally like Director did.... Flash is being MUDERED!!! and who is the perpetrator... I’m sure we’d know....
any consolation coming is that Adobe Edge, now in development with a downloadable preview, has a similar Flash UI; it works in native HTML5 and exports as such. further edits can be done with any HTML or simple text editor. Given time, Edge could and or may produce better results than Flash. In the natural evolution of things Adobe might just provide us just the “Edge” of things….
Cheers!!!
ZayLay
November 18, 2011 at 7:38am
retarded, this reminds me of the short term memory that this country has in picking leaders. the site themselves even admit they have to run the flash plug in to get their work done LOL. Does anyone remember not being able to view video on the web? What about embeding video on web pages? Even worse, we are trying to protect our content. Make it interactive, secured, dynamic... we aren't talking about html5 video here, we are talking about video with action scripted layers upon dynamic layers... something html5 simply can't do "the same on any of the latest browsers today". I've been testing Windows 8 with IE10's no plugin, no thrills HTML 5 only browser, and the experience is even worse than on the iPad. It's as if the entire internet is broken again like i'm in netscape, and all the videos that work on the iPad aren't actually html5, but remenicent of IE6 fixes.
Cregan89
November 18, 2011 at 2:57pm
ZayLay... You're an idiot.
I'm an HTML5 developer, and yes we do often use Flash. There's a number of Flash libraries that we call 'shims' which basically work as compatibility layers for older browsers (usually IE6-IE8) to replicate, or at least provide graceful fallbacks for new HTML5 API's. So yes, we use Flash in some cases to make HTML5 run on browsers which don't support HTML5 natively.
And as far as you questioning the ability of HTML5, well... Just take a look at the examples here on an HTML5 compatible browser and it's quite obvious that HTML5 is a very capable framework:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/
http://www.queness.com/post/3885/8-simply-amazing-html5-canvas-and-javascript-animations
http://www.queness.com/post/4105/13-amazing-examples-of-html5-and-css3And this fishbowl example here is an example of exactly what you just claimed is impossible with HTML5. That's an HTML5 video element of a fishbowl with graphically rendered fish overlayed. Plus a bunch of other various layers as well.
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/FishBowl/Default.htmlAnd IE10 in Windows 8 is glitchy? That's a shocker! I would have expected PRE-BETA code to work flawlessly!
dgrmouse
November 18, 2011 at 11:50am
You are very badly uninformed. No, nobody remembers not being able to view video on the web. It's been possible since before you knew what HTML, MPEG, or MP3 was. Back when you still had to bring your own TCP/IP stack to the party in order to get online, web browsers already had rudimentary support for embedding video. And MPEG itself provides plenty of options for interactive video - ever used a DVD or Bluray? If you're doing something so groundbreaking that it can't be rendered by the browser, why in the heck do you feel like it has to be shown in a browser window? A middleware engine is fine, but again... why does it need to be incorporated with a browser? If Flash were a standalone app on PC and iPhone and elsewhere, would you be satisfied?
Coldrage
November 18, 2011 at 8:05am
hurr durr im a wow player and i use retarded in every sentence hurrrrrrrrrrrr
stradric
November 18, 2011 at 6:15am
Flash is dead in the water. Even Adobe has an application called Edge that gives you a lot of the powerful features of the Flash animation studio, but outputting HTML5 instead.
Bullwinkle J Moose
November 18, 2011 at 5:55am
Impeding the transition to modern open standards would make "Occupy Microsoft" a higher priority than Occupy Flash?
Cregan89
November 18, 2011 at 2:33pm
Microsoft is actually one of the largest HTML5 proponents. That's why they actually prevent Flash and any other plugins from running in Windows 8 Metro, and the new development framework for Windows 8 Metro is based on HTML5.
Danthrax66
November 18, 2011 at 12:34pm
Actually Microsoft would love to transition to more open standards (they are the #1 contributor to the latest linux kernel). The problem is they created all of their proprietary software back in the 90's and early 00's and then business used it exclusively so they are forced to continue supporting that and still developing for it because that is what industry uses. And it's next to impossible to change industry.
