News - Adobe Flash 10.1 final hits the web

[superscaper]

HTML5 provides a complete interactive panel interface called "canvas" which is scriptable and should be able to do pretty much anything you can in flash. Particularly when combined with video and audio tags. I'd be intrigued to know what your company is doing in flash that you think would be so hard to do some other (open) way...?

CBT and simulations (mostly military). Like I said Flash isn't the only thing we use (certainly not for real time 3D/gaming etc ) but I can't realistically see HTML5 being much use for a lot of it and even using it with javascript/AJAX/php etc while it may be possible to recreate similar end products the development time would make it uneconomical.

[scaryjim]

CBT? I assume you don't mean either of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Compulsory Basic Training?

And... you're writing military simulations in Flash?! And distributing them embedded in websites?!

I think the point is that flash for the web is dead. Flash as a stand alone platform (which sounds like how you're using it) may well live on for some time, alongside Java and "proper" applications - anything that is reasonable to distribute online can be done in other, more open and standards-comnpliant, ways...

[superscaper]

CBT? I assume you don't mean either of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Compulsory Basic Training?

And... you're writing military simulations in Flash?! And distributing them embedded in websites?!

I think the point is that flash for the web is dead. Flash as a stand alone platform (which sounds like how you're using it) may well live on for some time, alongside Java and "proper" applications - anything that is reasonable to distribute online can be done in other, more open and standards-comnpliant, ways...

Computer Based Training or I suppose e-Learning (military like to stick to older terms and as much as I hate people using jargon I sometimes find it slipping out of myself as it were ). We do do some simulations in Flash and Flex. And yes for browser based applications. But I'm assuming when I say "simulation" you're probably thinking of a £100 million flight simulator as most people do, when it can mean any device of any size, e.g. a single simple panel. As I said we use a combination of things depending on the requirements (most complex simulations are either Java3D or C++ based), but we're actually using Flash/Flex more and more for the bread and butter e-Learning. And yes HTML5 will prove useful but I can't see Flash disappearing any time soon as it's now an entire development platform and not a single tool+runtime any more. I don't even use Flash a majority of my time in a typical day but it's definitely reaching more into different sectors than it did previously. If there were decent rapid prototyping tools for HTML/AJAX that could compete then sure that'd be useful too and maybe there will but there's not really anything on the horizon and certainly in my industry the new stuff on the horizon in terms of tools mostly seems to be AS3/Flex 4 based. From what I've seen Flash is actually growing so if it's going to die it hasn't reached it's peak yet.

Of course I could end up eating my own words and certainly not unprecedented (even specifically with Adobe) for popular technologies and tools to be dropped (even without anything to replace it). But at the moment HTML5 is only coming in dribs and drabs and is far from being a self-consistent open standard at the moment. And for it to be useful you actually have to mix it with other languages anyway. I can only imagine the nightmare it would be to recreate our web based apps in HTML even with the new tags, never mind ensure it meets specific compliances.

[Output]

Does this release also fix the recently mentioned vulnerabilities?

I agree about Adobe's Download Manager - I'd rather prefer not to have to use that. For one thing even after supposedly closing it, the process is still running (and therefore has to be ended via Task Manager), and I end up uninstalling it straight after anyway.

[this_is_gav]

Does this release also fix the recently mentioned vulnerabilities?

It has been for the 10.1 RCs for a while now.

I agree about Adobe's Download Manager - I'd rather prefer not to have to use that. For one thing even after supposedly closing it, the process is still running (and therefore has to be ended via Task Manager), and I end up uninstalling it straight after anyway.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_flashplayer_ie

http://www.filehippo.com/download_flashplayer_firefox

There is a link direct from the Adobe site too, but it doesn't indicate which browsers are supported.

[watercooled]

This link I supplied, http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flas...ash_player.exe is for 'other browsers'.

[aidanjt]

Turns out the 64bit flash 10.1 for Linux has been shelved for now. We only got rid of the need for a 32bit browser on Linux last year, nice regression.

[watercooled]

Really? But I'm not surprised TBH, and yet another reason I'll be glad to see the back of Flash in place of a proper standard!

[TooNice]

I am assuming that you would also need updated GFX drivers to benefit from the GPU acceleration? Could be an issue with laptops with 'custom' drivers which are hardly ever updated (e.g. Sony VAIO). Though in my case, it won't matter since I had to disable the nVidia card due to the fan failing.

[watercooled]

I'm using the latest ATI drivers, the system I tested it on is using a 780V IGP - proper codecs are GPU accelerated fine and surely IGPs are where it should be aimed? After all what's the point in only allowing GPU acceleration on high-end GPUs which would almost certainly be paired with a fast CPU in the first place, negating the need for GPU-accelerated flash. Oh and if hardware acceleration has only just been implemented the what the heck was the 'enable hardware acceleration' option for in previous versions of Flash?

[Output]

Thanks for the links to the regular installer - though what I was trying to say is that they should offer the regular installer by default.

[repon]

I never gone so deep of Adobe flash. I just know browser requires it to show flash contents. So, I have to use it. I use Firefox and Opera both notify when any update available and download immediately.

Nice Tool.

[FatalSaviour]

I am assuming that you would also need updated GFX drivers to benefit from the GPU acceleration? Could be an issue with laptops with 'custom' drivers which are hardly ever updated (e.g. Sony VAIO). Though in my case, it won't matter since I had to disable the nVidia card due to the fan failing.

Depending upon the particular card that you have in your laptop, you might find Nvidia's Verde program useful. For the last few months, it's been possible to obtain generic notebook drivers for the later cards directly from NV.

Link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

Hope that helps!

[mercyground]

i'm impressed. I have a T20 lappy with p3-700 and 256mb ram. With the new flash i can actually use youtube and watch streaming vid. before i'd have to wait for the vid to download before playing it.

[mikerr]

Flash did give us cross platform/browser compaitibility for multimedia content - use flash and its the same on any browser.
The benefits of one vendor and one content player.


But overuse of flash (mainly adverts) is what makes us all use flashblock...

I do hope HTML5 doesn't go the way of earlier HTML with every browser rendering it in a slightly different way.