With the Open Screen Project, Adobe is betting everything on making Flash the world’s number one universal runtime.
They are opening up the SWF specification which will allow anyone to build their own Flash player. They are also removing licensing fees for using Flash on devices. This means loss of revenue in the short term in order to entrench the Flash player on as many devices as possible.
It’s great to see Adobe continue to open up Flash, which makes it more appealing to a broad range of developers. While anyone can now build their own Flash player, Adobe are betting that their version is strong enough to remain the world standard. I guess they plan to make revenue from selling the dev tools to build SWFs.
Techies have always dismissed Flash, because of its origins as a web animation tool. Techies are scared of anything with a timeline. In spite of this, Flash may be able to sneak under the radar to become the world’s most ubiquitous platform, ahead of Java, Silverlight etc. It’s interesting that the web and technology in general is moving towards better designed user experiences, something that Flash has always excelled at.
According to techcruch’s great analysis, Silverlight’s answer to Flash’s increased ubiquity is “Live Mesh”. With good timing, Joel Spolsky just posted a scathing attack on Live Mesh. Frankly I am not at all worried that Silverlight will crush Flash, especially judging by the embarrassing state of their showcase (hello 1998). Maybe MS should just build their own version of flash player.
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It’s quite easy to dismiss things we don’t understand, and much easier to dismiss things when we have a vested interest in it’s competitor.
Take the blinders off idiot. Or should we call you Apple, Netscape, Real, or Wordperfect.
Soy Artista Plastica y actualemte trabajo con los nuevos medios tecnologicos, flash es uno de los programas que me ayudan mucho a desarrollar mis ideas aunque he tenido que utilizar otros programas com processing para lograr una mayos gama de posibilidades, por lo tanto este proyecyo realmente es genial y seran muchas las obras de arte que genere esta herramienta… GRACIAS
COMO ARATIASTA VISUAL Y AUDITIVA ESTA ES Y SERA UNA HERRAMIENTA MUY VALIOSA… GRACIAS
COMO ARTISTA VISUAL Y AUDITIVA ESTA ES Y SERA UNA HERRAMIENTA MUY VALIOSA… GRACIAS
Silverlight will never replace flash, even Microsoft uses Flash, like this http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/, it´s a site to promote Vista, made entirelly in FLASH.
Micosoft is running scared in a lot of respects but Silverlight promises to be a better universal development platform than flash in the long run. However, I wouldn’t discount secret development in some google lab some where.