what happened to linuxflashplugin?

Wed Feb 13 02:33:25 UTC 2008

----------------------------------------
> From: danny at ricin.com
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:16:56 +0100
> Subject: Re: what happened to linuxflashplugin?
> 
> On Wednesday 13 February 2008 00:27:53 Da Rock wrote:
>> ----------------------------------------
>>
>>> Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:50:40 -0500
>>> From: chuckr at chuckr.org
>>> To: jonathan+freebsd-questions at hst.org.za
>>> CC: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>> Subject: Re: what happened to linuxflashplugin?
>>>
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>>> Jonathan McKeown wrote:
>>>> On Monday 11 February 2008 22:26, Chuck Robey wrote:
>>>>> All you folks who are focussing on YouTube are (purposefully?  I don't
>>>>> know) the fact that with just about half of the entire Web using flash
>>>>> in one way or antoehr, not using Flash is a huge problem, as anyone who
>>>>> browses without a flashplayer knows.
>>>>
>>>> Just to provide a counterpoint to this sweeping generalisation, I browse
>>>> without a Flash player and it's never caused me any problem at all.
>>>>
>>>> There are a few sites which don't work without Flash. Having checked on
>>>> a number of occasions, I've found (and I stress this is a personal
>>>> opinion) that heavy use of Flash is a fairly reliable marker of a site I
>>>> wouldn't be interested in whatever publishing techniques were used.
>>>>
>>>> It's rather like the old saying in the British advertising industry:
>>>> only sing in an ad if you have nothing to say.
>>>>
>>>> How does Flash fit in with accessibility guidelines? In many countries,
>>>> a commercial site which doesn't degrade gracefully when viewed with (eg)
>>>> Lynx may fall foul of legislation protecting people with disabilities
>>>> such as visual impairment.
>>>
>>> You know, there are some folks out there who are still using their old
>>> M32 TTY's, and they can't understand why any folks would need mouses. 
>>> Those of us who have successfully made the move to the 21st century can
>>> tell them, but honestly, most of us are very tired of hearing the same
>>> hoary old excuses why things aren't necessary.  The majority of folks
>>> doing browsing today aren't impressed that maybe some 3rd world country
>>> is unhappy with flash sites, they just want their flash sites to work,
>>> and ours don't.  Why don't they?  Because everytime someone comes up with
>>> a workable plan, all the real cave-men out there trot out there
>>> war-stories, and bore us all to death with their memoirs, and endlessly
>>> recursive arguments.  Everytime they get proven wrong on one item, they
>>> just move the clock back a few months, grab the previous
>>> self-justification, and start the argument all back up again.  You can't
>>> out-last them.
>>>
>>> I personally tried to fix things, got soundly beaten to death over it
>>> (and I WILL NOT try that one again, under pain of death, sorry!).  MY
>>> flash works here and that's all I will worry about.  I can't predict when
>>> things will finally improve, maybe when enough folks realize they don't
>>> have to put up with this.
>>>
>>>> In short, I think ``half of the entire Web using Flash'' may be a bit of
>>>> an overstatement even if you count Flash ad banners (which frankly I can
>>>> do without), and the small number of Flash-only sites I encounter hasn't
>>>> caused me temporary inconvenience, never mind ``a huge problem''.
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
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>>
>> That was a right pretty speech there, and I agree with the sentiments of
>> moving forward with technology. However, I disagree that this is merely a
>> case backward compatibility. Are you aware that the w3 consortium has web
>> accessibility drafting committee?
>>
>> Consider also the facts that I have brought forward that Adobe has singled
>> out OS's that are not allowed to run Flash Player.
>>
>> Consider also the fact that most designers simply use flash because they
>> can't design properly and use other more accessible methods to achieve the
>> same thing.
>>
>> I agree that a fix needs to be found, but this is not a "cave man"
>> mentality, and we're not bringing up old war stories. The fact that this
>> has not been all that successful given the larger number of sites now
>> designed with flash player 9 which has been the number one problem here. If
>> you have a fix I am sure we would all welcome the knowledge and use it- I
>> certainly would. I merely point out (hopefully reaching some web designers
>> and other flash fans) that flash is not the only way to go, and is
>> certainly not preferable.
> 
> Let me be the one to point out the (next) controversial thing: here's a 
> perfect example why using linux binaries for stuff like this is a dead end.
> 
> And don't even start about the PC-BSD folks who want to make flash9 work.... 
> via WINE.
> 
> We need a native flash or a replacement for the animation side, and where 
> flash is merely used as a video container, we have not option but to use 
> youitube-dl, miro, and the like. But there too, some native solution is 
> needed, otherwise it will continue to work like crap if at all.
> 
> Dan
> 
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Here Here! Now how do we enforce it?

I can understand why flash is used for the movie side of things- copyright and compression (although there is a way around the copyright biz, and there is other compression options). But what most lazy designers do is use flash for all the "pretty things" in site design instead of doing things using css and javascript. That is the problem which needs to be corrected for the most part. If you need animation what happened to gif? (let me know if there is another format other than gif)

Incidentally how did you fix the flash prob for yourself (post off list if you feel you need to)? I'm extremely interested as I don't want to have to rely on my linux laptops to get flash sites. (I need linux until I figure out how to fix a tv card issue- at least they will work somewhat on them)

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