[ale] macromedia & internet future

[Fulton Green]

Off the top of my head:
- Macromedia does have a closed-source Flash plugin binary for the Intel
  i[3-6]86 platforms. The latest RealPlayer (ditto on platform and source
  non-availability) also has RealFlash support. I don't know if either of
  these can handle the more generic Shockwave stuff, of which Flash is a
  subset (unless they've changed around stuff in the past two years).
- Supposedly, there are *some* aspects of Shockwave and/or Flash design
  that allow for open standards (SMIL? SVG?) to be used in Flash animations.
- If you search on Freshmeat, you'll find not only the Perl mod for creating
  rudimentary Flash content, but also an attempt at a reverse-engineered,
  open-sourced Flash plug-in (though it may very well be stale by now).

In short ... is there a Flash doctor in the house?

The open source community needs to address this SOON. Most entertainment
sites rely on Flash animation, and now a ton of corporate sites are using
Flash for their, um, "splash" ...

On Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 09:08:23AM -0500, James Kinney wrote:
> I saw a blurb about a perl-based flash writer that could do some amazing
> things with text animations. 
> 
> Flash is a pretty lightweight way to add some great animation effects on a
> web page. The closed source is a problem. I like the effects. I would be
> happy if it were ported to Linux so I could use it at native speed instead
> of vmware (the generator, not the plugin).
> 
> At an ALE meeting a few months back, emediat demo'd their RadBuilder. It
> does much of what flash does. It does require a different plugin,
> available for Linux and M$ (no Mac). www.emediat.com  They are releasing
> it open-source! 
> 
> Security is always a concern when I don't have access to the source. I
> don't know what type of "sandbox" flash plays in and they don't tell any
> tech info. From what I have been able to deduce from the operation, it
> hooks to the browser past the html rendering engine to use it to gain
> access to the graphics device. Ditto for the sound. So it seems to run
> with whatever permissions the browser runs with. I wouldn't run it as
> root.
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