Flash's ActionScript engine, for instance, was donated to opensource and subsequently used to make Firefox faster.
(Adobe Flash Player includes licensed codecs from Fraunhoffer, On2 VPx series, H.264, more... Adobe can distribute them, but cannot license them for redistribution by others.)
Good point: Could you use the Sublime HTML/JS set for other codecs? Probably could -- the codec would make less of a difference to transport control functionality than the browser's varying support for JavaScript and VIDEO APIs would be.
<em>"The big question to me is, why isn't Adobe serious about making this technology better? I mean, if Flash worked superbly well we might be not having this discussion."</em>
It's much better than it was, and about to become even moreso. The major part of work over the past year has been invisible to you so far, but cross-device predictability is coming from almost every major manufacturer this year.
The Apple problems are only partly about technology.
I have always been under the impression that the primary sticking point with Apple with regards to Flash is that it would allow the implementation of everything in the App Store without involving Apple.
On the other hand Flash wasn't welcome on the iPhone when Apple didn't want native Apps made by third parties running on it... the App Store was an afterthought, leaving Flash on the side of the road clearly was not.
Or maybe the App Store was just a very well kept secret...
That "Player 9.4" is a bit of an odd bird. Nokia was insistent, a few years ago, on showing the world's real webpages on a pocket device -- they were the first to want to do desktop-style browsers and plugins, rather than Flash applications or native UIs on mobile. I didn't believe it could be done, but I did use an N700 when it became available.
From what I understand, Nokia adapted an older Adobe Linux codebase to the smaller device, and implemented it as a plugin to their browser. Nokia is currently a major partner in the Open Screen Project, and is poised to take advantage of the mobile optimizations in the upcoming Player 10.1 release.
So, oddly, I'd tend to agree with the earlier poster, than we haven't seen fruits of Mobile Flash work recently. But now in Jan10, it's almost showtime.... ;-)
True on the schedules. In 2008 Flash's mobile and desktop teams merged, to create a common runtime codebase across device form-factors. The Open Screen Project has a dramatically wide range of collaborators... one of the most massive examples of cross-company scheduling I've ever seen.
Mobile World Congress is in Barcelona in February. That should be the coming-out party for the entire next generation, and shipments will ramp up through 2010.
I was one of the first people at Macromedia to talk up FutureWave SmartSketch and CelAnimator. From what I've personally seen, the innovation of the entire Flash Platform under Adobe's stewardship has surpassed even the growth under Macromedia.
You don't have to believe it. But that's what I've seen.
Flash's ActionScript engine, for instance, was donated to opensource and subsequently used to make Firefox faster.
(Adobe Flash Player includes licensed codecs from Fraunhoffer, On2 VPx series, H.264, more... Adobe can distribute them, but cannot license them for redistribution by others.)