Flash Player FAQs Video with Justin Everett-Church
| Today I was at Adobe HQ in San Francisco and got a chance to interview Justin Everett-Church, who is the Senior Product Manager for Flash Player, about some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Flash Player 10 and our new search technology. Hopefully I got most of the questions you have answered. If I didn’t please leave your questions in the comments of this post for the next time that I see Justin.
If there are any other interviews that you would like to see please let me know. They don’t take long to produce and I think they can be invaluable for getting you the information that you need. |
Lee
Informative video with Justin. Nice one Lee!
I am really excited about unloadAndStop(). It will save a lot of time!
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keep it coming, Lee. Brilliant. Thanks!
Nice video, but for the next one, please use a tripod. Not a biggie, but still…
So sounds like there is a “special” player that the swfs get run through by the search engines. At any point will that “special” player be released to the public so we can play around with it and figure out what will get indexed and what wont.
My guess is no… HAH… But you never know. But at least some sort of app that you could run your flash site through would be great but I’m guessing that would be developed by google (or yahoo)
Great information! Thanks for making this and sharing it!
Thanks Lee and Justin!
@Thomas Yeah I usually do use a tripod but didn’t have it with me yesterday
Great Information! thanks.
Since you are always on the inside track with all of this stuff, is there any chance you might be able to shed a little light on the situation with a flash player on the iPhone (either in Safaari or as a standalone)? What do you know?
Yes, i have a question:
Does Adobe think they can cheat their users forever?
Most of these “features” in Flash Player 10 are fake or a bad joke.
Oh,yeah, we block key access in fullscreen mode and then introduce limited keyboard access and hype it as great new feature. Awesome trick!
Being cautios should not be the same as blocking everything pretty much every other web technology allows by default.
Next up: Horray, we “improve” how the Garbage Collector works so that it gets all those nice memory leakage issues like Java
from which we copy pretty much everything anyway and then we introduce a “solution” for one of those many issues which still only works partially and in a few cases.
Nice! Much better than having the Garbage Collector do its job as before without the developer having to worry about it!
Oh,yeah,the old one had circular reference issues and lead to less performance.
So yeah, better we get tons of swfs with memory leakage issues and cause lots of extra painful work to flash developers instead of finding a propper way on our side.
Then we don´t add graphic card support to flash for ages, cause sure, we want to support the broadest possible audience.
Then we decide to finally add it cause we fall behind too much, but then instead of doing it propperly so older cards are supported and one can actually use the features of the cards we only use it for partial render support and then also only support shader 2.0 class cards.
Wicked, all those years of waiting made sense.
And yeah, we should add that whole thing so that one sets a new wmode. Cause wmode settings together with flash player embed always worked great in all browsers anyway, no?
Hm..
And yeah, awesome, hype how this stuff that still only achieves ridiculously low fps on high end hardware runs in some demo
of some dudes who only run their own agenda which benefits if flash doesn´t propperly advance and they can push their oh so wicked
“selfmade” 3d engine (which is a 90% copy of 10 year old other engine/language code)
Yes, only listen to that part of your user base, cause with all these decissions you make you will sure soon alienate the majority of the rest of your user base.
And haha, i better don´t start talking about “hydra”, how nice, yet another Adobe only language to learn to create filters, which yes,
still run at sucky performance.
And yup, you should of course hype search indexing before you actually made sure its propperly used and usable by Google.
Thanks Adobe, you´re finally achieving more and more longtime flash users/developers like me loosing any left faith in you.
“Does Adobe think they can cheat their users forever?”
Absolutely. We all work round the clock in an effort to cheat you. You figured it out Pete. You are really smart.
Hi Lee,
I understand that you need Flash player 10 to be able to take advantage of the new wmodes but do you have to publish to swf 10 or will the Flash 10 player apply these modes to swf content 9 or before. So what I’m asking is will the new flash 10 player give the benefit of gpu wmode to old content or does it have to be swf 10 content?
Thanks,
Neil.
i think pete needs to put as much effort into his spelling as he does his adobe bashing.
Ok, thanks for pointing that out
Ok, of course i got your irony/sarcasm just as you probably got mine in my previous post.
You know, i appreciate it that you actually published the post, i didn´t expect that, at best expected you´d read it before you delete it, props for that. No need to personally attack each other then maybe.
I also don´t say you don´t work or work hard, but yeah, i meanwhile have the feeling (for a good while) that you guys have lost the direction towards which to work and got off the track some.
Did you realize that a big part of the programming world is going towards more approachable quicker and easier to use and manage higher level languages, not lower level as you do with flash every version?
Think about what made flash big, one of the key factors was that it was so approachable to non/beginner coders and that it was comparably easy to realize ones fantasies, that´s what it should be about.
With flash language and tech evolution its going the opposite direction.
Developers shouldn´t have to worry about garbage collection, they shouldn´t have to write AS3 if they don´t feel like it just to get halfway reasonable performance, they should be able to combine as3 and as1/2 in a project, all new api and player features should be usable with any AS version, 3D card support should support older cards and lead to way more functionalities of the cards available and way better performance instead of only beeing used for render support with some weird wmode parameters having to be passed through embed.
Have a look at unity3D, one can code in Boo, C# and even JS, also use all in one project, performance is in each case hugely better than even when coding in AS3 in flash, content runs way better on way older hardware, well, just try it for a week or two, no time for listing the tons of things now where it is better than flash, just makes me wonder everytime when i use it how Adobe could go so offtrack while others got it so right.
If this sounds like a unity fanboy now know that i used flash since the very first version and made games and RIAs with it long before it was a hype slogan and it was preached that now one should use Flex and AS3 for it cause that´s how things re done the serious and pro(pper) way.
You know, the pro way is to get nicer things done faster and have them also run better on lower end systems,too, not to have to write lower level and lower level code which takes more cautious longer dev times and then runs worse and on less systems than with comparable technologies.
While trying to attract pv3d,alternativa,sandy and java type developers Adobe seems to have forgotten about their main creative userbase who cares for expressing the creativity more than “oh, i get a boner, this code is so clean and nicely structured! Oh, wicked another language just to do filters, awesome!”
@ pete
Dude, if flash is good enough for Chuck Norris’s website then it’s good enough for everyone else. If Chuck finds out your bashing his preferred web technology, then he might stopAndUnload(you).
@pete,
Not wanting to start a flame war or anything, but show a bit of respect, eh. If you have issues, there are more tactful ways of going about making yourself heard. That post was just plain rude.
@lee,
To repeat an earlier question, will there eventually be a developer version of the Google indexing app for development/testing (or some kind of testing bed available in the Google cloud that’ll allow developers to see how their apps are indexing? Most likely a question for Google, eh?
When you wrote, “Hopefully I got most of the questions you have answered.” You probably meant to say, “Hopefully I got most of the questions you have asked.
[...] Link: LB asks J E-C some FAQ’s on FP10 [...]
Thanks for the information.
@pete
1. Developers want low level access. It makes the apps we develop more powerful since we have more control. If Adobe
was to waterdown flash and cater for noobs then I would back my bags and leave
2. All developers who develop with any managed languages should know about Garbage Collection. Count yourself lucky that there is a garbage collection otherwise you would be doing all the memory management yourself.
3. All new APIs avaiblable in any AS version? Your dreaming right?? lol
4. Yeah I would like to see more 3D support but just look at games and how they have issues with various drivers etc
Anyway I feel that 3D is a little pointless in flash anyway. It is better to focus on Flash’s strengths.
5. It clearly comes across that you are not a real developer as you don’t seem to understand why good structure is important, have a incorrect perception of the programming world and to be honest just come across as a script kiddy.
Have you checked out Director? it has Ageia Physics inbuilt and supports 3D cards, but the download size is much bigger which is why Flash is not like this.
)
Flash’s goals is to keep size down to a minium and be cross platform and as compatible with a wide range of machines as possible. If you really don’t like Flash move to Silverlight but you will still have the same gripes with it. (and maybe some more
“1. Developers want low level access.”
–>Guru guru. nice you know what everyone in the world thinks.
” It makes the apps we develop more powerful since we have more control.”
–>Yes, the first thing i think of when i think of flash is power.
Sadly not at all.
Sadly i have to think that despite the constantly raised hardware requirements the performance is still ridiculous and its nice to have low level access when one wants to use it for certain things, not to have to code things in lower level ways because flash otherwise has even more laughable performance.
Also the only big power flash always had, beeing able to quickly realize fanatasies is shrinking with each revision of player and ide.
Dev times are getting longer and longer, more and more responsibilities are packed onto the developers shoulder each time instead of Adobe adressing them in propper way etc etc.
“2. All developers who develop with any managed languages should know about Garbage Collection. Count yourself lucky that there is a garbage collection otherwise you would be doing all the memory management yourself.
”
–>Why should i be happy if the Garbage Collector was changed in a way that i have to worry about it way more and it leads to way more issues? You can be happy and dance in joy about that if you want.
Be happy about the new hyped usp: You can now in most cases unload an swf without it staying in ram, wicked!!!
“3. All new APIs avaiblable in any AS version? Your dreaming right?? lol
”
–>Yes, sorry, i´d be dreaming to expect Adobe to do it propperly. But no, i´m instead working with unity where i can code C#,Boo and JS inside the same project. There you go.
“4. Yeah I would like to see more 3D support but just look at games and how they have issues with various drivers etc”
–>If done propperly,so not as Adobe did it by only supporting Shader 2.0 grade cards then there wouldn´t be so many issues.
Also yup, would be cool if the card´s power was used for more display related things so that also 2D display would benefit.
Scaleform shows how that´s done nicely for vector stuff.
“5. It clearly comes across that you are not a real developer as you don’t seem to understand why good structure is important, have a incorrect perception of the programming world and to be honest just come across as a script kiddy.
”
–>Thanks, coming from someone who rates others based on a few blog posts that means a lot to me.
“Have you checked out Director? it has Ageia Physics inbuilt and supports 3D cards, but the download size is much bigger which is why Flash is not like this.”
–>I used director ages ago and kinda stopped it when Macromedia stopped pushing it forward propperly, i guess around 2003/4.
It has havok support, not ageia/nvidia physx and yup, its bloated, outdated to sadening degree on all ends and shows where flash will end if “developed” further with this arrogant stance of hey, we dominate the market anyway, we can make all bloggers hype us with pseudo features each time, flash is now 1000% faster btw!!!.
“Flash’s goals is to keep size down to a minium and be cross platform and as compatible with a wide range of machines as possible. ”
–>That´s surely why multicores were supported with it before supporting oldest gen gpu features and now shader 2.0 grade cards are supported instead of supporting older gen gpus and then support those propperly instead. That totally made sense and shows your argument is right on target.
Irony and sarcasm don´t show well in a blog post, you surely get em anyway.
And yes, all quite bitter in tone, but come on guys, you had so many years to get it right and this is what you got with flash 10?
Better be glad that the video support pushed flash adoption and reputation forward so much otherwise the flash is outdated to sadining degree just as director bells would ring much louder much earlier. Still, touting “now with limited key support in FS mode!!!” type usp slogans will let em come up louder and louder with time.
@Pete Sounds like you should keep working in C#. Apparently we just don’t build things that make you happy. No worries.
I actually prefer coding in JS in unity, i think its kinda funny that even when coding in JS performance is so much higher than when coding AS3 in flash. I´m just getting into C# so its nice to be able to write one class in C# and the other class or script file in JS, just as i want in that moment.
“Apparently we just don’t build things that make you happy. No worries.
”
Well, Macromedia used to for a while, then it was about waiting ages for some additions and improvements and meanwhile i gave up on it.
What you see now is just the disappointed bitterness of a flash user since day 1 after all those years waiting for the propper progress and then realizing now “progress” is actually going towards a wrong direction with flash.
No worries, that bitterness will go away after a while, too, i guess once i made a few games with unity and XNA.
I agree man, why bash? As a designer/developer, i think Flash is making awesome strides. If someone coming from a pure design background can embrace it so easily, why can’t someone with a “programmer’s” knowledge at least find one good about it? It’s too bad this whole post has to revolve around a certain somebody’s ignorance. It’s funny because I just had to edit a AS 1.0 file and was thinking how nice the code was back then – maybe we should revert
To Adobe, keep up the great work!
Great interview. Thanks Lee.
[...] Watch the interview at TheFlashBlog by Lee Brimelow [...]
[...] TheFlashBlog: Flash Player FAQs Video with Justin Everett-Church (the quote is at 8:20), emphasis mine. [...]
[...] TheFlashBlog: Flash Player FAQs Video with Justin Everett-Church (the quote is at 8:20), emphasis mine. [...]
Hey, this video stops after about 35 seconds! Could you fix it or upload it to youtube?
[...] Platform Evangelist, Lee Brimelow, has posted a good interview of Justin Everett-Church, Sr. Product Manager for Flash Player on theFlashblog.com. Today I was at [...]
Great video. Gave some good information…
I still don’t understand why Google just doesn’t “screen read” rather than rip apart the SWF. For example, just take a picture of the SWF running after 1,5, and 10 seconds and determine the text on the screen that way. CAPTCHA readers do this, I’m sure Google could do it as or even more efficiently.
Plus in terms of hiding content from search, there’s always robots.txt which I’m sure will still apply
Any information on the consistently poor performance of the Flash Player running on the Mac OS?