Macromedia to Port Flash MX to Linux?

LnxAddct writes "An article on CNet reports that Macromedia will start taking Linux more seriously. It will start this new initiative by making it's suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux! Their Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, stated, 'What we've been investigating is, When will it be time to bring our tools to Linux? I think it might be happening now.' Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux."

Sweet.

[hookedup (630460)]

This is half the reason I dont use linux on the desktop. Now, get me a stable version of Photoshop CS, and I'm in.

Re:Sweet.

[rokzy (687636)]

but Acrobat Reader sucks on Windows too, especially the latest one (6) which takes twice as long to load (cf 5), offers no improvments, adds some new buttons to make the interface more cluttered, and displays a list of 100 patents while loading to piss me off.

plus I hate programs that force useless things on me. is there a way to make the "My eBooks" directory fuck off?

Re:Sweet.

[abandonment (739466)]

no kidding...every time it creates the directory...every time i delete it afterwards... my computer is cluttered enough with crap that i don't need programs assuming how i organize things - and provide NO way to change the default behavior...

Re:Sweet.

[Hooded One (684008)]

You can speed up Acrobat significantly by getting rid of unneeded plugins, either by deleting them or moving them to another directory. There are only a small handful you'll ever actually use. It could still stand to be a lot faster, but it's better than it comes out of the box.

Indeed, Acrobat Reader 6 = lame

[danielsfca2 (696792)]

Yeah, I mean, christ, AcroRead6 even displays a freaking little ad button on the toolbar now. One time installing that POS taught me to only use version 5.1, conveniently available from the text-only download page [adobe.com].

Re:Sweet.

[plj (673710)]

You sure fill those PDF forms with xpdf too? Quite commonly used by government agencies in Finland.

OTOH, you're still right that reades sucks on Linux - you can only fill the forms with ascii characters, which is not so funny when your alphabet uses 3 extra characters in addition to English ones...

adobe's going backwards

[abandonment (739466)]

instead of increasing the number of platforms that their products work on, adobe has been reducing it... premiere no longer works on mac (once considered THE platform for premiere) because of heavy reliance on the windows media format in the latest premiere version (can use wmv as a 'native' format for editing)... i doubt that adobe will clue into linux, we'll have to rely on hoping that the gimp folks will figure out how to make an interface that is comprehensible and we can get rid of photoshop once and for all

Re:adobe's going backwards

[Slack3r78 (596506)]

In all honesty, the dropping of Premiere support had more to do with Final Cut Pro being a far superior product than it did Windows reliance.

Re:Sweet.

[AstroDrabb (534369)]

Disney paid to have it work very well under wine [eweek.com]. I used it under CrossOver Office [codeweavers.com] with no problems. It seems like it is working well for Walt Disney Co.'s feature animation unit. Though to be honest, I am a programmer and not a graphic artist and Gimp meets all my humble needs : )

Re:Sweet.

[GiMP (10923)]

I'm curious, have you tried the Gimp 2.0-pre? It is a much different beast than the 1.2 and older versions, and may surprise you if you haven't used it already.

Thank god ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god, because the only thing the world needs more is more adoption of Flash.

Re:Thank god ...

[Associate (317603)]

Right on!
Friends don't let friends use flash.

Re:Flash is worse than spam

[NanoGator (522640)]

"Why to people actually like flash? Hard for me to fathom."

Flash isn't the problem, it's how it's used. The difference? Kill Flash and people who set out to be annoying will use other methods, like huge animated .GIFs etc.

Flash is actually pretty slick. Fortunately it's being used more tastefully these days, though there are some who still need to learn that lesson.

I guess what I'm saying is it'd be far more productive to teach people about using it tastefully than it is to bitch about the existence of it.

Screw that!

[i_am_syco (694486)]

I'm still waiting for Microsoft to port Office to Linux! Then I'll switch over.

Re:Screw that!

[Saven Marek (739395)]

You may have been marked funny, and perhaps even writing in jest or indeed poking fun at us! But I think when it comes down to it that's one of the big obstacles to converting people to Linux and I am one of the people who's all for converting more people to Linux. market share = application writer attention = better for all of us.

I think a port of MS Office to Linux is likely one of the later ports that will happen, but applications like Flash and other general productivity ones will keep up the interest of all other software houses. There are dozens of big name applications I'd like to see released for Linux. They don't necessarily have to be open source themselves either. Imagine if Linux had a 50% market share just because Macromedia, Adobe, Microsoft and others released big name apps? that would be twenty times the user base we have now, twenty times the coders and twenty times the gamers and twenty times the bug reports.

How much better could Linux get if it were that popular? Unstoppably so

The uncrackable mac [67.160.223.119]

Re:Screw that!

[CleverNickName (129189)]

And open office isn't good enough? besides, what's wrong with just using vi for word processing? Simple, reliable. if you are liike me and can spel prefect, vi will due everything you could evar want.


And if you don't like vi, I hear that there's a text editor in emacs.

I've never been able to find it, but I hear it's there.

Re:Screw that!

[bfg9000 (726447)]

Simply hit Ctrl-Meta-Shift-X-U-G, then Meta-Shift-Q-Shift-P-77, then type gvaomp-txt

Don't worry, it becomes quite natural after a while.

Re:Screw that!

[Xenographic (557057)]

At risk of being branded a heretic by both sides, I *think* the text editor command is:
M-x shell RET vi

So, it finally paid

[pcmanjon (735165)]

All them emails I sent them finally paid off!!

Re:So, it finally paid

[Zakabog (603757)]

Actually I think it was my snail mail which included a note that said "Please port flash to linux or I'll send more pics" and a pic of myself naked. Although your e-mail may have helped a bit too.

Re:So, it finally paid

[Flashbck (739237)]

Apparantly my numerous bug reports informing them of the major bug "flash doesn't seem to install under linux properly" finally paid off!

Flash plug-in?

[Fancia (710007)]

Hopefully, this means that they'll take non-x86 platforms semi-seriously. ;b I'd like a PPC Flash plug-in, that's for certain.

Disaster waiting with WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

They might as well just come out and say they will not support Linux. My experiences with WINE have been, shall I say, bitter. I've managed to get a few games running with it, but never without significant hassle or loss of resources (sound, fullscreen, etc.).

The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux cannot go through WINE.

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[damiam (409504)]

That's their point. They are going to work to get Flash working well in WINE, hopefully on the same level that Office works with Crossover (which is really WINE). WINE can work damn well, it just usually doesn't, unless it's been tuned for a specific app, or the app's been tuned to it.

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[kfg (145172)]

On the whole I agree with you, however; I feel the need to add a couple of caveats:

WINE does not, as a general rule, work well with games, since it does not impliment DirectX, so your experience with games cannot be directly translated to non DirectX applications.

In the case of said games it was you trying to get them to run. In this case it is the orginal code author trying to get it to run. That difference may prove significant.

That said, a proper native port would be preferable.

KFG

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[jhoger (519683)]

Wine is probably the most ambitious OSS project around... cloning the Win32 API is no small feat. I know where your bitterness comes from, but that was then. WINE really is about there... Crossover Office is just a few steps ahead of Wine at any given time, and it runs Office flawlessly, and other apps too.

I use the Crossover version of WINE every day and I don't have any complaints. It does what I need it to do. And considering it just as a porting library to speed up porting efforts to Linux is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

Long term WINE is going to be an important part of moving people off of Windows.

Linux voids finally being filled...

[oldosadmin (759103)]

There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives. The Macromedia MX line of tools is -definately- one of those.

AFAIK, there is no alternative to Flash MX on Linux -- yes, Openoffice.org Impress will save to Flash, but to some designers, that's simply not powerful enough.

And Dreamweaver MX is the -only- wysiwyg editor that I will allow to touch my code. It works cleanly and with compatibility, something no other wysiwyg editor, even oss ones, can claim. (disclaimer: I code in gedit ;D).

On a side note -- didn't I read something a few months back about Adobe doing something similar with Photoshop?

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[AMystery (725537)]

I feel the same way. The lack of Dreamweaver was one thing that kept me on windows for longer than I wanted. Ever since I finally made the move I have been searching freshmeat, hoping that somewhere there was that miracle program that would do what I needed, but no such luck. Dreamweaver is by far the best WYSIWYG HTML editor, and for those who claim notepad (emacs), I can only assume you have never used dreamweaver. Its great how you can work with the code while also having the full power of a visual editor that just works. (Its like using a Mac:)

I would prefer to have a native port, as my experiences with WINE have been less than stellar, but I will take whatever I can get.

On a related note, I used Frontpage to make a site lately, mainly because I needed something simple, cheap and fast and it just happened to be on the system with MS Office. What happened to it? It used to be just a horrid WYSIWYG editor, but it has gone down hill! 2003 couldn't even upload the site and when I did finally get it up, it was broken, because it couldn't transfer its own _derived directory which for some strange reason contained most of the images. Admittedly I had low expectations, but it managed to underwhelm even those.

Long live dreamweaver! Gimp is great for graphics, and while I miss Photoshop since it is what I learned, i am happy with the replacement. Give me dreamweaver and I will be happy.

David, Frustrated Web Artist Extraordinaire.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[AstroDrabb (534369)]

and while I miss Photoshop

Photoshop runs very well under Linux using CrossOver Office [codeweavers.com]. Walt Disney Co.'s feature animation unit [eweek.com] is using Photoshop 7 under CrossOver Office on Linux.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[capz loc (752940)]

A few months back I had the opportunity to talk with a representative from Adobe who said that they have no plans to release any of their products for Linux until there is a larger customer base.

Unfortunately, this has become the chicken-and-egg scenario, where vendors won't make software for Linux until there are more people using it, while there will never be people migrating to Linux until there is more software that will run on it.

As much as I hate it, I feel that WINE is a good intermediate step in this situation, because it gives Macromedia a low-commitment opportunity to feel out the Linux market without fully porting the software.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[Ogerman (136333)]

There are some software titles that just -need- to be ported to linux, do to lack of OSS alternatives.

Wrong. We don't "just need" any proprietary software to be ported to Linux. We do need to get behind the projects that are developing OSS alternatives and support them both community-style and financially. We also need to gather support of the business community, focusing on software that will save them money. ex.) "You spend $10,000/year on Macromedia tools? Support our project and you can drop that expense within 2 years."

I personally would gladly donate $100 to a professionally run project implementing SVG solutions so we can ditch Flash once and for all. I would donate more if it would give me a vote in future feature development. If we can buy Blender in a few month's time, we can surely pool enough resources to do this.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[cubicledrone (681598)]

After years and years of "oh, how wonderful it would be if the net were truly a multimedia platform," the only toolset, and I mean ONLY toolset that offers solid animation and compatible sound capabilities on Linux, Mac and Windows, which is also, by the way, completely cross-platform, is Macromedia Flash.

There is also an installed base of some 500 million players. That's why it needs to be ported to Linux.

Wrong Software To Port?

[rsmith-mac (639075)]

While I applaud any efforts to get more software running natively on Linux, I have to ask: why Flash? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad flash movies, and anoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Dreamweaver be a better choice?

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[jimbosworldorg (615112)]

Because, whether you think it's generally a horrid abomination or not, more and more sites use Flash for essential navigation tools, and up until now, it's worked... inconsistently... at best under any platform but Win32.

Native Flash rendering under *nix could be a very very big step forward towards getting mainstream acceptance for *nix as a mainstream desktop platform.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

Why HTML? I mean as far as most of us are concerned, it's the scourge of the internet, responsible for a slew of poorly designed sites, bad GIF movies, and annoying advertisements. If Macromedia wants to go after the Linux crowd, wouldn't a more appreciable tool like Gopher be a better choice?

---

Look, you can use any tool improperly. That doesn't mean the fault is with the TOOL. As with frames in HTML, so with Flash. A bad designer is going to do things badly, no matter the tool or technology.

Because Flash is now all about applications

[ObligatoryUserName (126027)]

Much to the dismay of many of my designer friends, the last few development cycles for Flash have been focused on Flash as an application platform. Just take a look at their recent initiatives, Flex, Central - they're targeting the developer community.

Sad to say, lately their efforts haven't been going so well. Most of the people who are Flash programmers right now don't need new interfaces for creating Flash content because they're already acclimated to the old interface, and many programmers who aren't already in the Flash community aren't getting turned on by these changes to the tools because they already have strong opinions that they aren't open to changing. ("Flash is good for Strongbad, but why should I care?")

So, how do they attract more developers? By going where the developers want to go, to Linux. It might seem obvious here on Slashdot, but this is real leadership in the market in which they operate - let's hope it starts a cascade that turns into a flood.

Response to SVG?

[Stile 65 (722451)]

Are they doing this as a response to SVG? Especially since Microsoft is "embracing and extending" SVG into WVG? It'd definitely be easier, without a Flash MX that runs on Linux, for Linux users to develop SVG than Flash. Many of the people that create interactive content that's as advanced as Flash are geeky enough to love or at least know how to get around in Linux.

Fingers Crossed

[illuminata (668963)]

Oh Macromedia, please please please/b> bring DREAMWEAVER. I"m having a hell of a time with posting comments to Slashdot. It would make my life easier if I wouldn't have to do my own HMTL.

A leg up on Adobe

[overbyj (696078)]

This move by Macromedia could be a big one because it would give a serious leg up on Adobe. For whatever reason, Adobe has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the Linux market. Where is Photoshop? Gimp is no Photoshop. It is good but no Photoshop. Photoshop on Linux alone would be monstrous, but why don't they do it? Who knows.

Anyway, if Macromedia really wanted to scoop Adobe, this is the one way to do it.

How about...

[BHearsum (325814)]

They fix the Flash player first? I mean, jesus. Yeti Baseball shouldn't be using my entire CPU.

Puhleeeasse NO!

[wiresquire (457486)]

IMHO, there can never be too little Flash.

BTW for those who want to turn it off by default, all you need to do is rename the plugin, eg
mv /usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.temp

And if you REALLY need it, like those horrific sites that don't actually use HTML (car manufacturer sites are the worst offenders I come across) you can rename it back

Dreamweaver, and No WINE PLEASE!

[FullCircle (643323)]

Why not port a native Dreamweaver? There is NO decent WYSIWYG HTML editor on Linux. Flash is an accessory to Dreamweaver. People who want Flash can't work without a decent HTML editor. They definately won't edit their HTML in vi, so they won't buy Flash for Linux.

WINE is a pain when it comes to drive letters.

First, it has a totally different view of the filesystem than every native app. It has a fake drive letter (Z: for instance) that leads to /, then you get to dig for the home directory.

Or, if you set up the home directory as H: or whatever, the user ends up looking for their H: drive from a native app.

WINE is unstable, even using the Crossover Office I bought to try to get my wife, the last holdout in my house, off of Windows.

PLEASE, Macromedia, don't use WINE to hack this together and please port the main application FIRST!!

Flash For Linux alread OSS

[nicklaszlo (720488)]

The F4L project (at sourceforge [sourceforge.net]) is already working on an open source alternative to Macromedia's monopoly. The GUI is already in place in version .01, and there are already libraries in the wild for editing .SWF files (based on information released by Macromedia), so it is only a matter of developer time before it is finished. I run the F4L Documentation Project. [cesdep.org] You can chat about F4L at irc.freenode.net and #F4L

One more void

[Sean Clifford (322444)]

Now if we could only get a port of FrontPage... :)

I want my CPU back

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

Flash is smooth, it allows you to do a lot of fancy stuff, like annoying ads and badly designed web sites, but say sweet good bye to your CPU. What I mean by that is anytime I visit a page with flash I see a 10-20% increase in CPU usage per embeded flash. In some cases I have had my CPU usage at 80% until I closed all web page with flash in it. For this reason I ask Macromedia to please be considerate with my CPU. Maybe we need an option to be able to do a 'nice' on plug-ins?

If it makes a difference, my browser is Mozilla. If you want an example of CPU usage and Flash visit http://movies.yahoo.com/oscars/

Why they are so late:

[Qbertino (265505)]

Something like three years it was absolutely clear with *everyone* in the professional IT field that Linux/OSS would take off and soar. It went just as generally predicted, only did I lose a bet that Macromedia would have ported at least one app from the dreamteam to Linux within 2 years.
And here is why they're to late for me to collect my dinner out:
During the dot-bomb Flash was everybodys darling. There was no way you could design a solid site with predictable Layout behaviour without using flash. CSS was so crappy everyone just plain ignored it after playing with it for 2 hours. If you wanted a webdoc that was more than just a string of characters you had to use flash.
Then came the bomb, the web grew up within 6 months flat, Flash was to crappy for solid client side apps and the remaining pros switched to functional sites, also ditching Dreamweavers template engine for the bazillion OSS CMSes popping up left right and center. In the mean time IE and Netscape 6.1/Mozilla finally fullfilled the promise CSS had been making for 5 years. That all together weighed in on MM. Flash lost big chunks of it's significance on a monthly basis.
Nowadays Sites are cool and don't need no flash whatsoever.
But here's a really interessting thing: I happend to work on a Rich Media Framework in Flash MX 2004 Pro. After 2.5 years ignoring it I was in pretty fast again. (Sidenote: Customer and Partners agreed to GPL it once the bills are payed!) I actually had to install Windows to do it. While the IDE still has the typical super-crappy anoying macromedia glitches and quirks in it, ActionScript 2 has become a full range PL. ECMA compliance, error handling, a stack of oreilly books for it and all. Rolling an XML controlled industry leading E-Learn-Player and Webpresentation framework was a piece of cake and took me and a guy I work with no more than 8 weeks. On top of that, Macromedia is getting a drift before anybody else in the app vendor field: Their newest product 'breeze', doesn't come in a box anymore. They sell it as a service!
I presume that they saw income going down after the bomb and hushed and listend to the experts. I think there is a strong developers team with them that is seriously fed up with the crappy underlyings in their products (just like many of the professional customers) and that they have gotten a chance to call the shots. Not only is MM doing some very smart moves as a corp. right now, but a Flash MX 2k5 Pro for Linux would bring me right back onto their list. MM has had a steady revenue stream through nice packaging. Now that that doesn't work anymore, they're doing the next step. If I were to bet a fistfull of stockshares on a closed source software vendor, they'd be my first choice.
Linux/OSS is rolling and there ain't no stopping it. And now that MM isn't everybody darling anymore they have to shape up and comply.
All good news indeed.

Re:eaiser to run?

[Shados (741919)]

Actualy having your QA team try it and consider Wine bugs real bugs... I mean...they have access to the official source code... How many things don't run in Wine because of an half buggy splash screen, a messed up installer, or because they rounded up the corners using some "features" (read: bugs) of Windows to their advantage... That would be how: by actualy trying those things... Lots of things that dont work in Wine, would with a few hours of cleaning up code... If I remember well, its even written somewhere on the Wine page, that programs can be made "for" Wine, and will then work flawlessly in both environnements...

Re:Flash sucks

[PhoenixFlare (319467)]

Something that endless consume your processor speed (like a little movie) while you're reading a text or with a lot of tabs/windows open, it's definitly not the way I want to expend my processor time.

I think you may have some other problems, if you can't play a Flash movie without crushing your performance. As I type this, I have an 800x600 Flash movie playing, 5 other instances (and probably 15 tabs) of Firefox running, as well as an active connection to a busy MUD, AIM, etc....With no appreciable slowdown at all. And this is on a 4 year-old P3 667.

As others have said above me, the problem is not with Flash itself, but with how people use it. Yes, it can be used to make annoying ads and interfaces, but it can also be used to make some pretty damn neat things as well.

Re:How About

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the Flash Click To View [mozdev.org] plugin?

It turns all Flash animations into a little button - which loads and shows the flash animation only when you click on it.

Re:See, the problem is that

[Delphiki (646425)]

Sure, it might make quite a few people rabid microsoft haters. But it's still only a tiny percentage of the population who gives a shit. In fact, outside of slashdot and linux/mac specific forums, not much of anyone seems to have any righteous indignation over Microsoft (unless they hate the rich in general). I don't hate Microsoft that much. I just hate all their products. I'm become less and less willing to get infuriated about their business practices, except maybe them bank rolling SCO to attack Linux, but now I'm rambling...