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."

Not a lot of work

[r00zky]

IIRC previous version of Flash (5?) was running almost properly under WINE.

Dunno if much changed in MX, but i guess it's not a lot of work for Macromedia.

Two Words

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice.org (that's kinda two words...)

Re:eaiser to run?

[Shados]

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...

Disney

[CoolMoDee]

I'm not sure if it was so much Adobe as it was Disney and 2 other unnamed companys paying codeweavers lots of money to get Photoshop 7 (was current at the time) running in Crossover Office/Wine.

Re:Sweet.

[Smallpond]

Reader sucks on Linux. I use xpdf.

Re:Response to SVG?

[bad_fx]

Except WVG doesn't exist any more. It's now called XAML, and my understanding is that it's not going to be an extended SVG, just a system that provides "similar" capabilities to SVG. Blah.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[l810c]

Dreamweaver MX is one of a very few intuitive, powerful, fun to use apps that exist.

Many of it's features were integrated from Homesite, which I was using to program Cold Fusion web pages back in 1996. They took the 'coder's editor'(Homesite) and integrated it with he 'designers editor'(Dreamweaver) and created one Really Powerfull web desing app.

My only problem with it is that the latest version 2004MX is kinda slow on my computer. My computer is an Athlon 1900+/512MG. Most programs are pretty snappy on my system. I'm holding off upgrading until I get the final HL2/Doom3 specs :)

Grammar Tips: Apostrophe

[srcosmo]

Quick apostrophe tips:

It is => it's.
Otherwise, use its. Even for possession.

Remember that "its" is an exception to the usual rule of the apostrophe indicating possession, as in Steve's, Bill's, Darl's, etc.

Let's practice on the article header:

It will start this new initiative by making its suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port its tools natively to Linux!

Sorry for OT-ism.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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

I think that was last summer, and not Adobe, but three major movie studios cooperating to work together to make some Adobe products work under WINE.

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[damiam]

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:Not a lot of work

[Geek of Tech]

I've never had any problem with Flash MX and Wine. Dreamweaver a problem (Stability wise), but Flash already apprears to be fine.

Flash For Linux alread OSS

[nicklaszlo]

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

Re:Selective porting

[damiam]

The Flash plugin is already available [macromedia.com] for Linux.

Re:Wrong Software To Port?

[Anonymous Coward]

linux has a perfectly good flash 6 plugin for mozilla, for native rendering. This article is talking about porting the authoring software.

Flash vs. SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

As good as this port might be for the user friendly desktop-oriented distributions, the reality is that Flash is a deeply dated, inferior technology when compared to the open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).

The old proprietary Flash standard is centered around a rendering scheme built through reverse Bezier curve transforms. This is fine for small, non-interactive banners with small frame counts, but in more complex applications it scales horribly and is incredibly inefficient on commodity hardware (ever notice how a huge, complex Flash applet will *completely* monopolize your machine until you manually kill it). Even worse, although it may be difficult to believe, internally the Flash format uses 16 bit INTEGER values exclusively! (Is Macromedia stuck in 1983?). It might have made sense in 1996 when Flash was first being developed, but today using a bit depth that's less than an architecture's default word length is devastating to cache coherency, not to mention that all the processors floating point functional units are left idle.

By contrast, SVG uses 128 bit variable-length pages, with a modern cubic spline rendering core (see last years SIGGRAPH proceedings for a great paper describing the rendering model). Best of all, it's free software with all the efficiency and security that it brings. If people would just get behind SVG instead of beating the dead horse that is Flash, we wouldn't have to deal with Macromedia's half-hearted "outreach" efforts.

Just say no to Flash!

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[kfg]

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:Sold

[son_of_asdf]

No Doubt--having Dreamweaver tie into Apache/Postgre/MySql would send me running to CompUSSR to pick up a copy. Flash? I couldn't care less--.swf is one of the more evil file extensions out there.

Fireworks would be nice too--it's great for doing quick mockups of navbars, etc. Fireworks doesn't write the cleanest code ever, but when you can do a prototype navbar in about 10 minutes, who cares? Not I, at least.

OTOH, I doubt that the developers of NVU [nvu.com] are terribly pleased. There will be those out there that are all about a free WSIWYG tool, but they're going to lose a lot of pro designers and others who could potentially contribute to its development. I'm going to keep my eye on Nvu, but until it's stable and will do 95% of what I ask of Dreamweaver, I'm still going to have keep that damn VMWare Win2000 install around.

Re:Flash sucks

[PhoenixFlare]

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:Sweet.

[abandonment]

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...

adobe's going backwards

[abandonment]

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:Disaster waiting with WINE

[jhoger]

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.

Re:So, it finally paid

[trib]

As someone who is fairly heavily involved in Macromedia-technology-based development (ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, Central), I've been asking Australian and US-based Macromedia staff for several years when this will happen. The most recent response I got (before sort of giving up) from a Macromedia luminary (Ben Forta) was along the lines of "Linux, no. Linux users aren't interested in paying for anything so we're unlikely to make our tools available on Linux." Granted, this was 12 months ago (and patently rubbish, which I told him).
Looking around the Wine community, Flash and Dreamweaver have long been high priorities among us. I had them running under the previous version of Crossover Office, before they were officially supported by Codeweavers. However, with official Macromedia support, this will be very sweet. Native versions ever sweeter.
Now I can REALLY destroy my Windows partition (gaming only) - I just have to get my 6yo daughter's Barbie games to work under Wine (somehow I don't think so).

Re:Sweet.

[Sp4c3 C4d3t]

Crossover Office. Ever heard of it? I use it, and it works great.

Re:WINE?!?

[danieleran]

Macromedia didn't to 'a direct port to Unix' in any fashion when moving Flash from the classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.

Apple did the majority of the work by building a cleaned up version of the Mac APIs (Carbon) to run along side OpenStep (Cocoa). Both are so far above the BSD userland in OS X that there is no possible way to 'port' major OS X applications to Linux or any other Unix-like OS, even Darwin.

PLEASE stop asking to have Mac OS X apps ported to Linux "since both are Unix-variants." The only way to get commercial apps on Linux is using WINE or if Apple were to port Cocoa/OpenStep to the Linux kernel. Carbon wouldn't do much good, since it's tied to the Mac hardware. This won't happen though, sorry.

What you are thinking of is Mac OS X's ability to run most open source CLI software, and X11 apps. Since most of the value in Unix/open source software is based in server/utility/function code, most of it can be easily moved to OS X and given a graphic interface in Cocoa.

So Apple took the khtml engine to make Safari, but did their own interface. Safari can't be ported back to Unix/Linux as a graphic app, because its missing Cocoa/Carbon. All Apple can give back is code improvements to the khtml render engine.

Macromedia's use of WINE is analogous to their use of Apple's Carbon to port their existing legacy code to another platform with little effort. With Carbon, they produce a native OS X app that's integrated into the Mac's interface on every level. With WINE, they are simply making their Windows code run on top of Linux; it takes no advantage of Linux. In particular, it does not make it free.

The other critical difference is that with no effort to move their app to Linux, they have no investment to maintain and no commitment to selling a product. Which is fine, because Linux users don't buy commercial software (except for their Windows games).

Re:Flash plugin

[Via_Patrino]

It definitly won't choke any computer, but using 7% of my computer time, just because there's an ad playing (and I won't even look at it because it's in background), is not what I want when compiling some heavy program that will take hours.

Do you want some proves, here they are:
(measures made while idle, just watching top, specially mozilla-bin)

Mozilla with the Sun flash banner opened:
- active (i'm seeing the banner) 17-19% of processor use
- background (i'm not even seeing mozilla): 3-5% processor use (ok, that specifically isn't a heavy banner)

Mozilla with no flash:
- active (mozilla opened): 0.0%
- background: 0.0%

It may not be a lot for some, but for people which computer is always doing other stuff in background (aswell as their browser is always opened where you last stopped) or just waiting a java applet on the other window, it is.

These are facts, I'm not trolling.
I agree now that I shouldn't have used "sucks" (might be a strong word for some) but that's what I feel about it most of the time, and don't think my comment should be hidden for most of people ( tagged flamebait) just because of that.

Indeed, Acrobat Reader 6 = lame

[danielsfca2]

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:Disaster waiting with WINE

[dominator]

I think that you're mistaken. Wine does support DirectX and DirectSound to some large degree.

http://www.winehq.com/site/status_directx [winehq.com]

Quite a few games work well under wine. In fact, a whole company or two is devoted to making DirectX games work under wine.

http://www.transgaming.com/ [transgaming.com]

Re:Sweet.

[IamLarryboy]

I recently assisted in the transition of a small web/graphics design shop to linux. The employees reported that photoshop etc. actually ran faster using crossover office than under win2k. Something to think about anyway.

Re:Macromedia.

[The Master Control P]

I've also had sound problems with the Linux flash player. The sound plays for an instant, then siezes up for a moment (presumably being rendered/cached), and then resumes correctly. However, it absolutely kills the experience.

Strangely, I've only found such a playback problem while running Konqueror. Running the exact same player under Mozilla eliminates it.

Anyone else had the same problem?

Re:Puhleeeasse NO!

[Trejkaz]

Sometimes renaming the plugin's file isn't enough. Next time that package gets upgraded, the file will be overwritten. A better idea is to leave the file there and make it inaccessible by all users. That gives you a better chance of it not being squashed... but of course evil package managers will probably still insist on overwriting it. Maybe the plugins directory should be config-protected...

Re:Macromedia.

[OneHungLo]

I can agree with you there. Macromedia totally half-assed their Linux plugin. One way to watch flash animations bearably (although a little tedious) is to download this extension [texturizer.net] for Firefox and set it to overlay Flash animations. Then, when you open a page with animation (like a web cartoon), click the "Adblock" tab. Copy the URL to the flash to your clipboard, and open the Windows Standalone Player (which seems to work flawlessly in Wine, outside of some small clipboard glitches). Press Ctrl+O, and paste the URL into the open dialog. The flash plays fine then.

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[AstroDrabb]

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:Puhleeeasse NO!

[bgeer]

Calm down :-) Since I discovered the Flash Click to Play [mielczarek.org] plugin I've actually gotten to like flash again. Those of us using real browsers [mozilla.org] can just load it and flash animations won't start until you tell them to.

But wait there's more, Adblock [mozdev.org] also blocks flash and even puts a little tab around the flash frame so you can block them more easily. That way you won't even see the white "click to play" frame in place of the flash at all.

Now for an unlimited time only try them for 30 days risk-free and if you like them, just send 3 easy payments of nothing to nobody.

Re:Sweet.

[bursch-X]

Does it do CMYK and proper colour correction, does it use ICC profiles? No?
Well, then it's not even in the same league with Photoshop. Without that functionality it's not even a professional tool for graphic designers.

Again I find GIMP a great tool, but please don't say it's just as good as Photoshop. You're just embarassing yourself.

Re:Screw that!

[rokzy]

you have to reboot Windows to install Office. In fact, if you install all the programs (Office 2000 Premium) you have to reboot THREE times.

Re:Sweet.

[stateq2]

I've tried it, and it's awesome. The interface is MUCH smoother than 1.2. Also, the new tabbing and docking capabilities make working w/ it much easier.

Re:I want per site blocking of flash.

[base3]

Not quite per-site blocking, but Flash Click to View [texturizer.net] for Mozilla may be of interest to you.

Howto fill-in pdf in Linux

[jbrax]

Q: Are there any tools that will let me fill in forms in pdf?

Yes, acroread. But it provides output only via printing. When run on a pdf with a form to fill in acroread reports the following : "To save form data you need to have Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Approval. This form can be completed and printed from Reader; however to save the data you need one of the viewers noted above."

However, it is fairly easy to partially circumvent the above and direct PS to a file instead of the printer. Then you'll have the completed form in PS format. PS can then be easily be converted to PDF using ps2pdf. This doesn't let you edit the form later, you would need to start over in acroread. (Unless the edits required are small, then editing the Postscript file before creating the PDF file is quite possible as Postscript is just another text file).

Re:Linux voids finally being filled...

[cozziewozzie]

You might want to try out Quanta [sourceforge.net]. It's been making great strides recently, and its visual (WYSIWYG-ish) layer looks like it will be the best thing since sliced bread. In any case, it is one of the programs with the most devoted following in linux-land.

faster acrobat loading

[Hank Chinaski]

hold the shift key while acrobat loads. it will start up in 1 or 2 seconds then, because it doesnt load the plugin this way.

Re:Disaster waiting with WINE

[Mafia$oft]

God, so much misinformation in so few postings!

Wine DOES support DirectX, up to 8.1 (I guess even parts of 9 are implemented).
In fact I've heard (sorry, not too active a contributor any more) that several games now work even BETTER than on WineX with its "special" DirectX support.
In fact Wine ALWAYS had DirectX, what it didn't have was the Direct3D part of DirectX, but even that hasn't been true any more for a looong time now (much more than a year).
Right now even the D3D part is pretty good, AFAIK.

The non-commercial Wine version still isn't exactly a plug-n-play thing, though (more like plug-n-pray :). CXOffice still has many issues, too (it's got much easier configuration and much higher success rate, though).

Re:Sweet.

[funwithstuff]

That's good to know - it's a dog on the Mac too. And I thought it was just slower on the Mac because Adobe were moving their development primarily to Windows and porting back.

By the way, under Mac OS X, you can disable plug-ins by clicking checkboxes in the Application's Get Info dialog/inspector. Only hassle is, there are inter-dependencies, so you can bring up a heap of "plug-in X failed to initialize" dialogs by disabling the wrong one.

And at least Acrobat 6 Professional does actually have handy new features: its separation preview and preflight have both saved me before going to print.

Re:Sweet.

[ACorvus]

Uhm, CMYK is not patented - it's just the standard way colour printing works (subtractive color model). I think you're confusing it with Pantone, which is widely used for colour /matching/ is most certainly requires a licencing fee.

Ink tech. and patents (was Re:Sweet.)

[WillAdams]

There are however a _lot_ of patents for converting from colourspace to CMYK, a fair number of which are held by Adobe.

Pantone is primarily a spot colour standard (they provide a swatch book which shows what a given colour will look like on coated or uncoated stock), w/ a library of swatches for use on a display to approximate that. They also have a CMYK - equivalency list which shows which Pantone colours can be approximated by CMYK. And they've since branched out to offering a list of RGB swatches which allow one to pick an RGB colour which (in theory, on a colour callibrated monitor) will match a range of official Pantone libraries. These libraries are protected by trademark and copyright, and the methods used to get at the derivatives by patent.

That said, the big problem is that there's no way to do an ink representation in GIMP --- a generalized method of doing this would get one CMYK ``for free'', and allow one to do spot colour monotones, duotones, tritones &c. Possibly even Hexachrome (printing w/ six colours for an extend colour range). There's a British company (Cerilica) w/ a wonderfully cool system for this, Truism --- I _really_ wish Macromedia had listened when I suggested they license that tech.

I've a list of books in my bibliography on my web page which cover this sort of thing (ob. discl. I'm an Amazon Associate). Check out _Four Colors / One Image_ and _Duotones, Tritones and Quadtones_ for specifics.

William