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Graphics The Internet Technology

Adobe Flash CS5 Exports Animations To HTML5 Canvas 166

An anonymous reader writes "Adobe's Flash CS5 will seek to make the Flash runtime less relevant with support for exporting animations to HTML5 canvas. Seth Weintraub from 9to5mac writes, 'In a previous post, I'd wondered why Adobe didn't spend its time building HTML5 authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into its Flash -> iPhone Apps exporter tool for Flash CS5. As it turns out, Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools, as demonstrated in the video above.'"
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Adobe Flash CS5 Exports Animations To HTML5 Canvas

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  • by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:11AM (#31814866)

    Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas except for animations approved personally by Steve Jobs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Spacezilla ( 972723 )

      This is a serious question: Why does Apple appear to be OK with HTML5, but not with Flash? There are lots of posts claiming Apple is "afraid" of Flash, because the app store is their cash cow and Flash is a threat to that.

      Now, I realize there is a lot more Flash content than HTML5 content, but isn't the basic principle the same? Couldn't I go make just about any game in HTML5 right now and have it work on the iPhone and iPad?

      Is it because the source for any HTML5 game is viewable that Apple think "serious"

      • by ukdmbfan ( 904348 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:25AM (#31815118) Homepage
        In which case, you could take Steve Jobs' comments at face value, and it is just about the fact that Flash is crap, buggy, memory-hogging and inadequate to be run on a low-power, low-spec'd mobile device.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by abigsmurf ( 919188 )
          I'm not sure HTML5 is much better. A lot of the (non video) demos I've tried use insane amounts of CPU. What's it going to be like when there's heavy HTML5 integrated into site functionality and banner ads?
          • by Tei ( 520358 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @06:58AM (#31815410) Journal

            It will take years to optimize HTML5 to something comparable to Flash. And maybe it will still be a bit slower than Flash. The point is not speed. The point is not scripting. Scripting is as bad if not worst, than a binary stream vectorial format. The points is a document model, that is easier to examine by bots and archivers, that can be modified by external tools, that can be linked, and all the good and cool features we have learn a Hyper Text have.

            A binary stream of bits that render vectorial stuff is not fun, because you can't do much with these bits. A greasemonkey script is fun, google page rank search engine is fun.

            Even if Flash is fast, a what price?, you have to support a separate things, with his own memory management and probably bugs. And is not that good either, Linux users have bad experience with Flash banners that take the 100% of the CPU.

            Having everything following the document model (dom), any optimization made will touch all. Any optimization on the memory handling will affect all. Any safety mechanism. Updating the browser will update the rendering of such canvas thing, or svg thing.

            I don't think Flash game dev's will move to HTML5 in 5 or 8 years. Flash will still be more interesting. But there will be a "leak" of the good features of Flash into the web, so the web will get whatever good we have learn from Flash. So Flash will not be required for some things. At a point, you will not *need* Flash. Needing Flash is *mucho* wrong, and we DO NOT WANT.

            Some people will argue that "Flash-like" features in the web are bad news. These people are right. Animated banners in HTML5 are not better than in Flash. But with a better model, these will be more easy to control, limit, optimize.
            And people want these Flash features. I serve no one to ignore that Flash add value to the web. We will steal (with HTML5 and SVG and Canvas) part of these value, to make the web AWESOME.

            • by mgbastard ( 612419 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @07:55AM (#31815812)

              It will take years to optimize HTML5 to something comparable to Flash.

              Why? The Flash Player has over a decade of poor design decisions in SWF, bug-for-bug reproduction, etc, that it has to keep backward compatibility with. HTML5 canvas gets a nice fresh start having (hopefully) learned those lessons. IMHO, you'll see a lot of work with phenomenal improvements optimizing the runtimes, just like we saw with Javascript, in a quick surge. A lot of the same engineers who did did the magic on javascript are working on the HTML5 canvas implementations.

              I don't think Flash game dev's will move to HTML5 in 5 or 8 years. Flash will still be more interesting.

              I think that depends on whether Adobe makes the judgment call as to whether its more important to keep their Flash tools on top or not. If they conclude that the future is HTML5, they will bring their Flash/Flex/Air dev tools to be first class development environments for targeting HTML5 canvas; rather than being marginalized and losing their market share to a competitor in web animation authoring. Or perhaps they'll choose to compete on the platform itself, so they can own it. Time will tell.

              • I think you're totally right. And considering that a group used Google's GWT to build a Javascript/HTML5 implementation of Doom (can't find the link now, but it's out there, including a video on youtube), there's no reason to think that there won't be a *lot* more gaming activity based on this burgeoning technology in the near future.
                • Actually, It was Quake. And it worked beautifully. I compiled it and tested. On my laptop, it didn't work (since Chrome's WebGL doesn't support Intel). On an NVIDIA Desktop, it worked smoothly. Remember this is a very complex application, with physics and many other complex calculations done in software. That was pretty amazing, and it shows that HTML5 is a promising platform for game development.

            • Years? How long would it take to optimize it into something good?

            • Animated banners in HTML5 are not better than in Flash. But with a better model, these will be more easy to control, limit, optimize.

              This is a great point. Flash is obtuse - you can tell what domain it comes from and that's about it. It's hard to write smart blocking for it. HTML is much easier to figure out and deal with, from a user/browser point of view.

              This is why HTML is preferable to Flash fonts and image fonts, and why HTML animation is preferable to Flash animation: it's more webby. The web has a ph

              • People need to understand this: an SWF embed is a binary application running on a different process than your browser that just happens to position that black box at a given x:y position over the browser window. That's all. Canvas is just another HTML element. It's rendered by your browser's rendering engine, and is part of your page. You can use z-index, you can style it, and do anything you would do with an tag.

            • Yes ... but we won't be dependent on Adobe to do the optimization for us.

              If they can be bothered.

              Which they don't seem to be.

          • by PenguSven ( 988769 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @07:06AM (#31815466)
            Yes, people are abusing Canvas just like they abuse Flash, but at least with Canvas, Apple, Google, Mozilla, etc can DO something about the poor performance, rather than just listening to Adobe piss and moan and blame others, because Apple doesn't give a fucking browser plugin direct access to hardware.
          • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @07:20AM (#31815564) Journal
            I would suspect that Apple considers HTML5 to be "better", regardless of what benchmarks say today; because they have the power to improve it, subject only to the limitations of their engineering resources and any fundamental defects in the spec(which, because the process is at least moderately open and consensus based, and one where Apple has a fair seat at the table, they have some hope of ironing out). Flash, by contrast, is however Adobe wants it to be.

            Further, I suspect that Apple doesn't really need Flash-level performance out of HTML5. By virtue of their market share(and their customers' willingness to buy widgets), the "If you want performance, make an App and shut yer trap." argument has worked pretty well for them. I suspect that their intentions for HTML5 basically boil down to "Achieve broad enough adoption for video purposes that, for any random video website our customers go to, they'll get a lump of h.246 for our hardware decoder and a couple of vector widgets, rather than a 'you don't have flash, so sad' embed box." and "Achieve performance decent enough that, if web designers and their idiot customers simply have to have their fancy flash-based menu effects, they can implement them in HTML5 and not break the experience for iPod users."(and, presumably, in the not so distant future, Mac users).

            Long term, there isn't any particular reason why HTML5, which offers vector objects and bitmap canvases with javascript control, should be markedly slower than Flash, which offers vector objects and bitmap canvases with Actionscript control. In the short term, I suspect that Apple just doesn't care all that much.
            • That makes sense, thank you, and that goes for everyone else who has posted insightful answers as well. :)

              I really wasn't trolling, some people have just been arguing that Apple really doesn't want other ways to access applications than through the app store. (There was something about a C64 emulator being removed as well.)

              So I just didn't understand why HTML5 was OK then, when it gives at least some of the same possibilities.

              So again, thank you for your time everyone. :)

            • I've a sneaking suspicion they like HTML5 over flash, not only because they have the power to improve it but they have to power to limit it too, either by artificially poor performance of actions/functions troublesome for them or by outright disabling parts for 'security' reasons.

              Will they always be perfectly happy to let you play HTML5 based games in the browser that you can also play on Android phones with no limitations of any kind? They've been saying this is their intention but it's largely at odds
        • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @07:09AM (#31815486)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by DrXym ( 126579 )
          Steve Job's comments can't be taken at face value. If I use/buy an Apple iPhone app, I am stuck on Apple's platform forever (assuming I wish to keep my possessions). If I use/buy an Adobe Flash app, it doesn't matter what the OS is because my app runs through something that sits on top. So Apple sees Flash as a threat because it prevents lockin.

          That's the only reason Jobs has banned it. Every thing else is just some bullshit excuse. It should be quite within the means of Apple to support Flash on a handh

          • I don't think its nearly as simple as you claim. Having read this piece [daringfireball.net]. It made me re-evaluate the point of it. To basically sum up, yes, this locks developers on the iPhone OS. On the other hand, these meta-platforms hurt Apple's ability to improve their devices. It makes them depend on a 3rd party runtime too to actually provide support for the new features. As we've all see with flash, Adobe has no desire to provide runtimes on time that actually work. So yeah, its platform lock-in. But it's also more t
            • by DrXym ( 126579 )
              I don't see how it hurts Apple at all. Apple can pump out a new OS and it's up to 3rd parties to play catchup. Apple doesn't have to make any concessions any more than the Linux kernel does to binary drivers.

              Neither do I accept that Flash sucks purely because of Adobe. NPAPI plugins can be windowed or windowless. Windowed plugins are far more efficient both for plugins and browsers because there is minimal interaction except for setup & tear down. The plugin owns its own native window that sits over t

              • Legitimate points. However, I'm more inclined to put the blame on Flash, since Silverlight somehow doesn't seem to have any of these problems on Mac.
            • Yay Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)

              by theolein ( 316044 )

              ...... To basically sum up, yes, this locks developers on the iPhone OS. On the other hand, these meta-platforms hurt Apple's ability to improve their devices. ......

              You know, Microsoft used to make claims like that all the time during the anti-trust proceedings, that the trials were hurting their ability ot "innovate" and "improve" their products. Everyone used to deride Microsoft about their pathetic excuses. Now it's Apple doing the same thing.....

        • In which case, you could take Steve Jobs' comments at face value, and it is just about the fact that Flash is crap, buggy, memory-hogging and inadequate to be run on a low-power, low-spec'd mobile device.

          I guess the rest of us aren't actually able to use Flash on our smartphones. Huh. I guess we've been imagining things. I sure picked the wrong day to quit LSD!

      • by auLucifer ( 1371577 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:27AM (#31815124)
        My bet would be, like most engineer posts I have seen, is flash sucks on the mac. It is apparently by far the most reported issue by the mac crash report, it is slow and very resource intensive so not likely to give a very good experience on the iphone. I don't have a link but that's what the engineers inside apple say. With the stamping out the flash compiler though perhaps it's grown to be something more ...
        • by jo_ham ( 604554 ) <joham999.gmail@com> on Monday April 12, 2010 @06:32AM (#31815300)

          It's not just "resource intensive", it's outrageously dog slow for seemingly no reason. It seems almost incredulous that it could be as bad as it is, but a simple H.264 stream inside a flash container (ie, no fancy extra stuff, just video in a box) is a painful hog in OS X. A 2Ghz Core 2 Duo should not be pushing 30% usage per core to play back 480i content.

          Interactive flash content like games, or just heavy pages (like Blizzard's Diablo 3 site) do work, but they don't half push the CPU hard - considerably harder than the same site on the same machine booted into XP. (and we'll assume no H.264 hardware decoding on either platform - we're talking the animations and other stuff that flash does as well, it's not just video playback).

          On2's flash player that was part of the program for testing your flash builds (it had a feature to create little ready made flash players from your movies) was better, and XBMC (running on top of OS X) is excellent at playing video streams that the browser plugin makes such a meal of.

          It really is atrocious on OS X. (despite the considerable developer documentation about OS X's innards, although you will hear some people claiming it was somehow Apple "denying Adobe access" to the core of OS X to make flash better.

        • by Malc ( 1751 )

          I can attest to this. Watching Channel 4's video on demand (TV catch-up service) is impossible on my 2008 MBP running OS X 10.6 due to dropped frames, etc. Fire up a Windows Vista virtual machine in VM Fusion and try there instead, and it is perfectly watchable.

          The BBC iPlayer also became unwatchable about September or October last year on OS X 10.5. I don't know if that's still the case as I switched to watching on my PS3 instead. Now I just have to put up with sound of a jet engine in the background :

      • by smash ( 1351 )
        Because flash relies on adobe's shitty flash interpreter, which has more holes than swiss cheese.

        Javascript/html is run by apple interpreters, which apple have QA control over.

        If Flash gets exploited on the iphone and Adobe lag the typical x months before patching it, and people's iphones get owned - iphone, and thus apple, look bad.

        I don't think jobs, or any sane person wants to put their company/product in that situation.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jezza ( 39441 )

        Apple don't create the implementation of Flash (and can't). So if Apple allow Flash onto the iPhone OS then they cannot influence the quality of that implementation over time. Apple created their own implementation of HTML5, and they can improve it and maintain it over time. Apple want to be able to maintain the user experience - not because they love their customers, but because they want to keep selling iPhone OS devices: they have to remain competitive over time. Essentially Apple are alone in this "long

      • Maybe it is because of Flashs superior internal design [events.ccc.de] or because of Flash's superior Garbage collection [andymoore.ca]...
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )

      You can already get Flash on your iPhone. Remote Desktop to any OS capable of running flash, and there you go. As long as you're within you're own personal network lag should be almost non-existent.

    • by Shin-LaC ( 1333529 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @06:47AM (#31815350)
      Heh. But it's not too far-fetched to think that Apple's infamous new rules for the iPhone have something to do with Adobe suddenly annoucing that they're working on Flash->HTML5 conversion. It looks like something good might come out of that decision after all.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Verunks ( 1000826 )

        Heh. But it's not too far-fetched to think that Apple's infamous new rules for the iPhone have something to do with Adobe suddenly annoucing that they're working on Flash->HTML5 conversion. It looks like something good might come out of that decision after all.

        I doubt that, the video is from october 2009

    • Next step: Apple bans HTML Canvas except for animations approved personally by Steve Jobs.

      Why leave it there: Steve bans Javascript and HTML from Adobe, except for those personally approved by Steve Jobs ;)

  • by thijsh ( 910751 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:15AM (#31814878) Journal
    ... but I wanna bet Gordon will be pissed. ;-)
  • I'm not making the connection between "...wondered why Adobe didn't spend their time building HTML5 Authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into their Flash->iPhone Apps ", and "rather rudimentary".

    Either we're being fed an admission that the ar was wrong about how Adobe spent their time, or the ar is giving 'rather rudimentary' a rather generous pass. If the ar was wrong, then maybe when the other shoe drops we'll find that the generous pass was a mistake as well and this is no
  • by Meneth ( 872868 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:32AM (#31814930)
    What does this mean for Flashblock and Flash cookies?
    • by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:44AM (#31814970)

      What does this mean for Flashblock and Flash cookies?

      What a strange question. It seems about as relevant as asking what this means for Flashdance.

    • by A Friendly Troll ( 1017492 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:52AM (#31815004)

      Nothing. Flash will never be replaced, and by the time you start seeing Canvas ads, you'll have Canvasblock :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      The nice thing about Flash, from the perspective of someone who wants to turn it off, is that a Flash movie is self-contained. Each Flash thing in the UI is a separate blob of code. With canvas, this separation is not present. A browser can refuse to generate a drawing context from a canvas tag, but it can't isolate separate components of the page's script. JavaScript has a single global namespace and everything in a page is squished into this. You can't easily turn off JavaScript and canvas and then t
      • Uh oh. That's potentially very bad. Coming from the concept that some of us dinosaurs prefer information that doesn't twizzle, bark, rotate, blink or run around the page but instead just sits there ready to be consumed this is an unpleasant fact. As you point out, one of the great things about Flash is you can make flash go away very easily. For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that the idiots that design most Flash content will continue to be the idiots that design most HTML 5 graphics content
  • by mcvos ( 645701 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:34AM (#31814936)

    Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms. If everybody starts dropping flash support, why would they cling desperately to the flash plugin? Having their tools export to HTML5 is a smart move. Keeps them relevant, and they won't have to support their own runtime platform anymore. Instead, they'll have to compete, which is good news for everybody else.

    • by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:51AM (#31815000)

      Adobe has always been more about good editing tools, rather than runtime platforms.

      Yeah, maybe when Photoshop and Illustrator were their main products. Since then (and particularly since the acquisition of Macromedia) they have been all about "owning the platform" and trying to tie their products into the web. It's not just Flash, they took PDF from being a nice WYSYWIG print document format, and then started embedding all kinds of interactive bullshit into it. Or Adobe AIR.

      Since around the turn of the Century, they stopped being about creative tools and started marketing to executives as being "business tools." The rapid decline of their applications was very evident, as they lost focus and tried to shoehorn their "platform" thinking into every product, even if it didn't really belong there.

      • by Trepidity ( 597 )

        That seems true from observation of their actions, but I can't imagine the business case really lines up with it. From everything I can discern, Photoshop and Illustrator are still by far their cash cows. Their ownership of PDF helps them sell some PDF authoring tools, but it's not the revenue stream that Photoshop is.

        • by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:53AM (#31815202)

          That seems true from observation of their actions, but I can't imagine the business case really lines up with it.

          Nobody ever accused most executives that run big businesses today of being particularly competent at business. They mostly exist to enrich themselves by selling the company down the river for short-term gains.

          From everything I can discern, Photoshop and Illustrator are still by far their cash cows.

          I haven't seen any figures, but I wouldn't be so sure. Flash and Dreamweaver are very popular in web design and production. Anyway, nobody buys Illustrator or Photoshop as standalone products anymore, you buy the Creative Suite, and get the other stuff thrown in with it.

          Their ownership of PDF helps them sell some PDF authoring tools, but it's not the revenue stream that Photoshop is.

          Again, I'm not so sure about this. People may not buy Photoshop and Illustrator as standalone products, but businesses do buy Acrobat Pro as a standalone product in large quantities. Sure it costs less to buy, but it also costs less to develop, and when you buy Creative Suite it counts as an Acrobat Pro sale as well as a Photoshop sale.

          I don't have any hard answers, but to me the weirdest thing is the change of culture. Having worked in design and photo editing, it used to be hell to try and get the boss to fork out for a copy of Photoshop. They would say "why can't we use something cheaper, like Corel, or [shudder] Microsoft Paint, or perhaps pirate it?" This was at a time when Photoshop had few serious competitors. Today, Photoshop has mounting competition, and the bosses have the opposite attitude - "If it's not Adobe, there must be something wrong with it. It can't be very good if it's that much cheaper." It's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft" syndrome all over again. And just like that syndrome, it is highly entrenched. There are courses all over the world in web design that basically teach Flash and Dreamweaver as the holy grail, and teach people to do web mock-ups in Photoshop, and those courses will address issues like HTML5 when hell freezes over.

          It's a bit sad, as someone who has used Adobe stuff from almost the beginning, to see that people now miss the point. Rather than seeing the potential of the tools, it's become entrenched rote-learning and slavishness to the product, rather than the vision.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by gaspyy ( 514539 )

            This was at a time when Photoshop had few serious competitors. Today, Photoshop has mounting competition

            Name one.

            There is no serious competition for Photoshop. I wish it were. Corel stopped innovating years ago. Gimp is still a toy for professional work and I really don't know any other professional program that can do what Photoshop can.

            I'm saying this as a former Corel user. It wasn't easy for me to fork money for PS, but I had to because I realized that no other tool comes close. Sure, there's Fireworks

      • they took PDF from being a nice WYSYWIG print document format, and then started embedding all kinds of interactive bullshit into it

        Most of which is not used. The submitted PDF to ISO, and ISO also defines a few useful subsets of PDF that don't have any of the 'interactive bullshit'.

    • by jlebrech ( 810586 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:54AM (#31815010) Homepage

      This was the logical step to go from the start.

      Adobe has kept that quiet whilst pretending to be worried about flash going down the pan.

      Flash is just an export file format, and they can now export to a slightly less bloated/featured format. this type of technology will cement Adobe more into the web development industry.

      If Adobe are smart they will be the number 1 HTML5 authoring tools around.

      Very impressive.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) *

        How the hell do you think this will be less bloated? Instead of a binary plugin installed on your machine that just downloads compressed binary data to render an animation, now you'll need to download the entire runtime script, as plain text, plus additional js to run the same animation. If anything, this will INCREASE the download times significantly.

        • by agrif ( 960591 )

          How the hell do you think that this data is not already transmitted with Flash, and how do you know that it is well compressed? Even given that, I think you should read up on "Content-Encoding: gzip" and friends.

          • by mjbkinx ( 800231 )
            He probably read the specs [adobe.com]. SWF really is pretty compact to begin with, then everything after the first eight bytes is zipped.
          • I have to agree with the GP 100%. Labeling the GP as flamebait is just unfounded and dumb. Flash has it's entire class hierarchy/toolset/API that is used internally in building the flash animations. If you look at the documentation for AS3 and AS2 and look at all the functionality that is currently available to Flash developers, you'll see the extra bloat that will need to make it into the export. Now I wouldn't necessarily call it bloat, but it is above what a normal person would expect for something do
            • by agrif ( 960591 )

              I should not have set the tone I did at the beginning of the comment... I meant to poke fun at the language used, but no more.

              When I mentioned gzip, I meant literally making a .js.gz file out of the source, and hosting that directly with the correct headers. No CPU overhead, less bandwidth, eveyone wins.

              Including a standard library will probably make the files bigger, true. If Adobe is smart about it it will only include those bits you actually need, and if browsers and standards organizations were smart th

    • by stimpleton ( 732392 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:10AM (#31815058)
      "Adobe has always been more about good editing tools."

      I really must disagree. While Macromedia made Dreamweaver, it has been under Adobe control for a while and very little has changed. My brief list of why Dreamweaver might be seriously hampered in the next evolution of web(HTML5):

      - Data IDE to a database virtually unchanged since Dreamweaver 4.
      - Broken layer support such as nested layers. Try positioning a layer mid vertical and horizontal and then try editing that in Dreamweaver.
      - No virtualization for modern javascript techniques such as httpRequest, let alone HTML 5.
      - GUI implementation of CSS is poor. Old Skool technique of writing the style sheet first is fastest.

      In summary, Dreamweaver has not got these technologies right. I feel it is in real danger of dropping the ball. Adobe's attitude confuses me. But correct re Flash. It will be an IDE for HTML5 development or die. Within several years with a combo of increased processor specs and browser optimisations, the Canvas control will be the new VGA mode. With casual games being the biggest growth market, ignore this at your peril.
      • by snsr ( 917423 )

        In summary, Dreamweaver has not got these technologies right

        Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG rendering engine is a joke, and it always has been. The app is a text editor with code highlighting, plain and simple.

      • WYSIWYG web editors have always been criticized by serious web developers, and for good reason: HTML isn't quite a WYSIWYG type of format. It's not only important that a set of pixels be positioned in a certain place, but that they be positioned there the right way. That requires someone to understand HTML, CSS, and other web languages and to make intelligent decisions on how to use them.

        It might not be completely impossible for a WYSIWYG editor to be built with some really smart logic that allows it to

  • Back to the Future (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:48AM (#31814986)
    Adobe was pro web standards until it bought Macromedia. It was the leading supporter of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG [adobe.com]) for the first half of last decade, publishing and distributing an SVG plugin for Internet Explorer and supporting SVG in Illustrator and GoLive. Adobe lost its moral compass when it bought Macromedia, After failing to halt the popularity of web standards and standing at the edge of a precipice, Adobe is now seeking forgiveness from developers.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by virgilp ( 1774784 )

      Or another way to say it is:

      "Adobe tried to compete with Macromedia by supporting web standards instead of Flash; after Macromedia kicked their ass due to the much faster development cycle (they were not constrained by any standards comitee), they learned the lesson, acquired Macromedia and did the development no their own".
      Take a look at Apple... the only HTML5 standard they are supporting is the one already implemented in Webkit (coincidentally, it's their own platform). Sure, they've put up a "standards

      • Sure, they've put up a "standards group" to make it seem like they care about others think, but the WHATWG standard is really "what Apple thinks best suits their interest".

        Not quite, old chap.

        WHATWG was formed by people from Apple, Mozilla and Opera. They invited a Microsoft guy but he declined.

        The current editor of WHATWG specs is Ian Hickson, who works for Google.

      • And how's Safari doing on Linux, does anybody care to tell me?

        Could be better, but there are some interesting [twotoasts.de] developments [google.com] happening [konqueror.org].

        • And what do those have to do with Safari? 2 of them are webkit based browsers, while the third, konqueror, is the origin of webkit (no, webkit is not an Apple invention).
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Simetrical ( 1047518 )

        Take a look at Apple... the only HTML5 standard they are supporting is the one already implemented in Webkit (coincidentally, it's their own platform). Sure, they've put up a "standards group" to make it seem like they care about others think, but the WHATWG standard is really "what Apple thinks best suits their interest".

        Um, what? The WHATWG standard is written by Ian Hickson, who works for Google. There's theoretically a short list of members who can overrule him, but a) that includes people from Apple, Opera, Google, and Mozilla, as well as one freelancer; and b) it does nothing in practice, just lets Ian call the shots.

        The spec also currently has a W3C version that mirrors the WHATWG version. Changes to the W3C version can be made by a procedure that ultimately boils down to approval by the three co-chairs, who are

  • Imagine an industry which everyone won
    Permanent profit in endless black
    Indulge yourself, your every mood
    Consider for a minute who code for
    What you'd like to change, never mind the profit
    Bury the past, empty the shell
    Decide it's time to reinvent yourself
    Like Adobe before TrueType, Flash after HTML5
    Suddenly your missing, then you're reborn
    Living in an Adobe fantasy
  • Very telling post (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:51AM (#31814996) Homepage Journal

    "Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools"

    Tells me they only had this as a backup plan for when shit hit the fan, which they never expected to have happen so soon.

    Apple got Adobe with their pants down and now Adobe is scrambling.

    • by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:18AM (#31815082) Journal
      Well, I don't know if I agree with this analysis, all I want to say right now is : Thanks Adobe ! Welcome to the open web ! Finally ! Stop being an enemy and let's be friends ! Let's make the web fantastic again !
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Please refresh my memory: when was it "fantastic" before?
        • by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @06:30AM (#31815290) Journal
          When every text content was crawlable and accessible via links.

          When you didn't have to go through a slow (but shiny) flash animation to get twenty bytes of content. When the only annoyances were the animated gifs and the <blink> tag
        • Some time around 1993, when animated GIFs were the most irritating thing you could do, there were no search engines so you had to get people to recommend your page for it to be seen, most pages contained useful information, and any browser worked on any site. Of course, it was a lot less useful back then; less signal, but a much higher signal to noise ratio.
        • Between the launch of Mosaic and the start of the Eternal September.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by thijsh ( 910751 )
        I would like to sign your petition to make the web fantastic *again*... We all love animated GIFs with text and background with blindness inducing color scheme... Oh and lets not forget the mandatory Java applets with water ripple effects and ActiveX object just for some 3D little animation. The web really was fantastic then, websites even tasted better... kinda like strawberry and kittens. So please Adobe, sprinkle some of your corporate magic unicorn dust over the interwebs.
  • by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:52AM (#31815002)
    Or rather, can't view TF video - FlashBlock prevented it.
    • by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:04AM (#31815038)
      Just to clarify, I like it that way. I don't look forward to the day when any old site can peg my CPU and I can't prevent it. God knows, some people's JavaScript is bad enough.
      • Thank you for being one of only of the only people that gets it. All this Flash/Adobe hate is going to come back and bite the geek community in the ass 1000 times worse when sites start not rendering unless you allow the canvas tag.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Simetrical ( 1047518 )

        Just to clarify, I like it that way. I don't look forward to the day when any old site can peg my CPU and I can't prevent it. God knows, some people's JavaScript is bad enough.

        Adobe doesn't care so much if they peg your CPU, because you're forced to use their product anyway. If an actual browser renders sites very slowly, on the other hand, people will leave it for a different browser. Performance is paramount to browser implementers.

  • If this were to take off with Adobe, I would seriously love to see what Jobs would do. No un-signed web pages allowed to load in mobile safari??

  • Is their authoring suite going to be ported to Linux then? Between Apple banning them and Microsoft trying to kill them (PDF, flash) it seems that Linux is their last refuge.
  • IMHO the best destiny for Adobe's tools now is to work as a meta-language for HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript ... in other words all that Flash/ActionScript business needs to compile down to HTML5 related tech. So you *can* write HTML5 in the raw if you want but developers will still want to use their tool kit for the productivity boost it ostensibly gives them.

    Well... in the opinion of people who like those tools anyhow.

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