Flashplugin

[Jerry McAllister]

On Sat, Jun 07, 2008 at 05:09:08PM -0700, Tobias Hoellrich wrote:

> [Disclaimer: I work for Adobe Systems. I have nothing to do with the
> Flash Player. I'm a grunt who works on other stuff. This is my personal
> opinion as a long-time FreeBSD user and I'm not making any statements
> for Adobe.]
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org 
> > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Jona Joachim
> > Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 4:58 PM
> > To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> > Subject: Re: Flashplugin
> > 
> > Flash is a big pain IMO.
> > The Flash question has been asked *a lot* of times on this list.
> > The answer usually boils down to "use www/nspluginwrapper" or "use
> > linux-firefox". Both "solutions" are far from optimal.
> > My solution is to simply ignore Flash content. It makes your 
> > "online experience"
> > much more enjoyable. This is my personal choice of course.
> 
> ...
> 
> That's simply wrong. The Flash format byte-code is *not* proprietary. If
> you want to, you can go ahead and create your own Flash Player. The
> specifications for the format are freely available at:
> http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/developers/

This is encouraging.   Is that info really enough to create a player
such as Flash 9?

I hope some folks will take a good shot at it.  It is really beyond me.

> 
> And Gnash (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/), which was started before
> the spec was available, will certainly benefit from this. 
> 
> And to address a previous message: if your bank requires you to use the
> Flash Player to make a transaction, then you will need to get in touch
> with your bank and not blame it on the non-existence of the Flash Player
> on your platform. A disabled person with a text-only browser or a
> screen-reader will certainly have the same issues. 

Companies who insist on their front pages and their functional things
such as sales using flash or some other gimmick are inflicted with 
persons who are more interested in supplanting their egos than 
making the online product work for the company.

But, if the web page has all its business in normal html and only
uses flash and other such stuff as extra attraction and advertising
then, no problem.   A little eye candy on the side is not the issue.
It is when the essentials are all blocked and made non-functional 
by the eye candy that the company and/or web designer is way off base.

> 
> My offer stands: if anybody can provide the numbers above, I'm going to
> forward them to the right people and work things from my end. 

The numbers come out each month (BSD Stats), but unfortunately they really 
represent only a fraction of the actual number of BSD systems in use.  They 
also do not distinguish between server and desktop use -- which is sometimes 
impossible anyway since many systems, such as the one I am typing on right 
now, are used for both.

////jerry


> 
> Don't beat me up, I'm for the support - even if I'm not using FreeBSD as
> a desktop OS. 
> 
> Thanks and happy weekend - Tobias
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