Flash On Pandora? Possibly Maybe...


timothee

Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
171
Age
46
Location
Singapore
Website
Visit site
Adobe announced yesterday they want to see Flash on pretty much "all devices that have a screen". They've set up a project called "Open Screen" with the big guns of the industry (Sony, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc.) to achieve that.

This is the article I read:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9932688-7.html?tag=nefd.top


2 items I find interesting for Pandora are:
"ARM"
"Adobe will also remove licensing fees for embedding Flash Player on devices."


Also for the open source flash players out-there, a very important restriction from the swf file format specifications has been lifted: one can now use the specifications to create an independent flash player. Previously one could read the specs ONLY to create swfs files, not to read swf files and create a independent player. Because of that, the various open source flash players (gameswf, gnash, swfdec, flirt, etc.) relied on reverse engineering and that slowed them down obviously. Hopefully having the specs will speed up their development and make them more reliable too.


I don't know if Adobe will succeed, but at least they are trying. We may eventually see an "official" adobe flash player on Pandora.
 
Interesting! Some bullet points from the official page:

QUOTE
Specifically, this work will include:

* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
 
Gruso said:
Interesting! Some bullet points from the official page:

QUOTE
Specifically, this work will include:

* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
Nowhere did I see "Open Source" or any indication of a Release of Source code. I didn't look too deep, but this sounds like a serious life saver. If I can finally get a reasonable solution to flash on my 64 bit desktop I'm all for it. And perfect timing, too!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
And what is with Capuchin? Not opensource but mabye possible on the pandora, too.
 
AireTamStorm said:
Nowhere did I see "Open Source" or any indication of a Release of Source code.

I don't think Adobe will release the "official" flash player sources, I think the open screen project basically means:
* Adobe may create an arm based player in the future (with or without the help of its new partners in the open screen project)
* if they do you will be allowed to embed that player in your device for free (no licencing fee)
* if they do not, you are now allowed to create your own flash player (from scratch presumably) using the swf file format specification as base, without infringing any copyright or user agreements.

Like I said above, having now access to the specifications may speed up the development of the existing open source flash player projects.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
As far as I can tell, it is up to the OSS community to develop their own players. Adobe is just saying "do it for us". :D

It's a brilliant move on Adobe's part, in my opinion. Use as little resources as possible, while spreading yourself across multiple platforms.
 
frankly i'm surprised that adobe decided to make a move this big. is it actually profitable to open the platform up to others?
 
magicman5421 said:
frankly i'm surprised that adobe decided to make a move this big. is it actually profitable to open the platform up to others?
Absolutely. They could get away with selling licenses for new system development as long as they were the only game in town, but now that MS is pushing Silverlight, Adobe can't necessarily count on everybody wanting Flash badly enough to pony up for a developer license for every handheld platform.

See, the real money is in selling Flash CS3 and other application dev tools. By opening up the standard they can get Flash on more platforms, which will create more opportunities for people to create Flash applications, which will sell more copies of CS3. Opening up the standard is the smart thing for them to do.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Arialia said:
Read on the "TI - White paper - Introduction to Graphics Software Development for OMAP™ 2/3"

QUOTE

On the OMAP™ 3 platform, Adobe Flash is supported under Linux by the accelerated
OpenVG™ driver.
Adobe offers an implementation of their Flash player specifically for the
ARM® Cortex™-A8 (OMAP 3) platform which is optimized to utilize the Cortex and NEON™
accelerator. Please contact Adobe® for more information.



Maybe we could have Flash player for free ?


It will be great than Pandora have Adobe Flash player under OpenVG
 
Last edited by a moderator:
AireTamStorm said:
If I can finally get a reasonable solution to flash on my 64 bit desktop I'm all for it. And perfect timing, too!
What OS are you running? I run ubuntu 64bit and firefox downloads and installs the official flash 9 plugin no problem. Doesn't even need to restart firefox.

Technically it's probably running the 32bit version of the plugin but It works fine regardless in 64bit firefox.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Zarneth said:
AireTamStorm said:
If I can finally get a reasonable solution to flash on my 64 bit desktop I'm all for it. And perfect timing, too!
What OS are you running? I run ubuntu 64bit and firefox downloads and installs the official flash 9 plugin no problem. Doesn't even need to restart firefox.

Technically it's probably running the 32bit version of the plugin but It works fine regardless in 64bit firefox.
Are you sure you're not running 32 bit firefox?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sphinxter said:
Are you sure you're not running 32 bit firefox?
Yes. First thing I tried after installing the latest Ubuntu 64bit.
I've also previously manually installed flash 9 using NSpluginwrapper that lets you run 32bit plugins in 64bit firefox. I'm assuming it's a little like how WINE works. Just has to translate a few system calls, but most of it runs without modification.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top