Stewart Stremler wrote:
Of course, from a usability standpoint, not being able to do anything to
the computer *sucks*. You can't make YouTube in a Java applet without
nasty dialogs; you can in Flash. You can't make an iTunes in a Java
applet without nasty dialogs, you can in Flash. etc.
I'm not sure I follow. I thought an applet *could* do sound... so you
*could* play youtube or itunes in an applet, more or less.
I'm pretty sure that Java applets had restrictions on files that can be
created and memory that could be used. So much so that basically
nothing could be done to cache large amounts of information.
If you can pull everything across the network at enough speed to play
it, you're fine. However, you can't store any useful amount locally.
Therefore, if you can't park it in ram, you can't do it. You can't
cache like Flash without "security authorization." See Google Video for
just how much Flash can tuck on your hard drive.
In this instance, Java listened to corporations--"Give us security!" and
lost the popular vote--"Make it work and don't bug me!".
Who sets that security policy on applets? Is it a browser thing or is
it a Java thing? Sun needs to dial down the default security level and
let people who want it dial it back up.
Yet another example of the users being willing to turn over the security
of their machine for the tiniest of conveniences.
However ...
That wasn't the only reason. On the developer side, Flash does
animation. Java doesn't. Now, it does so by soaking up 100% of the CPU
on your machine, but it does animation.
Java doesn't do animation *easy*. I've seen Java applets do animation.
Webheadius Nobrainius has no means to do Java animation. He also
doesn't care. His authoring tools from Adobe get him 99% of the market
and the rest can go hang.
If anyone wants to stop the continuing rise of Flash, one of the things
they would have to do is put together an open source project that
converts Macromedia Director projects directly into Java or Javascript.
...or MPEG or Quicktime or AVI etc. etc.
I believe Director already can do that. No one really cares about those
since you're probably better off rendering and letting one of the more
advanced compression techniques (like H.264) take it on.
It's the interactive stuff where Java and Flash should compete head on
that Java gets trounced. An authoring tool that could create J2ME code
*and* SWF code would rule the roost.
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/
Bullet #2 says:
This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create
software which supports SWF file playback.
Ding! So, what good is it? Adobe knows that no one is going to create
an open-source authoring tool before there is an open-source player.
The specification would make writing the open-source player much easier,
but, oops, you can't use it for that.
and it looks like someone _ought_ to be able to make a Java SWF player.
Except that it won't be able to use the memory or disk that a real SWF
player can and thus will always appear to be crippled.
Looking around brought me to
https://jflash.dev.java.net/
So there's an effort underway for that. Presumably, once there's a
Java player, writing a Java converter would be far less painful.
Sorry, Charlie. Looks like a dead project to me ...
Try here (but not Java ...):
http://www.tulrich.com/geekstuff/gameswf.html
-a
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