[Laszlo-dev] Relevance of SWF8 runtime for OL 5.0 / support of Flash 10?

[Raju Bitter]

Thanks for the feedback, Sebastian! I get your point. The other side  
of the story is, that all the goodies you have with Flash 10 are not  
integrated into OpenLaszlo (3d transform, new text layout engine,  
drawing API, color correction). If there is solid support for the new  
text layout features only, that would really enhance the SWF runtime!

It comes down to the decision if you want to innovate by adopting new  
features supported in Flash 9/10, or by trying to support an - in my  
eyes - out-dated version of Flash. Flash Player 8 final was released  
in 2005, that's a long time ago! The next big thing for Flash is going  
to be Flash 10 on Android, webOS and Windows Mobile. Should OpenLaszlo  
try to jump onto that train, for the first time making the SWFx  
runtime an interesting option for mobile apps? In the end the Laszlo  
folks will have to make the decision, but I have the feeling that the  
platform is falling behind other RIA technologies innovation-wise. To  
me OpenLaszlo is only interesting if I see that there's enough  
innovation in the platform. I've shown with a few demos what can be  
done with the DHTML runtime, a bit of HTML 5 or CSS 2/3 support. Some  
of these features could be matched in the SWF runtime with better  
Flash 10 support, and I think that would be a powerful combination.

Other RIA technologies have better tool support,  better documentation  
and much larger communities = more paid project work!!! That can be  
countered by having an interesting feature set. I don't want to raise  
the discussion again, but if you look at the response to release  
announcements and the activity in the forums/mailing lists, the  
community is tiny compared to what it was like in 2005/2006.

Again, I'd be happy to hear what other community members think.

- Raju


On Sep 8, 2009, at 8:35 AM, Sebastian Wagner wrote:

> I think if you do that a lot of folks have their *old* apps and are  
> forced to sit some weeks in their office trying to shift it to AS3,  
> stay with the old platform or find another solution.
>
>
>
> sebastian
>
> 2009/9/8 Raju Bitter <rajubitter at me.com>
> Hm, no answer? Is that something you don't want to discuss with the  
> community?
>
> On Aug 31, 2009, at 1:05 AM, Raju Bitter wrote:
>
>> Do you still plan to support SWF8 with OL 5.0? I believe that OL  
>> needs to shift the focus to DHTML/HTML5 and Flash 10 instead. Flash  
>> 8 is just out-dated by now, and I cannot imagine good use for the  
>> runtime. According to Adobe, Flash 10 is installed on nearly 87% of  
>> Internet-connected desktop computers by now:
>> http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2009/07/welcome-to-the-flash-platform.html
>>
>> The new Flash 10 features are much more interesting for OpenLaszlo  
>> than continued SWF8 support, especially things like the improved  
>> text engine and 3d functionality.
>>
>> Flash 10 and mobile: Adobe announced a beta version of Flash 10  
>> player for Android, Palm Pre and other phones for October (Max  
>> 2009). For some time SFW8 was still an option for Flash Lite 2.1 or  
>> 3.0 - although I don't know of any deployed application, but that  
>> will change with the release of Flash 10 player for mobile devices.
>>
>> I know that Laszlo still uses SWF8 for Webtop, but it will only be  
>> a matter of time until that's not needed any more.
>>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Sebastian Wagner
> http://www.webbase-design.de
> http://openmeetings.googlecode.com
> http://www.laszlo-forum.de
> seba.wagner at gmail.com

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