Ted On Flash: The Future of the Flash Platform

The Future of the Flash Platform

DIGG IT! 66 Comments Published Wednesday, August 05, 2009 at 11:19 AM .

Having been involved in the Flash Platform for many years, I have witnessed future releases being defined both inside and outside Adobe. If there is one truth, customers(designers/developers paying or not) influence everything Adobe does. Teams internally pay extremely close attention to our developer/designer/project innovation and stay constantly tuned into where innovation (your work) is headed and what problems you are having. Instead of blazing headlights(new ground) or chasing taillights(follow the leader), Adobe (and Macromedia before) is focused on real customer need.

So how does the future get defined?
This is where YOU get involved!

Truth is you are building the future today and when you are vocal about your needs, Adobe teams listen. Adobe doesn't build the product we want to build, rather we build tools and technologies to help you exceed expectations in the market. No joke. To get involved in defining the future of Flash Player, Flash, AIR, Creative Suite, Coldfusion, (NAME THAT PRODUCT HERE), you need only get public with your needs. File Enhancements, File Bugs, Blog, twitter, and lobby for your features/needs. And like clockwork you will influence the platform and its direction.

Take a look at the following (small set of example):

In May of 2003, I was very angry at MovieClips
In Nov 2004, I then started complaining about lack of a Proxy class in Flash
In March 2008, Andre Michelle decided to make some noise. Now he wants threads, awesome!
In April 2008, Grant uncovered a bug, it was fixed in next player release.

Some campaigns of note defining the future:
In May 2009, Grant got fed up with idle CPU use.
In Feb 2009, many want private constructors in AS3!
in March2009, Chuck Freedman had enough and wants Microphone!

In every case above, work has been done to fix these and make Flash a better platform. Many times key external developers work directly with engineering to get these problems identified and solved. The thing is we are just not public about it. The road to getting things fixed is a windy road balanced by priority and limited by time and resources, that aside, the teams listen if you get vocal and if you file enhancements. But only IF YOU DO...

So this is my official call for you to step up get involved. Get vocal and define the future! I can tell you firsthand that it works every time. The future of Flash Platform is defined by you, not in some conference room in some Adobe office.

WARNING: If you complain too much and log enough bugs, you might find yourself working here too. :)

Cheers,

Ted :)

66 Responses to “The Future of the Flash Platform”

# Tony August 5, 2009 12:41 PM

I'd love to see Coldfusion and the Flash Platform converge... or at least Flash Platform take on the tag based functionality for logic and other operations that us Coldfusion guys know and love so well. learning AS3 is not as easy as it seems, and think about how the developer base for the Flash Platform would grow with all those CF guys being able to jump right in!
# Rostislav Siryk August 5, 2009 12:45 PM

I think the good idea is to create The List Of Most Annoying Flash Bugs Of All The Times Which Are Still Alive and ask Actionscript folks to vote, vote and vote for them in JIRA.

If nobody's gonna do it, I'm going to :)

BTW, today I'm voting for not so annoying, but important for Flash Platform full FlexUnit docs integration in Flash Builder help system.
# Ted Patrick August 5, 2009 12:49 PM

Make sure the comments do not become storage for enhancements that should belong here: http://bugs.adobe.com

Ted :)
# Peter Carabeo-Nieva August 5, 2009 12:51 PM

I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious which I also know is already being worked on... I think the number one flash platform request/priority is a single unified workflow for the creation of flash/air content across all devices. Meaning that flash developers will be able to use a single set of tools, write code just once, and have it run everywhere. This is of course the Holy Grail :-)
# Ted Patrick August 5, 2009 12:52 PM

Rostislav, Fixing bugs isn't as easy as it sounds. As you fix them, you potentially create new ones. The process for fixing things takes this into consideration along with the larger set of existing apps that might break given feature dependency. When we pour version concrete in player runtimes, it lasts a really long time. It is both a blessing and a curse.

Ted :)
# Fuad Kamal August 5, 2009 12:52 PM

...the problem with working at Adobe is it's on the wrong coast. ;)
# Kevin S. August 5, 2009 1:01 PM

Great points, Ted. I got a lot of great responses on my Flash IDE post. Lee Brimelow even remarked "See how effective blogging can be?", right after he mentioned that the Flash team would be improving the ActionScript editor in Flash CS5. Now, I take no credit for that, I just happened to ask the right people at the right time. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it worked.

Marginally related, I was wondering what determines which products are listed on bugs.adobe.com? Specifically, why isn't the Flash IDE in there? It kinda started this whole 'Flash Platform thing.' :)
# Radley August 5, 2009 1:02 PM

Less enterprise, more media!

Support more codecs, audio formats (5.1 / 7.1 / Dolby), and remote controls.
# Anonymous August 5, 2009 1:08 PM

How about getting the Flash platform onto more devices (let's not talk "presently-installed market share, which indeed is large and significant)? Right now, with my "workhorse laptop" dead, I cannot view YouTube movies or ANY Flash-based application on my BlackBerry or when running an Ubuntu Live CD-ROM (and let's not forget the iPhone user as well).

Flash is (still) a great and useful platform, but it (like Silverlight) is worthless for devices which cannot access things developed on it.
# Kevin S. August 5, 2009 1:09 PM

@Tony: I agree 100%. I have always felt like ColdFusion has sort of belonged in the Flash Platform family. What are your thoughts on this, Ted?
# Tek August 5, 2009 1:11 PM

You mean like create an issue for asking people if they want that Adobe open source Flash player : http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-2504 ? :)
# Jesse Freeman August 5, 2009 1:17 PM

I simple request, Interfaces for DisplayObjects. I feel there are a lot of inconstancies with the implementation of classes throughout Flash and as we push for more Object Oriented Programing having the right Interface/Concrete class pair will help allow use to implement cleaner decoupled code.
# Robert Reinhardt August 5, 2009 1:59 PM

UDP in AIR apps please. :)
# Alexa August 5, 2009 2:06 PM

As we move into all these social media tools there has to be easier ways to create and/or integrate blogs, forums, addthis buttons, twitter feeds , SEO, CMS systems and The back button within Flash. How cool will it be to have a full Flash site and have a client at ease knowing it is just like having an ASAP/PHP site but with stronger visuals to support the content.
# Scott Ysebert August 5, 2009 2:13 PM

After reading a few of your blog posts that you've linked here, I thought I'd link to a discussion a while back when the Flash Builder Beta was dropped: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2074467

As you'll see the thought to integrate Flash in anyway to FB seemed like a black sheep.

The other thing that I dropped on Mike Chambers' blog when he did this same thing for game development was the Flash plugin has no awareness of what it's container is doing. (ie. the browser). It would be helpful to have a Browser class that could integrate history as well as listen to events (onResize for example).
# Ted Patrick August 5, 2009 2:44 PM

Scott,

Black sheep will be in the day 1 keynote. Flash Pro is back! I cannot say more on the topic.

Come to Adobe MAX and you will see it firsthand.

http://max.adobe.com

Ted :)
# Peter Carabeo-Nieva August 5, 2009 2:51 PM

On the point of social media integration with the entire Adobe Creative Suite... In case you didn't know, Adobe partnered with Gigya to provide these kinds of features, you'll probably see Gigya integration in future CS4 updates and/or what will eventually be "CS5"
# Dazweeja August 5, 2009 4:49 PM

@Ted, you've given some examples of the (rare?) times when Adobe has listened but anyone just has to look at the Flash bug database to see that the issue of most concern to developers (FP-444) has been 'under investigation' for 2 years and has a priority of C. What message does this send to developers? Certainly not that Adobe is listening to the community.

Adobe better cracking on multi-threading too or it will lose thousands of serious developers to Silverlight. Just read the Silverlight blogs, "I'm a 'real' programmer... I need multi-threading... Silverlight has multi-threading, Flash doesn't, so I'm going with Silverlight".
# Anonymous August 5, 2009 5:59 PM

Noise cancellation, higher quality video encoding (at the very least in AIR), and you really need to fix these old but really nasty problems: http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2009/6/19/vendor-lock-out

Thanks,
-Brian Lesser
# Carlos Nazareno August 5, 2009 7:01 PM

Adobe Make Some Joy!
(a play on Andre Michelle's Make Some Noise)

One thing we Flash game developers look forward to is the addition of joystick/gamepad support for Flash.

Flash has becoming one of the most prevalent game platforms on the net, and it would be really fantastic if we could add gamepads into the mix.

Please check out Ian Lobb's blog post about it here
# Ted Naleid August 5, 2009 8:52 PM

I think when I voted for FP-444 (http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-444) I was around the 30th person to vote for it. I thought that was a lot of votes.

It's now 2 years later and there are now 329 votes for this to get fixed, with little to no comment from Adobe and a priority of "C".

It's hard to feel like the community has much impact on the path of flash/flex with this kind of bug/limitation outstanding.

At this point, I've mostly given up on flex development, but more attention to this issue would have made things less painful and more likely for me to stick around.
# Patrick August 5, 2009 11:56 PM

What about the problems with playing live video using NetConnection and NetStream classes?

While building a big campaign website using live video we came across a sorts of unexpected problems.

The two classes seems buggy as hell and never gave us the expected results.

Finally we had to work with several workarounds to get it work.
# Huhgawz August 5, 2009 11:56 PM

I'm an ardent fan of Flex however here are some of suggestions for Adobe: 1) As an experienced developer I think Adobe should make some kind of agreements with companies which develop third-party components in order to increase the amount of components and to enhance or extend the existing ones. Just look at the Silverlight community: there are plenty of companies that develop third-party components for Silverlight. Many of these third-party components for Silverlight have no simile in the Flex world. In contrast, the amount of companies which develop third-party components for Flex is really low. Certainly there are a lot of good open source projects around Flex such as flexlib. However, third-party components are essential for big companies which are looking to achieve a truly rapid application development. 2) It is essential to make the AIR platform available for mobiles ASAP.
# Patrick August 6, 2009 12:00 AM

Give the Flash player more power!

We've always been pushing Flash to the limit, but lately we reached its ceiling when it comes to performance.

We tasted 3D with Papervision, Away3D and Alternativa. But we want more! Please give it to us, otherwise we are forced to look somewhere else (eg. Unity3D).
# Chris Brind August 6, 2009 1:10 AM

I can't decide if you really believe what you're saying in this entry, or if are you just fulfilling your role as an evangelist.

Either way - I don't feel it is true and like Ted Naleid, I was going to mention FP-444.

My other main issue is lack of support (hilariously) for the HTTP protocol (i.e. no support for affecting headers to any serious degree, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS, etc, and lack of support for HTTP Authentication, e.g. Basic and Digest, both of which get delegated to the browser).

This makes building a REST (or even WebDav) client a real hacky chore, when it should be gloriously easy with extremely sexy results.
# Ryan Guill August 6, 2009 6:03 AM

Already two people have talked about FP-444 (http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-444). My understanding is that it is the number 1 voted bug logged against the FP and a duplicate of it is the number 2 voted bug. I am not going as far as the other guys, I am not going to leave the platform over it, but I do agree that it sorta goes against the statement that it works every time.

If nothing else, can someone from Adobe go in there and at least look at the issue and comment on it so that all of these people can know that you actually see it? From what I can tell, not a single adobe person has commented.
# Scott Ysebert August 6, 2009 6:27 AM

@Ted

Well if anything you put a grin on my face regarding your comment.

I'd love to go to MAX if to just be around like minds and the best in the industry. It's more than my company would spend on it, so I'm attempting some other methods.

I really do hope that one day there is a built in API for browser awareness in the Flash plugin though.
# brad August 6, 2009 7:25 AM

I know where to post bugs but what about wish lists?
# Anonymous August 6, 2009 8:39 AM

I am working on a large Flash project and encountered quit a lot Flash Player bugs. The good news is that we nowadays have a bug base to look up if Adobe knows about the bug. That's often the case. But what is very disappointing is that a lot of those bugs where already confirmed in for example flash 8 or 9 but where never resolved.

Now why should I go through the hassle to keep submitting bugs when there is little chance they ever get fixed at least wihtout campaining for them?

I think Adobe should have a policy that every bug - no matter how severe - should be resolved in for example 3 months. And if there is a valid reason to leave the bug as is then this should be documented in the bug base.
# Matthew Fabb August 6, 2009 9:23 AM

I think for the most part Adobe has done a great job in responding to what the community wants and needs. However, there could still be room for improvement.

One way that I think Adobe could improve is giving a bit more feedback on the bugs.adobe.com site. As seen in the posts above, the lack of feedback can sometimes get frustrating to developers. Often there's perfectly good reasons that certain things have not moved forward, which I've heard mentioned at Flash conferences, but that info then doesn't get communicated in the JIRA cases.

Another way, I think things could improve is including Adobe AIR and the Flash IDE into the bugs.adobe.com site. Actually, I would love it if all Adobe products eventually were included, but for now as a developer including Adobe AIR and Flash IDE would be very helpful. Not just to developers to track down existing bugs but likely that information would be valuable to Adobe. It would likely be a better way of tracking bugs rather than the occasional blog posts like this one from Mike Chambers trying to track down existing bugs. Now I realize both Adobe AIR and Flash IDE are closed source, which Adobe can do as they please, but so is Flex Builder and the Flash Player, but both of these are included in the JIRA system.
# Andy August 6, 2009 9:32 AM

I agree with Ted Naleid, FP-444 has been a particular sore spot for me as well. It has accumulated 331 votes over 2 years, with only one comment from an Adobe employee in the last year (where Charles Liss reveals essentially nothing). Its very frustrating to see Adobe spending time on things like Pixel Bender when the platform is lacking something as essential as global exception handling.
# Ted Patrick August 6, 2009 10:25 AM

I believe part of the issue here is transparency on the part of Adobe. Being inside Adobe I have a very different perspective on things given there is tons of progress being made on the platform ( FP-444 and many others ). The problem seems to be that Adobe doesn't share progress openly so our perspectives are different. Maybe we should change that and share more earlier, post proposed platform changes publicly, and set expectations for delivery.

The post was intended to get folks more active, simple as that. In highlighting 'the current way" it rubbed some wrong as if to say we are "ok" or "complacent" with the state of things. I certainly didn't mean to disregard the external point of view and getting that perspective surfaced is a great thing.

Regardless, know that lots of folks within Adobe are listening and watching this thread with interest. If there is a gap we will work to make things right. In this regard goals are aligned, everyone wants a better platform to deliver software. Simple as that.

Regards,

Ted :)
# Chris Brind August 6, 2009 10:52 AM

@Ted - if that is truly the case, then in the name of transparency a quick win for Adobe which would satisfy many many people (including a good proportion of those who bothered to comment here) is for someone at Adobe to raise the priority of FP-444 and assign it to someone who is prepared to comment on the progress of it regularly (e.g. weekly or monthly).

It would also be good if there were another blog contributed to by a few people which addressed community issues (even recurringly).

I look forward to having my perspective changed ... :)

Thanks,
Chris
# Matthew Fabb August 6, 2009 12:09 PM

Despite the criticisms in this comments thread, it's great that you are promoting this Ted, as I still come across Flash developers who are completely unaware of bugs.adobe.com. The top bugs in the Flash Player are currently in the 300 range, yet that's such a small fraction of the Flash developers out there. So I'm happy any time Adobe promotes bugs.adobe.com to get more developers involved, as the more people using it the better for all involved.
# ash August 6, 2009 4:20 PM

Whatever future Adobe has planned it better be bigger than HTML 5 + Processing.js + new tools being developed to support them.

Otherwise, you're going to see a steady decline in general Flash player usage.

Flex will continue to be used to build RIAs in the short term, until somebody releases an equivalent to the Flex framework.

Games? Unity3d is a better option.
# Christophe Herreman August 7, 2009 2:24 AM

Another interesting feature request is the one for Dynamic Proxies. It already has 92 votes and could certainly use some more: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3136
# David Wilhelm August 7, 2009 4:41 AM

Every day at work I do Flex development on 64 bit linux, and I have to use the 32 bit debug player with nspluginwrapper. This is rather unstable and slow, and causes me a lot of frustration. I'm glad there's a 64 bit release player, but as a developer I really need a debug player as well. I saw on some Adobe site that Adobe has 'no intention' of developing a 64 bit linux debug player. I don't understand why that is the case... It would save me a great deal of annoyance, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

The other issue I have seen lately is the bugginess of the player SDK cache https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14669 when using modules. This would be of great advantage, but I could not get it to work, even on the 3.4 branch suggested.

Other than that... keep up the good work!
# Anonymous August 7, 2009 5:33 AM

I don't think the progress of FP-444 matters anymore, Ted. Adobe has ignored the community - sorry, no, it's customers - too long on the issue. We'll probably all be happy to see a solution someday, but it's already disappointed those who care about it (and maybe that's why Adobe doesn't consider it high priority).
# adampasz August 7, 2009 6:33 AM

The squeaky wheel, eh...

Not sure if the chronology is that meaningful in predicting the future. After all, I think people have been requesting private constructors since 2003 as well.

Anyway, here's my list of Flex complaints. Wrote this around Flex 3, but most still apply to FB4. http://www.pasz.com/blog/2009/03/top-10-pet-peeves-about-flexbuilder-3.html
# Anonymous August 7, 2009 6:42 AM

RE: FP-444 - notice the related bug http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-9790 logged 12/2005! Coming up on 4 years.
# Tristan August 7, 2009 8:22 AM

I have to put in another word for FP-444, global exception handling.

I think the progress does matter. We still have no idea what Adobe's goals, plans, or opinions are about this issue, and that is the most frustrating part.

As the developer of an enterprise application that is about to launch, it's scary to know that an Error can occur, the user could never be notified, and Bad Things could happen thereafter without ever knowing why. That's unacceptable. But of course (or at least I hope) everyone understands why it's an issue.

Please please please just give us an update on your goals or even rough ideas on the issue. Transparency and openness is my concern over all else.
# Anonymous August 7, 2009 8:49 AM

@Ted, before i stoke up the flame thrower, i would say that i'm a big fan of Flex/AIR, and Adobe products in general. But i would hate to see these products die as a byproduct of community neglect, which is why i'm taking the time to write this.

>> I believe part of the issue here is transparency on the part of Adobe.

Yes, the lack of transiency is a *major* problem. Probably only second to Adobe's inability to deliver solutions to top issues.

FP-444 (399 votes): no basic global exception handling - 2 years old.
FP-1499 (122 votes): dup of FP-444 - 1.5 years old
SDK-13740 (98 votes): can not render (full fidelity) XHTML/CSS in flex - almost 2 years old.
FP-251 (31 votes): access to HTTP headers is broken. breaks REST, among other serious issues - over 1 year old.
FP-644 (17 votes): can not get an exception stack trace in production (non-debug player)! - almost 1 year old.

I could go on, but that a good sample of the current neglect.

If users are willing to spend time and energy trying to help Adobe build a better platform, then Adobe should at least have the courtesy to respond to the requests in writing.

No one is going to want to continue providing feedback if they feel their efforts are falling on deaf ears. You really should create a public, published policy statement/charter/service-level about the treatment of issues in the bug database.

Something like...

1. Every issue will be given an evaluation and status and within 4 weeks.
2. At least "X#" full time developer will be dedicated to solving the top 10 issues.
3. The top ten issues will receive weekly status updates, a solution ETA, and system to deliver the fix/enhancement as a patch.
4. Unless there are overriding technical reasons, the top 10 will be fixed/enhanced for the next major release.
5. Lower priority issues will also get attention, but with a lower service level (xxx).
etc...

>> Being inside Adobe I have a very different perspective on things given there is tons of progress being made on the platform ( FP-444 and many others ).

Yes tons of progress has been made, but the perception is that the progress is made where Adobe decides progress should be made. Instead, a disproportionate amount of progress should be made on the issues that are important to your users/customers.

FP-444 is the #1 issue for 2 years with no solution or any reasonable feedback. To not give a detailed response on this issue is completely unacceptable. Why waste people's time if you do not willing to respond?

>> The problem seems to be that Adobe doesn't share progress openly so our perspectives are different.

Yes that is a critical problem. But our perspectives should be the same - Adobe behavior on the Bug db is unacceptable. Why are you not flaming Adobe in support of us, instead of just making excuses for the current behavior?

>> Maybe we should change that and share more earlier, post proposed platform changes publicly, and set expectations for delivery.

Maybe? Come on Ted, you know the answer to your own question - make it happen!

Stop asking people to give feedback and suggestions when there is such a blatant pattern of neglect and disregard.

People will naturally give lots of feedback if they know they are being listened to, it's as simple as that.

mm
# Ria Flex August 7, 2009 9:16 AM

I actually wonder whether the solution for FP-444 will also solve the problem of a Flex application becoming unresponsive after an exception. I actually think we need a solution for this even more than being able to actually capture the exceptions. Hopefully the solution for FP-444 solves the fact that events aren't processed anymore as well... God knows what Flex would have looked like if all the time put in Flash Catalyst would have been put in Flex... Who makes these decisions??? An accountant, the shareholders, ... ??
# Tristan August 7, 2009 11:44 AM

I second Anonymous @#42.
# Radley August 7, 2009 4:25 PM

Might be a good idea to create some kind of channel for Flash designer/animator feedback. Most don't use JIRA (just like programmers don't use the timeline).
# Richard August 8, 2009 2:55 AM

I posted a bug report a couple of months ago. I returned the next day having done further tests in order to add more information to the report, only to discover I was not allowed to view the bug report. A few hours later the report was removed from the system entirely.

Now, that may be because the report detailed a way to crash the flash player, and Adobe don't want people to know about such possibilities. But guess what, I already know about it because I submitted the bug report. It would be nice to be able to continue to assist the developers with the bug and to know about their progress in fixing it.

If Adobe want to encourage me to get more involved, this is not the way to do it.
# TJ August 8, 2009 8:12 AM

I think great points are made on both sides of the argument. While anonymous #42 has a lot of valid points, he/she loses all credibility by virtue of the fact that he/she is anonymous.

I do believe one thing: communication between Adobe and the community in regards to outstanding issues needs to be improved dramatically. Someone needs to own the bug base and own the process between the developers and the community to ensure constant contact.

It is simply unacceptable to ask people to submit bugs and then be unresponsive in this regard. People seem to have come to accept this from large software development companies.

New features are great, and Adobe has certainly improved the Flash platform since taking it over. However, the most important progress that can be made in any product is to fix its flaws and defects, and to provide those things which most users find essential to their daily work.

I urge Adobe to put someone onto the bug base for each product who acts as our liaison. This position is as important as the evangelists, if not more so. It shows us that you care and it let's us know that you are there, that you are listening, and that the issues that are important to us are equally important to you.
# cm August 9, 2009 6:48 PM

PLLLEASE give us more performance!.. especially on the drawing API...
# Ronny Karam August 11, 2009 1:15 AM

Hi Ted,

I've been using Flash since version 4 and enjoyed every bit of it till AS3 was released.

AS3 might be the biggest improvement made to the language. It boosted performance, introduced real OOP, etc. Yet, it completely ignored the designer and the fun part of Flash.

AS is a scripting language. It should be easy and simple like AS2 & JavaScript. It should allow the non programmer to be creative and accomplish what can't be done with simple timeline animation.
If I wanted to be a programmer, I would've learned JAVA and used JAVAFX or learned C# and used Silverlight.

Adobe developed 2 tools to do the same JOB: Flash and Flash builder (AKA, Flex). Flash was fun, it helped designers go out of their Photoshop box. The developers improved the language, but it's the designers who pushed them to explore the limitations of AS1 & 2. It's the designers who planned, created, experimented and unleashed the developers power to realize their creations.

I don't know where the future of Flash is heading now, but I think that later on, the Flash Builder will survive the impact since developers will be using it, and the actual Flash IDE will eventually die; Adobe created another Visual Studio like toy for developers and completely ignored the actual reason behind the Flash success: THE DESIGNERS.

Flash wasn't built to create applications in the first place and shouldn't be creating only applications.
Why not have a scripting and programming language? Why not let the designers play around and make things fun and let developers go back to their boring stuff?

I have nothing against the developers, but if the web was left for them to improve, it would've still been a black screen with a flashy cursor.

PS: I'm not a designer... I'm actually a Flash developer who enjoys AS3 :)

Ron.
# JTtheGeek August 11, 2009 11:06 AM

I couldn't agree more to Anon 42. It seems like a huge giant slap in the face to for you to ask the community for feedback, when we have been slamming the system Adobe put in place with feedback, and have been given atrocious attention. Often times real bugs are dismissed all together, repeatedly defered, closed, or removed without response, called a duplicate and closed when it's obviously not, and on and on.
It has seemed like a cruel sad joke that Adobe played to try to keep the community happy, but has largely widened the gap between us.
Let's look at some quick stats on the bugs: 1% are under investigation, 5% are in progress, and over 82% of the bugs are assigned to just 3 people. Even if these numbers and stats can be taken as meaningful, which honestly I seriously doubt considering the way the bugs have been treated in the system, this is just down right appalling.
I for one am absolutely thrilled with SilverLight 3 and JavaFX starting to show some muscle on the RIA scene, as it's becoming apparent who actually does listen to their community...
I am sorry Ted, I love Macromedia and Adobe, I love the innovation they have by and large brought to the web, and I believe you have the best of intentions, so please, please go back to the feedback all of us have already been providing for so long and get Adobe to pay some serious attention to it, and more importantly, keep all of us involved.
# admin August 12, 2009 8:19 AM

Transparency can be done the hard way in shape of translated blog posts, tutorials, documentation, etc. or the easier way by using public tools for your own development process. Some person at adobe will work at something for the FP and he will have to get his status done and do documentation about it. Its possible to share some/much/most of your workflow with the outer world, you know.

Aside that it would be real good to stand to the things you do: I mean: putting a bug tracker online with the result that barely someone is working on it? Having people that beg on knees as in FP-444 is the result.

But in Joas post there are many organisation problems addressed already.

Technically I'd really welcome a different way to treat basics such as enterframe or the embed tag. With HTML/CSS/AJAX these days lots of things is possible which is hard to do in flash just by having the possibility to use a system scrollbar.

Bugs like FP-147 can be almost automatically tested and should belong to the past for a long time now. (And then again: Priority: None, Status: New? Are you kidding? its 1,5 years old, reproducible and problem of everyone who enounters to make a audio player)

The language question ain't a simple one. A mess is created and its hard to clean it up. It would remove a lot of research work if you'd just use JavaScript 2.0 hence that ain't available: Nicolas Cannasse worked on some charming features in haXe that already creates a .swf with a fast compiler under the hood. Its open source so I bet Adobe can take it and adapt and extend it to the needs of AS4.
# Andriy Panas August 13, 2009 7:49 AM

If we want to create solid and reliable RIAs with Flex 4 Spark components subset, we need to have those components functional automation ready by the time of official release Flex 4 SDK

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FLEXENT-1033

If you agree with that, please vote
# Jesse Freeman August 13, 2009 8:54 AM

For anyone who was not following Ted or me yesterday on Twitter you may have missed me ranting about my deep frustration and hatred for flash�s CSS parser. I wound up trying to explain myself in small spurts of 144 characters, hardly a way to have a real conversation on a serous subject. I felt that my blog would be a better outlet to finish my thoughts. Here is the post http://flashartofwar.com/2009/08/13/what-the-interface/
# cm August 14, 2009 12:52 AM

It really comes down to a simple point� performance and if Flash 11 doesn�t prove some significant performance increases (in visual rendering alone) then Adobe is going to have some big problems. Especially if they want to release their next Creative Suite using Flash as the GUI again� I honestly do not even know how they released Flash CS4 with such sluggish interface.

Dont get me wrong I really love AS3 and the platform. As an �interaction designer� AS3 is perfect for me to quickly prototype ideas and manage large libraries to later reference (packages are great)� without ever touching a FLA. But really the language additions (as nice as they would be� please give us Abstracts) performance should really be their main concern.

I have been lucky enough to have the past year to focus on �Surface� based interaction in Flash 10� (think multi-touch/fidicuals) and performance is even more crucial as each time you add a new cursor (finger) the available vars and thus dynamic nature of software can change times (n). I really think Adobe has fallen behind in the user input department� for example all of Flex is rigidly coupled around mouse and keyboard� with no abstraction available much of this has to be overrided or rewritten to work with my own �TouchEvent� class� and with Windows 7 coming out (Sept) focused on touch computing and we have heard null from Adobe/Flash Team on their roadmaps for dealing with touch input� when MS already has tutorials on IE8/Silverlight implementations in the browser. Also, touch is just the beginning of where emerging sensing solutions will bring� with each being more performance demanding e.g. augmented reality, voice or computer vision�

Either way love Adobe and I hope they have some secrets up their sleeves ;)

Originally Posted on: (http://blog.joa-ebert.com/2009/08/06/this-is-an-outrage/comment-page-2/#comment-174401)
# tomsamson August 14, 2009 4:17 AM

I�ve already posted my complaints and suggestions here:
http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2009/08/09/making-the-case-for-actionscript/#comments
here:
http://ncannasse.fr/blog/the_failure_of_as3
and on other flash/adobe blogs and sites
so i won�t repeat all those again now here,
just wanted to add another performance suggestion now :)
Of course the biggest performance request is propper gpu acceleration for all graphic handling related operations so flash could finally run way nicer on older systems, too without killing the cpu etc.
But this is something i just thought about right now:
Could it be made that there�s a new anti aliasing option for Sprites,Movieclips and Bitmapdata which would be autoHighQuality.
Unlike current settings this would cleverly know when a graphic has to be anti aliased to look good and when not, that way choose the right setting for best look and turn down anti aliasing for this element when not needed.
Example: A Movieclip contains vector graphics in this frame-->It has to be anti aliased to not look jaggy
Example 2: A Movieclip has a raster graphic in this frame which is neither scaled nor rotated (just like any container clips around it)-->Movieclip content does not have to be anti aliased in this frame
Likewise when it has been scaled or rotated it would have to be anti aliased.
More complex case: Display content has cacheAsBitmap turned on, then it should be anti aliased while bitmap cache copy is created
-next to that it would be generally very nice if one could set Stage quality to low and set the quality of seperate display objects individually
Well, just throwing in suggestions seeing how propper gpu acceleration for all graphical operations seems to take a while, dunno if something like what i suggested could be nicely implemented without too much hassle (and would lead to noticable performance gain even if it switches back and forth between AA and non AA for display objects often), but yeah, thought i should bring it up cause display performance is really the biggest drawback of flash right now and maybe this helps :)
# Anonymous August 14, 2009 9:27 AM

Forget more features and more API's:

FIX Flash Player, and give us PERFORMANCE + GPU SUPPORT.
# Beau Scott August 18, 2009 10:19 AM

I hate to beat a dead horse, but Flash Builder to me really represents the doom of Flex Builder for Linux.

There's tons of developer demand for it: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-19053

AIR and Flash are both touted as "Cross Platform" but I call BS on that to be honest. Their respective players might (partly) work on the holy trinity (mac/win/[some]lin), but you can't truly be cross platform until you can deploy to and develop on all three. How can you expect an AIR author to be able to test the quirks of their AIR applications on individual platforms if they can't easily debug/step through their code on each target platform? It's such a major pain to have to port tunnel to a VM or external machine to accomplish this. No linux dev support is really putting a huge blemish on the appeal to the developer part of your "designer/developer" target.
# Anonymous August 18, 2009 11:27 AM

ohh yea and please for the love of GOD fix the Flash Player settings... it really makes for a horrible end user experience in case they have to use that 5 year old settings panel :P
# Brian September 6, 2009 10:06 AM

Here's my requests: http://www.deitte.com/archives/2009/09/my_requests_for.htm
# Glen September 7, 2009 3:21 PM

Make MP3's Loop seamlessly please, or give us the ability to load WAV files if you can't...
# Rob E September 22, 2009 10:12 PM

Another one who voted on FP-444 years ago and wishes Adobe would fix it or at least make some comment about it ....

If Adobe spent one cycle where they stopped reinventing the wheel and giving us yet another new API that is going to change our lives and instead fixed and made faster what we already have things would be immeasurably better.

You don't need a new wish list when you already have an old one that hasn't been finished.
# Epoch of Entropy September 25, 2009 4:18 PM

FP-444 is now locked. It's mentioned 19 times so far, and it's not a viewable issue by me (a registered user and contributor) with the following error:

PERMISSION VIOLATION:

ERROR
It seems that you have tried to perform an operation which you are not permitted to perform. Bugs related to Security or Crash severity may not be available for general access.

If you think this message is wrong, please consult your administrators about getting the necessary permissions.

-------------------

What's Adobe's logic here?

I can't see a bug that would cause instability? Work-arounds? Internal Adobe priority?

I can't vote for said bugs, and say that they're important to me?

I can't add additional comments and information about the bug that may assist with debugging?

To what end? Oh yes... The Flash player shares it's memory across all instances so someone could exploit *my* code in a completely separate web page.

So what drives Adobe more?

A: Criminals
B: Internal policies
C: Past historical errors
D: Developer community

-------------------

Ted, I'm sorry but I'm not biting.

FYI: I've submitted bugs to the Adobe JIRA system, and have only gotten no feedback, deferred then closed with no explanation, sent to a different bug database with no follow up.

If you want to improve your image, you need to improve how these are handled in the public's eye. Just saying you are doesn't mean anything if nobody can see it.
# Ted Patrick September 25, 2009 5:30 PM

There are a few key bugs that are changing status headed towards MAX.

News at MAX!

Ted :)
# Epoch of Entropy September 25, 2009 7:27 PM

Ted Patrick said...
"There are a few key bugs that are changing status headed towards MAX.

News at MAX!"

Ted,

My question is: Will these be updated in JIRA, in their corresponding issues as well?
# Ted Patrick September 25, 2009 9:17 PM

They will get updated in JIRA. You were the first to notice a status change on them. I expected them to remain the same until the event but seems player engineering is checking in changes to JIRA.

Most likely they will be updated on Monday Oct 5 when these go public with new feature announcements.

I am very excited about this release, as you will see we have come a very long way. Memory, performance, dev features all changed as a result of community feedback.

Ted :)
# Bouiaw September 26, 2009 3:57 AM

My most wanted features re
- Linux support for Flash Builder (32 and 64 bits)
- 64 bits standalone debugger under Linux
- 3D native acceleration to allow Flash to compete whith WebGL

Since WebGL progress quickly, I think (don't know if it make sense) that the best option would be for Adobe to do like for HD video in Flash player 9 : releasing 3D support in an update of Flash 10 player.

Since 3D support is already in Flash 10, just adding 3D native acceleration BEFORE Flash 11 may be a key point for Flash and Flex success. If you don't do that, you will loose some market share against HTML5/WebGL/Canvas technologies. Also think about that IE is not really an issue anymore since Google Chrome release.

Ted Patrick - Demos & MAX @ Adobe Systems

Note: This is the personal blog of Ted Patrick. The opinions and statements voiced here are my own.

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