BIT-101 Blog

Arrived in San Francisco around 1pm. Just before we landed I was looking over some conference logistics stuff I’d printed out, and the guy sitting beside me asked if I was going to FlashForward. Turns out he was too. So we shared a cab back to the Fairmont. Got checked in and took another cab over to the Adobe where I did a video interview about Flash 10. I guess it will be on a page on Adobe.com at some point in the future. While I was there, I bumped into Mark Anders and spoke to him for a bit. He helped me track down Ted Patrick. Had a nice visit with Ted, bumped into Branden Hall on the way out, then went back to the Fairmont.

Went over to the Masonic Center to check out the venue. Bumped into my old friend Jared Ficklin on the way over there. Too early for much to be happening there yet, but saw the venue and said hi to Beau. Now just getting set to go to the speaker dinner.

I’ve been subscribing to CDM for several weeks now. Lots of awesome visual stuff to be inspired by there. Got a nice surprise today when they ran an article at least partially on me.

Stuff like this just makes my head get all swollen.

Lee Brimelow has just posted some more information in regards to the issues WordPress, Flickr, SWFUpload have with the Flash 10 Beta. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the behavior is going to change, but I do understand a bit more on why this was put in place.

Read Lee’s response here.

Another encouraging thing is that Lee mentions Adobe will be reaching out to Flickr, WordPress, et al, to help them come up with solutions. If you know any other sites / companies, applications that are running into this problem, let Lee know so that Adobe can work with them as well.

One thing I love about Adobe is that they DO listen. You just have to make some noise.

OK, I’m being a bit dramatic to get attention, but there is a serious issue here, which I hope Adobe takes notice of and thinks about changing.

Often one of the most frustrating parts of working with Flash is dealing with security issues. I understand completely the need for security in Flash. Any mention of any security loopholes in Flash spreads like wildfire around the Internet and is blown up to represent the end of the modern civilization, and of course, a new reason to NOT use Flash. So Adobe has to clamp down on them. But man, sometimes it feels like they get a little TOO enthusiastic about locking down Flash.

The latest one that’s bugging me is a Flash 10 Player change that only allows you to open a file browse dialog via a direct user interaction such as a button push/mouse click. The idea here is to prevent malicious code from opening a file dialog and perhaps making you think it is for something else, and you wind up uploading some sensitive data to someone else’s server. I can see the point, but it’s creating some havoc.

It seems that various solutions such as SWFUpload use a mix of SWF + JavaScript to allow for file uploading. My understanding is that you click an html upload button that calls a method in the SWf via JavaScript to initiate a file browse and upload. Works fine in Flash 9, but you get a security error in Flash 10.

The real issue is that SWFUpload is what is used by WordPress for their file uploader. So Flash 10 is going to break this feature across the boards in all WordPress installations, which is like eleventy-zillion.

Oh, and there’s another little site that a few people use that implements a similarly coded Flash uploader. I think it’s called Flickr. Yeah, the Flickr uploader is busted in Flash 10.

There are probably plenty of other photo/video/etc. uploaders which are similarly destroyed by this new security feature. Again, I understand the intent, but I seriously hope that Adobe takes a good look at this one and makes it possible for products like SWFUpload to work. Possible workarounds are a “trust” dialog, or just going back to Flash 9 behavior.

Here are some links for further info on this issue:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=72&catid=675&threadid=1362693&enterthread=y

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/179104?replies=4

http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6979

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/177127?replies=6

http://swfupload.org/forum/generaldiscussion/551

As you can see reading through some of this, the perception by the world at large is that this is a “bug” or it is “broken”, not that it is a “security feature”. Some even interpret this as, “unlikely that Flash 10 will be able to do any sort of file uploading of any kind.” And of course, the recommendation across the board is “don’t upgrade to Flash 10, or downgrade to Flash 9.” Great work guys. Create the best Flash Player EVER (seriously) and then piss people off so much that they don’t want to use it.

Breaking millions of installs of software and disabling some of the features on some of the major sites of the Internet for a percieved security fix is utterly irresponsible and only brings bad press and bad blood to Adobe.

I’ve been working in NYC all this week. Heading back to Boston in a couple of hours to spend a couple of days with the family, then Tuesday morning I’m off to San Francisco for FlashForward.

At first I was pretty skeptical about FF with the recent acquisition, but it’s shaping up nicely and I’m really looking forward to it now. It’s going to be a whole new ball game with the one-track / twenty-minute session format. I’m really curious to see how that goes over. It was certainly a challenge to come up with compelling content to fit into that time frame. I hope mine works since it looks like I’m the first speaker after the keynote! Mmmmmm…. pressure.

Anyway, if you are there, come up and say hi. I’ve been accused of not being friendly enough when I’m at conferences, which kind of shocked me. I guess people come up to me and say they liked my book or whatever and ask a question, and I guess sometimes I come off as annoyed or not interested. Anyway, that’s not my intention, so I’m working on trying to be more warm and cuddly. Come say hi and help me practice.

So ECMAScript, ActionScript, blah blah blah. You already know the news. No need to restate it.

What I’m honestly wondering is, why should I care? I’m not being flip about it, I really want to know if AS3 being based on some standard or not really makes any real difference in any way, shape or form. It seems mostly like a marketing tag line. “ActionScript is Green! ActionScript is Open Source! ActionScript is based on ECMAScript! No baby seals were killed in the making of ActionScript!” But who cares? People who hate Flash will continue to find reasons to hate it no matter how open, standard, world-peace-generating Adobe makes it.

ActionScript is no less useful to me today than it was last week. Most clients could probably care less. I don’t think Silverlight or any other “competing” technologies are any more standards compliant than ActionScript now is. And if they were, that wouldn’t carry any weight at all in terms of  anyone I know switching.

Furthermore, it seems like Adobe was the driving force behind most of the features that were going into the spec, and ActionScript was the only language even remotely compliant. So what good is a standard if there’s only one thing that complies to the standard? OK, JavaScript would supposedly eventually maybe comply to the same standard. But I’m still not sure what I’m missing out on now that that is not going to happen.

I guess I could see an argument in that if ActionScript is based on a standard, then Adobe can’t do whatever they want with it, add features in that theoretically give them advantages, etc. But to be honest, I even see that as a plus point. Maybe now we can have private constructors!

Again, though, I’m no expert in these matters. So, in all honesty, if someone has some info on why being standards-compliant is of any benefit other than a sticker on a box, please share.

Well, it’s probably too late to do so in person, but you could make it into the keynote by creating a “Why MAX?” video! Here is your chance at 30 seconds of fame! Details here:

http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/08/want-to-be-in-max-keynote-30onmax.php

I was digging up some really old links while preparing for my Flash Forward presentation. Ran across Gabriel Mulzer’s old site, http://www.voxangelica.net. Amazing, it’s still up there. Remember the ice queen?

I learned the basics of 3D from a chapter Gabriel wrote in some book by Friends of ED back in those days. Wonder what he’s up to now.

I should say something witty here, but I think it’s best to let you watch.

A couple of genuine LOLs in the 2nd one.

Dug this one up too. Not ActionScript, but some nice editing near the end.

That is all. Get your ticket!

http://www.flashontap.com