Re: Flash

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Re: Flash
by T. J. Brumfield on Thursday 01/May/2008, @12:43

> As long as the problem is in the Flash plugin code, which only Adobe has access to, it is Adobe's problem to fix.

Except the problem likely isn't in their code. They released the plugin to operate using Netscape plugins. Other browsers who follow that standard, implement the plugin just fine. If Adobe had a problem with Flash, it would be noticed by the countless users who use it every single day.

Clearly the nature of the problem is how Konqueror implements plugins.

This is one of the many reasons I will never uses Konqueror as web browser.

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Official News
·   Also by T. J. Brumfield
·   Contact author

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Re: Flash
by Kevin Krammer on Thursday 01/May/2008, @13:32

> Except the problem likely isn't in their code

judging by the issues that have already been fixed in the plugin, it is quite likely that most remaining issues are bugs in the plugin as well.

> If Adobe had a problem with Flash, it would be noticed by the countless users who use it every single day.

As we know it is noticed by countless uses who happen to not use Gecko.
E.g. one bug was that the plugin accessed GTK functions without calling gtk_init(), which only works if something else has already called that function.
Even a non GTK based Gecko engine would have failed that.

The fix was to properly call the init function, as documented in the GTK API docs.

A recent discovery is that the plugin calls a plugin host function and cannot handle user agent strings which include "like Gecko" but requires to have just "Gecko". However, any later call of that function can return the correct user agent, cleary indicating that there is a bug in the plugin code responsible for the first call.

> Clearly the nature of the problem is how Konqueror implements plugins.

Clearly the nature of the problem is how Adobe's Flasg plugin developers assume things outside the definition of the plugin API instead of properly using it an other APIs (see GTK misuse above)

> This is one of the many reasons I will never uses Konqueror as web browser.

I use Konqueror as my main web browser every single day, even with Adobe's Flash despite Adobe's best efforts to make this impossible.
It is awesome how Konqueror/KHTML/nspluginviewer developers manage to find workrounds and outside fixes for problems Adobe seems to be uncapable of fixing where they originate.

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Re: Flash
by Sebastian Sauer on Friday 02/May/2008, @06:02

> Adobe seems to be uncapable of fixing where they originate.

To be fair it was Macromedia who wrote it in the first place and someone just needs to work a bit with there other products (Director does provide there a fantastic impression how software should _not_ be) to see that it was there philosophy to deliver such kind of software ;)

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Re: Flash
by Anon on Friday 02/May/2008, @09:17

Actually plenty of the mess in Flash nowadays was introduced after Adobe taking over Macromedia. It is the versions since then (7) which turned Flash into an apparently unmanageable kitchen sink of browser plugin meets media player meets multimedia toolkit framework. To make matters worse (likely related to the worsening of the code base) Adobe doesn't even bother to offer code of Flash version after 7 for commercial licensees anymore resulting in unsupported platforms being stuck with a more and more unsupported version 7 (a mainstream example is Flash in Opera for Nintendo Wii).

That and Flash being used for the majority of ads makes me wish it'd rather die today than tomorrow.

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Re: Flash
by Sebastian Sauer on Friday 02/May/2008, @23:24

Thanks for the details which I wasn't aware of. Somewhat frustrating for those who depend on it and a good example why closed / non-free software does provide more problems then to solve any :-/

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Re: Flash
by fred on Thursday 01/May/2008, @16:59

If you want to see how many hacks needed to make nspluginviewer works in Konqueror, you can refer to Lubos Lunak's blog. http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3162 (Guess what? Opera is also not supported)

When something is badly engineered and closed source, you can only a hack to make it works. And this is the fault of those who implement the plugin.

Do you know that people with non-32 bit machine (e.g. AMD64) also got headache to enable flash in Firefox? (no 64-bit flash plugin so far) And they curse Adobe even more than us Konqueror users because of that.

I heard Adobe has released their swf spec, hopefully it will make Gnash/swfdec better and other browsers can utilize this to provide better flash.

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