Flash re-implemented as 100% free software in Firefox: project Shumway
Hi
At the last Mozilla Summit I saw some pretty impressive demos of
Shumway, the new 100% free Flash re-implementation coming up in Firefox.
In fact it's already available as an extension, my understading is it
will be default in Firefox, much like the PDF reader was reimplemented
natively and is now part of the browser.
http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/
I'd like to know if anyone here has tried this in Trisquel and if it
does in fact offer a viable alternative to binary Flash from Adobe.
Cheers,
Fabian
--
Fabián Rodríguez
http://fsf.magicfab.ca
Shumway is crap right now. It doesn't work on embedded objects (you need to open the SWF file separately), doesn't seem to work properly on much of anything, and has gray lines at the edges of objects. Maybe it'll get better at some point, but right now, it doesn't even hold a candle to Gnash and Lightspark.
Even if you could play a game, it's not a free game. I kinda question programs that exist to run non-free things. And, if I understand things correctly, the game can only be made with non-free software too.
I am reminded of the issues presented by gNewSense: http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/WhyNotFlash
There are free software programs that can create SWF files, though I don't know how good they are at making games. OpenLaszlo is an example I'm aware of.
I agree. With free implementation by default in the browser the Flash will never die and more developers will be using the Adobe proprietary software suite.
Bad for them, not bad for us.
This is great news.
The inability of the present free alternative, Gnash, to play flash videos as well as the proprietary plug-in is the biggest weakeness I can see in the free distros...
Since that, the difference in performance is quite significant - at least, in older computers.
And (either you like it or not) flash has become a very much used format in multimedia services. And, unless/until such changes, we will all have to still watch a lot of videos, and use other content, in such a format.
Go Shumway and HTML5!
Many websites today have video in H.264 (MP4) or audio in MP3. Disable Gnash and see. Abrowser support it with Gstreamer. [0]
I removed Gnash of here.
[0] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/abrowser-firefox-24-solution-non-working-mp4-video
And, responding to the questioned posed in the initial post...
I don't know what I was using in such experiments. But, I remembered that, when I tried another free distro, about a year ago, I could already choose on YouTube to use the experimental HTML5, and the quality of videos was quite superior, compared to the ones played by Gnash. More close to the performance of the proprietary plug-in, but still not as good...
Anyway, this is just the begginnig...
And, being a Free Software project, dedicated to something that people use a lot, it has a lot of evolutionary potential.