Penguin.SWF

Adobe is announcing the Open Screen Project today. The press release mentions that it deals with "driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics." However, I can guarantee that the part of this announcement that will be of most interest to Linux/open source fans is likely to be these items:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services

Note that this is not about open sourcing the Flash Player (although a non-negligible portion of the Flash Player code is already open source). However, the previous restriction that anyone who looks at the spec technically isn't allowed to create an independent SWF decoder (if documentation EULAs are to be believed) was a point of contention among many open source types. No more click-through EULA embedded in the actual PDF, or so I've been reliably informed.

And if I can find the new documents (there's the traditional SWF spec, while the FLV and new F4V formats have been split out into a new document) on the vast corporate website, I will be sure to link to them. I'm not even sure if they're posted yet. But I'm sure my loyal readers will post links in the comments if they can locate them first.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

Some visitors have gently proposed that I should make some blog post, if only to assure the community that the Adobe Flash Player for Linux is still very active. Besides, the previous post's comment thread was growing a smidge unwieldy. Here's a fresh new thread.

As many are already aware, there is a new version of Flash Player 9 available. This version is designated 9.0.124 and is available here (standalone Player available here). There are no major features to announce with this release; it's a security fix. This is for your protection, cyber-citizen.

Also, I apologize that this release once again broke package management cryptographic checksums because the filename is the same as the previous release. I will rectify that for future releases.

You may be interested to learn that we just rolled out a new bug base: https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/. This replaces the old wish form. Flash Player Project Manager Justin Everett-Church has more details about the new system. You can vote for your favorite bugs!

Posted by Mike Melanson at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

A new version of the Flash Player is available. To be specific, this is Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, version identifier 9,0,115,0. It is simultaneously available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. The Linux version, as with previous Linux versions, is presently x86_32 only.

This version includes the new Flash support for the standard H.264 and AAC codecs as well as hardware-accelerated fullscreen support (where supported by video hardware and drivers, and specified by a site's SWF). This is also the first official Linux release to support the new XEmbed browser protocol which simply allows a browser plugin on Unix to behave better in a modern desktop environment.

Improvement over the string of beta releases: This new XEmbed-enabled plugin should work with Opera now.

Get it here (.tar.gz, .rpm, and YUM available).

Posted by Mike Melanson at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (217)

Adobe's Flex Builder is coming to Linux. You can download the public alpha of the tool over on the appropriate labs page.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A release candidate for Flash Player 9 Update is available for download on labs. Windows, Mac, and Linux, all at the same time.

Oh please, click bug, please be be gone!

Go get it. If you find problems, remember that this blog's comment section is not the best place to report them. This is. Also, there are the forums.

Posted by Mike Melanson at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (48)