Adobe has rolled out two new open source initiatives aimed specifically towards developers for media companies and publishers. Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework lets developers build more robust, feature-rich media players optimized specifically for the Adobe Flash Platform. The second initiative, the Text Layout Framework (TLF), will help developers create sophisticated typography capabilities to Web applications.
OSMF basically lets developers easily build media players for the Adobe Flash Platform. Adobe says the structure of OSMF lets developers leverage plug-ins for advertising, reporting metrics and content delivery along with standard video player features such as playback controls, video navigation, buffering and Dynamic Streaming. The OSMF source code and software components are available under the Mozilla Public License. Adobe is also partnering with content delivery service Akamai to create a cohesive standard to support Adobe media players that support Flash.
TLF lets developers layout text on web applications with support for complex languages, bidirectional text, multi-columns and other advanced typographical features and controls. TLF is an ActionScript library built on top of the text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5 software. Similar to OSMF, TLF is available as open source under the Mozilla Public License.
Adobe’s product manager for Flash, Tom Barclay, says that these new initiatives are mainly targeted towards media companies who want to leverage typography technologies and rich media players off of the Flash and Adobe AIR platforms. The New York Times TimesReader 2.0 and The Boston Globe’s GlobeReader are both powered by TLF, and leverage the typography features of the open source code. Barclay says that Adobe saw an opportunity to open code to Flash applications that could prove to make interactive rich media applications. In the past, Adobe has also opened up the Flex Platform and launched the Open Screen Project.
They need to promote open source SWF compilers (not just for ActionScript, but for other languages, like Python -> SWF, Java -> SWF).
Otherwise, Flash will get killed by HTML 5.
All video sites will switch to HTML 5 (Youtube, etc). Flash games are a very small niche.
Also, if they do not create a working Flash player for cell phones ASAP, HTML 5 will become de-facto development standard there.
Actually, flash is already dead due to all these considerations, but their stupid execs do not know it until IE 10 with HTML 5 comes out and Youtube switches to HTML 5.
Haha, seems that adobe is getting prepared for HTML 5 to come out. Still, a good idea, but eh. I agree with Sutro, either promote open-source compilers or be destroyed.
This is only correct assuming that HTML/XHTML5 will require browsers to use certain video codecs, originally planned to be Ogg Theora and H.264.
However this was dropped in July and now no common video codec/plugin is specified/required for HTML/XHTML 5.
If and until this changes, Flash may very well be with us for a long time to come.
So MS will kill their own Silverlight with IE10? Firefox will do a u-turn and pay licensing fees for H.264? Or will Google and Apple suddenly decide that Theora isn’t crap after all? Are you sure YouTube et al will switch to HTML5? YouTube are just starting to do some tricky stuff with overlays and embedded ads – some of this is possible with HTML5 but the more complicated it gets, the more you have to worry about cross-browser issues, esp. whatever IE chooses to support in the future. Assuming some future version of IE does support all of HTML5, how many years before all current IE6-8 users have moved across? What capabilities will Flash have then?
I forgot to mention adaptive bitrate streaming which will become more important as online video moves to HD. Flash and Silverlight already support this but there’s no standard for this and won’t be for quite some time (I think Apple have recently submitted a draft proposal based on their own technology).
Dream on. You’re assuming that the world will instantly have millions of html5 experts to replace existing content systems. Flash platform will continue to evolve and offer more than what you can do with primitive html and javascript.
SutroStyle, Adobe’s Flash compiler for Flex is already open source, which they do promote when pushing Flex. Anyone can create Flash content using just text files and the open source compiler.
As for getting Flash on smartphones, betas for the mobile version of Flash Player 10 will be out for Android, Symbian, Palm Web OS, and Windows Mobile phones in October, with a non-beta version set to release in early 2010.
As long as both Adobe and Microsoft continue to include more video functionality that is not found in the browser with the HTML5 tag (like the P2P video capabilities in Flash Player 10), Flash and Silverlight will have a place in the market.
Also people should check out what is capable now with Text Layout Framework. It’s the full control of text that is normally found in desktop publishing software (apparently the text engine was written by the Adobe InDesign team), which is far beyond anything that can currently be done in the browser or even Silverlight. Now that Flash Player 10 is getting close to the 90% range I imagine we will start seeing some really cool new projects using the capabilities of the TLF.
Yes, Text Layout Framework is very powerful and has a lot of potential. Check out this example that shows TLF in action where text is threaded (broken up into linked frames), with edit, copy/paste, undo, etc.
You guys crack me up. Flash is dead?
There is plenty of fight left in Flash, and it is too early for anyone to suggest that the platform, or Adobe’s ’stupid’ execs are searching for burial plots.
Visit YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, or your favorite PGC / UGC video site du jour, and think about the hard work that went into developing their video players. Then ask yourself, “Self… if HTML 5 were out today, would any of these websites choose Flash all over again?” The answer would be a clear, and undeniable “Yep.”
Here’s are the cliff notes on MySpace / Hulu / YouTube’s platform evaluation from August 3, 2011, care of the wayback machine:
HTML 5
Pros: Nothing to install. Runs natively.
Cons: Inconsistent Javascript support, backwards compatability issues, difficult to code ad overlays, hot spots, simple animated overlays, buttons, embed frames, etc. for multiple browsers.
Flash
Pros: Flexible, Extensible, Universally supported
Cons: Have to install a plugin (<30 seconds).
So. Is the Open Source Media Framework hype really that symbolic? Nope. Rather, it’s just another press release about stuff that doesn’t matter all that much.
HTML 5. Meh.
By 2011, Myspace will be irrelevant, Youtube will be rewritten using HTML 5.
Google does not need another proprietary software vendor in between them and their audience. No big company does. Gmail and Gmaps are quite complex, and yet they were handled in Javascript. They only resort to proprietary software if it is ABSOLUTELY impossible to do otherwise. Even Google books does not use PDF, and even though PDF is an open standard. Read my lips.
Nice to know that Adobe is working hard to ensure that in the future we’ll still be addicted to Flash.
Seriously, we need to work AGAINST locking up content inside of proprietary media “players” and solve the codec issues in HTML 5. MPEG, MP4, and other media video files need to be accessible and playable in their native formats.
Media Player = DRM
You can argue against proprietary technology as an abstract concept but in the real world do you really believe that the design-by-committee nature of web standards has been the best thing to happen to the web? Look at CSS1 positioning as an example, ‘OK, we know that most websites today use 3-column liquid layouts, let’s completely ignore that and make it almost impossible to achieve these layouts in CSS *and* tell web designers it’s wrong to use tables!’.
Yes, MySpace, Hulu, YouTube all exist because of proprietary technologies. Likewise AJAX (specifically XMLHttpRequest) and Google Gears. Feel free to live in the past, I’ll live in the present where companies at the forefront of internet technology can continue to innovate about 10 years ahead of what these monolithic standards bodies can achieve.
It bothers me when people hate on Flash. It’s really good at what it does, and useful for a lot more than video. The platform has been going strong since the Nineties, when streaming video still required Quicktime or Real.
That said, I don’t see the meat in this announcement. TLF has been around for months (I did a commercial project with it last winter). I believe the open media player thing was previously announced as well.
Sounds like all OSMF does is let independent developers write a skin for Adobe’s Flash player engine. Fine enough for letting video sites do branding, but it does nothing for getting Flash onto new platforms such as mobile phones. Nor does it help with Hulu not playing on unapproved platforms, or with GPU hardware acceleration. Those are the real problems Flash is facing today.
@Marco
Having participated in the OSMF prerelease program I can assure you that this framework is much more than a skin overlay. In fact it’s the best media player framework I have seen so far.
As for Flash on mobile, it’s already on hundreds of millions of handsets and it’ll see a big push soon – you should keep your eye on http://www.adobe.com/mobile/ later this year… I’d say around the time of MAX, the Adobe Developer’s conference.
Wonder what’s next!
Kaltura has developed an open source online video platform – we believe that what people really need are platforms that work on multiple formats, both Flash and non-Flash – that’s what we offer today and currently we’re the only one.
Learn more at http://www.kaltura.org
Also, check out http://www.open...oconference.org where more than 900 people gathered last month in NY to help foster the open video revolution!
This is just Adobe PR trying to pre-empt a possible win by “rtmpdump” at the SourceForge / OSCON awards (to be announced on the 23rd).
For details on what Adobe *really* thinks about Open Source and Open Standards, read the message on the second half of this page: http://flazr.com
Great to see that the big players slowly but steadily are moving in the direction of open platforms. Again again I’m astonished how much power the renegade web developer communities have. The monopolies of yesterday(today) can no longer rely on their brute force and ignorance of alternative solutions. All thanks to the Internets’ transparency and democratization effect. Wow, what else is there to say.
Adobe is alarmed by HTML 5 and what it will do to Flash and their business model. I attended an Adobe sponsored focus group in Chicago last week and this was the very subject.
The majority in the group also expressed they were moving on to Silverlight 3.
Thanks TC for reporting on this. Your site provides me a lot of value. Keep up the good work!
Have you tried to create a vid for HTML5?
It’s not as easy as doing it in Flash. HTML5 has a long way to go for it to actually catch up with flash. Yea, laying out elements in Flash is a bitch but converting a mp4 to ogg is like climbing a mountain.
HTML5 is still in it’s embryo state dude. I’ll definitely wait for it to mature a bit. Maybe in another year it’ll be fun to write for it.
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I had someone tell me not long ago that HTML and JavaScript will soon be running our refrigerators. I said god forbid…
if (mayTag)
make_10_IceCubes ();
else if (Frigidaire)
{
for (var i = 0; i < 10; ++i)
makeOneIceCube ();
}
I have been bending and twisiting JavaScript and HTML for about 6 years now. SUCKS
I have jumped technologies many times … no problem… with web pages you use whatever works…
I am in the mind set really that everything sucks these days…
Here we go…
Man invents the internet — outstanding
Man invents HTML — What ???
Don