Adobe Flash Player replacement "Shumway" lands in Firefox 27

[ShyWriter]

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Adobe Flash Player replacement "Shumway" lands in Firefox 27

 

Steven Parker

 

  Death knell for Adobe Flash Player?

 

Shumway has landed in the nightlies, but has yet to debut in Aurora.

 

Mozilla has taken one giant step closer to making Adobe's Flash Player a thing of the past with the inclusion of their own HTML5 Flash Player called "Shumway".

 

Shumway landed in Firefox 27 nightly, which has yet to make the Aurora branch, and according to our own tests, even though Shumway can be loaded (it's disabled by default) it's in a "pretty much unusable state" right now.

 

Adobe Flash Player has a long history of being plagued with bugs, and many users opt not to install it at all; so being able to play Flash without the normal player is a big step forward for security, as well as on mobile devices which don't support Flash natively.

 

Shumway is a HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient renderer for the SWF file format without native code assistance. Shumway is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Their goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering SWFs. Full integration with Firefox is a possibility if the experiment proves successful.

 

If you want to test it out for yourself, download the latest nightly from http://nightly.mozilla.org and then navigate to about:config > find  “shumway.disabled” and set to false, then disable Flash in Tools > Add-ons. As pointed out, Shumway still has a ways to go before it can fully replace Adobe Flash Player.

 

Via: Gemal.dk

 

/Steve

[AdvancedSetup]

Death knell for Adobe Flash Player?

 

I don't know - ask Microsoft how well their Silverlight has taken over that market.

 

Let me predict this.  Brand new so no hacks to it yet.  Fast forward a couple years and for the sake of argument they have taken over Flash.  I'm sure they will then be targeted and just as vulnerable if not more so to attacks than Flash is currently.

 

and many users opt not to install it at all

Not saying that perhaps some people don't install it but not many.

[GT500]

Google already has this sort of technology in Chrome... It hasn't put Flash Player in its grave yet, however HTML5 video playback might be able to, if every major browser adopts it.

[AdvancedSetup]

HTML5 is now in 2 different groups that don't agree so good luck with that anytime soon.  Development of HTML5 has been going on now since 2004 and we still do not have a completed final standard for it.  In September 2012, the W3C proposed a plan to release a stable HTML5 Recommendation by the end of 2014 and an HTML 5.1 specification Recommendation by the end of 2016.
 
However in reading other articles on the subject HTML5 is not going to be an immediate panacea that some think it will be.
 
7 Facts and Myths of HTML5

What else does HTML5 need to defeat flash? (Part 1)

What else does HTML5 need to defeat flash? (Part 2)
 

HTML5 vs. Apps: Where The Debate Stands Now, And Why It Matters

The HTML5 Scorecard: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in iOS 7

Auto Industry to Rev Up the Death of Native Apps, Rise of HTML5

Gooble Web Designer

 

 

Browser Support - HTML5 & CSS3 Support

[GT500]

No web standard is ever immediately supported. We're still waiting for some browsers to correctly implement CSS2...

That being said, YouTube already hase an HTML5 video player. The technology is there, if browser vendors decide to support it. The issue for browser vendors is that, if the technology changes once the final standard is drafted, then they have to redo the portions of their browser layout engines that support those standards. Adaptation of web technologies is slow enough once something becomes a finalized standard, so we're probably going to see this drag on for a long time.

That being said, my initial understanding is that every major browser vendor except for Apple was OK with the open technology approach to HTML5 video, and Apple was the one that insisted on their proprietary codecs being part of the standard.

[AdvancedSetup]

A bit interesting if you read some of those blogs by people in the industry that actually code pages. Seems no matter what HTML5 will not fully replace Flash and according to some takes about 3 times the amount of code to control video as well as Flash can. Both have pros and cons.

Its certainly coming but as you said some still don't support stuff well that's been out for a while now.

[GT500]

A bit interesting if you read some of those blogs by people in the industry that actually code pages. Seems no matter what HTML5 will not fully replace Flash and according to some takes about 3 times the amount of code to control video as well as Flash can. Both have pros and cons.

Well, I don't expect people to be making games using HTML5's video playback feature, however some people have made games using canvas in the past. Still not as functional as Flash is, but since most people use Flash primarily for watching videos, I don't see a big issue. Those who want Flash and those who don't know to get rid of it will keep it, and those who don't want it will remove it.

[CWB]

hmmm ...

FF is at 25.xx beta ... so it looks like it will be a while before it is out "en masse" .

 

silverlight ... the only reason i have it on my machine(s) is netflix , and i can honestly say that i am underwhelmed with it .

as far as i know , one cannot view netflix on a 'nix machine due to a few constraints , with silverlight being but one of them .

i have not looked into this scenario for about a year ... but i aint holding my breath .