Comments on: Flash 9 File Format Still MIA - Flash Should Be More Open

By: Momo

Momo — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:24:44 +0000

Adobe people proved again to be total morons when they decided to remove the flash sdk from their website.
If you want us to use your stuff, why dont you make your tools available, like MS or Apple did.

By: Brooks Andrus » Blog Archive » Adobe’s Continues Flash Platform Move Towards Openness and Transparency

Thu, 01 May 2008 06:35:04 +0000

[...] been critical of Adobe in the past with regard to their tardy format documentation and restrictive licensing of the SWF [...]

By: what is mia format

what is mia format — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:31:51 +0000

[...] Be More Open” 01 … and I also want to make very certain that what I create is as was intended. …http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2007/05/21/flash-9-file-format-still-mia-flash-should-be-more-open/AII POW-MIA - FaxNetwork… published a poster including only the letters &quotPOW/MIA&quot and that [...]

By: Brooks Andrus » Blog Archive » Adobe Flash 9 SWF Specification To Be Released End of Month (July 07)

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:23:51 +0000

[...] JD left a comment today on an a previous post indicating that the Adobe Flash 9 SWF Specification will be pushed live the last week of July [...]

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:01:41 +0000

I checked with Emmy on delivery schedules, and the changes to the file-format specification have made it through review and publishing and legal, and are now waiting for the next web-push, scheduled for the final week of the month.
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/

(In previous releases I’ve seen people like David Mendels agree that bi-directional scripting w/o system dependencies in the tiny Player were a desired item, but it wasn’t until Emmy’s comment that I saw an actual commitment within a certain release cycle.
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/05/swf9_docs_bi-di.cfm )

jd/adobe

By: Fazeel Gareeboo

Fazeel Gareeboo — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:27:27 +0000

Yep…any ETA on the Flash-9 file format spec from Adobe ?

By: Den

Den — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:55:18 +0000

@emmy:
any news by spec?

By: Brooks

Brooks — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:16:38 +0000

Jesse:

Thanks for the links–I’ll be rifling through those in a few moments.

As far as the cool-aid–I attend MAX every year and get my fair share from the Adobe drip line…sometimes it back fires on ‘em and turns into whine though. :)

We’re in total agreement that Adobe needs to get their act together as far as roadmap guidance on the spec and an actual release that coincides with Player releases.

By: Jesse Ezell

Jesse Ezell — Wed, 30 May 2007 05:43:56 +0000

PS: That cool-aid sure is tasty ;)

By: Jesse Ezell

Jesse Ezell — Wed, 30 May 2007 05:34:10 +0000

Didn’t we get the same exact run around with Flash 8 with JD saying he would look into it and Emmy apologizing for the delay. Same story different version. Not that I don’t appreciate you guys trying to get it out, JD and Emmy, but it’s pretty lame that at least a draft of the spec isn’t released when the betas or at least the official version of the player comes out.

Brooks, in the mean time, the best version of the spec outside of Macromedia is here:

http://sswf.sourceforge.net/SWFalexref.html

It documents some things the Macromedia docs leave out and helps fill in some gaps. Also, for the security stuff for AS3, might try to set the SWF file attributes to allow AS3:

http://sswf.sourceforge.net/SWFalexref.html#tag_fileattributes

By: Sergio G.

Sergio G. — Mon, 28 May 2007 12:25:27 +0000

Hello,
I maintain an open source library that helps writing SWF files. It is great to know that the new spec is going to be released soon, and I think there are a lot of people in the open source arena waiting for it.

By: zwetan

zwetan — Sat, 26 May 2007 14:59:47 +0000

@emmy:

great news, would the release of the SWF9 spec will be in sync with a release for the abc format (actionscript bytecode) used in the Tamarin project ?

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:00:30 +0000

I don’t think it’s an inappropriate rant. In fact, you can say it’s a squeaky wheel. Though, I think also, that you can see the value JD offers all of us! I’m impressed.

By: Lancaster

Lancaster — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:56:22 +0000

What a rant….”over the top personality”…might be an understatement:)

By: Brooks Andrus » Blog Archive » Adobe Provides Some Guidance for Release of Flash Player 9 File Format Specification / License

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:39:41 +0000

[...] some very loud complaining, I’m happy to announce that it appears the release of the Flash 9 file format specification / [...]

By: Brooks

Brooks — Fri, 25 May 2007 04:39:11 +0000

Awesome Emmy - that’s good news to hear. I appreciate the guidance and I’ll be looking forward to the spec notification.

By: Emmy Huang

Emmy Huang — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:40:41 +0000

Hi,

Sorry about the SWF9 spec — it is partly my fault that I didn’t push it along faster. But, well, you know … there are always lots of balls in the air over here ;-)

The engineers did their job, but then we needed to update the EULA language with the Adobe wording and I also wanted to clean up some of the poorly worded terms. The basic structure is the same — the spec is for figuring out how to output SWFs. We are very very very close to getting it posted for you. Last steps are approval of the new license and getting through the web publication process.

cheers,
Emmy
Product Manager, Adobe Flash Player

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Wed, 23 May 2007 03:11:17 +0000

“I have an over the top personality…”

Okay, I can deal with that. :)

(I haven’t gotten an email reply yet, and suspect I’ll have to do some cube-hopping to find the owner on this. I’ve been working at home a lot lately, nursing a quadriceps strain, and there’s a 60% chance I’ll be able to get into the office on Wednesday to run this down; otherwise, Thursday.)

tx, jd/adobe

By: Brooks

Brooks — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:15:24 +0000

Oh and yes JD I want to be able to deliver Flash 9 content and I also want to make very certain that what I create is as was intended. It’s not a good thing to have to read the tea leaves based on guesses you’re making from reverse engineering. So you’re definitely on the right track!

By: Brooks

Brooks — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:05:01 +0000

JD:

Your efforts are much appreciated. I definitely am using “almost criminal” as emphasis rather than literally. I have an over the top personality and I like to write with a little juice to make things interesting, but I wasn’t trying to slander or malign anyones brand or character. Hell there are oodles of things that TechSmith can and should be doing much, much better.

I’m actually very appreciative of the fact that you folks at Adobe are as transparent as you are. I only know that the engineers are responsible for maintaining the spec as they have time because Tinic blogged about it. It’s very cool how progressive Adobe is.

FWIW, No one at TechSmith put me up to this. I’m operating as an advocate of the Flash platform based on internal observations, talking to users (some of whom are Flash devs themselves), my personal selfish desires as a Flash dev and commentary in the blogoshphere. I hope I didn’t mislead anyone since I made every effort to be transparent.