From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-09-12T00:28:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Rubyscript instead of javascript

On Friday 11 September 2009 03:38:34 am Michal Suchanek wrote:

> And yes, flash supports only a tiny fraction of platforms. Macromedia
> wanted tight control over the flash platform so they disallowed
> writing alternate flash viewers.

I believe they've since changed this -- so technically, Gnash is allowed to 
simply read the specs.

As for "fraction of platforms":

> The result is that if you put some
> chips together, compile a web browser for that platform and put it
> into a case to make a set-top box you won't have flash unless you are
> Windows based, i386 LInux based or can emulate one of those.

Or you talk to Adobe.

Consider the Wii, for instance. That's a PowerPC CPU, and it's not any OS I 
know of, yet the Wii Browser (Opera) does have Flash.

Besides which, I'm not trying to convince anyone that Flash is a good target 
-- only that it is a good way to get 99% of desktop browsers to support 
something that you'd otherwise do in a standard way. If I "put some chips 
together", for instance, I'd think I could get a browser that supports 
<video>, and fallback to Flash on IE.

> On the other hand, you should be able to run Java and Mono on any
> platform for which you manage to build a graphical browser.

With the caveat that it has to be installed. For the platforms Flash supports 
(which admittedly isn't all of them), it's already installed. With Java, if 
it's there, it's probably an older version.