Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 
> 	Well, a site like Hulu has a business model relying on making it as
> hard as possible to download. Nevertheless, I'll grant that an
> application probably does exist or will.

If the information will be provided to the end user, it is possible to
save the information somehow. Another thing is that is there enough - or
even anyone - users who would like to save that information enough to
create such software. It's well possible that such software will never
exist, but I don't believe it's impossible to create one.

> 	Well, perhaps the reason is that these aren't problems for most people.

Possibly. It still surprises me if Adobe ain't aware of them.

> I wasn't even aware of them till you brought them up. I don't have
> memory leak issues with my browser or with Flash. But that's perhaps
> because I use NoScript and only run a Flash app when I want to. 

Possibly. When Macromedia released Flash7, the Linux-version had huge
memory leak (something like 700MiB in 2 hours oslt), which was fixed
IIRC in couple of weeks, but ever since it has had smaller leaks.
Granted that most of them are cleared when the particular application
(practically means the web page) is closed.

> Crashes?
> Can't remember the last time Flash resulted in a crash for me.

No crashes, hang ups, ie. the application (and therefore the browser
process that mothers the Flash-process) hangs for some nice time and
won't answer, then recovers.

And yes, I have had such hang ups on Windows, too.

> 	As an end user on Linux, Flash sucked for a while. It's been just fine
> for a few years now, though. 

When 7 was released, it sucked 'cause it had a huge memory leak (which
was fixed, as noted). When 8 was released, Flash on Linux sucked 'cause
they didn't make Linux-version. From Flash9 they finally did one, but it
still ain't available in 64-bit. After AMD released Opteron (IIRC 2004)
Macromedia was from time to time asked why there's no 64-bit Linux
-version - they asked that it won't compile (which is somewhat
intresting, while there exists Flash 7 for Irix). I guess it still
doesn't, 'cause there still ain't one.

> I won't criticize anyone for making it
> better, but yes: Of course people will use software that happens not to
> give problems to them.

I criticize the way Flash has been growing. They do fix big bugs and
make new functions etc, but fix time of smaller problems (that won't be
complained by 95+% oslt of the users) seems to be very long.

Also while the users of the internet are expanding in systems (ie.
moving from Win to Linux), not releasing a 64-bit Linux-version (which
is a growing group of users) is a loss for both Flash and Linux. If they
wouldn't release version for Mac (I assume there is one, I don't know),
it would be a loss for Flash and Mac. In commercial practice this is ok,
but it shouldn't be considered (nor wanted) to be any kind of standard
on the www.

> 	Perhaps Java has improved in recent years. 

Surely.

> I rarely come across an
> applet these days, so I can't tell. 

Me neither on the internet, but I face it almost daily at work. I'll
have to grant that there ain't too many applications nor applets and
they don't change.

> However, it was overtaken by Flash
> simply because Flash provided a much better experience. Java had an
> irritating load up time (which in those days hung the browser - another
> problem...). 

I'd say they are ment for different things. Java was used while there
wasn't anything else and it could do, Flash was implemented to fill that
gap. Java is AFAIK better for bigger applications, where loading time
ain't such a beast - for example Raritan Dominion KVM-over-IP -switches
have built-in web-server to provide Java-based client. It works pretty
well, loading time is comparable with local application etc. Somehow
doesn't seem to hit the main target area of Flash, which is small and
quick web applications.

> Its interface was crappy. 

Interface? Doesn't that depend on the application/applet?

> Getting it installed was a
> Herculean effort compared to Flash. 

I can't remember anything special in the installation of Java. Can you
remind me?

> No real contest. It doesn't really
> impress most people that Java may be 10 times faster, and is/was a cool
> technology.

As I said, I believe they have different original goals - Java being
built to handle bigger applications and Flash to be kind of quick and
easy. With the latter one the utilization of cpu etc ain't such big deal
(it's a deal yes, just not that big), while it's more important that
it's there for you right away and handles well enough for the next 5-30
minutes. With the first one it's better to be more powerful, prefereably
also more flexible - it's not so bad to wait minute for loading the
system, if you're gonna use it for hours after it's loaded.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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