April 3, 2002
1:20 PM   Subscribe

Ever since installing the latest version of the Flash Player, I've been having problems with the sound continuing if I exit the movie, or close the browser window, until I completely kill the program by closing ALL open browser windows. Well, the problem has been formally acknowledged, though Macromedia is being weird about doing something about it.
posted by Su (22 comments total)
 
This is the first time I've heard of Macromedia doing anything like this. As far as I'm aware, they're pretty well-liked, and haven't pulled dumb crap like this before. I know we've got a lot of web dev people here. Have you guys had any extensive contact with them that might show different?
posted by Su at 1:23 PM on April 3, 2002


It's a bigger problem than that: "Dynamically loaded content will continue to download after the object is unloaded or the browser url is changed... this uses up bandwidth against the user's and developer's wishes." If this is for real, Macromedia really dropped the ball on this one, and they're going to be eaten alive for it.
posted by panopticon at 1:27 PM on April 3, 2002


more info here
posted by machaus at 1:28 PM on April 3, 2002


...Macromedia really dropped the ball on this one, and they're going to be eaten alive for it.

Yes, yes. Much like CNN.com video going pay-for-play has clearly heralded the end of the Free Web. Overreact much?
posted by Danelope at 1:33 PM on April 3, 2002


Fortunately, I don't think any major browser maker has bundled flash 6 (I hate that silly "MX")... so the only people currently afflicted are early adopters and developers, who won't have a big problem patching.

If they roll 6.1 or 6a or MX+ or whatever out soon enough, it should blow over.

MM generally (rightly so) avoid patches to players, but in this case, they really have to.
posted by malphigian at 1:35 PM on April 3, 2002


Coming from a Director background, Macromedia’s initial non-pulsed reaction doesn’t surprise me. Usually solutions to these kinds of problems involve workarounds rather than software patches to properly fix things. Although, this is the first time I’ve seen them act this way about a player issue (as opposed to a development environment).

Jerking developers around is one thing, screwing over users is something else entirely.
posted by alana at 1:41 PM on April 3, 2002


At least you're getting something. I've installed Flash player 6 for IE5 on Mac and no matter what, I can't seem to get sites using Flash MX.

For instance this and this are supposed to use Flash Mx's new features. But they don't recognize the plugin for me despite multiple installs. It's too bad, I've never had problems bumping up player versions before with Macromedia.
posted by jeremias at 1:50 PM on April 3, 2002


STUFF THE INTERNET COULD DO WITHOUT:
REALPLAYER/REALAUDIO/REALVIDEO
WINDOWSMEDIA
VIVOACTIVE
BADLY CODED JAVA
OBNOXIOUS JAVASCRIPT
ANYTHING IN HTML WHICH DOES ANYTHING OTHER THAN ORGANIZE TEXT AND IMAGES
ANYTHING MADE WITH DREAMWEAVER/NETOBJECTS/ADOBE GOLIVE/QUARK-HTML PLUGIN
2MB PLAINTEXT PDFS
PDFS IN GENERAL

STUFF WHICH NEEDS TO GET MORE POPULAR:
QUICKTIME (FOR AUDIO/VIDEO, STREAMING)
XML, CSS
OPTIMA / GILL SANS / BEMBO / FRANKLIN GOTHIC FACES

posted by Settle at 1:58 PM on April 3, 2002


Um...Settle...
What's your point? The thread's about Flash, which you failed to mention as either a pro or con.
Other than that, you offered a bunch of sweeping generalizations with absolutely no support. For starters, I wasn't aware that HTML was able to do anything other than organize text and images.
posted by Su at 2:14 PM on April 3, 2002


Su's link points to yesterday's article on actionscript.com - see today's for a brief update. To sum it up: Macromedia is working on a fix.
posted by jazon at 2:37 PM on April 3, 2002


I have always found Macromedia to be pretty good when they really want to be. They have the developers to make good products, but I don't think, as a company they have the heart.

For example, they stopped supporting Fontographer, which was a great program when it came out. Now it hasn't been updated in umpteen years. And, unlike Adobe (Macromedia's bigger, better brother) Macromedia has shown little to no support for OSX.

That being said, I DO use Dreamweaver for my website (in classic mode), and I'm not saying that they are a bad company. I just don't think they support their programs as much as they should. Soooo, this article doesn't surprise me too much.
posted by untuckedshirts at 3:55 PM on April 3, 2002


Uh, Untucked, Macromedia shipped Freehand for OS X before Adobe shipped Illustrator. I think just about every major software manufacturer currently has rather half-assed support of OS X but MM seems to be trying as hard as any of 'em.

And hey Settle, what do rather out of fashion 80s humanist typefaces have to do with the web, eh?
posted by bcwinters at 6:18 PM on April 3, 2002


STUFF THE INTERNET COULD DO WITHOUT:

> People telling me what the internet could do without.

What surprised me the most out of this whole mess is Macromedia's Mike Chamber's reaction on the flashkit forum. Macromedia hypes the new streaming video/audio features, a major problem is found, and then they reply* to it by essentially saying: "uh, don't stream stuff."

*(ok, I guess I shouldn't say they reply but rather their employee replies... but still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.)
posted by mkn at 8:07 PM on April 3, 2002


Settle, you're so right on its not even funny. Except for quicktime. Proprietary stuff on the web sucks, and quicktime is no exception.

I'd live with vanilla MPEG, since the only way to reliably stream video is through something with at least cable modem bandwidth, and MPEG isn't impossible to watch at that point anyways.

So what were we talking about again? Oh, proprietary stuff on the internet that screws up your web experience. Why doesn't that surprise me in the slightest?
posted by shepd at 8:18 PM on April 3, 2002


And hey Settle, what do rather out of fashion 80s humanist typefaces have to do with the web, eh?

eighties, my ass. research before you bleat.

franklin gothic: 1902-ish.
bembo: 1930-ish.
gill sans: 1927-ish.
optima: 1958.

nary a one is classified as a humanist anything, unless you wanna make a stretch and say that gill sans was an early predecessor to humanist sans. but i wouldn't recommend it.
posted by patricking at 9:03 PM on April 3, 2002


Settle: Add the following to your "NEEDS TO GET MORE POPULAR" list

* A highly optimisied replacement for JPG.
* RAR

I've had great success playing with an MPEG4 still-image plug-in for Photoshop and associated plug-in for (at the time) IE. Files are *much* smaller than a similar-looking JPG.

As for RAR, it's *so* much better than ZIP. Go try it - http://www.rarsoft.com

Things I already do without: Animated GIFs and Roll-overs. Thank you Proxomitron.

Things the web could do without:

* Flat-colour JPGs
* Full-colour, photographic GIFs

People really need to learn why we have two graphics formats.
posted by krisjohn at 9:26 PM on April 3, 2002


franklin gothic: 1902-ish. bembo: 1930-ish. gill sans: 1927-ish. optima: 1958.

Gill Sans is currently the third most popular typeface at Linotype. Optima is number seven. Franklin Gothic is everywhere, especially with corporations. The year a typeface was created isn't indicative of much, since it may not have necessarily been widely adopted until much later.
posted by panopticon at 12:18 AM on April 4, 2002


Last year I had repeated problems with Flash / Shockwave / Fireworks [why should I know the difference?] trying to update to a version that was already present on my computer and which worked fine if the download was cancelled. I knew other people having the same problem.

The other day Shockwave [I think] wanted to update. I said okay, and when the long slow download completed it went on to kill all my browser windows and only re-opened the one which had instigated the process.

I started writing this post with the intention of just getting it all off my chest, but now that I think about it why should I reinstall any of them the next time I format and reinstall Windows? What wouldn't I be able to do on the net without them?
posted by southisup at 2:05 AM on April 4, 2002


Okay, so while we're nitpicking, I'll point out that the Linotype chart reflects sales. I'm sure T26 sells lots of fonts, too. This says nothing about actual usage, much less whether the fonts are good.

My point is that quantity isn't quality(yeahyeah, cliche). The fonts listed above are standards. Every designer probably feels they're supposed to have them, hence that chart. I think that Settle's real argument was that the web fonts aren't pretty as opposed to Gill et al. Well, sure they're pretty. On paper. Arial, for example, is basically a rip of Helvetica. But have you ever seen a web page that specifies Helvetica instead of Arial? It looks weird, and fuzzy. I notice it the second the page loads. The web fonts were created for use on-screen. They're not gorgeous, but they work for their intended purpose.

As for a typeface's year of creation not being indicative of anything, that's like saying the year Dali did one of his paintings isn't indicative of anything, but I'll leave that to PK to explain.
posted by Su at 2:14 AM on April 4, 2002


The year a typeface was created isn't indicative of much, since it may not have necessarily been widely adopted until much later.

and so calling them "eighties humanist fonts" makes sense? what are you talking about? that makes as much sense as calling some blues song "late-nineties techno" because moby sampled it in 1999.
posted by patricking at 2:19 AM on April 4, 2002


...and here I was thinking he'd go off on a typographic history lesson.
posted by Su at 2:21 AM on April 4, 2002


Franklin Gothic makes my teeth itch.

My experiance with Macromedia support usually with Freehand and Homesite rather than Flash, leads me to think that this isn't an isolated incident. They have repeatedly ignored bug after bug that gets reported. Especially about Freehand.
posted by jackiemcghee at 3:32 AM on April 4, 2002


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