I’m a little irritated that all those preaching about Flash are ignoring the history — how we got here — so this is by way of filling that in.
There was a time when lots of browsers didn’t have Flash installed. On the downside, any attempt to use video was a crapshoot, and you might end up in the Pure Hell of the real.com website. Also, there were a lot fewer amusing lightweight games. On the upside, there were a lot fewer squirmy obtrusive ads.
Flash filled a real need; for a lightweight portable graphics programming environment, and for a ubiquitous reliable video codec. That, plus a lot of determined marketing by Adobe, got us to the status quo, where it’s assumed that every computer has a Flash player installed.
Does the need still exist? That’s an open question. I personally run with a Flash-blocker in my browser, and find this improves my experience of the Web. It seems unlikely to me that, in the mobile space, Adobe is going to be able to repeat their success in finding an unmet need, meeting it with Flash, and convincing everyone to ship their solution.
But, I could be wrong. Which is why I think that forbidding Adobe from even trying, as Apple’s doing, is short-sighted.
But then, a platform with a vendor who gets to decide what’s allowed to run is profoundly uninteresting to me anyhow.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Todd Sieling (Apr 29 2010, at 09:45)
The thing about allowing Adobe to try (and try again, for years to get a mobile Flash delivered) is that users pay the price of crashes, etc. I think Apple has had enough of using the customer base as a beta testing pool, and frankly I've had enough of it too. Let's make beta be beta again and full release something that is right, not 'good enough'.
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From: Matt kanninen (Apr 29 2010, at 09:51)
Well put.
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From: MenTaLguY (Apr 29 2010, at 10:12)
I'm pretty sick of Flash-related browser crashes myself. Maybe if Adobe had halfway-decent QA or development practices people wouldn't hate Flash so much.
(Of course having recently switched to Chrome, Flash can't crash my browser anymore, nor do CPU-intensive flash things block the UI like in Firefox. Which is pretty nice. I find myself wanting flashblock less.)
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From: Chris Melissinos (Apr 29 2010, at 10:14)
Hey Tim! Long time.
As for Apple controlling the pipeline/distribution end points, my thought is this: With the flood of content online, is it easier to drink (consume) from a faucet (AppStore) or a firehose (open source everywhere). For the vast amount of consumers, they prefer to fill up at the faucet.
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From: Paul Bersch (Apr 29 2010, at 10:14)
Apple is betting that their internal platform innovation is an adequate substitute for the innovation that is possible (but not guaranteed!) in an open platform.
It certainly is possible that Adobe could provide better (or more mainstream) tools for building applications and deploying rich content on the iPhone. And yes, if they failed to do so, the quality of apps built with their tools would suffer and their products would fail in the marketplace.
However, the platform also suffers during these sorts of "market corrections". Apple thinks they provide perfectly good tools. Plenty of terrible, useless apps are created with their tools, but Apple can update and improve obj-c and the publicly-available APIs along with the OS. I don't think those tools deter serious developers, except where functionality is expressly prohibited (a problem Adobe can't solve).
Another toolkit may spur innovation, but it may also pollute the marketplace. The overwhelming majority of its users neither understand nor care about this debate, but they can recognize bad software.
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From: Bruno (Apr 29 2010, at 10:16)
I believe you have confused "Adobe" with "Macromedia" in your snippet. Flash was already well established when Adobe acquired Macromedia. It was the "raison d'être" of the merger/acquisition.
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From: Dirk McGitnty (Apr 29 2010, at 10:22)
But then, a platform with a vendor who gets to decide what’s allowed to run is profoundly uninteresting to me anyhow....
You've never played any video game console?
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From: Jason (Apr 29 2010, at 10:31)
(1) Apple allowed Adobe to try, I personally feel that Adobe hasn't delivered anything reasonable.
I don't know this for a fact, but this is my feelings.
(2) We'll have to wait and see Flash on FroYo, but I can only imagine the Flash experience will be terrible, due to ridiculously small input box zones, and numerous incompatibilities, because Flash is geared for a mouse.
I stand by the point that if Adobe delivers something that requires users to make a mobile optimized Flash version, that the point is moot, and having to redo your entire site again is a joke.
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From: May (Apr 29 2010, at 10:33)
Cmon.. this "crashiness" thing is played out. I use both Win and Mac and can't remember the last time it crashed. If it's on top of the crash charts it's a statistics effect, it's one of the most frequently used pieces of software.
The real issue is that Adobe didn't show love to Macs for many years, hence inferior performance.
For what it's worth in terms of performance Flash on Win is far ahead of HTML5 in any of the latest browsers, not just video, also rendering of text, bitmaps, vector graphics. Try scaling a few images with JavaScript in Chrome and watch your CPU explode. Is Chrome some "craptastic bloatware"?
The Flash player for Mac might be inferior but Flash as a technology definitely isn't.
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From: Israel Alvarez (Apr 29 2010, at 10:42)
"But then, a platform with a vendor who gets to decide what’s allowed to run is profoundly uninteresting to me anyhow."
For a platform you find profoundly uninteresting, I find a surprising number of references to it on this blog. To quote Iniego Montoya: "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
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From: dr2chase (Apr 29 2010, at 10:46)
I think the fact that you run with a Flash blocker (so do I) and find it better (so do I), and that most of Apple's customers (ESPECIALLY iPod, IPad, and iPhone) customers probably don't deal with browser plugins like that, makes Apple's choice pretty clear. If Flash-blocked is the choice that most people who twiddle the knobs and switches choose, shouldn't that be the default for Apple's customers?
In terms of what delivers the best experience to Apple's customers, the ban works. Consider if there is "no ban" -- lazy website maintainers will simply tell people to "enable Flash" or "install Flash" -- and we're right back to where we were, with slowdowns, additional plugins to selectively disable flash, and obnoxious singing-and-dancing advertisements. That's not better.
I think, also, that Jobs is not speaking quite honestly about why Flash is banned. The problem is not the "crashes" (I don't see those), and it's mostly not the slowdowns (more of an issue on mobile devices, for sure) -- it's the damnable intrusions from Flash apps that lack STFU/DIAF buttons to make them Go Away. The obnoxious animated advertising makes for a crap experience, and there's nobody enforcing standards in Flash-land (and how would you?)
Add to this, also, that Flash has factored into several security holes in the past (the one that bugged me was the Flash/UPNP/DNS redirect stunt). Ban Flash, ban code interpreters, you just carved away a big slice of hacker-vulnerabilities.
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From: Regis G. (Apr 29 2010, at 10:50)
@Todd: Wrong. Flash itself is a stable platform and just like any platform it can fall victim to poor development practices. Do you really believe that native Objective-C apps don't leak memory, become unstable and/or crash? You would be quite naive if you did so.
Don't be childish. You don't like the in-your-face, memory-intensive banner-ads? Blame the developer for developing it poorly; blame the marketing firm for contracting him to do so; blame the ad network for allowing it through; blame the website for displaying it; blame the browser for not handling crashing plugins properly due to said poor coding (no longer an issue in Chrome and new FF); finally, blame the user for clicking the ad sending revenue down the chain (it is about money, after all). But you can't blame Flash anymore than you can blame PHP/Java/Ruby/etc. for an insecure website, Javascript for a buggy interface, CSS for a poorly colored website, a camera for a horribly cropped photo, a pencil for a bad sketch etc. etc. The blame lies with the developer, the artist, the creator; not the platform, not the device.
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From: Blain (Apr 29 2010, at 10:54)
So, um, when can I install flash on my android device again?
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From: Jonathan Van Matre (Apr 29 2010, at 10:54)
They're not being forbidden to try. They are being forbidden to half-ass it.
No one qualifies for the Olympic team based on reputation alone. No one gets a bank loan on the strength of nothing but their good intentions.
You're right: past history matters.
And the history of the Flash experience on OSX (aggressive memory consumption, memory leaks, browser crashes, OS crashes) as well as the history of Adobe's efforts to deliver a stable mobile Flash experience (keeping that four-word phrase firmly in oxymoron territory) demonstrates that Adobe is not ready to qualify. This is an upper-division class and they haven't fulfilled the prerequisites.
Flash was the right technology at the right time. It has been a crucial part of the development of the online experience. But that doesn't mean Adobe should be allowed to coast in to every new frontier un-vetted.
I detect a not at all subtle subtext from Steve Jobs saying "If you had only shown us you had what it takes, it wouldn't have come to this." I think he is actually baiting them to try, but he wants them to bring their best, not something that is barely good enough.
Demanding excellence from others you know to be capable of that excellence is not a prohibition on trying; it's an exhortation to try harder.
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From: David W. (Apr 29 2010, at 11:11)
Flash is extremely important for the mobile platform!
That's why over eight dozen people world wide have chosen the JooJoo tablet over the iPad.
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From: Chris Melissinos (Apr 29 2010, at 11:20)
@Regis G - Sure, but Flash is among the worst. I have to say that, consistently, Flash is THE application that spins the fans up on our two household computers. If my wife leaves the Farmville app open for too long on Facebook that system just cooks. YouTube, same thing on a MBP or Win7 system. Flash has so much digital duct tape applied to it over the years, extending it beyond what it was intended for, that is is just a mess to deal with.
Even Flash developers will tell you it sucks to program. But the tools are just so damn good that they put up with it.
HTML5 standard adoption can not get here fast enough.
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From: Russ Beinder (Apr 29 2010, at 11:31)
There is only a pseudo free market for iPod/Pad apps. It could be argued that the regulators of that market (Apple) have a responsibility to keep it free of things that could damage the market (apparently porn falls into a similar category as FLASH). This article hits the nail on the head though. There should be no need for censorship in a world where users can so easily communicate with each other. If enough people say FLASH sucks, it will die. If a better technology comes along, FLASH will die.
Let's face it, FLASH is very very unlikely to cause permanent damage to your device, you, or anyone around you. Then again, maybe we all missed something. Perhaps Steve is not telling us everything about his products. What if it is possible that an errant application (like apparently FLASH) could cause an iPad/Pod component to start emitting dangerous radiation. Maybe that is what is really behind his fear about FLASH.
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From: Kyle Fox (Apr 29 2010, at 11:34)
"forbidding Adobe from even trying, as Apple’s doing, is short-sighted."
I don't think so. If Apple allowed Adobe to "try", they would be opening a Pandora's box. Can you imagine the backlash if Apple "tried" Flash on the iPhone, found it wasn't to their liking, and then removed it?
In fact, prohibiting Flash is probably one of the most visionary choices Apple is making -- it would be much easier for them to simply cave to the pressure and allow it. But instead they're sticking to their guns because they envision something better.
Seems like the exact opposite of short-sightedness to me.
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From: Julian Reschke (Apr 29 2010, at 11:47)
Jonathan,
when you say
"OS crashes"
...are you seriously saying that Flash is to be blamed when the *OS* crashes?
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From: Kyle Fox (Apr 29 2010, at 11:52)
@Regis G. -- Have you ever used a Mac? The Flash Player is incredibly buggy and performs poorly on Mac OS X. Even well-built Flash sites crawl/crash.
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From: Ivan (Apr 29 2010, at 12:38)
All I can say is that it's pretty contradictory from Apple talk about supporting open standard while having one of the most closed platforms I've seen.
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From: Jonathan Van Matre (Apr 29 2010, at 12:51)
"Let's face it, FLASH is very very unlikely to cause permanent damage to your device, you, or anyone around you. "
No, but it is highly likely to cause permanent damage to your opinion of the device.
"If enough people say FLASH sucks, it will die."
This kind of swing in market opinion takes time - time during which the platform suffers from a guilt-by-association effect. Out goes the baby with the bathwater.
That's why Apple and Google are both making the right decision here. Apple has a large amount of user goodwill built up for their mobie platforms, and the risk to that goodwill by letting Adobe run Flash mice through their iPhone maze is far too great.
Google, on the other hand, needs to build a groundswell of popular goodwill for the Android platform. For all of Flash's imperfections, people love their Flash content, and Google is wise to be taking an experimental risk on mobile Flash. For them, the upside is far greater than the downside.
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From: Jonathan Van Matre (Apr 29 2010, at 13:08)
"...are you seriously saying that Flash is to be blamed when the *OS* crashes?"
Not solely, no.
But if I can put salt, Kool-aid, Tang, or tea into a glass of water and nothing catastrophic happens, but then when I put in potassium it goes "boom!"...well...
Yes, it takes both of them to make that reaction happen, but the one that has a solid reputation for providing benign flavored-beverage experiences is going to get less of the blame.
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From: Michael Prasuhn (Apr 29 2010, at 13:50)
The real problem was the flash let designers program. That shortcut is fundamentally why Flash tends to have issues, and why it's slow.
This is close to a visual IDE for JS apps:
http://280atlas.com/
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From: Hamranhansenhansen (Apr 29 2010, at 15:57)
> forbidding Adobe from even trying
Apple cannot possibly forbid Adobe from even trying. Is Adobe that incompetent that we need to keep excusing their failures by blaming Apple? It's 3 years since HTML5 came to mobiles an no Flash at all yet. Not on any mobiles. Presumably, Adobe has been trying that whole time. That's 100% Adobe's fault.
The issue was never Apple versus Adobe, it was Adobe versus HTML5. Once we had HTML5 on mobiles, the race was on: would Adobe bring FlashPlayer to mobiles before publishers were forced to follow YouTube's lead and switch from Flash to HTML5, making FlashPlayer irrelevant? 3 years later, we have our answer. HTML5 won the race. In fact, it's the only one who is on the track running. Flash is still in the locker room.
If Adobe had FlashPlayer ready to go on Android and other mobiles in 2008, it might be a different story. Publishers might have stuck with Flash and made it a requirement for iPad to have it. Adobe failed to get that done.
If Adobe had open sourced FlashPlayer years ago (like Apple did with WebKit) then it might be a different story. Apple might have ported it to ARM for iPhone themselves. Adobe failed to get that done.
If Adobe had participated in HTML5 instead of sitting on the sidelines saying IE/Flash is here to stay until 2020, then some or all of their API's could have been standardized, and Flash CS5 might be the best HTML5 tool in existence.
Finally, I don't see how you can defend a proprietary technology sitting on top of the Web. I don't see how you can defend a $599 tool that runs only on Mac/PC being the only way to publish video, animations, vectors, and fonts. That seems like an awful lot to give up for a chance to Apple bash. You're saying we should have an extensible markup language but completely unextensible audio video? It doesn't track. There are Flash presentations that are made out of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and H.264, and then they are wrapped up into a binary that only Adobe can play.
> But then, a platform with a
> vendor who gets to decide
> what’s allowed to run is
> profoundly uninteresting to
> me anyhow.
What Apple does with iPhone OS is no different from Linus Torvalds deciding what patches get added to the Linux kernel.
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From: Darren Kopp (Apr 29 2010, at 16:12)
You are correct in that HTML5 now has a lot of features that used to require Flash to do. I believe that not allowing Flash is a mistake, and I can guarantee that Flash will not die because of it.
Do not think of Flash as some bloated software that only does things that HTML5 can do natively. Think of it as a sandbox for ideas. Historically, Flash has given us the ability to do things that we were not able to do with html and javascript alone, and I believe that it will continue to do so. We did not know how important video was to the web back when flash supported it, we do now though, which is why it's in the html5 spec.
Who knows what the next killer feature on the web will be, but we need something there that will allow us to try something new, something outside the scope of the html5 spec. Will it be successful? Maybe. Is it worth trying? Absolutely.
Trying to kill off flash is worse than having flash around. In 1994, the html 4 spec was finalized. In 2000-2001 the xhtml spec was finalized. In 2010 we will have the html5 spec finalized. 5-10 years is too long to wait for innovations on the web.
I know there are other ways to do this outside of using flash or silverlight (look at webgl). The advantage to flash is that it works cross browser and you don't need to worry about wanting to do something but only being able to support it in one browser. Nor do you need to have requirements that for a feature your users be running a nightly build of a browser.
Stop doing things in flash that you can do in html5 like play video. Continue to embrace flash and silverlight however when html5 lacks complete or sufficient support for the tasks that you need to accomplish. If what you are doing is popular, in about 5 years it may make it's way into an html specification and you can then do it natively in a browser, but until that day, you can continue to do what you need to do and what your customers need.
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From: Pedant (Apr 29 2010, at 16:14)
Adobe are *not* prevented from TRYING to implement Flash. They can ignore that phrase in the license agreement right up till they deliver a version that addresses Jobs' points about reliability and performance.
Adobe want to ship what they have right now and Apple have said "nope, not good enough".
Apple, by being participants in an open capitalist marketplace, have given Adobe the opportunity to prove themselves on some other platform - if that other platform performs well and people flock to it, then its a no-brainer that Apple will change their policy.
But Adobe need to put up or shut up.
At the moment, they are just trying to get the unwashed masses to storm Cupertino, in the hopes that no-one notices that they really don't have a reliable product to sell.
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From: Stephan Müller (Apr 29 2010, at 17:35)
@Michael: Good point. Apples IDE on the other hands lets programmers without many sense for design build nice apps with great guidance; something almost impossible to accomplish within Adobe products without hours of adjusting and input from more gifted persons. E.g., you don't need to care about fonts to build a simple utility. It somehow reminds me of LaTeX…
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From: Stan (Apr 29 2010, at 17:46)
Steve Jobs did allow Adobe to try. Remember thy Steve Jobs wrote that Adobe had not produced Flash on iPhone or any oter mobile devices in the letter? Apple considered Flash but Adobe is just too incompetent to release a working Flash for the mobile.
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From: Mike (Apr 29 2010, at 18:11)
What are all these crashes people are talking about? I use Safari on my iMac, and I don't particularly notice any problems.
I suspect Steve Jobs may spend most of his time visiting porn sites or poker sites or the like, and perhaps they use Flash in ways that tend to produce crashes.
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From: Edwin (Apr 29 2010, at 22:12)
It really doesn't matter whether Flash sucks or not. Apple is presenting the iPad as the successor to the PC and their vision is that nothing will ever run on it that they don't want to run on it. What part of that scenario is not fundamentally repulsive?
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From: Steven (Apr 29 2010, at 23:11)
It almost seems as if you didn't just read Jobs's "thoughts." Didn't he say he tried? He waited and waited for Adobe to come up with a decent mobile Flash. No luck. Heck, it took ten years for them to come up with a Cocoa version of CS5 for MacOS X. Do you think he's going to connect any portion of the future of the iPhoneOS platform to Adobe's screwed up idea of a roadmap?
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From: Carl (Apr 30 2010, at 02:27)
This whole row isn't just about Flash. What about Googles Voice App, what does Apple see wrong in that?
Adobe does actually have some problems, not least of which is its virus transport Protocol a.k.a PDF.
As for Flash, it is very easy to block. Apple should leave it to the users to decide.
But really, if everybody is so worried about performance, battery life and runaway tasks, then Javascript would have to be part of this discussion.
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From: daniel siqueira (Apr 30 2010, at 06:14)
What I don't get about all this, is why people are just buying everything that jobs said.. how naive must you guys be.
Technology is a red herring.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18377_5-reasons-you-should-be-scared-apple.html
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/iphone-raid
bottom line is:
- HTML5 will never compete with native apps and apple knows it. And if any HTML5 technologies get close enough to reproducing what a native app does, Apple WILL change rules mid game (anyone has any doubts?)
- Consider how much revenue apple would stand to lose if its browser ran the multitude of games and apps (like grooveshark) avaiable on the web.
- after the creation of iAd, is there any doubts it IS about money?
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From: dr2chase (Apr 30 2010, at 06:29)
"If enough people say FLASH sucks, it will die. If a better technology comes along, FLASH will die."
No, no, no. Because of network effects, an entrenched widely used technology can out-compete a superior challenger. One example is 60Hz electricity -- higher frequencies are more efficient in most applications (except for (a) long-haul transmission, which is best done in DC anyway and (b) killing people). Higher frequencies allow smaller motors, smaller transformers, and (in AC/DC conversion) smaller capacitors to remove the ripple. But we have a huge investment in 60Hz, so there we sit.
Network effects have an enormous influence on computer industry economics.
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From: len (Apr 30 2010, at 07:15)
I look at productions like Sita Sings the Blues and I wonder how much longer art chops will be the victims of predatory platform marketing on all sides. To keep ROL viable, I had to go from a rich pallette (VRML97) to a degraded palette (wmv to mp4). It really sucks. So the answer is, probably always but if the artists aren't getting angry about this they are too dumb to breathe properly.
No one wants to put two years to five years to ten years producing a complex work that is obsoleted by the platform. That was the key insight of markup and the tribe that used it: platform independence is the protection of the producer and the content owner from the platform and language vendors.
There are/will be the usual issue distractions from the marketing technical community and the fanboys wishing to suck up to some resource or the other, but the facts are our culture's current best work is anemic with respect to it's maintenance because of the digital tools and media types provided. We're fools.
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From: chris (Apr 30 2010, at 07:22)
I think a lot of the commenters here are missing the point of the ban.
Most flash applications today rely on the mouse. Example: the youtube player shows you the menu when the mouse enters the display area, and hides it when the mouse leaves the area.
How is that going to work on a device with a touch interface? How many flash apps have you seen that don't have some form of this behavior?
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From: Bharath (Apr 30 2010, at 11:12)
Hi Earlier times Apples asked Adobe to develop products for MACINTOSH.But they rejected. So it gave birth to iLife.
So now it became reverse Adobe is in trouble now it stopped all its activities of flash project into iPhone.
Many people call it as Tit for Tat.
Apple is not a ordinary company like others it is a spiritual based and also it is led by a Future Thinker.Their product so they can keep close.If you are more clever better design a product which is better than iPhone . Why to comment un necessarily about Apple. Real Innovators never Comment.Because they are humble.
Be always meek.If you are proud.The providence can make your life worst then the xml cannot help you nor google can help u. Be submissive to God and never comment first clean inside yourself then talk about others.
I am sorry If i hurt.
Great leaders are always humble.
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From: steve harley (Apr 30 2010, at 12:01)
well put when you write "It seems unlikely to me that, in the mobile space, Adobe is going to be able to repeat their success in finding an unmet need, meeting it with Flash, and convincing everyone to ship their solution."
but Apple is not "forbidding Adobe from even trying" -- it is simply making its current position clear; were Adobe to "try", it would either
1. show Apple an iPhone Flash Player that is great, plus has some benefit for Apple (get creative, Adobe) so that Apple (which is a fairly realistic decision-maker) changes its position (it's been known to happen)
2. create a Flash to HTML5 compiler
or 3. make Flash so great on Android/Web OS, or the new Adobe Flash-only mobile OS [grin], that competition forces Apple changes its position
it's simple, it's up to Adobe to make something compelling enough that Apple "has to have it"
personally, i'm hoping for option 2, since it will add momentum to an open standard that is independent of Apple or Adobe
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From: Michael (Apr 30 2010, at 13:45)
One useful piece of data for the "Flash crashes" vs. "Flash doesn't crash" argument is the Mozilla crashstats report.
http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/3.6.4
Here, for example, you see the crash signatures of the top crash locations in Firefox 3.6.4.
NPSWF32.dll is Flash. Especially if you remove the KiFastSystemCallRet results, which is the generic "plugin hang" issue tracker, quite a few of the top 20 crashes are in that library.
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From: Anton McConville (May 01 2010, at 04:58)
Having worked with Flash, HTML5 Canvas and SVG, I can say that there are aspects of all of these technologies that are positive and exciting.
I think that none of the 'standard' web graphics APIs are quite as powerful as Flash is right now, but they are definitely evolving quickly and are capable of offering some very decent experiences ( for example Google Maps, Google Docs Drawing ).
The Flash community has attracted many passionate and incredibly creative designers and developers that hopefully won't be silo-ed either way with all of this. I hope that they begin to find interest in the evolving 'standard' drawing APIs too.
As tempting though Flash can be for producing great visual apps, it can be awkward to integrate with JavaScript and HTML for certain scenarios. I think Flash did show us what Ajax/HTML could eventually do for us though and deserves respect for that.
My own preference now is for native ( non plugin ) drawing standards ... and so if these decisions result in more adoption of those standards, then I hope that it'll result in examples of more creativity and faster evolution of them.
Decent IDE tools are lacking for Canvas and for JavaScript ... so surely that is a huge opportunity for someone!
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From: Robert Young (May 02 2010, at 15:40)
-- (except for (a) long-haul transmission, which is best done in DC anyway and (b) killing people)
Wrong. As any electrician will tell you, AC current *repels* touch, while DC *attracts* touch, and it was the massive inefficiency of Edison's DC in transmission which led it to lose to Tesla's AC. Get your history straight.
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From: Anon (May 03 2010, at 00:31)
Dear Tim Bray,
I am trying one last time to convince you that there is a problem with the "View Article" link at the end of your RSS Feeds.
Clicking on "View Article", for this post, for example, for the intended URL of "http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/04/29/Flash-History",
which is where this article is, shows up in the RSS email as "http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/Flash-History".
So, to read your posts, I have to go "to http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/" and figure out which link to click on.
No offence, but seeing that you are such a great blogger (love your photography posts too), it's a shame you have not done anything about this linking problem
for over a year (thats the length of time I've been following your blog). And before you ask, yes, I have posted in at least three different blog posts about this problem.
Maybe I should have sent you a non-blog-post email instead?
Please, fix the problem! :)
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From: Tim (May 03 2010, at 10:38)
Dear Anon: I'm afraid not. Whatever software you're reading my feed with (and btw it's Atom not RSS, but that shouldn't make a difference), that software is broken.
My feed uses relative URIs per the Atom spec and is carefully composed so that they should work. In the early days of Atom, this exposed bugs in quite a few pieces of software, but now they seem to have been fixed, mostly.
Except for whatever it is you're using.
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From: lazugod (May 05 2010, at 03:09)
I think a lot of people miss the subtlety of what Flashblock does - it's not a blocker, it's a buffer between me and any distracting, high-cpu-use bit of tricks.
Sometimes I *want* to see those tricks, so I click through. Oftentimes, as with ads, I don't. The performance hit is worth it to me when I do. But using the web shouldn't be predicated upon taking that hit right when the page loads.
Adobe would get a lot of respect from me if they were to make Flash blocking an official feature.
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