Player or virtual machine?
I've just read a post by Darron Schall where he talks about the "virtual machine", instead of the "flash player".
The first difference between the flash player and the java virtual machine is size. Of course, that difference comes from the different funcionality provided. When programing in flash, we cannot acces the file system, the sytem configuration,....
But does it really make sense to try to do in flash the things that can be done in Java?. I'm not sure.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that macromedia is trying to provide a new development platform. So we'll have Java (Sun), .Net (Microsoft) and Flash (Macromedia).
That sounds good, but I'm afraid we are really close to forget what flash has meant for all these years. I am very excited about our future as flash developers, but I don't want to forget about our past.
Any thoughts?
Comentarios
How about a platform? :P
Publicado por: Richard Leggett | January 16, 2004 12:09 PM
you might want to check steven webster's post on this topic.
Publicado por: eokyere | January 16, 2004 01:01 PM
if you do not allow html, i think you shd display so. link is:
http://www.richinternetapps.com/archives/000020.html
Publicado por: eokyere | January 16, 2004 01:02 PM
I actually started actively calling it a virtual machine from the lnik above. I've always thought of it as a virtual machine, but kept calling it the Flash Player as that's what Macromedia officially calls it.. but maybe it's time for a change in terminology. It might even give Flash a better image to those who think it's just an animation technology.
Publicado por: darron | January 16, 2004 01:14 PM
It would be nice to have 2 flash virtual machines, a standard one like we got (with low size) and a professional one which would be faster to make real applications with more features, natives api, ram capabilities, multithreading ... hehe ... Maybe one day, just a thought. :)
Publicado por: petepx | January 16, 2004 01:20 PM
Ooops!
I didn't know about the Steve Webster's post. It's hard to add anything to what he said!.
Anyway, thanks for pointing me to it.
Publicado por: Cesar Tardaguila | January 16, 2004 02:54 PM
From my point of view Flash and Java platforms share the same design: the raw code is transformed to intermeidary byte code by a dedicated interpreter; then a separate app owned by the final user exectutes the byte code in its enviroment. This is the Tanenbaum definition of virtual machine, and it fits Flash.
Following the Macromedia vocabulary, that app is a "player", the byte code is a "movie", subsections of byte code is a "scene" and so on; Flash has been designed to add colorfull buttons and animations to websites and Macromedia is talking to trendy and well haired designers, not to bald coders ;)
Publicado por: egoloco | February 26, 2004 03:30 PM