DaveNet: Thursday, October 23, 1997; by Dave Winer.

Dave Livesay on Macromedia Flash

From Dave Livesay, dlivesay@erols.com:

You've written in the past about Macromedia Flash as being a nice, cross-platform multimedia format. I used to share your admiration, but after having actually used the product for about six months, I am not so enthusiastic about it. Here are some of the problems I've encountered.

When exporting a movie named "movie", Flash warns you if a file named "movie" already exists and asks you if you want to replace it. If you say "yes", it saves the file as "movie.swf" without overwriting "movie". If a file named "movie.swf" already exists, that file is overwritten without warning.

When Flash runs out of memory while it's exporting a movie, you get an error message saying something about how windows might have to be drawn in gray or something like that. What this message should say is, "Warning: Flash did not have enough memory to successfully export that movie. Do not attempt to use the file you just exported as it will cause your browser or computer to crash! Data loss is a distinct possiblity!"

Actually, these unsuccessful exports should be deleted automatically by Flash, and the user should get a message saying "Export failed" or Export succeeded" whenever they try to export a movie.

Windows are sometimes shown in grey for no apparent reason. I have allocated a ton of memory to Flash, and I can actually see how much memory it is using by getting the "About this computer" window out, so I can assure you that this is not a low memory situation. It usually happens after I close a "Link Properties: Button" dialog box. Clicking the wondowshade button to collapse the window and expanding it again causes it to redraw properly.

There are a number of user-interface issues that might not be considered bugs, but which really should have been addressed in a maintenance upgrade. For example, in every other Macintosh program, objects don't stay selected when you select another object, unless you hold down the shift key. This might not seem like such a big deal until you accidentally delete something because you didn't happen to notice it was selected! Sure, you can undo it--if you happen to notice it in time.

This inconsistency requires a user to be very careful when using this program, and that makes this program harder to use than it ought to be. The thing that makes the Mac so much more productive to use than other platforms is that you don't have to re-learn all these conventions every time you learn a new program. If they insist on throwing us a curve, we lose that advantage, so we might have to look for other programs that are more consistent in their adherence to user interface guidelines.

Although they claim that you can use Javascript to control Flash movies, their documentation is very poor. In fact, this document is about all there is on the subject. It mentions a few of the properties and methods it's supposed to have, but it's nothing like complete documentation on the subject.

Even more disconcerting is the fact that their demo that purports to show how you can use Javascript to control Flash movies doesn't work on a Macintosh, even though the documentation, and the demo itself, claim that it it supposed to work on PowerMacs in Netscape 3.0.

I support open standards because I am interested in publishing content to the widest possible audience. I have no interest in promoting a particular platform, especially not Windows. I bought Flash because it was claimed to be a cross-platform solution. To some extent it is, but their support for Windows is clearly better than their support for Macintosh, and they don't seem to be overly worried about this inequity. As Napoleon said (Napoleon the pig, that is), "Some [animals] are more equal than others."

I have reported these issues to Macromedia, but they seldom acknowledge or respond to my messages. When someone finally did respond, all I got was some vague promise that they'd log them if they really are bugs. I haven't even heard rumors of any maintenance upgrades even though the product has been out for six months.

I used to have a high opinion of Macromedia, but that was before I actually had any experience working with their products. I have generally found that small companies and shareware authors provide much better support for their products than big companies like Macromedia and Microsoft. I just got a bug alert from Terry Morse about a bug in Myrmydon that I hadn't even noticed yet, and I have every reason to believe that he'll make a free maintenance upgrade available with a week--he always has in the past. I've had similar experiences with UserLand, BareBones, St. Clair Software, Script Software and many others. Shouldn't the economies of scale make it easier for the big companies to support their products?