On Aug 1, 9:37*am, Jose > wrote:
> On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:42:03 -0700, cwdjrxyz wrote:
> > Many
> > large sites have replaced Windows, Real, and QT formats with it because
> > it will play on most modern computers and has many other advantages.
> > Videos on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, YouTube, etc now usually are in this
> > format.
>
> The flash format is an abomination, a security hazard, an advertiser's
> dream, and a web surfer's nightmare. *Flash keeps its own (pretty much
> secret) cookie stash of where you visit, does not respect portable
> standards, has no "off switch" in the browser (and never will because it
> is primarily supported by advertisers who use flash to force animation on
> web browsers that otherwise have it turned off), and should not be used
> except in special cases (of which this is not one). *It should absolutely
> never be used on the opening page of a site.
>
> All IMHO of course, but please reconsider! *There are -much- better ways
> of accomplishing most of what flash does (for example, animated .gif for
> a slide show)
Like it or not the new FLV/SWF is here to stay and has now run most
other formats into the background for online videos. It now can give
outstanding full video quality in contrast to the old swf, and it can
be used for even long movies. The swf file you see is now only a small
container file that contains the player controls, logos etc. The
actual video is a .flv(flash video) file that contains the video, and
both files are encoded at the same time and stored on the server. You
only see the .swf file if you view the source code. The .swf and .flv
files are linked so that when the .swf file is started, it internally
starts downloading the .swf file to the temporary cache of the
browser. Flash may not have an off switch in some browsers, and some
ad users can abuse it by auto starting etc, but one is easily added to
a good modern browser such as current Firefox. From their screen you
can download a plugin in a very short time that will put a button on
the screen everytime there is a flash video. If you want the video,
you click the button, if not the flash video does not appear. Replace
flash with an animated gif? You must be joking. An animated gif (do
people really still use these) does not include sound in sync and
allows only very crude motion, not full movie quality if desired.
Anything can be a security issue, but it usually is solved quickly by
those who supply anti-virus and malware programs. Likely the most
numerous security issues over the years have resulted from ActiveX
exploits on IE browsers. I find your concerns without serious current
merit, and apparently so do the officials of many private and public
organizations including most of the major news organizations in the
US. I am not going to reconsider. You have a right to your opinion,
but I think it is based on an outdated knowledge of current FLV/SWF. I
have been using the new FLV/SWF video most often in recent years on my
2 private domains with good results. However I am perfectly able to
encode and use dozens of audio and video formats. For some examples,
see
http://www.cwdjr.net/video4/embedpageB.php which is an
experimental media demo page of mine. Some of the media there are of
very high quality and require a high broadband connection. Other
media, especially some of the audio, will even work on dialup. The
page is valid xhtml 1.1 and served correctly as such with server
conversion of code to html 4.01 strict for outmoded browsers, such as
all IE ones through IE7, that can not view proper W3C xhtml standards
code when the xhtml is served properly as application/xhtml+xml.
In short the FLV/SWF comes on only if you click the start button, so
you do not have to view it. You do not even have to view the entry
page that contains it as I explained earlier. It does not force
anything on you. I absolutely will not take it down, and would take
the whole website down before I would do that. This subject is closed.