[Sussex] Moot/Linux CD thoughts

[John Crowhurst]

On Sun, August 13, 2006 07:24, Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> I am puzzled, what is the problem with the existing Flash player version
> 7? What we do not have is the Shockwave player and the Authorware
> player, this latter is only available for Mac.

The biggest difference in Flash versions is the codec used to compress and
playback flash movies. In Flash 7 it was H.263 (the same as quicktime),
but in Flash 8 and 9 they introduced much faster and efficient codecs
which gave a vast increase in quality to video.

Also, in Flash 8 the introduction of flash video (flv) meant you could
simply write the shell of the player and play the video in a rectangle of
your flash movie from a different source. In Flash 7, the video had to be
in Flash SWF format to be called by the player.

I think the use of these codecs will stop a release of Flash 9 on Linux,
Apple have a large amount of closed source in OSX, and encourage companies
to do the same, whereas there is a movement in Linux to keep closed source
out as much as possible.

--
John