Flacrobat – Please, No
Update
I was wrong in this post. There is no plan to combine Flash Player and Acrobat Reader – only a plan to use them both in a desktop app similar to Central. The Adobe FAQ wasn’t worded very well and I jumped to unwarranted conlusions. – d
Original post below…
There’s been a lot written about Adobe buying Macromedia the last couple days. But, only one concerns me. Unfortunately, it concerns me a lot. According to Adobe’s FAQ (no anchors – about 2/3 down the page – hiding something?), Adobe plans to combine Acrobat Reader and Flash Player. Bad idea. We (visual i|o) have enough trouble getting clients to upgrade to the latest version of Flash. Making the player 27x bigger (Flash 926 K, Acrobat Reader 27.4MB), extremely slow to load, and constantly checking for updates is not going to help.
Another reason not to do this… open source tools are being used more and more for Flash development. That usage helps Flash’s acceptance as an enterprise web development tool, which increases the ubiquity of Flash content. Adding the additional features of PDF to the Flash Player would surely burden (if not kill off) some of the open source compilers like MTASC. Less tools to make swfs is bad for Flash.
Finally, thinking specifically about data visualization, there is nothing in Reader that I care about. I don’t hate Reader. It’s great for printing (an area where Flash is lacking – but not 26MB lacking). But, Flash and Acrobat are different tools that do different things.
From Adobe’s FAQ…
What are Adobe’s plans for Flash Player and Adobe Reader?
Our long-term plan is to develop a “universal client” by combining PDF, Flash and HTML in a single, integrated runtime. Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.
// end Adobe FAQ
Even if Flash Player is kept as a small separate intsall, you still create confusion with multiple players. I guess we’ll see how this pans out. Certainly more than a paragraph from Adobe on the future of the Flash Player would be welcome.
Thanks to Colin Moock for including this in his email.
btw, here’s Jakob Nielsen’s take on Acrobat, “Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that’s it. Don’t use it for online presentation.”
Comments
7 Responses to “Flacrobat – Please, No”
Leave a Reply
Hi, is the main concern right now “I don’t yet see an integrated architecture across computers, mobile and more?” If so, then a lot of us don’t see all the details yet, you’re not alone…. ;-)
What you mention about version confusion is a real issue, one of the many when scaling creative work across devices like that. I think we’ve got a good chance of handling it right though.
Have you visited the Labs site yet? Right now there’s Flex 2.0 and Flash Player 8.5 for public-alpha guidance, but if you could doublecheck the experience whenever the next-generation runtimes start to come together, then that could help make sure it’s acceptable to you, thanks.
tx, jd/mm
Thanks for the comment John. My post was probably a bit strong.
Obviously, I am not alone in these concerns, and, based on your comment, many of my concerns are shared by MM as well. That’s reassuring. I guess more than attacking Adobe, what I want is to document my concerns about this combination. And your point is right on, I don’t know what Adobe is planning for the swf/pdf solution. Maybe it will be great and all of my concerns will be proven wrong (I hope). Nonetheless, a few more thoughts…
1. One of the fears I think all Flash developers have is a change in direction for MM. You guys have been so great over the last years really listening to what developers want. And a poorly thought out paragraph hidden in an investor relations’ FAQ is not a way to value the opinions of developers. If you have plans for the Player, put them on MM Labs. Be upfront about it.
2. My first impression of a combined solution is that it feels a bit proprietary and inflexible. I think the future of web development is about loosely coupling different technologies (e.g., mashups, Ajax-Flash integration), and creating a new uber-player just kind of feels wrong.
3. But, hey, maybe I’m wrong. If Adobe really wants to build an uber-player by throwing Flash Player into Reader and adding a few hooks to connect the two, I guess that’s not such a big deal – as long as it doesn’t adversely affect Flash Player (not Reader) development. A couple caveats on that…
a. Flash and Flex IDE should not be stuck supporting PDF features. A couple possibilities might be… use Meta tags to add swf/pdf connectivity, similar to Flash/Flex devt with swcs; PDF components could be included or ignored by the developer – like FlashComm.
b. The Acrobat Reader Flash Player should be identical to the current Flash Player. Supporting multiple versions of the Player would obviously be a pain.
You mentioned Flex 2, Player 8.5, and MM Labs – you guys got all that right…
Releasing an alpha of Flex Builder 2 shows commitment to developers, will speed new product adoption, and will reduce bugs in the app and in the documentation. The public release of Flex 2 and Player 8.5 will be a bigger upgrade for data visualization and enterprise development than Flash 8. I’m aware of all that and I appreciate it. And don’t worry, when it’s released, I’ll definitely stop by Labs to try the new Flacrobat.
Thanks,
Doug
Hi Doug,
Totally off-topic, but I came across this startup in Cambridge a while back that uses Flash to deliver video over IP. Jeremy Allaire’s company Brightcove. Obviously flash based applications have a ton of potential to do things we can’t event imagine, including business performance management apps. But video delivery on a large scale like Jeremy is planning to just…cool. Thought you’d get a kick out of it.
-Tom
Thanks Tom.
Jeremy gave an overview of Brightcove at this year’s MAX Conference. But, I kind of forgot about (there was a lot going on at MAX). I’ll definately take a look.
Doug
[...] Shortly after the Macromedia/Adobe merger I started hearing rumblings from commenters and about an Adobe plan to merge the Flash Player with their PDF Reader. I freaked out. The reasons why this is a terrible idea are better expressed by Doug Marttila. I believed Adobe’s move would be the death of Flash on the web. Luckly, the news was wrong. And I chastized myself for becoming histerical over yet another unconfirmed, internet rumor. [...]
Well, at least my hysterical ramblings are well expressed. And, it appears they were, in fact, hysterical. I was wrong. I bought into internet hype. I should have waited a couple days for MM to sort out the FAQ before ranting. Apologies all around. Flash rocks, etc. Mike Chambers sums it up well here. Bascially, PDF Reader and Flash Player will be combined, but, in Apollo, which is in very early development, and is kind of a sucessor to Central. My bad.
I am still very concerned about bonsai kittens, however.
[...] A post I made a few weeks ago – Flacrobat, Please, No – got linked a couple places. That would be great, if my post wasn’t wrong. The points were fine – lots of reasons why Acrobat Reader and Flash Player shouldn’t be combined. But, Reader and Player aren’t going to be combined. It was like writing a post about why the US shouldn’t invade Canada. I’ll be wrong again – but MM’s been great lately (alpha release of Flex, Flash 8, Player 8.5, etc.). I should have given them the benefit of the doubt and waited a couple days before posting. My bad. Fortunately there’s a silver lining. My post is a good example of noise, which is an interesting data viz topic. [...]