Microsoft: "How about we bundle Flash Player"

(MJF alert)

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1971047,00.asp

Microsoft has offered Adobe the opportunity to have its Acrobat PDF reader, Flash and/or Shockwave technologies bundled into Vista, Heiner said. Microsoft also has extended to Adobe an offer to include in Windows Vista their own "Save as PDF" plug-in. Adobe is still considering the PDF reader, Flash and/or Shockwave integration, but is not interested in the PDF-export technology deal, Heiner said.

"We wanted to address every concern they have. We want them to be a happy ISV (independent software vendor)," Heiner said.

Old News.

Windows 98 and IE4/5 bundled Flash Player and Shockwave Player, they're listed under "Additional Windows Components" and the IE4/5 installer's Advanced views. (with painful consequences: Flash was impossible to re-install right after less-experienced users tried reinstalling it from both the Windows CD and the downloadable installer)

But if Microsoft is going to start bundling adware with Windows (Acrobat Reader has adverts in it) then I'm going to be really peed off. You don't spend £150+ on an "advanced" operating system just to get adverts.

Windows XP still bundles Flash Player 6, not so sure about Vista though.

Since flash is the only mainstream vector based animation format, wouldn't it be a perfect candidate for accelleration through WPF?
Maybe microsoft has that on their mind, especially since the version of Flash in the xbox360 arcade software does just that (albeit directly to the hardware, not through wpf)

Please would SOMEONE write a replacement for Flash... STOP THE MADNESS

Oh no, horror oh horror.

Dont do this!

Bundled applications are evil, if they are installed by default.

Chadk wrote:



Oh no, horror oh horror.

Dont do this!

Bundled applications are evil, if they are installed by default.

IE included?

Chadk wrote:



Oh no, horror oh horror.

Dont do this!

Bundled applications are evil, if they are installed by default.

I agree.  Because what if the user doesn't want it! (although I think these specific programs are fine to be bundled)

But not that there's the Welcome Center, it could have a "Install a whole bunch of software" button that would install flash, acrobat, shockwave, hmm and windows like stuff.   That way make it would totally be up to the user.

Ugh, no thanks on those. Flash is always, always, always, always one of the first things that I disable on any computer that I find it on. The only things that I've ever seen it used for, are annoying web-advertisements and annoying website interfaces. Much better off without that.

Acrobat Reader is ok, but only if you use the older versions that actually load quickly and don't have ads in them. Still, there's better document formats that pdf out there that we could be supporting (.txt for example ).

Adobe better start playing nice or at least reasonable with Microsoft and its customer base.

Assuming Windows Vista lives up to expectations, especially Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon), XAML, and the Expressions Suite, Microsoft could remove the Flash Player, Shockwave in Internet Explorer as well as PDF in Windows 2012.

Business reason--so few of Microsoft customers are still using this legacy software anymore.

Yes, they would would lose some market share to other browsers who would still support Flash and Shockwave.

If you do not think this could happen, can you say Lotus 123, WordPerfect, Netscape Navigator,...

I think it would be fair to ask for the XPS support to be in if there's Flash support. (And IF there's Flash support, there should also be Flac,Ogg and Xvid too!)

Manip wrote:

Please would SOMEONE write a replacement for Flash... STOP THE MADNESS

That has long been done, were you living on Mars?

That shouldn't however mean that Flash shouldn't be included as well, it is the defacto standard for the web.

Ewww NO, don't bundle the piece of junk of a reader, why can't MS make a light-weighted version of the reader?

Now that would be better, either put the reader as part of the OS or part of Office 2k7. But i prefer if it was inegrated into the OS.

Acrobat reader itself is a total bloatware.

dotnetjunkie wrote:



Manip wrote: Please would SOMEONE write a replacement for Flash... STOP THE MADNESS

That has long been done, were you living on Mars?

That shouldn't however mean that Flash shouldn't be included as well, it is the defacto standard for the web.

Clearly I must have been... Please link to the replacement.

Where is the SVG plugin? :O

dotnetjunkie wrote:



Manip wrote:Please would SOMEONE write a replacement for Flash... STOP THE MADNESS

That has long been done, were you living on Mars?

That shouldn't however mean that Flash shouldn't be included as well, it is the defacto standard for the web.

SVG isn't a perfect substitute for Flash and doesn't include all the features (nor do any easy-to-use IDEs exist for the format, which means 'creative types' won't be able to use it)

W3bbo wrote:


SVG isn't a perfect substitute for Flash and doesn't include all the features (nor do any easy-to-use IDEs exist for the format, which means 'creative types' won't be able to use it)

SVG is a candidate to replace Flash, afterall it's W3C's "product" by mixing Microsoft's VML and Macromedia's Flash, it's does make sense to me that it's possible to extend SVG to include all features avaliable in Flash.

And since Macromedia is brought by Adobe, who was a major pusher for the SVG format (for those who don't know: Adobe produced the SVG player for IE), it's not impossible that the next version of Flash could include that as a supported save format. So we'd get a decent "IDE" then)

Now... only if Adobe "wishes" to make to move... all this could happen.