Weiqi Gao's Observations - flash tag

Killing Flash But Not Firefox: Yes You Can (On 64-bit Debian)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:31:35 GMT

Reading the Google Chrome comic book last week lead me to the following line of thoughts:

A: It would be nice if I can kill a tab as easily in Firefox as in Google Chrome.
B: Nah, I can't because everything runs in the same process.
A: But those darn Flash/Flex apps—they routinely eats 100% of my CPU and hang all tabs, all the time
B: Too bad they are in-proc. But wait, they aren't on 64-bit Debian.

Recall that Adobe provides their Flash plug-in for 32-bit Linux only. And to use it in 64-bit Linux, a nspluginwrapper is needed (as I reported 410 days ago.)

Yesterday, I got into one of those situations where Firefox is using 100% CPU and is not responding. I fired up SystemMonitor and sure enough, underneath firefox-bin there is a subprocess called nsviewer.bin. I killed the nsviewer.bin process and Firefox (well, IceWeasel, to be precise) became responsive again.

I was happy.

Flash Player 9 for 64-Bit Debian 4.0: Here's The Link

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:48:37 GMT

It took 37 days since I installed 64-bit Debian 4.0 on my amd64 machine, but I've finally gotten Flash Player 9 to work in my browser.

There are several reasons for the 37 days delay. The biggest reason is that the procedure I followed, which is the "I'm Feeling Lucky" page for the Google search for "nspluginwrapper etch", is not the obvious search target for anyone who want to get YouTube going on an amd64 Debian 4.0 installation.

Most of my time is spent on the transition from searching for "Flash 9 Debian 4.0 amd64" to searching for "nspluginwrapper etch". It went something like this:

I want Flash
But Flash doesn't work for 64-bit browsers
I can install a 32-bit browser, but that's going to be painful
Wait a minute, there is this thing called nspluginwrapper that will allow me to use the 32-bit Flash player with 64-bit browsers
But feta search nspluginwrapper turned up nothing
I'm going to build nspluginwrapper myself
The ./configure script complains about GLIB 2.0 not being available. Surely it's available, how else could I have run a GNOME desktop?
Oh, I need 32-bit GLIB 2.0. How do I get it?
It should be in ia32-libs-gtk. But I can't find it. I can find ia32-libs, but not ia32-libs-gtk
I hope I don't have to rebuild the 32-bit Gtk+.
Someone must have done it. Let me search for "ia32-libs-gtk etch" (I know Debian people likes to use names like Sarge or Etch or Sid to describe the OS version)
Bingo! There it is—ia32-libs-gtk and nspluginwrapper. All packaged up for Debian 4.0 amd64, ready to be installed.

The whole point of this post is to show you the detours I've taken to get a functioning Flash Player 9 on Debian 4.0 (Etch) amd64 so that you can go directly to the destination.

Link to this blog, or better yet, link to http://www.dipconsultants.com/debian/, if you find it useful.

And Oh, Thank you, Markybob.

He's Been Thinking In Java, Now He's Thinking In Flex

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:26:02 GMT

I read Bruce Eckel's books and blogs. I usually agree with what he says. So naturally I read Bruce's latest blog article Hybridizing Java seriously.

What I didn't realize was that Bruce was also working as a spokesman for Adobe in its Flex 2 advertising campaign until I spotted the Flash advertisement on some technology website. I didn't remember which site I spotted the ad on, however I did save a link to the actual swf file.

I don't know how many people have read the article without seeing the ad, or how many people have seen the ad without reading the article. For me, reading the article first without any knowledge of his role in the ad campaign, and then seeing the ad popping up, gave me somewhat of a surprise. And, maybe I'm being a little bit of oversensitive, it works to completely negate whatever impact Bruce's article had on me. For example, after reading the article, especially the following assessment of Flex:

Bruce Eckel: Of course, if my dream is to be able to learn a single GUI system in depth, is Flex the right tool, since it was originally designed for web RIAs?

A Flex UI can initiate communication with its server, or any other server it chooses. A server cannot initiate communication with a Flex UI, which makes sense because of security (it would be effectively the same as having an open port on your machine).

However, a Flex UI is not limited to communicating with a server. It can also communicate with a local application. Thus, you can create an application in any language you prefer, even a dynamic language like Python or Ruby, and use Flex to build a beautiful UI.

Adobe is developing a new tool called Apollo, a cross-OS runtime that allows you to use Flex to create desktop RIAs. This means that your Flex skills can be further employed for creating smooth desktop applications, but it also means that you can more easily build applications that will work on both web and desktop (I’ve seen expensive and difficult-to-use tools that allow other languages to do this).

I went as far as to have registered with Adobe's website and downloaded the Flex 2 SDK. I was about to give it a whirl this weekend to see if I like it. Then I saw the ad, and my mind went, "Wait a minute! If Bruce is doing a celebrity product endorsement gig for Adobe Flex 2, how objective could his assessment be? Especially since he did not disclose his connection with Adobe in the article."

They almost had me.

(Since I haven't played with Flex 2 yet, I don't know enough about it to say whether it's good or bad. But judging from the amount of Flash content on the web, I'd imagine it to be pretty good. Bruce's assessment may still be accurate. His criticism of Java is certainly on the mark. I wish the Java community take Bruce's criticism as motivation to improve the platform.)