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»

Lightspark 0.4.6.1 released


Ver­sion 0.4.6 was released no more than a free days ago, but unfor­tu­nately a change in the YouTube player exposed a bug that could cause browser crashes. Ver­sion 0.4.6.1 fixes the issue and updat­ing is recommended.

I’d also like to share some though and explain why we need to make so many point releases to keep things work­ing. Lightspark shares a lot of sim­i­lar­ity with the Wine project in my opin­ion, as both projects aims at reim­ple­ment­ing from scratch a large (huge for Wine, of course) plat­form for third party applications.

The “advan­tage” for Wine is that exe­cuta­bles for installed pro­grams (e.g. Microsoft Word) change not so often, and usu­ally updat­ing is under the con­trol of the user. A user that is inter­ested in keep­ing Wine com­pat­i­ble with a cer­tain appli­ca­tion is, most often, free to delay the update until Wine catches up.

Lightspark, on the other hand, needs to exe­cute con­tents (e.g. YouTube video player) that are mostly out of the user con­trol and new, incom­pat­i­ble, ver­sions of the con­tents may pop out at any­time and there is very lit­tle we can do about it.

The only way we can be faith­ful to the adver­tised “YouTube[*] sup­port” is to improve our code when­ever a break­age pops up. I under­stand this is also chal­leng­ing for dis­tros and pack­agers because the life span of our sta­ble releases is linked to quite unpre­dictable events and I’d like to say “thank you” to all the peo­ple pack­ag­ing lightspark for dis­tros in the wild. Your work is exceptional.

[*] As a side note, although cur­rently only YouYube sup­port is sta­ble enough to be used daily, Lightspark is not an YT spe­cific hack. Sup­port for other sites is com­ing along slowly given our lim­ited work­force. I’ve done some work to have hulu work­ing and I think we’re now 80% done in sup­port­ing it. If any­one is inter­ested in con­tribut­ing to lightspark to have Hulu (or any other pop­u­lar site) sup­ported, please drop by #lightspark IRC chan­nel on Freen­ode

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This entry was posted on March 18, 2011, 5:15 am and is filed under Lightspark. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Jani

    Please add a high-level and not tool long doc­u­ment to the wiki describ­ing Lightspark’s archi­tec­ture, and point­ers to the code­base where each block is imple­mented. It gives more con­fi­dence to new­com­ers who want to dive in the code and help. Also mark the parts of the code that are not yet used, legacy or work in progress so they are avoided.

  • Jani

    Please add a high-level and not tool long doc­u­ment to the wiki describ­ing Lightspark’s archi­tec­ture, and point­ers to the code­base where each block is imple­mented. It gives more con­fi­dence to new­com­ers who want to dive in the code and help. Also mark the parts of the code that are not yet used, legacy or work in progress so they are avoided.

  • Robin

    Just tried it, unfor­tu­nately videos on YouTube are unwatch­ably slow.

    Could this be a prob­lem with the nou­veau nvidia dri­vers? Pro­pri­etary plu­gin works though.

  • Robin

    Just tried it, unfor­tu­nately videos on YouTube are unwatch­ably slow.

    Could this be a prob­lem with the nou­veau nvidia dri­vers? Pro­pri­etary plu­gin works though.

  • Anony­mous

    It could def­i­nitely be a prob­lem with nou­veau. As far as I know 3d graph­ics accel­er­a­tion is not cur­rently offi­cially sup­ported by the nou­veau devel­op­ers. Please try using nvidia pro­pri­etary dri­ver if pos­si­ble and, if the issue does not solve, report a bug. Thanks you

  • Anony­mous

    It could def­i­nitely be a prob­lem with nou­veau. As far as I know 3d graph­ics accel­er­a­tion is not cur­rently offi­cially sup­ported by the nou­veau devel­op­ers. Please try using nvidia pro­pri­etary dri­ver if pos­si­ble and, if the issue does not solve, report a bug. Thanks you

  • Markus

    I’m won­der­ing why you put so many resources behind YouTube sup­port. YouTube sup­ports HTML5 and there is also a Grease­mon­key script avail­able to embed the YT video files directly (and play them back via VLC or MPlayer browser plu­g­ins).
    If there is one site one does not need Flash sup­port for, it’s YouTube. IMHO it made more sense to con­cen­trate on pop­u­lar Flash appli­ca­tions which don’t have a No-Flash option, eg. Far­mville or what­ever is cur­rently popular.

  • Markus

    I’m won­der­ing why you put so many resources behind YouTube sup­port. YouTube sup­ports HTML5 and there is also a Grease­mon­key script avail­able to embed the YT video files directly (and play them back via VLC or MPlayer browser plu­g­ins).
    If there is one site one does not need Flash sup­port for, it’s YouTube. IMHO it made more sense to con­cen­trate on pop­u­lar Flash appli­ca­tions which don’t have a No-Flash option, eg. Far­mville or what­ever is cur­rently popular.

  • http://www.timonvo.com Timon Van Overveldt

    I think this is a mis­con­cep­tion that I’ve heard lots of times.

    The fact that we try to keep Lightspark YouTube-compatible doesn’t mean we focus all our energy on YouTube.
    In fact, a lot of work is being done on gen­eral fea­tures, like the work on gra­di­ents which just got released in 0.4.6 or my work on Exter­nal­In­ter­face sup­port, which is arguably one fea­ture which is used by nearly all true Flash appli­ca­tions.
    The fixes for YT sup­port are often only a few lines of code. Com­pare this to some other work, con­sist­ing of hun­dreds of lines of code, with­out it being directly related to YT.

    How­ever, as Alex states, we do try to keep up with YouTube’s con­stant changes, so that our claim of “YT-compatible” stays valid.
    I also under­stand that the many dot-releases related to YT sup­port, can cre­ate an image of YT-focused devel­op­ment, how­ever wrong it may be.

    That being said, please also note that there are still a lot of fea­tures which are miss­ing sup­port. These fea­tures are often pretty gen­eral. YouTube’s player often pro­vides us with a great oppor­tu­nity to test our sup­port for them, since it uses a lot of those features.

    Finally, also note that we are work­ing on (or at least plan­ning) a web­site where users can sub­mit and vote for their favorite Flash appli­ca­tions. This will help us get a clearer pic­ture of what users really want supported.

  • http://www.timonvo.com Timon Van Overveldt

    I think this is a mis­con­cep­tion that I’ve heard lots of times.

    The fact that we try to keep Lightspark YouTube-compatible doesn’t mean we focus all our energy on YouTube.
    In fact, a lot of work is being done on gen­eral fea­tures, like the work on gra­di­ents which just got released in 0.4.6 or my work on Exter­nal­In­ter­face sup­port, which is arguably one fea­ture which is used by nearly all true Flash appli­ca­tions.
    The fixes for YT sup­port are often only a few lines of code. Com­pare this to some other work, con­sist­ing of hun­dreds of lines of code, with­out it being directly related to YT.

    How­ever, as Alex states, we do try to keep up with YouTube’s con­stant changes, so that our claim of “YT-compatible” stays valid.
    I also under­stand that the many dot-releases related to YT sup­port, can cre­ate an image of YT-focused devel­op­ment, how­ever wrong it may be.

    That being said, please also note that there are still a lot of fea­tures which are miss­ing sup­port. These fea­tures are often pretty gen­eral. YouTube’s player often pro­vides us with a great oppor­tu­nity to test our sup­port for them, since it uses a lot of those features.

    Finally, also note that we are work­ing on (or at least plan­ning) a web­site where users can sub­mit and vote for their favorite Flash appli­ca­tions. This will help us get a clearer pic­ture of what users really want supported.

  • http://www.mspy.com/ Angelo

    I was wait­ing for the Lightspark release. I just needed some­what sup­port­ing Action­Script 3.0 and have a Mozilla com­pat­i­ble plu­gin. To me, Lightspark is the right thing to discover.

  • http://www.mspy.com/ Angelo

    I was wait­ing for the Lightspark release. I just needed some­what sup­port­ing Action­Script 3.0 and have a Mozilla com­pat­i­ble plu­gin. To me, Lightspark is the right thing to discover.

«
»

Lightspark 0.4.6.1 released


Ver­sion 0.4.6 was released no more than a free days ago, but unfor­tu­nately a change in the YouTube player exposed a bug that could cause browser crashes. Ver­sion 0.4.6.1 fixes the issue and updat­ing is recommended.

I’d also like to share some though and explain why we need to make so many point releases to keep things work­ing. Lightspark shares a lot of sim­i­lar­ity with the Wine project in my opin­ion, as both projects aims at reim­ple­ment­ing from scratch a large (huge for Wine, of course) plat­form for third party applications.

The “advan­tage” for Wine is that exe­cuta­bles for installed pro­grams (e.g. Microsoft Word) change not so often, and usu­ally updat­ing is under the con­trol of the user. A user that is inter­ested in keep­ing Wine com­pat­i­ble with a cer­tain appli­ca­tion is, most often, free to delay the update until Wine catches up.

Lightspark, on the other hand, needs to exe­cute con­tents (e.g. YouTube video player) that are mostly out of the user con­trol and new, incom­pat­i­ble, ver­sions of the con­tents may pop out at any­time and there is very lit­tle we can do about it.

The only way we can be faith­ful to the adver­tised “YouTube[*] sup­port” is to improve our code when­ever a break­age pops up. I under­stand this is also chal­leng­ing for dis­tros and pack­agers because the life span of our sta­ble releases is linked to quite unpre­dictable events and I’d like to say “thank you” to all the peo­ple pack­ag­ing lightspark for dis­tros in the wild. Your work is exceptional.

[*] As a side note, although cur­rently only YouYube sup­port is sta­ble enough to be used daily, Lightspark is not an YT spe­cific hack. Sup­port for other sites is com­ing along slowly given our lim­ited work­force. I’ve done some work to have hulu work­ing and I think we’re now 80% done in sup­port­ing it. If any­one is inter­ested in con­tribut­ing to lightspark to have Hulu (or any other pop­u­lar site) sup­ported, please drop by #lightspark IRC chan­nel on Freen­ode

Flattr this

, , , , ,

This entry was posted on March 18, 2011, 5:15 am and is filed under Lightspark. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.