19 Mar 2007 company   » (Master)

So here's a small update to last week's Swfdec Youtube post. I've spent most of the time on the awesome IRC feedback that I got. Thanks everyone. Here's some answers to the most common questions I got:

Swfdec plays Youtube. Now what does that mean?
It means that when you grab the Swfdec library and the swfdec-mozilla package out of git and manage to install it correctly, you will be able to go to any Youtube video site and have it play back the videos in your browser. The buttons don't work yet and it certainly doesn't behave 100% like the Adobe plugin, but it certainly plays the videos.

OMG, swfdec doesn't work on 64bit machines!
OMG, it does! Since I posted the last entry, I've got lots of offers for remote access to 64bit machines and spent the last hours making sure it compiles and passes the testsuite. Of course I have no 64bit machine and until 3 hours ago didn't know most of the things I'd need to look for, so expect some bugs being left. Please test if you're on 64bit and if you find crashers, file bugs.

Where's the release?
I intend to do a release soon, but I'd like to have a working pause button and slider in Youtube. I'm hoping for a release at the end of this week. For now, use git.

How close is Swfdec to being a complete Adobe Flash replacement
That really depends on your definition of close. For the definition "implements all of Flash's features" it'll probably not hit 5%. For the definition of "plays all the Flash files on the Web" I think it's 80/20 right now. Swfdec plays 80% of the ads and 20% of the real content. And no, that wasn't on purpose. I've been following a simple rule for what to implement: I take an interesting flash file and make it work correctly. So if there's any Flash files that I might find interesting and that you want to have working in Swfdec, don't hesitate to contact me with URLs to those files. I'm always looking for cool Flash files.

What can be expected from Swfdec in the future?
I have no idea. I'm looking for a job at the moment and since that job will most likely not be me hacking on Swfdec fulltime, expect the Swfdec development to slow down in the future. However, it only took me half a year to get Youtube working and Youtube is already quite complicated. So in short: I have no idea.

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