How important is compatibility with Flash Player 9 to you?

[Till Schneidereit]

Dear Robotizens,

as Stray has announced in her fabulous post to the knowledge base here
(http://knowledge.robotlegs.org/discussions/suggestions/63-robotlegs-20-the-path-from-here),
we're currently planning to give up on compatibility with Flash Player
9.

Even though Adobe chose to slow down development of AS3, the language,
to a crawl over the last 5 years, there's one improvement only
available starting with FP 10: Support for Vectors. These provide for
improved speed, more type-safety and (this last point might be a bit
subjective, I'll readily admit) improved self-documentation of code.

Now what we can't really know from discussions in a pool in Spain is
how many projects still absolutely must support FP 9. Newly started
projects, that is. Just to remind everyone: FP 10 will have been
released more than 3 years ago when RL 2 is finalized towards the end
of the year.

Sooo, with all of that being said: Please speak up if requiring FP 10
would leave you in a state of terror, without a job or just really
sad. We wouldn't want any of that to happen to you, so this is really
important! Please also tell us the specific reasons for any
foreseeable bouts of terror, joblessness or sadness.

thanks,
till

[Neil Manuell]

well, there is still robot legs 1, right.
you aint taking it off the self, so if support for 9 is needed...

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[Till Schneidereit]

Absolutely! Still, if it turns out that, for some reason unknown to
us, a large fraction of Robotlegs's user-base would stay with RL 1
because of support for 9, then that would make us very sad. And as I
said before: We're staunchly anti-sadness.

[Neil Manuell]

well then, as Stray says in that post, the community that needs fp9
can port all those Vectors
to Arrays.

Then the happiness spreads

[Conrad Winchester]

What I have found in my experience is that it is the creative industry (web ads, banners and advert type games) that push for backwards compatibility. In my brief stint in a creative company I mainly used AS2 - and that was only 2 years ago.

However since getting into more 'enterprise' level app building the demand is to always use the most up to date and secure version of the flash player ( I am even being asked to investigate molehill for data visualisation), so it depends on who you ask, and what they do.

Vectors are much better than arrays for good coding if you ask me.

With flash player 10 you also get access to the alchemy byte codes :-) they might be useful !

Conrad

[John Lindquist]

I'm perfectly happy sticking with Robotlegs v1 if I'm given a "new" fp9 project.

[Michael Cann]

If it helps, I currently work for a social games company and we use RL to develop our games. We target player version based on its penetration percentage:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

With flash 10 at 99% in mature markets I have absolutely no worries with RL being 10+ only. As other have noted, if the backwards compatibility is needed you can always just change those vectors to arrays.

Mike

Mike Cann
http://www.mikecann.co.uk/
http://www.artificialgames.co.uk/

[joel...@gmail.com]

I think RL one is a solid release and will always be there to support
older players. I'd hate to hobble a new version for legacy support, or
even worse to all sorts of compile time trickery to have two version
(gross!)

[Marc Bir]

I work at a software vendor that targets large enterprises and we use market penetration as our key guideline. This is why we are currently still stuck on Flex 4.1 (10.2 has only hit 74% for our clients).

Random side note: ~15% of our users still on IE6, but they are running Flash Player 10.3... Go figure.

Personally I've found vectors to be painfully limited as a generic container, but I do like the type safety.

I vote to embrace FP10.0 and move on. There is no weakness in RL1 that should impact developers deeply enough to drive them away if stuck in FP9.

thanks
-marc

[gerald.yeo]

I've pushed for FP10 for all microsite/app releases since last year,
so I'll go with FP10 support for RL2. I can always use RL1 or port RL2
for FP9.

Media banners are always bugbears, slow to adapt.

-gerald

[Joni Bekenstein]

I agree, RL2 should target FP10. It's also our responsability, as
developers, to push forward with the latest technology available.

--
Joni Bekenstein

[Ondina]

> It's also our responsability, as
> developers, to push forward with the latest technology available.

> Joni Bekenstein

I second that!!

I’m for FP 10+

Ondina

[jarretgabel]

agreed. no need to support FP9. anyone on FP9 can use RL v1. and
anyone not on FP10 can suck it.

On Jun 30, 4:02 pm, Till Schneidereit <tschneider...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Robotizens,
>
> as Stray has announced in her fabulous post to the knowledge base here

> (http://knowledge.robotlegs.org/discussions/suggestions/63-robotlegs-2...),

[Dominic Graefen]

Long time ago since I had the last project where I had to use Flash Player 9,

also regarding the upcoming release of Flash Player 11 I would say ditch Flash Player 9 compatibility!

-- 
Dominic Graefen

Freelance: Interactive Developer / Creative Technologist

devboy.org

[Aaron Hardy]

My vote is for FP10 + vectors. No worries about backward compatibility here.

Aaron

[John Olson]

My vote duplicates everyones vote to ditch backwards compatibility and support FP 10 with vectors in RL2. 

- John O.

[creynders]

Even though I was the one who triggered this question I too vote for FP10, if it makes a better product.

As all others said, RL 1 is going nowhere.

And it's true it's mainly the creative sector that keeps on demanding backwards compatibility preferably till flash player 3. 

(I'm known to exaggerate)

Now when it comes to Vectors specifically, I'm still a bit sceptic whether it'll be worth it. 

And if not using Vectors, are there other reasons to target FP10?

[Steve Mathews]

"I agree, RL2 should target FP10. It's also our responsability, as
developers, to push forward with the latest technology available."

That is a whole can of worms that would be off topic...

On topic I normally argue for not pushing ahead too fast as there are still quite a few companies who don't upgrade. I see a lot of it in corporate environments related with training. With that said, for something like this I think dropping support for v9 is just fine.

Steve