FlexibleFactory

We’re developing a fairly complex application that requires communication between Flash players on the same page.

Initially, we went for a solution that uses LocalConnection. At seemingly random times, the browser crashed. I won’t even go into what the problem might be here. I simply ask the user to search the internet and/or the Flash bugbase for “LocalConnection crash”. It’s unusable.

So now we’ve opted for an ExternalInterface based solution. Once again, the browser crashes. Digging around the internet turns up this beauty of a page:

http://riafiles.googlepages.com/ExternalCrashDemo.html
(this is deliberately not a link, as using this page WILL crash your browser. If you do visit the page, just make sure you don’t have anything important open in your browser when you hit the magic button!)

Frankly, this is a fucking joke. I want to make my anger at this situation completely clear, hence the strong language. Apologies if this offends.

So off we go again, trying to establish the cause of these crashes. More time. More money.

It looks like polling SharedObject () might be an option. I wonder how much time we’ll have to invest in this before it all goes horribly wrong again. I’m already eyeballing this search with weary eyes.

If there were any choice here, we’d abandon Flash altogether on this project.

Maybe it’s just the kind of work we do at Flexible Factory that ekes out these kinds of problems, but we now seriously have to budget for working around bugs in the Flash platform. I’d say at least 10-20% of our Flash development time is spent on these sorts of issues. On this project, that moves up to around 80%.

Sorry, Adobe… if we filed all the bugs we found, we’d never have any time to work. I’ve seen the line:

“Comments on blogs, other web sites or 3rd party bug databases are not tracked by our quality assurance team.”

Well maybe, for the sake of hanging on to developers, it’s time Adobe did.

Wouldn’t it be great if Flash Player 11 was exactly the same as Flash Player 10, except without the bugs? Instead of running to cram more features into a buggy platform, wouldn’t Adobe’s time be better spent fixing what they’ve got?

Which leads me on to the big question:

As a business, can we afford offer Flash development in our product portfolio?

I like to keep my PC in good working condition. This means limiting the number of startup items and shell menu items that invariably sneak onto one’s PC when installing software from less reputable manufacturers.

If I want a toolbar, I’ll install it, thanks. If I want extra shell items hooked into my rightclick menus, I’d like to ask for them. I certainly don’t want some management buffoon deciding that the best way to up the number of installs of their pet project is by sneaking it in like a trojan on the back of some other product.

I installed the trial version of Illustrator the other day on my PC. Now I have something called AdobeDriveCS4 appearing in my right-click Explorer menus. I don’t want it. I didn’t ask for it. Adobe didn’t tell me it was going to be installed and now it’s there slowing down my machine. No worries… I’ll just uninstall it, right? Nope, there’s no uninstaller available, nor do Adobe publicise how one might get rid of this sneaky trojan.

The thing is, I’d quite like to carry on using Illustrator, and I don’t even know if uninstalling it will get rid of the parasite programs that hide within its monster 1GB (1GB???) installer.

Adobe… this sucks. The public decided a long long time ago that this is a bad idea. How long will it take for your management to catch up with us?

I’ll certainly think twice before I absent mindedly install any other Adobe products.

For the record:

Windows 64bit removal

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Drive CS4\ADFSMenu.dll"

Windows 32bit removal

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Drive CS4\ADFSMenu.dll"

Let’s have a page telling this, or even better the option not to install it in the first place. Adobe, if you really, really must install such crap then at least have the decency to provide an uninstaller.

The pity is, I don’t even know what Drive CS4 is. Now I guess I never will.