Simon Willison's Weblog: adobe

Quoting Eric Urquhart

2023-06-22T11:13:46+00:00

Back then [in 2012], no one was thinking about AI. You just keep uploading your images [to Adobe Stock] and you get your residuals every month and life goes on — then all of a sudden, you find out that they trained their AI on your images and on everybody’s images that they don’t own. And they’re calling it ‘ethical’ AI.

— Eric Urquhart

Tags: ai, adobe, ethics, generative-ai, ai-ethics

Adobe made an AI image generator — and says it didn’t steal artists’ work to do it

2023-03-21T17:08:09+00:00

Adobe made an AI image generator — and says it didn’t steal artists’ work to do it

Adobe Firefly is a brand new text-to-image model which Adobe claim was trained entirely on fully licensed imagery—either out of copyright, specially licensed or part of the existing Adobe Stock library. I’m sure they have the license, but I still wouldn’t be surprised to hear complaints from artists who licensed their content to Adobe Stock who didn’t anticipate it being used for model training.

Tags: adobe, ethics, ai, generative-ai, training-data, ai-ethics

Quoting Rafe Colburn

2010-05-05T12:10:00+00:00

The crisis Flash now faces is that Apple has made it clear that Flash will no longer be ubiquitous, as it won’t exist on the iPhone platform, thus turning “runs everywhere” into “runs almost everywhere.” As Web developers know, “runs almost everywhere” is a recipe for doing everything at least twice.

— Rafe Colburn

Tags: adobe, apple, flash, ipad, iphone, iphoneos, rafe-colburn, recovered

Quoting Steve Jobs

2010-04-29T15:22:06+00:00

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

— Steve Jobs

Tags: flash, adobe, apple, steve-jobs, mobile

Quoting FXG 1.0 Specification

2010-04-11T18:58:01+00:00

"... the interchange format needed to be able to support future Flash Player features, which would not necessarily map to SVG features. As such, the decision was made to go with a new interchange format, FXG, instead of having a non-standard implementation of SVG. FXG does borrow from SVG whenever possible."

— FXG 1.0 Specification

Tags: svg, fxg, flash, adobe

Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas

2010-04-11T18:33:01+00:00

Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas

This looks pretty awesome—Illustrator CS5 and Flash CS5 can export to a new “FXG” format, and Adobe are providing a JavaScript library to load that format via Ajax and render the contents (including Flash animations) in a canvas element. Could be great for displaying newspaper infographics on the iPad.

Tags: adobe, canvas, flash, fxg, html5, illustrator, ipad, iphone

Some questions about the "blocking" of HTML5

2010-02-16T09:11:21+00:00

When people say that the publication of HTML5 "blocked" by Larry Masinter's "formal objection", what exactly do they mean?
Why does the private w3c-archive mailing list exist? Why can't anyone reveal what happens on there? What are the consequences for doing so? Who gets to be on that list in the first place?
Can anyone raise a "formal objection"?
Is anyone calling for the HTML Working Group to be "rechartered"? If so, what does that involve?
If there are concerns about the inclusion of Canvas 2D in the specification, why were these not resolved earlier?

Some background reading. I was planning to fill in answers as they arrive, but I screwed up the moderation of the comments and got flooded with detailed responses - I strongly recommend reading the comments.

Tags: adobe, html5, larry-masinter, w3c

The Widening HTML5 Chasm

2010-02-15T21:51:56+00:00

The Widening HTML5 Chasm

Simon St. Laurent’s commentary on the HTML5/Adobe situation. The most interesting piece I’ve read on it so far.

Tags: adobe, html5, simon-st-laurent, w3c, whatwg

Quoting Larry Masinter

2010-02-15T21:31:02+00:00

No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, "blocked" in the W3C HTML Working Group -- not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video -- not by me, not by Adobe. Neither Adobe nor I oppose, are fighting, are trying to stop, slow down, hinder, oppose, or harm HTML5, Canvas 2D Graphics, Microdata, video in HTML, or any of the other significant features in HTML5. Claims otherwise are false. Any other disclaimers needed?

— Larry Masinter

Tags: adobe, html5, canvas, larry-masinter, w3c

Quoting Ian Hickson

2010-02-15T19:38:29+00:00

At this point all I could honestly tell you from the point of view of the editor of several of the HTML5 documents being held up is that the W3C have said they're won't publish without the objections being resolved, and that the objection is from Adobe. I can't even tell what I could do to resolve the objection. It seems to be entirely a process-based objection.

— Ian Hickson

Tags: ian-hickson, adobe, hixie, html5, w3c, canvas, process

Quoting John Gruber

2010-01-31T12:05:40+00:00

32.38 percent of visitors to DF last week did not have Flash.

— John Gruber

Tags: john-gruber, flash, apple, adobe

Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes?

2010-01-31T12:05:23+00:00

Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes?

John Gruber makes the case for the fading significance of Flash, brought about by Apple’s point-blank refusal to support it on the iPhone or iPad. “Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There’s a big difference between “everywhere” and “almost everywhere”.”

Tags: adobe, apple, flash, ipad, iphone, john-gruber

Cross-domain policy file usage recommendations for Flash Player

2009-11-05T16:24:02+00:00

Cross-domain policy file usage recommendations for Flash Player

One of the best explanations of the security implications of crossdomain.xml files I’ve seen. If you host a crossdomain.xml file with allow-access-from domain=“*” and don’t understand all of the points described here, you probably have a nasty security vulnerability.

Tags: adobe, crossdomainxml, flash, security

Adobe is Bad for Open Government

2009-11-01T12:51:20+00:00

Adobe is Bad for Open Government

The problem isn’t just that PDFs are a bad way of sharing data, it’s that Adobe have been actively lobbying the US government to use their PDF and Flash formats for open government initiatives.

Tags: adobe, flash, opengovernment, pdf, sunlightfoundation

No PDFs!

2009-11-01T12:04:36+00:00

No PDFs!

The Sunlight Foundation point out that PDFs are a terrible way of implementing “more transparent government” due to their general lack of structure. At the Guardian (and I’m sure at other newspapers) we waste an absurd amount of time manually extracting data from PDF files and turning it in to something more useful. Even CSV is significantly more useful for many types of information.

Tags: adobe, csv, open-data, opengovernment, pdf, sunlightfoundation

Quoting John Gruber

2009-10-06T07:33:28+00:00

This is very interesting technology. But that Adobe would go to this length suggests that they suspect that Apple will never allow the Flash runtime on the iPhone.

— John Gruber

Tags: john-gruber, flash, adobe, iphone, apple

Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash

2009-10-05T21:15:45+00:00

Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash

A brilliant feat of engineering: Adobe worked around Apple’s “no runtime allowed” rules by writing a compiler front end for LLVM that compiles ActionScript 3 to ARM assembly code, and apparently ported the regular Flash drawing APIs as well.

Tags: actionscript, adobe, compilers, flash, hacking, iphone, llvm

Adobe: Akamai Download Manager FAQ

2008-12-16T10:13:17+00:00

Adobe: Akamai Download Manager FAQ

Tip for Adobe: if the bizarre, buggy custom Java applet you force people to use to download your software requires an FAQ this long, maybe you should provide a “just do it the way everyone else does” option.

Tags: adobe, akamai, usability

Document startups in chaos as Adobe's Flashpaper discontinues

2008-09-05T13:57:26+00:00

Document startups in chaos as Adobe's Flashpaper discontinues

Don’t be a sharecropper.

Tags: adobe, flashpaper, sharecropping, startups

Running C and Python Code on The Web

2008-07-04T08:26:27+00:00

Running C and Python Code on The Web

Adobe are working on a toolchain to compile C code to target the Tamarin VM in Flash. This will allow existing C code (from CPython to Quake) to execute in a safe sandbox in the browser.

Tags: adobe, browser, c, flash, python, quake, tamarin

Quoting Ben Charny

2008-06-06T21:08:53+00:00

Using the patent application as a guide, Apple appears to be making room on the iPhone for flash memory, which means an end to Apple's standoff with Adobe (ADBE) that's kept iPhones from easily viewing a plethora of Internet videos.

— Ben Charny

Tags: ben-charny, flash, adobe, apple, funny, iphone

Adobe and Industry Leaders Establish Open Screen Project

2008-05-01T09:43:04+00:00

Adobe and Industry Leaders Establish Open Screen Project

Talk about burying the lede... the real story is that Adobe are going to drop the license restriction that prevents other people from implementing SWF players. They’re also publishing the AMF and Flash Cast protocols and removing licensing fees for Flash Player on devices.

Via programming.reddit.com

Tags: adobe, amf, flash, flashcast, swf

H.264 support coming to the Flash player

2007-08-21T08:28:20+00:00

H.264 support coming to the Flash player

It looks like this is a response to the higher video quality offered by Silverlight. I wonder if YouTube knew about this when they started transcoding their videos to H.264 for the Apple TV and iPhone.

Tags: adobe, appletv, flash, h264, iphone, microsoft, silverlight, video, youtube

ActionMonkey

2007-07-24T15:29:33+00:00

ActionMonkey

SpiderMonkey + Tamarin = ActionMonkey. New JavaScript engine for Mozilla 2, incorporating code from Adobe’s Open Source ActionScript VM.

Via John Resig

Tags: actionmonkey, actionscript, adobe, javascript, mozilla, spidermonkey, tamarin

Adobe open sources Flex

2007-04-26T11:24:00+00:00

Adobe open sources Flex

Ted Leung says that this might indicate the possibility of Adobe open sourcing Flash itself in the future.

Tags: adobe, flash, flex, open-source, ted-leung

Adobe Apollo: beyond the hype

2007-03-24T19:10:13+00:00

Adobe Apollo: beyond the hype

Niall Kennedy explains Apollo.

Tags: adobe, apollo, niall-kennedy

Adobe wants to be the Microsoft of the Web

2007-03-02T13:01:55+00:00

Adobe wants to be the Microsoft of the Web

The base platform technology for RIAs is too important to be controlled or designed by any single party.

Tags: adobe, flash, flex, rias, ted-leung

The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability

2007-01-11T16:23:33+00:00

The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability

If you host a PDF file anywhere on your site, you’re vulnerable to an XSS attack due to a bug in Acrobat Reader versions below 8. The fix is to serve PDFs as application/octet-stream to avoid them being displayed inline.

Tags: adobe, pdf, security, vulnerability, xss

Tamarin

2006-11-09T12:24:45+00:00

On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe announced the Tamarin project, an open-source ECMAScript virtual machine based on the ActionScript engine used by Flash Player 9.

Frank Hecker's overview of what this means is useful, but the Tamarin source code itself provides this interesting piece of historical insight:

AVM+ is the ActionScript Virtual Machine

AVM+ offers an order of magnitude performance increase over the "Classic AVM" in Flash Player 7. Our performance target is 10X.

AVM+ implements ActionScript 3.0, the new version of the ActionScript language that is compliant with the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard.

AVM+ is also built for modularity. It will be part of the Flash Player, but is a self-contained module which can be incorporated into other programs with ease. It may also be submitted to the ECMA standards organization as a reference implementation of ECMAScript Edition 4.

Adobe's reputation for solid engineering shines through here - it seems that what is now Tamarin was designed for integration with other applications from the very start.

The most important thing we can expect from this is a serious improvement in JavaScript performance in the Mozilla family of products, thanks to Tamarin's JIT compiler that can convert ECMAScript bytecode to machine code at runtime. JavaScript/Ajax applications will run faster, and the Mozilla applications themselves will perform better as much of their UI is written in JavaScript and XUL.

This performance boost will benefit other applications as well. Tamarin is being integrated with SpiderMonkey, which is used in a variety of applications such as the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

Reading through Brendan Eich's technical overview of Mozilla 2, it looks like the Mozilla team also plan on taking advantage of this performance boost to move code from C++ to JavaScript 2 in many places, simplifying their code base and reducing the likelihood of security flaws in the code.

Even in these buzzword filled days of Ajax and Web 2.0, JavaScript is still seen as a poor cousin to so-called "real" programming languages. With a high performance open-source VM like Tamarin available, maybe more developers will start to re-examine JavaScript's role outside the browser.

Tags: actionscript, adobe, javascript, mozilla, tamarin