You're not honestly suggesting that developers start using flash to render their body content, are you?<p>Besides the copy/paste argument that people have already mentioned (yes, I know there is a "solution"). It's also inaccessible, takes longer to render and relies on a 3rd party product to render your website how you intended.<p>I know you'll probably say "give search engines and accessible-concerned folks a text version", but who honestly wants to maintain two different sets of code for ALL body content? And all just so the text looks a little better? Why not just tell everybody to use Safari/Mac?
> Flash completely dominates CSS/HTML/JS for rendering text accurately<p>Except that the resulting rendering is an image so you can't copy and paste. I suppose some content providers will consider that a feature, but as a user it seems like a serious bug to me.
Three reasons to dislike Flash text. First, it does not look native. I have certain anti-aliasing settings, for example, and Flash text looks totally different. Second, copy-paste, as others have pointed out, is a problem --- yes, it can be done, but enough apps out there fail to enable it properly, so it does not really work. Third, if I have browser plugins which operate on text, they break.
PNG dominates CSS/HTML/JS for rendering text accurately too.<p>I'd prefer something usable. Something that matches the rest of my apps, and something that used the font sizes and types that I specified (I set a minimum font size so I can read the test, for example). This doesn't do that.
Glad you like it. The new Text Layout Framework does a whole lot more too... it brings the classic Adobe digital-text expertise right into 98% of the world's current browsers.<p>Veronique Brossier has a good intro to it all:
<a href="http://www.insideria.com/2009/03/flash-text-engine.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.insideria.com/2009/03/flash-text-engine.html</a><p>More examples & info:
<a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/" rel="nofollow">http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/</a><p>jd/adobe
CSS/HTML/JS can render fonts perfectly if you use <canvas/>. The copy/paste problem can be solved using the HTML5 drag and drop API. (copy=drag, paste=drop)<p>To make sure you have the exact font, you may want to include the font file with @font in CSS.
So I'm supposed to be excited at the prospect of ditching open web standards in favor of embedding proprietary Word into proprietary Flash for minor aesthetic enhancements?
Here is what I always wondered about...we are now on Flash 10...why hasn't Adobe figured out a way to make Flash more native to the main browsers out there? How hard is it really for them to add the right click options that everyone in the world relies on?<p>Seriously a few lines of code(yeah exaggeration I know), is keeping them from pretty much domineering the interweb design.
Wait, what? You're claming that Flash renders text accurately by comparing it to <i>Word</i>? If we're going to create a new typesetting system, can't we at least compare it to existing typesetting systems that have had some professional design input? I hesitate to drag out TeX, but come on - Adobe InDesign, Quark Xpress, even Mac OS X's built-in CoreText/ATSUI rendering probably pays more attention to text layout and spacing than Word does.<p>I know Firefox's rendering engine put some effort into supporting the underlying platform's high-quality text-layout engine (for instance, Firefox will often use the 'fi' ligature if it's available), and this will only get better with time - unlike Flash, which will now have to maintain their exact layout system forever to maintain backwards compatibility.
This approach for text rendering should really only be used if there were some sort of graceful failover whereby another browser, lacking flash, would receive the text rendered as standard HTML. It would be foolish to use it otherwise.
There's absolutely no need for that trolling headline. What would have been wrong with "Flash enables perfect replication of Word's layout engine online"? Truthful and probably more interesting.