Netscape will include the Flash plug-in with all future versions of its Navigator browser, a decision Macromedia hopes will make its Flash graphics format ubiquitous.
"It's a really big announcement for both companies," said Ben Dillon, Macromedia's director of product management for Flash. "Being included in all Navigator products has really been the Number One requirement of our developers since day one."
Introduced by Macromedia a year ago, Flash provides a way to display and add interactivity to vector-based graphics. It can be used to create interactive cartoons, animations, and illustrations in addition to static graphics on Web pages.
To distribute the software "player" along with its browser products, Netscape has licensed Flash from Macromedia. The financial terms were not disclosed, although Macromedia's Dillon said the financial component was minor. The real advantage for Macromedia, he said, comes in the co-branding and co-marketing with Netscape's products and on the high-traffic Netcenter, its Web-portal site. The browser company also plans on incorporating Flash-based content into the design of Netcenter.
In contrast to pixel-based formats like GIF and JPEG, vector-based formats define shapes in mathematical expressions, providing smaller file sizes, more control, and a means to position and animate graphical elements. Browsers, while automatically displaying GIF and JPEG graphics, need add-on software to display the rarer vector formats.
"We felt there was a lot of promise for vector-based graphics on the Web," Dillon said of his company's release of Flash in 1997. To prove its success since then, he cites a reported 40 million downloads, over 50,000 Flash developers, and millions of users. Tens of thousands of sites, Dillon said, now incorporate Flash content.
Netscape's senior product manager for Communicator, Matt Harris, said his company felt developers were yearning for vector-graphics support and that Flash had proven itself as the format of choice. He also said Netscape liked the fact that Macromedia had made Flash an open format, a move the company announced in April.
The Flash player is not currently bundled with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. An available ActiveX control will detect and retrieve Flash automatically for Explorer users, but this still requires the download of the Flash plug-in. A Macromedia spokesperson said the company would be interested in a similar deal with Microsoft, calling Macromedia's browser world view "like Switzerland."
Microsoft spokesperson Erin Cox said it was too early to speculate if Internet Explorer's support for Flash would be bolstered in upcoming conversions along the lines of today's Netscape announcement.
It is expected that Macromedia's source code for the player will, like the Flash format, be released as Netscape's Communicator source code now is. Neither company would confirm that, however.
Dillon said site developers' desire for more Flash support comes from a need for more sophistication. "What they want to do is create complex interfaces," he said. Flash enables interactive, animated simulations, demonstrations, and so on, he said. "They all want to do this stuff, but they want to do it without any plug-in hassles."
Another format for the display of vector graphics and animations is Adobe's Precision Graphics Markup Language, or PGML. Adobe has touted that format for being more open, referring to its simple text-based, rather than "binary" structure. But Macromedia feels Flash is better for many tasks, especially those involving animation.
Dillon said both Adobe and Macromedia, as well as Netscape and Microsoft, are working to establish the final PGML specification, because the companies see it as complementing, not competing with, Flash.
The companies said Navigator will come preconfigured for Flash support, but they did not want to take the software integration further by "baking it into" the browser itself. Keeping the Flash viewer as a separate player, they said, allows Netscape to keep the browser software smaller in size.
