Adobe opens Flash source to Firefox

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 08 November 2006 03:38

Your IT - Home IT

Adobe Systems has opened up the source code for the scripting language of the widely used Flash Player to Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox web browser. Access to the code will enable the development of faster and richer interactive Web 2.0 style of applications that will work well with Firefox.

The source code, called ActionScript Virtual machine, is based on the ECMAScript programming standard, which is also used by Microsoft's JScript and similar to Sun's JavaScript.

Mozilla will incorporate ActionScript Virtual machine into an open source project called Tamarin aimed at providing web developers with a unified standard scripting engine.

According to Adobe, its scripting engine has clear performance advantages over the JScript engine used by Microsoft. Some observers say that the inclusion of ActionScript into Firefox will widen its performance lead for Web 2.0 style applications on Internet Explorer.

Microsoft has yet to react to the news but Adobe has indicated that it would like Internet Explorer to also incorporate ActionScript.